Chapter 6: The Reckoning

In this chapter, you play as Kratos, followed by Freya, Mimir and Brok.

Cutscenes from the previous chapter done with, you’ll first get a tutorial about rage replacement.

Then, either during the following dialogue or after, nav assist to the first interactable of the chapter, a mystic gateway.

Interact to trigger it and hear some more dialogue. Wait in the Realm Between Realms whilst the dialogue continues, no need to move from here until it finishes and the exit loads in, as usual.

Nav assist your way along and, as you do so, Brok will pose a riddle. Eventually, you’ll come to an interactable which starts a climb, with Freya talking about her spell. Continue walking through and the rest of the associated sequence will trigger.

Nav assisting to the next interactable allows you to progress further in. Keep walking and nav assisting until Freya mentions the plants being aggressive. There’s a small sound cue when these plants unfold and, if you stop moving before you run into them, you should be out of danger, relatively, at least in terms of not taking said damage they dish out.

Aim at them and throw the axe to make them explode. They do count as targets and have associated throw cues. They can also damage enemies as well, but depending on your difficulty, they can really do a number on you health-wise too.

In short, keep an eye or an ear out for these folding plants and try and hit them before they hit you.

Keep walking until some enemies appear. Here, you’ll get a small tutorial saying that you can command Brok to attack just like Atreus, by pressing your companion action button (Square by default).

After the battle, keep walking and auto-traversing, still being mindful of the plants. If after a drop down, you see an interactable prompt, hit it as it’ll unlock a shortcut you can use to hit a second interactable. This may not be required, but it’s certainly fun if you happen to find it.

Keep on moving, including interacting until you meet some more plants which you can obliterate by throwing the axe, where Brok will also point out there’s loot you’re missing.

Keep nav assisting forward, if you get stuck, restart the checkpoint and retry. You’ll run into combat and a QTE appears, along with a tutorial about Brok’s capabilities within combat if that’s not happened previously.

Navigate forward and hit an interaction prompt to continue traversing. Moving forward some more, you’ll be stopped to watch a new type of plant attack poor Brok.

This particular species of plant is one you have to face towards and throw the axe at, though they have a short time window to hit before they disappear and then attack you again after an interval.

Take down more of these new plants as you go and walk past a locked Nornir chest on your right, continuing to auto-traverse.

Continue moving forward, taking down any plants you come across, until you hear mention of Wulvers.

Fight these very tanky enemies off and then continue. Hit an interact prompt to your right, then move forward until Brok eventually says all yours, big guy.

Don’t run forward, instead stay where you are, with nav assist pinging in or close to the centre of your stereo field. Aim and you should get a light attack prompt. Throw the axe at this and hit the revealed interact prompt to progress.

Eventually, after some more interacting and nav assisting, you’ll trigger a cutscene.

After the cutscene, your quest progress will update again and you’ll meet another new member of the cast, Lunda (pronounced loon-dah.

Find the interactables for Brok’s shop and the warchest (which should be to your right), make any upgrades you want to and then continue via nav assist to some more dialogue through interaction prompts.

Quest updated and once Lord Freyr advises Kratos not to screw up, when you are ready, move to the next interactable and progress.

Continue walking until the next interactable appears. Use it to swing to the other side of a gap using the blades, then destroy a plant by throwing the axe.

Then, find the next interactable, and climb to trigger:

Boss Fight: Ancient.

Ancients are large, tough enemies that, in this particular instance at least, aren’t aggressive immediately. That being said, keep your shield up, listen for when its chest opens (indicated by a high pitched, almost whirring noise) and then throw your axe in, that’s the only way you’re able to do damage to it.

Block the large attacks that happen when it opens its aforementioned chest, dodge any unblockables and you should be able to get through this as you learn its various patterns.

Also note that the ancient will occasionally summon ads (short for adversaries), smaller enemies intended to distract or disrupt you. As usual, you can flick the right stick to change targets, whether to block or counter the ads, but keep your eye on the ancient as it hits hard, even on lower difficulties.

