One of the Gleeok variants in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom comes in the form of the Thunder Gleeok. Although it shows up in a variety of places, you can find it most readily in the Coliseum Ruins close to the Great Plateau. Much like the other versions of Gleeok, the Thunder Gleeok can seriously overwhelm you if you come in without preparing yourself with high-level gear and overall knowledge of how the fight works. We already covered the fight with the Frost Gleeok, so check out that guide for the granular details of strategies that can apply to every Gleeok variant. But if you would like to hear about strategies specific to the Thunder Gleeok, you can find them right here.
Strategies for Thunder Gleeok
Dealing with Thunder Gleeok’s thunderstorm
Right off the bat, the Thunder Gleeok has a unique quirk in that a thunderstorm will always occur when you encounter it. Not only does this mean that you can’t climb structures as easily, but it also means that lighting will strike you if have metal equipment out for too long. Because of this, equipping wooden or Construct weapons will go a long way toward making this fight less dangerous.
But if you really want or need to use metal weapons for whatever reason, then try to stay under wide ceilings as much as possible if the arena has them. Additionally, you can unequip your metal melee weapon until you stun the boss, at which point you can wail on it for a bit before quickly unequipping the weapon again to avoid the lightning strike.
Screenshot via PC Invasion
Weaknesses to take advantage of
As with the Frost Gleeok, the fight has you landing arrow shots on the Thunder Gleeok’s three heads and knocking them out within a certain time frame to leave the boss open to melee. As you do this, you keep your distance or hide behind cover to stay clear of the devastating lightning beams the heads spew out. And of course, leaping off of a ledge to trigger bullet time so that you can increase the accuracy and frequency of your shots will provide you with the best chances of success.
This is all familiar territory at this point, but one aspect of the Thunder Gleeok fight that complicates things is that, unlike the Frost and Flame variants, it does not come with a clear elemental weakness. Of course, if you have a powerful bow on hand, a single shot will dispatch one of the heads, removing the need for such a weakness. If not, however, you will have to come up with other methods for augmenting the strength of your arrows.
In my attempts, I found that attaching bomb flowers to my arrows served as a decent substitute for fusing an elemental material when up against the other variants. Having said that, the resulting explosions did tend to obscure my view of the heads, making them more difficult to aim for. You can try to rely on the lock-on arrows as indicators for where the heads are if you want to stick to this method. In general, though, it’s probably best if you fuse one of the many attack-boosting monster parts you can obtain from other enemy encounters instead.
Watch out for the electric balls
Arguably, the electric balls the Thunder Gleeok shoots out when airborne present even more of a threat than the fireballs and ice balls of the other variants do. This is mainly because when they land, the electric balls produce circular lightning fields that have a wider radius and a damage output roughly as devastating as the boss’s other attacks.
These don’t make too much of a difference in the Coliseum Ruins fight, as you can easily zip up to the upper floors using Ascend to avoid them. But in other arenas where cover plays a larger role, the electric fields can slip through the walls, which can hit you behind cover if you stand or climb up close. In these situations, keep your distance and climb your cover to initiate bullet time only when you know an electric ball won’t head your way.
Screenshot via PC Invasion
The final phase
For the final phase, the Thunder Gleeok will fly high above the arena and summon lightning strikes all around your general vicinity. This plays out similarly to the Frost Gleeok’s final phase, as both the lightning strikes and the frost variant’s icicles have visual indicators for where they will land. However, the lightning strikes differ in that they leave behind thin, tall gusts of wind that you can use your glider on to reach the dragon. Just remember, if you are running low on stamina while shooting the heads from up high, keep some in reserve to soften the landing and avoid lightning strikes on the way down.
As with every other Gleeok variant in Tears of the Kingdom, stunning the Thunder Gleeok in this last phase will deal massive damage to it once it lands, leaving very little health left for you to whittle down. The powerful lightning-based parts it leaves behind come quite in handy during other challenging combat encounters, so they’re definitely worth the effort.
