Chapter 2: The Quest for Tyr – SightlessKombat.com

In this chapter, you play as Kratos, accompanied by Atreus and Mimir.

Now that you’ve entered a brand new realm (after leaving the gateway at the end of the previous chapter), the first thing to keep an ear out for is the strange crowing noise. That’s a raven. You won’t be able to easily hit them all, but hitting the ones along the way that you happen to find might allow you to claim some useful latter game items if you can eliminate enough, though it’s not mandatory and not all the ravens will be documented in this guide.

This particular raven should be on your left and slightly upwards of centre. Once you’re in roughly the right spot I.e. it’s in the centre of your stereo field, aim the axe and see if you get a throw cue.

Once you do have it lined up, have a resulting cue and throw the axe, if it connects you’ll hear a sound indicating one less raven to find later.

Do note that not all ravens are stationary, nor can they all be removed as soon as they’re spotted.

Now you can progress, though you may have already entered the starting area for the first fight of the chapter whilst trying to hit the raven.

In short, whilst trying to free a boat, Atreus has just unearthed a new enemy, wretches. These small pesky individuals are very easily taken care of with a straightforward trick, simply by fishing for them with the blades.

To do so, with auto lock-on and a little skill in realising when one might attack you or is close, aim and throw the blades with a light attack and, if successful, you’ll see an animation that ends in a kill. There are usually quite a few of these at any one time, so be prepared to sometimes feel a little overwhelmed, especially on higher difficulties.

New enemies dealt with, navigate forward and interact to start off on your first rowing adventure, once you enter the water.

Boat notes:

Whilst rowing, you need to remember that nav assist turns quicker than the boat does. The best way to work with this is to stop moving forward, then press nav assist, wait for the oars to stop splashing and then move forward again, rinsing and repeating as necessary.

Also of note is that you’ll occasionally bump into geometry. If you can’t progress (the boat will not stop moving but keep hitting things), you can pull both sticks left or right for about a quarter or half a second, pull backwards on the left stick and then nav assist again to then hopefully move forward. This is the most frustrating part, but you will get used to it over time and this strategy is usually seldom needed.

Gently Down The River

Row until you get an interact prompt and get off the boat. If it’s not the right dock, as happened to me when I played through to test the guide, you’ll be turned around and put back into the water.

After rowing for a while, Kratos and Mimir will talk about a wheel to turn and you’ll be given instructions to find a beach to dock at. Keep navigating and rowing and eventually, you’ll find land via an interact prompt.

Be aware that on PC, nav assist can get a little confused here, including when finding the dock.

Now, we come to the first puzzle of this chapter.

Puzzle

Use navigation assist to progress. Keep aiming every so often and you’ll hear a throw cue, which you can then use to hit the Geyser which will then start water flowing.
Leaving the axe where it is, you can nav assist and jump over a gap. Note that if you want to open a Nornir chest, you should stop here and refer to the below section for further instructions on how to do so.
If you decide to not opt for the chest, continue to navigate until you get an interact prompt which, as you climb, will start a conversation.

Unlocking the Nornir Chest

Nornir chests are puzzle boxes, for lack of a better phrase that, once opened, grant you boosts to either your maximum health or rage. These can definitely help you, especially in the latter game, but unfortunately are mostly off the critical path where nav assist won’t allow you to go without sighted assistance.

However, there are times where these chests are, with a little work from you, accessible and this first one is not too far from where nav assist would have you go anyway.

- Directly after the freeze Geyser tutorial prompt, freeze the Geyser and jump across by moving forward, then recall the axe.
- From here, you will hear 2 Geysers, one behind you that you just unfroze and one to your right.
- Rotate 90 degrees to your right, until one geyser is in front of you and the tutorial one is to your right.
- This will put you facing the Geyser that hides a secret way up. Freeze the geyser and you should immediately hear an interact prompt to grapple up, though you might have to move forward to find it potentially. Press interact to traverse to the next part of the puzzle.

Using this grapple point puts you at the top of a platform; recall the axe so you do not accidentally go backwards or fall back down.

To unlock this chest, you have to break 3 runic seals. The first rune is located in front of you. On PS5, the aim snapping seemed to lock onto this without issue, though you may need to aim very slightly left and down without moving. You should hear a throw cue if you’re lined up and you could use either the blades or axe here. On PC, this throw cue only played for a fraction of a second, but could still be hit with a throw after the cue played.
If done correctly, you will hear the rune shatter and get a tutorial about breaking more seals just like this one.
From here, turn left until the geyser sound is pretty much 90 degrees to your left. ON PC, I was able to turn right to achieve the same result.
Sidestep to your right a few times (around 5 to 7) and walk forward until you drop off a ledge.
If done correctly, this will drop you directly in front of the locked chest (where you’ll hear the sound cue for locked items.
From here there are 2 additional seals, the first of which is directly ahead of the chest on an island across the water (a decent distance, but should not require much adjustment to hit, merely a small amount of forward movement should get you close enough) to hit an axe throw.
The third and final seal is about 90 degrees to the right of the chest itself, which you can just rotate to find without moving.
Break those two in whatever order you wish and you should be able to then hear the lock open on the chest.
Turn towards the chest and find an interact to open it and get your first apple, which will raise your maximum health. This is identified by a prompt which is not narrated.

