Those delving into everything The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom has to offer will surely come across the new Gloom mechanic. Gloom is effectively a stacking debuff that reduces your max Hearts the more you're exposed to it. The Gloom is mostly found within the Chasm Depths of Hyrule.
Under the earth, some monsters have become infected with the Gloom, and corrupting the ground. Every time Link stands in the Gloom-blighted patches, your Hearts will deplete, and eventually, you will die if you let your HP reach zero. Thankfully, there are several ways to combat this.
How To Remove And Recover From Gloom
There are three main ways to remove Gloom build-up and recover your lost Hearts.
When you travel through the Chasm, even being hit by an enemy will cause Gloom to stack on you, which makes it difficult to navigate through the cave safely.
If you need to remove the miasma, you should consider the following three routes.
Activate Lightroots
The first and easiest is to make a beeline to the nearest undiscovered Lightroot. Activating a Lightroot for the first time will bathe Link in light and cleanse him of any Gloom.
Doing this won't restore the Hearts you lost to Gloom, but it unblocks them, meaning you can eat something to recover your Hearts to full.
While exploring the Depths, this is a great way to remove your Gloom, since it will also illuminate the surrounding area.
If you go to an already-activated Lightroot, you won't recover from your Gloom.
It is only by activating a Lightroot that removes the status.
Travel To The Surface
The second way to remove Gloom is to fast-travel to the surface. This might not be the best course of action for you, especially if you're determined to keep going in the Depths and don't want to lose your progress.
Fast travelling to the surface removes all your Gloom, but it also means you won't be able to return to where you just left.
The only way to fast-travel to locations in the Depths is by going to an active Lightroot.
Eat Sunny Meals
Arguably the best way to explore the Depths and remove Gloom is to prepare and eat several meals that have the name Sunny in them.
The way to do this is to cook meals specifically with Sundelions and whatever else you throw into the cooking pot.
The key ingredient to making something Sunny – such as Sunny Steamed Meat or Sunny Steamed Mushrooms – is to use Sundelions in your cooking.
Eating a Sunny-type meal will remove a certain amount of Gloom, and let you restore your Hearts to full. To increase how much Gloom is healed, use more Sundelions.
Here are some quick and easy examples of Sunny meals:
- Any Meat + Sundelions = Sunny Steamed Meat.
- Any Mushroom + Sundelions = Sunny Steamed Mushrooms.
- Hylian Rice + Milk + Hylian Herb + Sundelions = Sunny Veggie Porridge.
These are quick and easy recipes you can make en masse. Perfect for spelunking through the treacherous depths of Hyrule.
How To Prevent Gloom Damage
Now you know how to recover from Gloom damage, you should know how to prevent Gloom from taking effect in the first place.
There is a special armour set you get from delivering Poes to the Bargainer Statues that naturally increases your Gloom Resistance called the Armour of the Depths.
Alongside this armour, you can prepare special meals that increase your Gloom resistance for a time.
Wear The Depths Armour Set
You can find the Tunic of the Depths by trading with a Bargainer Statue in the Depths. The other two pieces of the set are gained from subsequent Bargainer Statues, but you get the Tunic fairly early.
Wearing any piece of this set gives you blue Hearts that will soak up the Gloom before you lose your normal red Hearts.
The blue Hearts provided by the Depths armour set regenerate over time, making them incredibly useful pieces of armour for your exploring.
Prepare Meals with Dark Clumps
You might have seen that the Poe Statues found around Hyrule offer an item called the Dark Clump.
While this item is used to upgrade the Depths armour set – which, incidentally, should be prioritised over using them in meals – you can cook up Elixirs and food using Dark Clumps that will increase your resistance to Gloom.
Similarly to Sunny meals, you need to cook something using a Dark Clump to give it the effect of resisting the miasma.
This follows the same basic recipe as above, but switch out the Sundelions for Dark Clumps to make Warding food. You can increase the duration of the Gloom Resistance by using more Dark Clumps.