End Of Fight

After the battle and grabbing any loot you can find, nav assist to find the next interactable prompt.

After some more navigation, aim and burn some brambles blocking your path.

Find the next interaction prompt (which turns out to be a blades traversal. Hit this to swing over to the other side and, after dropping down, you’ll enter some combat with a fair few enemies.

There are also a couple of combat interactions here as well that you can use if you find them, but they’re not mandatory.

Those foes taken care of, find an interactable, and start traversing.

When you reach the end, there are more plants to destroy and some auto-traversal to undertake, after a little while of nav assisting.

Keep traversing and destroying plants until you get to the next interactable, which will trigger a tough battle.

This battle features an encounter with multiple waves of Einherjar, as well as a new foe, the Gradungr. These large creatures are formidable even on lower difficulties and are quicker than they look. Thankfully most, though not all, of their attacks are cued, thus making them fairly easy to work with if you’re patient.

After the battle, nav assist forward and Freya will mention you have to go through the valley to reach the Watchtower, and your quest progress is updated. Save here as this is a checkpoint of sorts.

Use the next interactable and climb with nav assist, hitting interaction prompts where needed as dialogue continues.

The trick here is to press nav assist only when you can’t move forward, only once per time. If successful, you should have long passages of climbing where you don’t have to press it at all; you’ll know when you have made progress when Kratos uses his blades. Interact to allow you to disengage from the surface and continue onwards.

Continue to walk until you meet some more plants, throw the axe at these and keep moving until Freya asks if you hear something… This something is a new enemy, called a Nokken.

These small creatures buff other enemies, making said buffed foes sometimes unkillable. The only way to get around them is to run towards the Nokken, or take it out from a distance if you can get a clear line of sight. Once done, the rest of the enemies will return to their normal power levels.

Sometimes, nav assist can reportedly break here, if this happens, just restart last checkpoint and attempt the fight again.

Once the Nokken stops making noise, you know it’s dead or injured. If it’s only injured, it will resume it’s singing a little while after and buff it’s allies again.

This particular Nokken can be killed by flicking your right stick to the right a couple of times once locked on, though as it is above you, running forward will make you unable to hit it.

If you find you’re aiming and just hitting geometry, roll backwards once or twice and aim and throw the axe. If the Nokken stops singing, Keep throwing until it’s dead, at which point you can deal with the enemies it was protecting in standard manners. Note that you can also run towards it, dodging its allies and grab it with the blades to attack it as well.

After the battle, continue nav assisting and Freya will give you some more dialogue. Keep nav assisting until you can’t move forwards any further, then aim. You should get a light attack cue, meaning you’re at another:

Puzzle:

• you have now reached an uncrossable gap. Throw your axe at the cue and listen.
• If the sound you hear is a long grinding sort of noise and you hear an interact point come into view, you’ll be able to hit it to swing across and have completed the puzzle successfully.
• If you just hear a clang and not much movement, you’ll need to reattempt the throw. It might take you a couple of tries or maybe a look to the left or right to get a second target, but it’s comparatively not too complicated as these puzzles go.

End of puzzle.

Keep nav assisting and traversing until Freya says about getting ready to clear them out. Walk to the interact and follow the tutorial to start the fight, though it is not required.

More einherjar await you here and this time, you’ll have to use interact prompts to get to them. If you can’t hit an enemy, try running towards them and hitting an interact prompt, then as the tutorial instructs, deliver a death from above attack by hitting light or heavy attack mid traversal.

Keep listening as you fight to know when to block, as most of these warriors’ heavier attacks have a wind-up you can block reactively. There are a lot of them to work with even on lower difficulties, so fight to the best of your abilities, switching rage if you need to.

Using your fists to stun and dispatch these enemies could also be a good play, depending on your skills using the heavy attack to launch them backwards and the light as a follow-up.