End of chest and puzzle instructions.

Whether you got the chest or not, navigate onwards and you’ll come to some traversal. Keep in mind that this traversal will have a cue a little way along it to press circle to jump to a new point, hitting this will let you progress if it doesn’t happen automatically.

That small navigation section finished, you’ll find another interact prompt. This is another zipline that will play the sound cue for rage, as you’re entering combat with some more new foes.

These melee enemies are frustrating to deal with in numbers, but are pretty easy to take down at this point in the game as long as you keep your shield up when they’re attacking. Getting to a partial lull in the fight, you’ll be prompted as to how to use the Stone Wall shield effectively via a spoken tutorial. Alternatively, if you’re using the Dauntless shield, a non-narrated prompt will appear letting you know that parrying applies stun.

After this, more enemies will appear. Dealing with these should be no problem fo you really at this point.

Battle over, continue to the next interactable via nav assist and climb up the chain you find.

Ground tremors and a conversation indicate the start of the next puzzle.

Puzzle:

Nav assist to an interact to blade latch on to the platform. Move the left stick backwards to lower it.
Nav assisting will get you to another prompt to unlock a blade shortcut, a sort of metallic scraping noise indicates you’ve successfully unlocked a blade traversal point on interacting with it. These are useful if you end up coming back here later.
Turning to your left around 90 degrees and walking forward should give you an interact prompt that will provide you some hacksilver from a chest. This is not mandatory.

End of puzzle.

Now navigate back to the boat, though it may be on your left rather than right in front of you.

After a while of boat-based navigation, once Atreus says think we can fit under that bridge, you should see an interactable prompt. Hitting this triggers a small animation where you do just that. Continue on from here to your next dock.

In one run before I found said dock, I purchased the Serpent’s Snare axe skill at this point (though I could’ve likely got it before), which allows you to hold heavy attack and launch weaker enemies, or at the very least apply high frost to whatever enemy it comes into contact with, though be aware of the massive wind-up time you need for this to connect, which you are not invincible during.

Once on land, defeat the enemies (which shouldn’t be any trouble at this point) and proceed via nav assist, interacting with the prompt when Atreus mentions about capping geysers. This heralds another

Puzzle:

interact to use the blades to pull a geyser cap.
Now aim and if needed look down a little to throw the axe in to the geyser in front of you.
If successful, you should hear it freeze and can continue onward via nav assist.

More enemies await you and, once defeated, you’ll encounter the rest of this puzzle, but first, strategies.

There are two sets of instructions, one for each build as they seemed to be different through testing.

PS4 version:

As soon as the combat cue happens, stand still and deal with the enemies from range, do not move forward to engage. Just block and axe throw and utilise Atreus arrows as needed to take down your foes.
With that done, look down slightly and turn to your right for about a quarter of a second. If done right, you should aim and hear a cue that says you’re too far away to hit an object. However, you can in fact hit the geyser from here and it will trigger a reaction from Kratos and co.
Note: in trying to replicate this, it did take me a couple of tries. However, nav assisting forward slowly and repeating both the turn and the look seemed to work consistently, though you might end up hearing a cue that says you can hit an object directly, which is fine if you succeed.

PS5 version:

Whilst fighting the enemies here, use your blades and then stand still once the fight’s over. Then use nav assist to get you to orient in the correct direction for an axe throwing cue.
Hit this cue and the puzzle will be complete, with the wheel moving and the gate coming down.
Note: If you’ve not used a blade point yet, you should be good to go within seconds (as was the case during our tests).
If you have used a blade traversal point, it might take a little longer but nav assist plus use of said blade point should take you right to an area where you can hit the aforementioned throw cue.
If you’re struggling with this on PC, find the moving mechanism cue. Aim to the left of that by about 70 or so degrees and throw at the resulting cue to trigger a reaction.

With this puzzle complete, you can now return to the boat, after which a conversation will start around “the Dwarves of this realm”.

End of puzzle.

Back in the water, continue to row until you start hearing what might be described as the sound of a high-pitched Dog. These are Ormas, animals that you will have a hard time taking out (though they are not hostile anyway).

This cue means you’re at the right dock to proceed, just keep rowing until you find the interact prompt. When you are on solid ground, you’ve arrived in the area of a now infamous puzzle.

Before we get to said puzzle though, throw your axe at an object to knock it down (on the PS4 and PC build I had to roll back and look up slightly to hit this which then allows you to progress).

From here, continue forward until you get to an interactable. This is the start of the previously mentioned puzzle.

