In this chapter, you play as Kratos, accompanied by Atreus.
With the previous cutscene over, you’ll earn a trophy as you Remember The Spartan Teachings
, along with a quest update.
Nav assist and interact to speak to Ratatoskr, you can interrupt his dialogue via the interact prompt should you so wish to enter the mystic gateway.
Wait for the exit to load as per usual and take it, at which point Garm, the wolf you freed earlier, will be seen.
Keep nav assisting and aiming, eventually you should hear a spear throw cue.
Hit this weakpoint and detonate it, hitting the newly revealed interact prompt underneath to climb.
Get to the top of this climb and you’ll get into combat. You can use range to your advantage here if you so wish. After this, you’ll come to a
Puzzle
- Nav assist your way forward to auto-traverse up a ledge, you may have to move around a little to get nav assist to unstick you from geometry first.
- Once you are up on this first ledge, nav assist and auto-traversal should take you on to the second ledge, where the puzzle itself takes place.
- Press nav assist, the cue should rotate to your right, then step forward once (you should be able to hear this).
- Aiming should point you at the far right of the 3 cues in this puzzle.
- The points for this puzzle are arranged in a triangle (with two points on the bottom and one on the top middle).
- From here, aim and look to your left for about half a second, then press aim again and throw at the cue this snaps to. This cue won’t sound any different to the first one, though there have also been occasions where it doesn’t play at all.
- Finally moving diagonally up and right for about a second (to complete the triangle), repeat this process for the third and final cue.
- Once all 3 spears are lodged in, if successful you should hear a detonation cue as if you were hitting a single weakpoint. You may have to try this a few times to get it right and it can be one of the hardest puzzles in the whole game.
- If you want to reposition yourself for this puzzle, move forward and you should drop off the platform. You just have to, from here, nav assist and traverse up the two ledges at the start to reset.
- Note that if you rush the aim snapping you may accidentally catch the wrong cue, so take your time with this one and if in doubt, restart the checkpoint.
- With the weak points taken care of, the puzzle is complete and you enter combat.
End Puzzle
Combat done, nav assist for more climbing.
Traverse via an interact prompt and move forward. Eventually, after a climb and some more nav assist, you’ll get to a companion prompt. Hit this to open a tear and combat will begin.
This is actually an exercise in survival. If you’re using the Stone Wall shield, just stay behind it, dispelling where needed. Note that you don’t have access to Atreus here at all, as he is closing the realm tear. Using your blades here is probably a good option. However, note that you actually don’t have to throw a single attack the enemies’ way if you don’t want to.
Note that if you die, you’ll reset to before the tear opens.
Tear closed, nav assist, interact and climb.
Then, you’ll come to a puzzle, via a gate mechanism much like you’ve seen before.
Puzzle
- Interact with the gate, aim with Atreus and shoot 3 sigil arrows.
- Then aim up for about half a second and have Atreus shoot 3 more at a second aim cue, release aim and hit it again to try and get it to snap.
- Now pull back on the left stick whilst still interacting with the gate, then have Atreus shoot the final point by aiming then throw the axe to freeze all 3 and hold the gate in place.
- If successful, Atreus should have dialogue to confirm it and you can sprint through via nav assist, as the gate closes behind you; you’ll actually run straight into more combat.
End of puzzle
After a first wave and a little nav assisting, a second set of enemies will appear, including nightmares. Take these out and progress onward to… you guessed it… more combat.
Once defeated, Atreus says this is all my fault
.
Once combat ends, nav assist until your feet stop moving. You may have enemies intervene, in which case take them out as well.
Once you get safely to a point where you can’t move forward, throw your spear at a weak point. This might summon more enemies. In my testing, this seemed to make enemies spawn behind me to fight.
Battle done with, nav assist and usee the embed point you created to get into yet another fight, which you’ll drop down into. Do not move from this spot for an important reason mentioned shortly, instead handling enemies from range.
If needed, you can just let Atreus shoot them and take them out whilst sitting behind your shield.
After combat, we’d recommend trying to get the chest that’s actually just to your left as you drop down at the start of the fight, the reason we said don’t move in the first instance when this battle begins.
If you haven’t moved forward at all as instructed, nav assist once and look to your left to get an interact prompt. Hitting this opens a legendary chest.
This chest gives you a blades heavy runic, Tame the Beast, which can be great for up close situations with singular or multiple targets.
From here you can auto-traverse, dropping down via the blades, with Kratos and Atreus conversing as you continue navigating.
Autotraversing as Kratos and Atreus continue to talk, then waiting will allow Atreus to unlock a blade shortcut for you to progress via an interact prompt.