After the battle, nav assist your way forward and interact with a prompt which should give you the classic double click of a pull-based interaction (much like the platforms we’ve worked with previously). Then pull the left stick backwards and keep pulling until Kratos releases the object on his own.

Walk until you meet another new type of plant life, and throw the axe to freeze. This time, you don’t want to retract the axe, as you’ve made an area passable that otherwise would injure you. When you have thrown the axe, continue to walk using Nav assist.

Walk onwards and near to the next set of folding plants, retract the axe and throw it at them.

After a little more nav assisting, look for a spot to use the blades to burn a Bramble. Nav assisting until your feet stop moving then rolling backwards once should hopefully get you there.

Burning this bramble will drop a chain which you can interact with.

Grab the chain and climb up it. When you reach the top, nav assist a few steps forward and you should see an interact on your left. Continue to manually navigate to this interaction prompt, which starts a conversation and another…

Puzzle:

• Here, you have to fix a zipline to progress. Interacting with the prompt, pull backwards on the left stick as before until Kratos releases his hold on the mechanism.
• Now interact with the zipline itself to slide down and progress.

End of puzzle

Continue walking to the next interactable, which starts a small conversation.

Keep swinging from these blade traversal points in sequence until your blades release and you start climbing, then climb to the top.

Walk forward until the quest progress updates and you encounter another…

Puzzle:

• Here, you have to cross a broken bridge. If you realise you’ve unintentionally broken the puzzle, just load the last checkpoint to reset it and you should start over from here.
• Nav assist and aim, you should hear a distant throw cue for a blades ignition point.
• If you can’t find the full cue, try moving to your left, then running forward for a while, then hitting nav assist again.
• Once you’ve found the full cue, aim and burn the Bramble, allowing you to get to the next part of the puzzle, though do not move from the spot you burned it from.
• Staying where you are, nav assist and aim to hit an axe throw cue a single time.
• You’ll hear a metallic grinding noise and an interact prompt should appear on your left, with a distant one on your right. Hit the prompt on your left to get onto a platform.
• Move forward manually, and you’ll grab an auto-pickup that is slightly to your left.
• From here, nav assist, move forward and make sure an interact prompt is on your right, you might have to physically reposition Kratos so this prompt appears.
• Aim and hit a target in front of you with the axe once for another fairly long grinding noise.
• Once the crane has stopped moving, nav assist and an interact prompt, for a bucket holding a torch, should be on your right.
• Manually move towards it, then interact and pull the bucket back once via the left stick. After a little waiting, it should burn the brambles, prompting Freya to say Let’s cross the bridge now.

, as well as a quest update.

• Note: If you reload a save from after this part of the puzzle is completed, but before the next checkpoint, continue from the next set of instructions.

Completing The Puzzle

• Nav assist, aim and hit an axe target once. Once the mechanism you’ve hit has stopped, nav assist onwards and interact to swing from a blade prompt.
• Once you’ve hit it and are on the platform, do not move.
• Again staying where you are, nav assist to turn 180 degrees and aim to hit a throw cue. Hit this once to turn the prompt you need so it’s in the correct position.
• Nav assist onwards and hit the final blade prompt that you just moved into position. This will let you progress and leave the area, triggering more dialogue once you move forward enough.

End Puzzle

Walk for a while to the next interactable. If you find yourself stuck, Gryla turning to your left and running forward should allow you to autotraverse up a platform, at which point you should be fine to continue as usual.

Once you find that aforementioned interact prompt, this starts a climb leading to a battle, though your singular foe is not immediately aggressive.

Boss Fight: Fiske, Einherjar Captain

This is, as Freya points out, one of Odin’s captains. and you’ll see some more of them as the game goes on. These warriors are tough and they throw out some quick unblockable attacks that you have to dodge, along with some using delayed timings.