The Rope Puzzle

Having nav assisted forward, interact with the aforementioned prompt and pull back on the left stick to lower the platform, then Atreus will say something about it only being half-way down. Let’s rectify that.
Nav assist until you can aim and get an axe throwing cue. Throw the axe at this to freeze a geyser, then nav assist to jump across the now frozen area. Continue nav assisting until you enter combat.
Defeating all the enemies, nav assisting to fight more if needed, then navigating a little more should trigger Atreus to say think you can uncover that geyser from here? This is the start of a checkpoint, should you need to reset.

From the checkpoint:

Nav assist to an interactable that will uncap the geyser, don’t bother freezing the one in front of you.
Instead, turn slightly to your left and aim to get a throw cue.
After that turn, if you hit the one you are aiming at successfully, you should hear Atreus say something about a block coming down or pressure turning the wheel.
If you’re stuck in terms of finding the target you need to hit, you can hit the one on the right (the one that nav assist points you to) and then turn to where you hear the water splashing after the freeze.
Lining up with this latter splash cue to your left should allow you to hit the actual geyser you need to use and trigger the aforementioned dialogue. Once done, this geyser is the primary focus point for the rest of the puzzle.
Note, whilst getting these puzzles to work on PS5 seemed at least semi-consistent, the nav assist on the PS 4 version as well as the aiming might be slightly off unfortunately, at least as of the time of original writing.

The next step

Now we need to cut a rope that’s attached to the block we just moved via the geyser.
Before we go any further, there are two methods of doing this as follows:

Method 1: The 15-step routine (SLJ’s method):

Given you’ve now got a block lowered via the frozen geyser in front of you, you’ll want to hold L2 to aim and then move your right stick up 15 times in small increments.
Though SLJ got this method to work with a few tries, I personally could not, so this method is currently a little less consistent than we’d like, even after much testing.

Method 2: The “Sight Calibration” Method:

Now, as before, aim at the left-hand of the two geysers, then throw your axe. Whilst the block is coming down, continue to hold aim and whilst doing so continually move your right stick upwards gently (not an easily measurable value, I know).
If done right, you should hear a brief glimpse of the aim cue when you don’t have the axe equipped. As soon as you hear that, stop moving the right stick.
This is because you’ve essentially calibrated your sight on where the rope will pass through in order to cut it when you recall the axe.

Irrespective of method

When you want to attempt a rope cut, you should recall the axe with triangle and throw by continuing to hold down aim and hitting R1 as usual when you hear a cue (whether that’s for a near or far object).
If successful (regardless of how far you moved upwards originally), Atreus should say nice one and you can progress, as the hard part is done.
Unfortunately, the PS4 version did not seem to play the aim cue for the rope itself at all on some attempts, so your mileage may vary. However, method 2 was able to be replicated consistently on my playthrough on both builds.

The easier part:

Recalling the axe, nav assist until Atreus says see anything from that block?. make sure you’ve climbed (you’ll feel a similar haptic to those when you’ve climbed previously.
Whilst standing on the block, turn until the sound of water is in front of you, look down towards it with the right stick and aim. If you get a cue to throw, do so and you can progress onward once you’ve hit your target.
If you nav assist forward and the interact prompt you find allows you to pull back on the left stick just like the platform from earlier, with Mimir saying lad, if I may?, then you’ve finished the rope puzzle and can finally progress.

End Of Rope Puzzle

After returning to the boat via nav assist, continue rowing towards your destination, that being the Dwarven capital city. You’ll know when you’re nearby when Kratos says Atreus, look ahead.

A while more rowing will see you arriving in the vicinity of the city proper, discussing an alarm and eventually, after an interact prompt and some light traversal, meeting up with Sindri again on land. Before you talk directly to him though, there are both a pickup on your left and a raven that you can hit as it’s stationary.

Given Sindri is technically running a shop here, there’s also the war chest here too which you should retrieve any lost loot from, it’s to your right as you face Sindri if available.

After Sindri’s cutscene, you’ll have a small tutorial on your hands about sonic arrows which you actually get to take control of, after which you get to test them out on some enemies. Just follow the TTS instructions and you should be able to start the next sequence.

After the battle, I’d recommend you turn around and go back to Sindri. This is not only for any upgrades that you might need, but also you’ll get a short tutorial on Resurrection stones once you interact with our Dwarven ally. Press confirm on the tutorial screen and the stones section is automatically selected.

Press right on the DPad to open the category and hold Square to purchase your first resurrection (or Res stone.

This first one is free, but will only resurrect you with a small amount of health. Other later versions will allow you to resurrect with different levels of health or rage.

If you have one, a resurrection stone can be activated by pressing Square when you die and hear a prompt. This commands your companion to bring you back to life. You can only have one stone on you at a time and you need a companion to be able to resurrect.