Climb via the next prompt and once you reach the top, Atreus will try to calm Garm down which, of course, doesn’t work. Combat ensues after Garm leaves, with some very powerful new enemies.
You’ll have to be ready for the unblockable attacks thrown here, as they are very quick, as well as being mindful of any shields the enemies may possess.
Note that if you die in this fight, you’ll restart at its beginning, should you wish to use this as a checkpoint and save.
After eventually defeating everyone here, follow nav assist until you reach a blades interact prompt that should start some more combat.
That done with, keep running and dropping down and you’ll hear the formidable, guttural speech of a traveller.
Be patient, tactical and dodge the unblockables and you should be able to emerge victorious. Also be aware of his AOE casting attack where you’ll hear a shimmering sort of sound. You have to back away when he does this.
Once the traveller’s down, time for another:
Puzzle
- Interact with the prompt for the gate, then disengage.
- Nav assist and aim. Hit the cue with 3 sigil arrows.
- Find and interact with the gate again, then pull the gate back for one haptic pulse with a single pull of the left stick.
- Look towards where you hear your first set of sigils and hit a second set of 3 when your aim snaps,. You should see overlapping sigils.
- Now pull the gate all the way back for the final time and repeat the process, hitting a third set of sigils and seeing them overlap.
- Freeze this final sigil set with the axe.
- If successful, Atreus will acknowledge your triumph and you can once again run through as the gate closes behind you, though nav assist might make you need to manually turn slightly to your left to unstick from geometry.
End Of Puzzle
Puzzle done, auto-traverse, run and eventually you’ll find some enemies. For speed, I’d suggest using your blades to defeat these, much like most things in Helheim.
Foes eliminated, nav assist onwards and periodically aim to find a throw for an embed point.
<!–and find an interact prompt that starts a climb. Disengage from this and pick hit the interact to your right, which gives you the Thurst Of A Thousand Soldiers light runic for the spear.
At the top of said climb, look for an aim cue with your spear.
Hit this to make an embed point, then nav assist and use it to continue.
It turns out you can actually embed this at the bottom of the climbable surface, if you find an aim cue down there prior to nav assisting your way up.
Regardless of how you achieved the above, carefully nav assist onwards and
–>
This done with, use said point and then traverse over a gap. nav assist might get a little stuck here, but some patience will be rewarded as eventually, you should find two interact prompts.
The first of these, to your right, should be a legendary chest, giving you Thrust Of A Thousand Soldiers, a spear light runic attack that is very useful.
This discovered, nav assist to the second prompt and you’ll come to a climbable surface where Kratos and Atreus discuss the boy’s plan
.
Once you reach the top of that surface, as well as experiencing a cool scripted moment during the climb, nav assist and you’ll drop into an arena where combat begins.
You’ll have to run to lock on, but once you do, deal with the enemies that spawn in.
Defeat these foes plus any others that might arrive and, once done, nav assist and you’ll enter a sequence with Garm himself.
As this is not technically combat, nav assist and run, watching for Garm to lodge his chains in the ground. Once he does, aim at the chains and freeze them, grabbing them as instructed by the tutorial.
Holding interact with chains in-hand enters you into a cutscene of sorts.
Cutscene done, nav assist onwards, roll if required to get around geometry, and you’ll come to an interact prompt for a door. Once opened, you’ll enter combat with some wisps.
Enemies dealt with, nav assist onwards and roll left when your feet stop moving to smash some objects blocking your way. This allows you to look for a spear aim cue.
This one can be quite tricky to find, so persist with slow nav assisting forward and you’ll eventually be able to create an embed point with the spear, accompanied by some dialogue.
Spear thrown successfully, auto-traverse over it to progress.
More enemies, including nightmares, a revenant and some wisps, await you directly after this embed point.
Those defeated and with Kratos saying We do this my way now
, nav assist onwards and you’ll come to an interact that is actually a series of blade traversals.
After completing these you enter, dramatically, like something out of God Of War III:
Boss fight: Garm
Garm is a boss with many attacks, both blockable and unblockable. Thankfully, most are telegraphed and, when the time comes to freeze his chains to do what damage you can, when you hear a loud metallic clang that is very distinct usually preceded by an unblockable telegraph, you’ll usually be able to tell very quickly.
Trying to describe each and every attack in text form would be too complicated, but if you’d like to see footage, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
The one attack that might cause you issues is a phase or two in, heralded by a reverberant raw, followed by a long silence.
If you hear this roar, at its end, roll back to the edge of the arena, then sprint in for around half a second or so and roll forward once, blocking just after you do so.
Come up with your shield in hand and if you’re lucky, Garm should smack straight into it, being potentially vulnerable to attacks and at the very least not doing any damage to you.