This one also has a charged area of effect attack that you should role backwards to avoid. Learn the patterns, keep your shield up and counter when you know you have a window and you should be able to beat him, though he is no doubt a tougher enemy than the rest you’ve faced so far.

End Of Boss Fight

Battle over, grab the loot he drops which does include a new relic (Glaive of Dodher), that throws out some bifrost should you be interested in that, then nav assist and interact with a prompt to pull an object and trigger some dialogue.

Nav assist seems to get easily stuck here, but quick turning (block+down on the DPad), then running forward and turning to your right when your feet stop moving and nav assisting again seemed to get me out of this during testing. You’ll know when you’re in the clear when one of the interval plants we’ve seen previously attacks you

Keep nav assisting, traversing (including climbing) and obliterating plants, as well as listening to dialogue. Once you’ve reached the end of a traversal section, with Kratos and Freya talking about the debt he apparently owes her, you may have to look down with the right stick until you release your hold and draw your weapon.

You may need to roll to your left to smash some wooden objects to progress, sometimes that was an issue during testing.

Whether you had to obliterate debris or not, you should, not long after via nav assist, come to a large door opened via an interact prompt. Nav assist some more and you’ll get into a cutscene that eventually starts the next…

Boss Fight: Nidhog

The fight against Nidhog (pronounced Neeth-Hohg by characters throughout the game) is a multi-phase battle. On Give Me Grace, the difficulty I played on whilst collaborating on this guide initially, she wasn’t too difficult to take down, learning her attacks wasn’t too difficult as all the unblockable ones are cued well enough that you can learn how to dodge them as you fight.

Watch for stun cues and instructions from the game and Freya as you battle, doing what they say as you go and you should be able to get through this with little issue.

Should you have specific questions, please do let us know.

After defeating Nidhog, you’ll get a couple of long cutscenes, ample breathing room after what can be a rather intense battle.

After this, you’ll get an interact prompt and a tutorial about the amulet you picked up, as well as enchantments. Follow the instructions and then leave the menu with circle multiple times when no further ones are given.

This done, you’ll have earned 2 trophies, one for killing Nidhog and the other for getting an enchantment.

End Of Boss Fight

Navigate (including interacting where needed) until you come to dialogue from Freya where she says she can help with the vines. Follow the instructions and you should be able to hit the companion cue and the associated interactions to move forward.

Traverse forward and you’ll get an interact prompt, which starts some combat, usually beginning with a shield strike.

During this you’ll also get an unnarrated tutorial about sigil arrows and their use in combat to trigger elemental explosions. I personally prefer a stun build unless otherwise stated, but using them can’t hurt either if you want to give them a try. Fire sigil arrows at enemies afflicted with the burning or frosted status effects (which aren’t easy to discern in my experience) and it should trigger the aforementioned elemental explosions.

Battle these enemies and continue onward

Nav assist and find an interact, then traverse as Freya starts talking about her brother.

From here, continue onwards and Freya will remark that these plants are the same as we saw earlier, as well as saying that frost should make quick work of their poison. Aim and shoot a sigil arrow or several at the throw cue, then throw your axe to hit the sigils and freeze the plants (thanks Jukesy).

Running onward and climbing up, you’ll meet some whisps, a new type of foe. Shoot these with an arrow, then hit them with the axe to get rid of them. It’s only in numbers where they’re really a problem, usually.

After some more traversal, you’ll get a cutscene where Freya talks about Skoll and Hati being in Vanaheim.

Cutscene over, run and nav assist and eventually you’ll hear a strange plant-like noise to your left.

Keep running, nav assisting and rolling, past a Nornir chest on your left and you’ll find an interact prompt that opens a door to more combat.

This time, you’re facing some shielded Einherjar who require sigil arrows to break through their aforementioned protection.

If you were to fire a stun arrow, which you can’t actually do at the moment but will be able to do so later, and hear it clang off the target, chances are it’s shielded. In those instances, switch to sigil arrows with up on the DPad by default, fire one or more and you’ll soon hear a small explosion, meaning their shield is broken.