Furthermore, if you use the stone in a fight and then die during that same encounter, your ability to use it will be restored on reloading the last checkpoint at no extra cost. If you complete an encounter after using a stone however, the stone is permanently gone until you purchase a new one at a shop.

Note that at times stones will disappear without being used, for no clear reason. I am not able to provide advice as to why, but am letting you know this can happen just so you don’t panic and are aware ahead of time this can occur.

Upgrade what you want at Sindri’s shop and continue. Note that vendors will usually let you know if your axe, blades or other combat related elements can be upgraded, though I personally wouldn’t rely on this.

Any shopping done, continue nav assisting forward until Atreus talks about the citizens hiding on this side as well, then aim. You may not hear a cue, but if you shoot as instructed in the tutorial you should hear an object fall and be able to progress as normal.

Continue forward and use any interactable prompts you find until you hear a companion command prompt instead, when you’re near an individual playing an instrument. This triggers a conversation where you’ll meet Raeb, voiced and motion captured by Bear Mccreary, composer for the game and its 2018 prequel.

Once the main conversation’s over, you can move towards him again to get an optional conversation that will allow you to obtain an immediately trackable side quest, In Service Of Asgard, documented in the associated section of the guide.

Note that if you opt to track this latter quest now, you can potentially also take on the Weight Of Chains side quest, should you find the dock associated with it on your journey, all explained in its own subsection.

Main story-wise and irrespective of your choice of tracked quest, nav assisting forward allows you to exit and, when leaving the tavern via the interact prompt, Sindri gives Kratos a compass, which unlocks the map.

You’ll get a short tutorial on said map which, after pressing confirm, automatically cycles through its various prompts until it asks you to first press L3, then down. Now you’re able to back out with circle and continue.

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A note on side quests:

To cancel a side quest, you can open the map and press L3 to center the currently tracked place, and then Triangle to cancel the quest. However, that does not work all the time.

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Use nav assist to return to the boat. You’ll hear a sort of metallic swoosh, much like when you’ve had tutorials appear previously. In this particular instance, you’ve discovered a mystic gateway, which will be just behind you to your left when you’re at the boat’s interaction prompt, should you wish to activate/hit it to replenish your health and rage.

Once onboard the boat, though it’s a little tricky at first, you’ll eventually be able to extricate yourself from the confines of the area you’re rowing in, at which point Mimir and Atreus both suggest paths, one to the mining rigs covered in the side quest and the other to the main path. Though you could go and complete the side quest now, we’ll be focusing on the main path here.

Row for a little then dock and Atreus will comment on the safety office, which is where you’re headed.

Entering the office via an interact prompt triggers a fairly lengthy cutscene, with it finished, the quest progress sound plays again. You can stay for some funny dialogue and, if you feel like hearing some more, you can leave and re-enter the office as well via the interaction prompt up ahead, then turning round 180 degrees and hitting it again. Would highly recommend doing this, personally.

Once you’ve had enough, leave the office and battle the enemies outside. There are a lot of them, even on easier difficulties, including Grims that release poison that needs to be blocked or dodged. You’ll get another quest update once the battle’s done.

After the battle, as you nav assist, shoot any companion prompts you might come across whilst aiming, then find an interact prompt to progress, where a mine is referenced.

After hitting this, continue to navigate to another interact prompt where a train is mentioned.

Use the interact prompt to take the train up the mountain and listen to the conversation. This is not, in fact, a cutscene, even though you lose control whilst it takes place.

Once your train ride is over, you’ll get a tutorial of sorts. However, it is not mandatory to do as it instructs, given it relates to the inaccessible compass.

Nav assist forward and, after going through a squeeze through prompt, which is a good place to save as it is also a checkpoint, you’ll hear mention of a dead Dreki.

Subsequent events then lead to…

Boss Fight: Dreki

This is a tough, but predictable battle. If you hit the Dreki and hear it react, raise your shield to block, then retaliate with attacks of your own.

Don’t be too impatient though, as sometimes you can only get one hit in in between the Dreki’s swipes.

When its health gets low enough, it’ll start throwing out an unblockable AOE that you’ll have to roll backwards for. Throw your axe at it when at range and remember, when you’re close to keep your shield up in between hits.

You’ll learn the patterns soon enough and, though it’s a tricky fight at first, it’s a fun one, ending in a stun grab (hold circle) alongside a QTE where Atreus joins into help you defeat this larger foe.

After the fight is done, remember to wander around to find loot on the ground, usually very near to you when the combat encounter completes. If you miss it, don’t worry, you’ll pick it up at the war chest later on.

If you manage to pick up your loot though, you’ll get a new runic, this time a light runic attack for the blades.

If you want to slot this in now, though it is not tutorialised, there are couple of ways to do this:

The Long Way

Press the touchpad to go to weapons
Then go down once to the blades.
Now press right then down to go to the blades’ light runic slot, then press right and then confirm to equip the new attack.

