Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom - How To Defeat Flux Construct 1

Despite being no more than a tutorial area, the Great Sky Island in "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" is a veritable treasure trove of new discoveries and adventures offered to the player right off the bat. Though one could simply speed through the introductory segment to finish the four shrines as quickly as possible before heading down to Hyrule, it's hard not to get lost in everything this starting island has to offer: Zonai Devices, Zonaite refining, Korok rescuing, and even the game's very first mini-boss fight waiting out in the open.

Acting as the starting equivalent to the Stone Talus found in "Breath of the Wild," the Flux Construct 1 is the earliest boss you can encounter in the game and can be found on a wide circular platform near the southernmost Zonai Device Dispenser. It's rather hard to miss, considering its one red eye rotates across the platform like a searchlight. While you don't necessarily have to confront it to progress through the tutorial, it's a great opportunity to get familiar with the mechanics and attack patterns of an enemy you'll find popping up in Zonai ruins all across the map. They're also a great source for stocking up on Fuse tools, as they drop a bunch of Zonai Charges and device capsules upon defeat.

Here's a rundown on how to prep for and defeat Flux Constructs in "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom."

A Flux Construct is much like a Stone Talus in more than the fact that it's the tutorial miniboss — it's also big, hard-hitting, and nearly invulnerable in every part of its body save for one weak spot. It also comes in three tiers — Flux Construct 1, Flux Construct 2, and Flux Construct 3 — with its HP and attack patterns getting more difficult with each iteration. However, the same core strategy remains the same with every Flux Construct: Hit the glowing eye cube while dodging as many hits as possible. 

This is easier said than done, of course, as this mass of wriggling cubes can move extremely fast and slam you down to your last heart in no time without good armor. The key to staying on top of every Flux Construct fight is going in prepared with stamina-restoring foods and elixirs, movement-speed foods and elixirs, and a ton of arrows. If players are not confident about their dodging and aiming abilities, it's a good idea to stock up on regular hearty foods to keep Link's HP up and Keese eyeballs to turn his arrows into homing missiles. Lastly, don't forget to keep a good melee weapon on hand; players will want something that really packs a punch during Link's hard-earned damage windows.

Fighting a Flux Construct happens in phases: Every time you manage to disassemble the construct, it'll remain scattered across the ground and vulnerable to hits for a short time before reassembling itself into a new formation with a new attack pattern. Your goal in each phase is to locate where its glowing core cube has gone and dodge its attacks while going after it once more.

This is done easily enough while fighting Flux Construct 1, as it only has two formations that it cycles through: A humanoid walking form with lunging attacks, and a rolling cube form that tries to crush poor Link. The amount of possible formations seems to increase with Construct levels, with Flux Construct 2 having an airborne form (as well as much more advanced attack patterns while in humanoid and cube form).

Hence, positioning is key. Starting the fight off from the high ground with a downward attack can give Link a great head start. If there are any floating platforms around, it's well worth setting them up, so Link can dodge onto them using the Ascend ability during combat as needed. Having a few shields with Rockets attached to them can also be very helpful in getting Link to a better vantage point above the Construct, which players will need to do during the airborne phases especially.

Possibly the most important part of Flux Construct fights is understanding that every single cube in a Flux Construct is susceptible to the Ultrahand ability. Link can simply grab and pull cubes off the Construct's legs, destabilizing it until it collapses into a heap; in the same vein, Link can peel its rolling cube form piece by piece to get at the core cube. He can even target the core cube directly and rip it off with brute force — though it's a bit risky: It takes a few seconds and a good angle to get the core cube off, leaving Link vulnerable to attacks while the Construct is still moving at him.

There are a few phases where this kind of tactic doesn't really work, however. The airborne forms that Flux Constructs 2 and 3 can take on, especially, seem to regenerate any cube pulled off of it with Ultrahand every time it performs an attack. If Link is out of Rockets and doesn't have any Ascend-eligible platforms nearby, this can get frustrating pretty quickly. The good news is that the cubes are also susceptible to Recall: With good timing, Link can stop one of its attacking cubes, hop onto it, and let it carry him up onto the Construct to wail on the core cube.

Link won't always have the right opportunity to do this, of course, as specific attack patterns vary from Construct to Construct. The key is to keep Link's abilities in mind as players study the attack patterns and look for any way of using the cubes' susceptibility to Link's Zonai powers against the Construct. There's no wrong way of defeating one, so long as Link can deal enough damage to it without running out of HP himself.

That also means that getting creative and off the rails with Link's approach is entirely feasible so long as he has the means: If players have unlocked the Autobuild ability from the depths, they could stock up on Zonaite pieces to build useful blueprints on the fly, such as hot air balloons, tanks, cannons, flamethrowers, or some unholy combination of all of the above.

Given enough space and a bit of finesse, Link could probably set them up on the arena before engaging the Construct for an easy victory without lifting a finger. Don't be afraid to experiment: As with nearly everything else in "Tears of the Kingdom," any Flux Construct can be defeated at even the lowest levels with a lot of patience, resources, and creativity.