Note that if you throw your axe or try any other attack before breaking the shield, you’ll hear a strike prompt instead, seemingly to imply the shield is still there (thanks Jukesy).

Battle these few waves, keeping an eye out for shields and wisps, then, combat over, continue to nav assist and traverse.

Freya will start saying that so much has happened since she last saw Freyr and asking Kratos about his family. Continue through this squeeze through-style sequence and continue nav assisting once you’re out the other side.

Here we come to the most frustrating puzzle of the game so far, in the form of what will now be referred to as a:

Sigil Puzzle

• After dismissing the tutorial that appears, aim at your companion cue and fire 3 arrows.
• Look left for about a quarter of a second then aim and fire 3 arrows, there’ll be no audio cue before you fire.
• Finally, look left a little once again for about a quarter of a second then aim. Whilst aiming, move your stick left for about half that length of time, then down slightly as well. Fire the final 3 arrows, then ignite the blade point that should appear right where you are if you’ve done everything correctly.

For the record, I timed the first 3 movements left with the word and, then the last one was a relatively small movement to the left in comparison.

This information won’t work for everyone, but I thought I’d mention it here.

When sigils connect to each other, there’ll be a subtle additional cue to indicate they’re overlapping. This is what you want to hear as you chain these together.

If you’ve completed the rest of the puzzle correctly and ignite the blades prompt, you’ll see 3 large fiery explosions and get an interact prompt. Dialogue will indicate you’ve finished the puzzle.

This will almost certainly take you several tries, but if you get stuck, just re-orient using nav assist, remove placed sigils (with aim+interact/circle) and try again. During testing, I had a run of managing to do it consistently once I realised how it worked, but in a subsequent test run I had to revisit footage of completing the puzzle that I’d recorded previously. Be aware that this is probably the hardest puzzle in the entire game, at least for now.

End of sigil puzzle

Interact and continue traversing, turning to your left slightly if nav assist gets stuck and you’ll hear a voice that is decidedly not Freya, which means… More combat round the next corner via a traversal.

This encounter (featuring einherjar and wisps) also teaches you about Freya’s summon, a poison cloud created by holding your companion action button when available.

You can actually attack these without even traversing into the middle if you play correctly, giving you much needed breathing space and the ability to not take damage, on lower difficulties at least.

Just make sure to take the wisps out as you see them by switching targets, shooting an arrow then flinging the axe their way, as they can sneak up on you when you least expect it and ruin your chances of getting through the encounter unscathed.

Beat these enemies and find an interact prompt to traverse, whilst Freya speaks about her relationship to Odin.

This climbing section is a little tricky, if you get stuck, move left then climb some more. Once Freya starts talking about Atreus rushing to Ragnarok and Kratos draws his weapon, then you’ve got to the next area safely.

As you navigate, you may spot a raven, though during my testing I couldn’t figure out how to hit it unfortunately. Keep traversing until Freya asks what’s next for you and continue onward.

Eventually, you’ll end up in an area where you can’t roll to move yourself out of strange sticking points. As before, if you manually turn around approximately 180 degrees or so, then run forward for a little then use nav assist you should get past this geometric obstruction.

After some more traversal, you’ll get to an interact point where Kratos will ask if Freya is ready and, once activated, you’ll trigger a reunion cutscene.

After that cutscene, move to Brok, who will add sonic arrows to Freya’s arsenal, alongside a quest update. You have the opportunity to upgrade your gear and collect Mimir as well, though the latter is thankfully mandatory.

Grab the items from the Warchest and talk through any optional conversations with Lunda, where you’ll unlock the Mysterious Orb side quest which you’ll need later.

In my case during the original run to adjust this section of the guide, I was able to upgrade both the axe and blades, then nav assist onward..

After this, navigate to an interact prompt where Freya says she knows where to look for a gateway.