The Short Way

When you hear the sound that indicates you’ve obtained the attack, press the right-hand side of your touchpad. The TTS should then say “weapons”, with the sound cue as if you’ve selected an option.
If you are on the correct screen, with the blades unsheathing animation having played, only possible to fully verify with OCR realistically, you should be able to press confirm to equip the attack.

Whichever ymethod you use, you may also be able to upgrade the attack to level 2 by pressing right trigger once and holding square, should you wish and have the XP available to do so.

End Of Boss Fight

Battle won, nav assist to an interact, which takes you into a climb to progress.

Some more traversal later, including using a blade point, you’ll come to a small skirmish with some wretches and a nest that keeps them spawning in.

The nest will act as a lock-on target and can even be punched, though if you’re having trouble, throwing the axe from range works as well.

Nest and wretches removed, nav assist and interact to use a blade point, then carry on nav assisting. Continuing onward, your quest will again update, this time with an objective to fix the broken train.

Use the interactable prompt, moving the right stick down as instructed to start the sequence. From here, follow the instructions with the left stick. Once done, Atreus will say round 2, at which point you can interact to continue, triggering a cutscene.

This sequence has a few QTE prompts for various types of attacks, companion actions and hold circle. Following these prompts leads us to a scenario that fans of the 2018 game will no doubt laugh at if you are aware of the significance, as I was when it happened, but again, follow the prompt to finish the sequence.

The battle’s not quite over yet though, as you now have some more enemies to deal with, in a more standard format.

Foes disposed of, use navigation assist and traverse until you can aim and hear a companion prompt. Get Atreus to shoot this, spawning some more enemies.

Dealing with these, nav assist again and interact to grapple into a new area.

Aim and throw your axe to trigger an exploding pot, with yet more combat afterwards.

Once this final set is dealt with, you should be able to progress unimpeded to an interact prompt, after which Mimir has some choice words for Atreus during the traversal.

During this dialogue, you need to continue traversing. However, for some reason, this section is a little broken in terms of nav assist, as it doesn’t actually take you directly to where you want to be, irrespective of whether you’re playing on PS4 or 5.

There aren’t too many situations where this occurs in the game, but when they do, they can be frustrating. Just keep a cool head and try different routes with your left stick, keep nav assisting and (given it’s a small area), you’ll eventually make it out to the new area sound effect. In this case, combinations of moving forwards and to the right seemed to work for me.

After a while you should be able to nav assist and go straight forward again.

Nav assist and traverse your way along, until Atreus says we’ll need to get past this cargo.

In one of my test playthroughs for the guide, I got a tutorial as to what to do to start what turns out to be another complicated puzzle, though thankfully no rope cutting this time.

Additionally, there’s also a Nornir chest here too, which will be covered in some instructions below.

Puzzle:

Nav assist until your feet stop moving. Roll backwards once, or twice if needed, then press nav assist again.
Aiming here should give you a throw cue to freeze the channel in front of you. Hit this to cause an object to move into place.
Switch to your blades immediately after so as not to unfreeze the channel, then interact to grapple across and progress.

Nornir Chest

This chest allows you to increase your maximum rage via a Horn of Blood Mead.

Pressing nav assist should orient you so you can hear the lock sound to your left, and get the tutorial, the chest should be on your left.
Then, using your blades, ignite the torch directly to the left of the chest, using the lock sound as reference.
Next, turning left about 90 degrees so the chest is roughly behind you and walking a few steps forward should let you drop from a ledge.
From here, walk a few more steps forward, hitting an interact for a resource chest whilst you’re at it), then turning so the waterfall is on your left-hand side again.
Strafe left towards the waterfall for about half a second.
Now, do a 180-degree turn. The waterfall should be to your right if you’ve done everything so far correctly and, after recalling the axe, a grapple point interact prompt should appear in front of you.
grapple across and ignite the torch that is slightly up and right (you may not even have to adjust your aim, I didn’t on PS5at
least).
Once done, turn around 180 degrees and grapple back, taking a few steps forward until the waterfall sound is slightly behind you and to your left.
The last torch is to your left 90 degrees, but requires you to “refreeze” the waterfall, that is high above and to the left of you.
You should face the waterfall and look up, then zoom snap while using the axe, this should target the freeze point which will activate the wheel-like mechanism) from the original puzzle.
Once the water is frozen, you should be able to look down, swap to your blades and ignite the torch, which may be slightly forward from where you are, depending on your positioning.
Torch ignited, finally, nav assist to return to the Nornir chest. You will hear an interact to your left after you grapple back up the ledge and take a few steps forward if you did everything correctly, and get your additional rage after a non-narrated prompt.

