The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is filled to the brim with danger, but few things can be as scary as the ever-encroaching Gloom. This red-and-black substance is littered nearly everywhere in the pitch-black Depths areas of the game, and coming into contact with it has a devastating effect – it reduces your total hearts, leaving you increasingly more vulnerable. Even enemies can be infected with Gloom, meaning their attacks can chip away at your total heart reserves. Luckily, the effect can be healed in a variety of ways, so read on to see how Gloom works and how to heal from it.
How to heal Gloom
If you venture into the Depths, you’ll find an abundance of black-and-red Gloom covering the caverns. If you come into contact with it for a few seconds, your maximum hearts will be reduced by one. That destroyed heart will now show up as a cracked gray one, indicating that it needs to be healed in order to fill it up with red again. If you have your maximum heart count completely destroyed, it’ll result in a Game Over, just as normal damage would. That makes it important that you seek out healing methods once your total heart count is reduced pretty significantly, or else you’re putting yourself in some serious danger.
Fast travel
The first (and perhaps easiest) way to heal from Gloom is to fast travel. You can fast travel to a nearby Lightroot if you’re in the Depths, but you can also just fast travel to any unlocked spot on the surface if you’re ready to get back to exploring Hyrule. Regardless of which choice you make, your heart containers will refill with red and heal your Gloom entirely.
Make food with Sundelions
Another way to heal from Gloom is to make Gloom-healing meals with Sundelions. These can be found in plenty of places across the Sky Islands, making them relatively easy to round up and use as needed. Just make sure you cook the Sundelions with items that will refill your health, too, as cooking them alone will only heal the Gloom.
How to resist Gloom
Wouldn’t it be better to just avoid taking Gloom damage to begin with? We think so, and it’s not a terribly difficult thing to achieve. There are a few different ways you can do this, and you may find some are more efficient than others.
Cook gloom-resistant meals
One method of avoiding Gloom is to cook Gloom-resistant meals with Dark Clumps for temporary resistance. These rare materials can be exchanged for poes at Bargaining Statues. If you explore the Depths a bit, you’ll find no shortage of blue glowing poes everywhere you go, so stocking up on Dark Clumps shouldn’t be that hard to do – but you may prefer to save your poes for the next option.
Wear gloom-resistant armor
Perhaps the best way to avoid Gloom is to obtain the Depths Set. Unfortunately, this can be time-consuming, as it will require you to find and pray at multiple Bargaining Statues, then spend a good chunk of poes buying each part of the three-piece set. However, you can at least moderately increase your Gloom resistance by just getting one or two pieces of the set. Either way, it’s worth saving up the 200-plus poes needed to buy a piece of the gear, as having inherent Gloom resistance will always be better than the temporary resistance offered by food.
Find the skeletal horse
You can tame and ride a skeletal horse if you’re able to find them roaming around the Depths, as this will allow you to cross over Gloom without taking any damage from it. You can tame these boney steeds the way you tame any other horse – just walk slowly behind them and quickly press the A button, then calm them down until they’re comfortable with you on their back.
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