Few foes make the ground shake like a Hinox. These one-eyed giants guard treasures with brute strength and surprising speed-yet with the right tactics, timing, and a well-aimed shot, you can turn this towering threat into an easy victory.
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
Hinox can be found across Hyrule in several regions, often sleeping in open clearings or near ruined structures. They appear in different variants-Hinox, Blue Hinox, and Black Hinox-each tougher than the last. Common spots include Hyrule Field, Faron Grasslands, and the depths where Stalnox versions roam at night. Marking their territories on your map helps prepare for future encounters, as these giant
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.
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.
How to defeat the Hinox in Tears of the Kingdom
Hinox often sleep in open areas, so approach while crouched to climb their arm onto the belly and loot necklace weapons without waking them. Shoot arrows at the large eye from medium range, about a five-second sprint away, to stun it and topple the beast. Rush in with a one-handed weapon of at least 20 damage for quick strikes during the stun, then retreat as it recovers; repeat until it bursts into purple smoke, dropping teeth, guts, toenails, horns, and cooking items.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Defeating a Hinox yields its body parts like toenails, teeth, horns, and guts for fusing to weapons or cooking elixirs. Players also receive random fruits such as apples, wildberries, voltfruit, palm fruit, mighty bananas, or fortified pumpkins. Certain Hinox drop weapons from their necklace chains.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Best weapons to use against Hinox in TOTK
The most effective weapons against Hinox in Tears of the Kingdom are fast one-handed weapons with good fuse damage for when it’s down, plus any decent bow fused with strong parts to keep stunning its eye. Elemental damage is fine as bonus power, but raw physical damage and speed matter more because Hinox resist most status effects.
Melee weapons (when it’s down)
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Use a high-damage one-handed weapon (20+ base damage before fusing) so you can get lots of quick hits in each stun window. One-handers let you stop and sprint away before it stands back up.
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Fuse strong monster parts (Lynel parts, Hinox horn, Black Bokoblin horn, etc.) to swords or durable weapons like Royal/Knights gear for big, efficient DPS.
Two-handed “spin to win”
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A big two-handed weapon is great if you start on a sleeping Hinox: charge a spin attack to shred a large chunk of its health before it even gets going. This works especially well if you wear attack-up gear or eat attack food first.
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Later in the game, heavy hammers or greatswords fused with ores or boss parts (e.g., Talus-type hammers) can chunk Blue/Black Hinox quickly during each knockdown.
Bows and arrow fusions
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Any reliable bow works, but multi-shot bows (Lynel bows, Duplex bow, etc.) make hitting the eye much easier and effectively multiply your damage. Keep your distance so you can consistently line up eye shots to chain stuns.
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Early on, fuse Keese eyeballs to arrows so they home in on the Hinox’s eye, guaranteeing easy knockdowns even if your aim is shaky. Later, swap to high-damage fusions like Bomb Flowers or strong monster parts to accelerate each stun cycle.
What to avoid or de-prioritize
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Pure elemental rods and low-damage gimmick weapons are less efficient because Hinox are resistant to being frozen, shocked, or burned; treat elemental effects as bonus, not your main plan.
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Slow, low-damage two-handed weapons without attack buffs can waste your stun windows and leave you exposed as the Hinox gets
Which bows deal the most damage to Hinox
Lynel-type bows and other high-power late-game bows deal the most damage to Hinox, especially when you factor in multi-shot and fused arrows. For Hinox, what matters is total arrow damage to the eye per shot, not just a single high attack stat.
Top raw-damage bows
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Savage Lynel Bow: Among the highest damage bows in the series, and in Tears of the Kingdom its multi-shot variants can fire 3-5 arrows at once, multiplying damage to the Hinox’s eye if all arrows land. Even with slightly lower range and durability, it’s the go-to “delete a miniboss” bow.
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Other Lynel bows (Mighty/standard variants) still hit very hard, and are easier to find earlier; they give you high per-shot power plus multi-shot for big bursts on stunned Hinox.
High-power single-shot bows
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Royal-line bows (Royal Bow, etc.) offer high base attack, good range, and solid durability, making them excellent for consistent headshots if you do not have a Lynel bow. These shine when using strong fuse materials rather than relying on multi-shot.
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“Sniper” bows like the Golden and Phrenic types trade some raw power for zoom and range, which can still be very effective if you are confident landing precise eye shots from safety.
How to maximize bow damage vs Hinox
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Fuse the strongest monster parts or Bomb Flowers you have onto arrows; multi-shot bows apply that fuse damage to every arrow that hits the eye, greatly increasing burst damage. Combining a Savage Lynel Bow with powerful fused arrows lets you burn through a Hinox’s health in just a few stun cycles.