Puzzle Continued

From this platform, traverse your way through and interact where needed, until Atreus says, after you hit one of these prompts, that he’s going to take a better look and mentions a gate.
Nav assist forward slowly. You should start hearing a companion prompt. If you haven’t already, you can recall the axe. Look around via aiming for an axe throw prompt.
During my tests, it seemed like facing the companion prompt (I.e. having it in the centre of your audio field of view) allowed me to have both the throw and companion cues available simultaneously, essential for progression here.
Without aiming, press square to have Atreus lower the gate. Atreus begins to make fun of you and, during this conversation, you need to throw the axe to freeze the platform in place.
With extended plus puzzle timing enabled, wait for about half a second after Kratos says Atreus… and throw the axe.
If done correctly, Atreus will say I hope you can make that jump, indicating a successful throw. Do not recall the axe.
Leaving the axe in place, walk forward via nav assist. Switch to the blades if you want to feel comfortable about not accidentally recalling the axe.
The axe, in fact, will recall automatically, as you drop down a couple of times via auto-traversal and Atreus starts talking about a trough. Once the dialogue has finished, activate the interact here to start a platform moving so you can cross, which you can do via nav assist, there is no need to hit the interact prompt to your right.
Listen for when the various wheels and platforms have stopped moving and then move across. Make sure you drop down before continuing.
Nav assist until your feet stop moving, then roll backwards once. If successful, you should be able to aim and see a throw cue. Hitting this will cause a block that previously raised to lower again.
Roll to the left a few times to line yourself up for the next part of the puzzle.
Turning to your left so the sound of water is directly to your right and slightly behind you, keep trying to move forward whilst turning in very small increments to the left, a strategy later fully explained and given a name that I won’t spoil
If successful, you’ll climb up via auto-traversal onto another platform.
Once you’re up, nav assist and interact with a blade point in front of you to lift you onto a block, at which point you can recall the axe to get a little higher up whilst standing on it.
From here, nav assist forward until you drop down, at which point Kratos says you lift on your side. Wait for an interact prompt to appear and use it.
Nav assist forward after the gate is lifted to end the puzzle and continue. An interact prompt will have you reunite with Sindri, who provides you with a light source.

End Of Puzzle

From here, continue forward via nav assist and you’ll encounter some enemies.

Once done, nav assist forward, aiming and keeping an eye out for companion prompts which can also be accidentally hit whilst fighting that allow you to progress via autotraversal up a small ledge.

After some more post-combat traversal, Atreus remarks that this is the mine, at which point you’ll have another fight on your hands.

After this is done, nav assist some more and Atreus will say the official entrance is blocked.

If your nav assist struggles briefly here, use your time-honoured if in doubt, roll about strategy just to get you re-oriented and continue navigating until Kratos says this way.

Following this path (including auto-traversal) finds yet more enemies and, after they’re defeated, navigate until you can aim to get a companion prompt. Shoot the blockage to continue, interact with the traversal prompt and keep moving forward.

Boss Fight: Bergsra

If you haven’t undertaken the side quests already available to you (namely Weight Of Chains or In Service Of Asgard), here we meet our first new enemy, the Bergsra, which is apparently spawning the wretches we’ve been fighting in this area.

In one of my test playthroughs for the guide, I had my first instance of a shield strike prompt to break an attack here, which was not tutorialised.

If you hear the sound cue for this (found in the glossary), double tap L1/block and if you’re close enough, you’ll hit the enemy out of the attack they’re winding up for. Some attacks are quicker than others, so don’t rely on the cue to time your break attempt.

If you can’t hit the Bergsra, throw your axe at wherever auto lock-on is pointing you, or even disengage and run forward and it should become aware of your presence once you run up a small ledge. Yo umay even need to roll left if you haven’t broken an obstruction that can block you in.

Remember, the Bergsra is your priority target, as with it still alive, more wretches will keep spawning in and artificially lengthening the fight.

Just dodge the unblockables, keep your shield up to mitigate damage, hit the shield strikes and take your turn when you have it to end this battle.

End Of Boss Fight

Combat over, you can interact to get into a boat for a cutscene.

Once you arrive in a new area you’ll find Sindri at a shop, which you can locate via the metallic clanging of his tools.

Purchase whatever you need, including sorting out any levelling you can do for your armour or weapons. If anything, Sindri should say he can upgrade the blades here.

Any spending accomplished, nav assist from here to continue onwards.

Navigate forward and you’ll come to another puzzle.

Puzzle:

- Nav assist until your feet stop moving. Then aim and if you get a companion cue, get Atreus to shoot an arrow.
- In one playthrough, I just had to throw the axe from here and that progressed things with Atreus saying let’s get to the door! Come on!.

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- Note that, however, there may also be loot-based companion prompts, so just check that you have an aim cue after shooting and if not, keep navigating and looking for a companion prompt followed by an aim cue.

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With that axe throw successfully achieved, find an interaction prompt, using it to blade swing over to the other side of a gap, then use the next interaction prompt to open the door, finishing the puzzle.

End of puzzle.

With conversations ongoing, nav assist and aim until you see a companion prompt. Shoot it to allow you to progress via nav assist.