He’ll likely take a few tries to take down and will introduce new moves as you go, but learn as you fight (even after respawning) and you should be fine.
Garm defeated via a QTE after freezing the aforementioned shackles, nav assist and you’ll find an interact prompt whilst Atreus talks about it all being his fault. This is a checkpoint, should you wish to save here
Hit said interact prompt and continue nav assisting.
Eventually, whether you had to restart the checkpoint or not to get things to work as I did during testing when nav assist seemed to briefly break here, Atreus talks about a locked door.
Nav assist to an interact prompt that is actually for a gate, then turn so the interact prompt is around 90 degrees to your left. Run forward from here and to your left, after several steps, should be a second interact.
Hitting this should open a legendary chest, this time giving you access to the onslaught shield. If you want to equip this, much like any other runic attack you picked up along your journey, as the prompt appears you can press the touchpad to go to the correct section, then press confirm to equip the highlighted instrument of war.
With that done though, nav assist back to the gate mechanism. Guess it’s time for yet another
Puzzle
- Interact with the gate and, without moving it, aim and fire a sigil arrow set (i.e. 3 arrows). There will be no cue for the points in this puzzle.
- Then pull the gate back for two vibration pulses with the left stick and shoot a second set.
- Next, pull it back all the way, then move it forward for a single pulse.
- Aim and shoot a third arrow set. Now aim at this final point and freeze it.
- You may not get success dialogue for this, but if the gate stops moving on disengaging, then you can sprint through before it closes via nav assist.
End Puzzle
Grab the resource chest that should be just to your right after you run through, then nav assist forward to an interact prompt.
An escape sequence ensues and, though you’ll be locked on at first, when the conversation turns to running, you can disengage targeting and use nav assist to your advantage.
Run so that Garm is behind you, then move so that he is diagonally to your right. This should get you roughly in the right place for Atreus to throw in some more dialogue, asking what do we do?
.
Keep running and getting into combat. Whenever combat ends, nav assist onwards and interact if you see a prompt.
If nav assist keeps taking you round in circles or doesn’t seem to let you progress, sometimes that means that you’re just slightly out of the way of a trigger point, so move around without it for a little and you should be able to hit it.
Note that this is one of the only points I can recall in the game where if you choose to restart a checkpoint, it sometimes restarts the entire escape sequence, though thankfully you don’t have to fight all the smaller enemies.
My best advice would be to follow Atreus as a sort of audio guide, as nav assist can get stuck with some of these elements.
After another combat segment, ending with Atreus telling Kratos to look out
, which acts as another checkpoint if you need to restart, you’ll nav assist to an interact prompt though you may have to roll and break some obstructions to get it to appear.
After this prompt, and some more running, Atreus will say that maybe he’s learnt he runs better on chaos
.
Keep nav assisting and, via an auto-traversal you’ll enter a cutscene that leads into another:
Boss Fight: Garm Round 2
This is much less frustrating than the first battle against this formidable foe, if only because you’ll realise that when using the spear, aiming and flicking the stick left or right should aim you at weakpoints to stun the hellhound.
Such stun opportunities give you an opening for massive damage. After a little while, Atreus will say Stay down
, and some relevant dialogue will trigger.
Keep fighting Garm until eventually, you initiate a stun prompt. If successfully hit, you’ll enter a QTE cutscene to end this sequence.
Questions being asked and answered, nav assist and auto-traverse your way up via interact prompts. Eventually you’ll hear the sounds of an injured wolf. Once you reach the end of the climb, moving left if you need to unstick from the surface, you’ll trigger a cutscene.
End Of Boss Fight
After this sequence ends, nav assist your way onward until you get to another interact prompt with gate-style haptics, which is aâ¦
Puzzle
- Interact with the wheel and shoot 3 sigil arrows whilst aiming.
- Then pull the gate back for 2 vibration pulses and hit a second set of 3.
- Hit this second set with the axe, disengage from the wheel and run through, auto-traversing up a platform and hopefully running up to two interact prompts.
- Until you reach these, don’t stop, otherwise you’ll have to redo the puzzle again.
- Though you may hear dialogue about the fates if you’re successful, there is a chance you’ll hear it and still be on the wrong side of the gate, so the interact prompts mentioned above should be your guide here.
End puzzle
Hit the stationary raven should you wish, then keep nav assisting and interacting to unlock a blade shortcut.
Continue onward, interacting then heavy attacking to free a mystic gateway, triggering a cutscene.
Cutscene over, interact and you’ll automatically travel back to Sindri’s house.
After waiting for the exit to load and taking it, run to the interact prompt to trigger the final cutscene of the chapter, where Freya asks if Heimdall is our focus. This cutscene leads in to the start of chapter 13.