How to beat Hinox in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

The Hinox is a recurring sub-boss in the Legend of Zelda series, and can be found in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s Hyrule Ridge and West Necluda regions. For long-time fans of the Zelda franchise, the return of this baddie is certainly a sight for sore eye.

This cyclopean monster follows a fairly straightforward attack pattern, and shouldn’t present too much of an issue if you’re in the mid-game and have decent gear. As long as you remember to pack a bow, a bunch of arrows, and a few strong melee weapons, you’ll be fine.

Hinox locations in Tears of the Kingdom

There are a lot of locations to find Hinoxes across the Surface and Depths in Tears of the Kingdom. On the Surface level, we’ve found 30 Hinox locations, so far. For a better idea on where to find the sleeping beasts, check out the map below.

Graphic: Jeffrey Parkin, Johnny Yu/Polygon | Source images: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

In the Depths, we’ve found a total of 19 Hinox locations, so far. If you’re looking for more Hinoxes in the Depths, a good rule of thumb is to find their surface counterpart. Not every surface Hinox has a Depths cousin, but many of them do! Check out the map below to see where to find the monsters in the Depths.

Graphic: Jeffrey Parkin, Johnny Yu/Polygon | Source images: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

How to defeat the Hinox in Tears of the Kingdom

First, make sure you’re prepared. At the very least, you’re going to need arrows and a strong weapon. We used a mighty Lynel bow and a Stone Talus hammer, and it went down in under a minute.

When you’re ready, sneak up behind the Hinox. As long as you crouch and move slowly, you can get extremely close.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

When you’re ready, equip your strongest weapon and just start hammering the enemy. This isn’t an official Sneakstrike, but we still took off a third of its health before it even stood up.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

Once the Hinox is on its feet, the real fight begins. Swap to your bow as it stands up, run backwards and take aim. It’s a fairly slow-moving enemy at this point, with a slow turning circle. Once you see the blue of its iris, you can rain righteous fury upon it with your arrow. If you want to go for the flavor win, you can stick a bomb flower on it, but a normal arrow will do just fine, as you can see from the screenshot below.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

This will make the Hinox cover its eye and stumble backwards, stunned, giving you’re a brief window (around five seconds) to attack unimpeded. Go and attack its feet until it dies. With a decent melee weapon, you won’t need more than one arrow to take down this monster.

What rewards do you get from a Hinox?

Hinox drops a collection of items once you defeat it, as you can see from the screen below. There will be a couple of monster parts, and a couple of bits of fruit.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

A defeated Hinox leaves behind a fruit drop, including apple, wildberry, voltfruit, palm fruit, mighty bananas, and fortified pumpkin. Which fruit you get is entirely random.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

On top of that, there are three monster parts that you can grab, including the Hinox horn, which offers +12 Fuse attack power. That’s a nice buff, and not surprising, considering how spiky it is.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

Similarly, the Hinox tooth offers +8 while the Hinox toenail adds +7 attack power. Despite the toenail being “as tough as plate armor,” according to the item description, it doesn’t add any defense to your shield.

Update (June 6): We’ve added information to this post on where to find Hinoxes.