Use the revealed interaction prompt to continue, going through some more climbing until Atreus sees a new door, your next objective.

Traversing through will have you fight a few enemies, after which point your nav assist might get a little stuck.

If you have to manually wander the area to get it to reorient for a little while, do so. Though of course this is not ideal, it shouldn’t take you long before Atreus says Did You see that over there?.

This line of dialogue seems to indicate that nav assist will then take you in the right direction, where Atreus acknowledges a broken door, indicating the next puzzle starts here.

Broken door puzzle:

Use nav assist and then aim to find an axe cue. Hit this to hear dialogue about overflowing water powering a crane, as a mechanism moves into place.
There are two interact prompts now, one you can’t get to at distance in front of you and the one you want to hit slightly to your right. This will allow you to swing over to the other side of a gap.
After crossing the gap, recall the axe, then nav assist and hit the next interaction prompt that will, after a brief blade animation, keep the water flowing over the sides.
From here, nav assist to yet another interact prompt which will swing you back across where, after a little traversal, Atreus will say about getting closer to the elevator wheel.
Having dropped down via nav assist, if you haven’t already, run over to a chain which you need to climb up.
From here, auto-traversal forward via nav assist, interacting with the next available prompt. This should cause Atreus to congratulate you and say that said action should keep the lift fully powered up and that we’re almost there once the mechanical movement stops.
From here, you should be able to aim and throw the axe to continue getting things moving, with Atreus saying let’s take that lift up if successful. The PS4 build required me to aim down a little to find this prompt, so you might have to be a little patient with it on that version of the game.
Switch to the blades and don’t switch away from them until specified.
From here, nav assist and interact, climbing down the chain, navigating and swinging where needed until you find the next interaction prompt for progression.
You should hear a wooden grinding noise if you’ve hit the correct one. This means you’ve opened the door and entered the lift.
Finally, recall the axe to ascend and you’ve completed the puzzle, with Atreus posing an interesting question.

note the above instructions were able to be followed on both PS5 and PS4, though the aiming for PS4 seemed a little spotty, particularly with the very first cue that starts the Broken Door puzzle above.

Some patience and persistence may be required, but it’s not too tricky and the puzzle is definitely doable without assistance (unlike the rope puzzle from earlier) was felt to be.

End of puzzle

Having ascended in the lift, use navigation assist to find the next interaction prompt, then continue traversing, which will lead you into another combat encounter.

After the battle, nav assist should take you to near an interaction prompt. Trigger it to obtain your first relic, then get a related spoken tutorial to follow.

After going through the tutorial’s instructions (until it tells you how to use the new ability you have equipped, at which point you can press circle a couple of times to leave the menu system), fight the foes using your new-found relic-based strength.

Fight over and relic in-hand, nav assist and climb your way onward into what is described as another empty vault.

Once you reach solid ground, nav assist forward and look for a companion prompt, which you should get Atreus to shoot to progress.

Nav assist forward some more if you haven’t already and hit the interact prompt, which begins another…

Puzzle:

Having swung onto a platform via the blades interact, nav assist and hit any interaction points you come across, the first should be a blade shortcut unlock and the second a chain-style interact. You may have to roll left and then nav assist to get out of the small area you start in to get this latter one.
If you were to interact with the prompt in front of you, you’d move the left stick backwards and notice the chain is blocked, then press Circle to stop interacting with the chain. However, should you wish, you can skip this almost entirely by, after hitting the interact prompt and disengaging from the chain again, using nav assist to find a spot where Atreus can shoot an arrow.
On PS4, walk left so that the chain interact is directly to your right and then look down a little and aiming should get you this prompt, though it’s a little finicky.
On PS5, You have to move around a little, but returning to the chain and going forward slightly should let you aim at the prompt automatically.
After shooting the blockage, with Atreus confirming it should be clear now, return to the chain, interact and move it backwards.
Atreus confirms that you’re successfully done with this by saying Ready when you are.
Use nav assist to find the next interactable to move on via a zipline, taking this speedy way down means you’ve completed the puzzle.

End of puzzle.

Note: If you reload your save, you’ll have to do the above puzzle again, even if you save at the end of the zipline. You are, however, not done with puzzles just yet.

One More Door puzzle

- Nav assist until you drop down via auto-traversal, then stop. Press nav assist again without moving forward, then turn back towards the sound of water.
- Look around and aim until you find an axe cue and throw. If successful, you’ll hear the sounds of wheels turning.
- If not, recall and aim to the right from where you threw the axe. You should see a second prompt which should be the correct one.
- On a successful throw, leave the axe where it is, for now.
- Now use nav assist to find an interact to boost Atreus up, at which point he’ll say he sees a crank.
- Whilst Kratos is talking about another mental exercise, nav assist and drop down once.