Following some traversal and a quest update, you’ll get a tutorial about Freya’s combat upgrades, armour (which is cosmetic outside of shared accessories) and her unique skill tree, as she joins your party.

These tutorials are spoken, follow the instructions where given and then press circle a few times to return to the game itself, once you are told to View Freya’s skills.

Tutorials done, nav assist onwards and you’ll traverse to an interact point that opens a door, with another shortly after showing how to use a magic chisel you have on-hand.

If you reload the checkpoint as I did trying to figure out where the second prompt is, this latter one will be where you start.

Interacting with this prompt gives you a chisel tutorial, as well as unlocking a side quest (The Elven Sanctum), after you get Freya to speak an incantation via a companion cue. Note that when it says move stick down the screen reader is referring to the left stick specifically.

Continue nav assisting onwards until you get to another:

Sigil Puzzle

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There are two strategies for this, one of which is less consistent.

Less consistent strat:

If you role to your left a couple of times and aim, you should hear no cue. If you hit this spot with a sigil arrow though you should get a blades prompt. Hit it twice more with sigil arrows for good measure, then ignite it. If successful, the vines to your right should burst into flame and prompt new dialogue from Freya.

Consistent strategy:

Aim at the companion cue and hit it with sigil arrows. Then aim slightly to your left and aim, you should hear no cue. Hit that point a few times then repeat the left move and hit a second no cue spot with 3 arrows on all 3. This last spot should make a blade ignition point, though there may be no cue or you might have to run forward to get it. Igniting this, you should hear 3 rapid explosions, the last of which ends in a fire trail and Freya’s dialogue.

–>

• Nav assist until your feet stop moving. Then role left once and run forward for a short distance without nav assist, until your feet stop moving for a second time.
• From here, aim and even though you hear no cue, shoot multiple sigil arrows and ignite them with the blades. If successful, the vines you’re trying to burn should erupt in a long burst of flames, triggering new dialogue from Freya and a second part to this puzzle.

Part 2

Part 2 of this small puzzle involves you using sonic arrows. Pressing Up on the DPad toggles between arrow types.

• Sonic arrows equipped, aim and shoot at a companion cue to hit an intervening log a couple of times and Freya will say that we’re clear, thus meaning you’ve completed the puzzle and can progress.
• In this case, progress means rolling backwards once, turning 180 degrees and looking around to find the interactable as it’s behind you.

End of sigil puzzle

Get in the boat and continue navigating and amongst other dialogue hinting at side quests, there will also be a reference to removing a log in the river.

Heading for the mystic gateway ahead, disembark after finding the interaction prompt to dock.

Once on land, turn 180 degrees and look around for a companion cue. Shoot this with some soundstone to clear the log Freya mentioned earlier and if successful, she’ll say that we can explore the river now

She’ll also talk about the potential to right some old wrongs. This latter line refers to a side quest known as Freya’s Missing Piece, covered in its own guide section.

During one playthrough, whilst checking for consistency in this and surrounding chapters, I decided to undertake first The Mysterious Orb, then switch to Freya’s Missing Piece and Conscience For The Dead As described in the guide for the second quest. This approach, including finishing the orb quest after Freya’s business is dealt with, seemed to work well when I’ve tested it on subsequent re-runs.

If, however, you want to continue with the main path, just nav assist and interact as usual with the mystic gateway up ahead, then press and hold square to head to Sindri’s house.

Walk through the exit and brok’s dialogue triggers, at which point you can speak to Ratatoskr via the chimes.

If you decide to speak to said squirrel, you can do so via the associated talk prompt.

After heading through the door into the main hub via an interact prompt, you’ll be greeted by more dialogue. Should you wish, you can immediately proceed, though if you wish to wait until after Tyr’s dialogue finishes you can do so.

Whatever you decide, nav assist to a door, where you can hear Atreus and Sindri arguing. Go through via an interact prompt and this will trigger the cutscene that ends the chapter and leads straight into chapter 7: The Runaway.