Without aiming, look around, primarily towards Atreus’ voice, until you get a companion prompt.

activating it and with the results playing out, Atreus should say that’s gotta be it. You can now nav assist round and recall the axe.
Keep aiming periodically and you should find another axe prompt in line with where nav assist takes you. Throw at the cue and, once hit, a platform should lower and you can interact to swing onboard.
Once you’ve swung across, recall the axe to raise yourself up, but you won’t get all the way to your destination at this point.
Nav assist and move forward slightly, then turn to the right by around 45 degrees or so and aim until you get a companion prompt again. Shooting this will cause the platform to finish raising, with Atreus giving you some success dialogue and allowing you to nav assist onwards.
If nav assist doesn’t work as intended, you can walk around until you fall off the platform. The sound of water should be slightly behind you to your left to make the necessary drop.
Atreus says this could be it, at which point you can run to an interaction prompt, marking the end of the puzzle.
The interaction in question is a checkpoint as well, so if you want to save and stop here you can, with your only task next session to be to nav forward and hit it again.

End of puzzle

Once you’ve opened the door and heard dialogue exchanged, navigate forward, interact and climb.

When you’ve finished climbing, you encounter a locked door, indicated by the sound cue associated with locked items (found in the glossary if you’re uncertain).

On PS5, aim and shoot 4 individual arrows until an interactable prompt appears.

On PS4, there are 2 pairs of prompts to shoot, to the left and right of the door, one above the other. I hit these consistently as follows:

PS4 Specific Instructions

Nav assist then look right and then down for about a quarter of a second each. If done correctly you should find a companion prompt, which you should hit with multiple arrows.
Move the right stick straight up for about half a second and you should get a second companion prompt to shoot, just like the first.
That done, nav assist to re-centre yourself and repeat for the two on the left-hand side, turning left instead of right of course.

Story Continued

If you’ve followed the instructions correctly, regardless of your build’s method, you should see an interactable (which will serve as a checkpoint. Save here should you wish.

Trigger this interact prompt to start a battle, which begins with a short, narrated tutorial on bifröst attacks and a mention of a new enemy type, Einherjar.

Dismiss this by pressing confirm when you’re ready to resume combat.

Einherjar

These warriors are formidable. They’ll throw out unblockable attacks as well as standard ones, so keep your wits about you and dodge, block and potentially parry as needed. Just keep in mind that their bifröst attacks are more dangerous than you might give credit for, especially on higher difficulties.

Story Continued

After the battle, find an interactable, then, as the audio cue indicates, hold or mash interact, depending on your preferred settings. Doing this successfully triggers a cutscene.

Cutscene over, you’ll enter another encounter with more einherjar, though do note that you won’t have Atreus to back you up, so the fight might seem a little harder.

If, during the fight, you get stuck and can’t use nav assist, run around the small area until, in my case during one playthrough, one final enemy enters the fight.

Once everyone’s defeated, dialogue will trigger and, along with a quest update, nav assist should be available again.

As with most navigational issues, rolling left or right should unstick you from any geometry, if you find yourself unable to progress forward and think you should be able to.

Use an interact prompt to swing down and enter dialogue with Atreus, who once again won’t back you up in this fight, as well as confronting more Einherjar.

Warriors defeated, follow nav assist, interacting with any prompts you come across, with a blade swing seemingly signalling an end to combat. A little more navigation, accompanied by dialogue, will trigger the next cutscene and an update to your quest.

Cutscene over, navigate whilst some conversations occur until you get to an interact prompt.

Activate said prompt and, once you emerge outside in a new area (with the accompanying sound effect), continue to navigate onward until you come to a combat encounter.
<!–***Didn’t have to do this***
Find a spot where you have to command Atreus to shoot an arrow to progress. Do that twice. Then, use the navigation assist to walk to a battle.
***tweaks continue onward from here***

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After the battle, use navigation assist to walk to the next interactable to trigger a cutscene.

When you hear the heavy attack sound, you can choose to continually tap both the Aim button and Heavy attack button to progress as soon as the sound starts (you can’t hold them down unfortunately), though you can also wait until the conversation stops before pressing these buttons together each time the cue plays. If done correctly, Mimir will observe they’re getting out of here not a moment too soon.

Then, when prompted, hold the Interact button. After the resultant cutscene, your quest will update once again.

Cutscene done with, nav assist forward (hitting the raven on your left should you wish) until you get into combat.

After the battle, use navigation assist to go to the mystic gateway and interact to go through, travel to the correct destination is automatic in this instance.

Once again, wait for the end of dialogue to then move forward and hit the exit for the gateway, triggering another cutscene.

After the cutscene finishes and you regain control, nav assist to an interact prompt and thus converse with Atreus. Words exchanged, you can turn around and head towards the shop and warchest to make any upgrades.

If you purchased the Dauntless Shield and want to switch it out, this might be your earliest opportunity to craft the alternative.

If you don’t want to though, you can nav assist to a final interact prompt, triggering what starts out as a rather reflective moment and marking the end of chapter 2.