Freya's Missing Piece

Quest Realm: Vanaheim

This quest is a brilliant one, but in order to get it, a fair amount of rowing needs to happen. Given the map can’t be utilised without assistance to track waypoints etc directly, a little ingenuity comes into play as well, including the use of another side quest.

Note that these instructions were originally written during Chapter 6: The Reckoning), just after you’ve cleared the second log from your path.

Guidance of The Orb

Go to the goals menu and track Lunda’s Mysterious Orb quest, though we won’t be completing all of it here.

Nav assist from whatever realm you’re in and when you’ve traveled to Vanaheim, get back in the boat and navigate. Eventually Kratos, Freya and Mimir will start talking about what the unfinished business Freya has relates to.

After Kratos asks Freya to guide us, you’ll get a sound cue for a side quest.

In this case you can press the up arrow on PS5 until you hear the game’s response cue indicating you’re tracking it, then continue to navigate further.

Actual Side Quest: Freya’s Missing Piece

Continue navigating into a new area (heralded by the associated sound cue) and Freya will give you some contextual dialogue. Keep rowing

Eventually, after a while, you should find a dock. Hitting interact here will put you in another new area.

Nav assisting onward will put you in range of some Nightmares and a Revenant, the latter being a teleporting enemy that can be tough to deal with at times.

Taking these on and triumphing, continue to nav assist onwards through a climbing sequence or two, then unlock a blades shortcut via an interact prompt to your right when you’re on solid ground.

From here, continue nav assisting. There is a blade swing prompt and a sigil setup, though I couldn’t tell what the latter was for during testing. You’ll drop down a few ledges and Mimir will ask Now how do we get up there, I wonder?.

Freya will respond that We can’t, not with those vines in the way.

This prompts a:

Sigil Puzzle

• Aim at the companion cue and hit it with your first 3 sigil arrows.
• Whilst aiming, move to your left for about a quarter of a second and fire again, there is no cue here.
• Repeat this a second time to hit your third cue and create an ignition point with the blades.
• Igniting said point you’ve created should then cause 3 fiery explosions and the vines to your right to burst into flames, to which Freya remarks that worked

End Of Sigil Puzzle

Navigate onward, interacting with a prompt found after you drop down, to unlock a blade shortcut if you haven’t done so already. Then journey onwards to find a chain to interact with and climb.

Ascending this long chain, continue forward and interact with a chisel door. Complete this and hit a companion cue to progress via a Runic word.

Freya will remark that We should be able to reach the wedding site now.

This means going back the way you came via nav assist, climbing down the chain and running past a spirit who you can talk to via an optional conversation prompt. You should be able to use her voice to locate her, or the swirling sounds that surround her, unlocking an optional side quest to do with Seidr magic.

This quest, Conscience For The Dead, can actually be completed from this exact point, though parts of the dialogue will be the same at first should you decide to take it on.

If you’re carrying on directly with this quest though, nav assisting further, you’ll get back into the boat.

Row onwards through dialogue about Freya’s feelings towards the current situation and you’ll enter a new area and find a dock.

Interact to disembark once again, then nav assist into combat with some pretty strong Wulvers and other enemies.

Once they are defeated, nav assist to a climb prompt, where part way through you’ll want to move to your right with the right stick to reorient nav assist.

Once you reach the top, after some expositional dialogue, nav assist to a grapple prompt, then to another climb a little way onwards.

That second climb done with, continue onwards, dropping down a ledge. You’ll find two prompts. If you go near where nav assist takes you, you’ll hear a companion cue, but if you go toward an actual interact prompt, there is a Nornir chest, not yet tested for viability.

Going to the companion prompt and hitting it, Freya will use her magic once again.

Once the door is open, nav assist forwards into a new area, but don’t go forward all the way, otherwise you’ll run into:

Boss Fight: Soul Eater

This fight is tricky, as there is a poison area that can very easily kill you if you happen to step into it.

Once you get the new area sound cue and Freya’s dialogue of Reavers… Of course, nav assist then aim slightly to your right. If you’re lucky you should get a distant throw cue.

Hit this with the axe and you’ll freeze one of two poison areas, but it does mean you’ll have to fight without the axe for the entire battle.

Try and take out the smaller Reavers first as then it’ll just be you and the Soul Eater, but it’s by no means an easy foe to vanquish.

Actual success came for me when I decided to hang back and deal with the Soul Eater from range, using its blockable attack (that is cued with the parryable audio cue from the glossary) as my axe throw prompt.

Even having killed the enemies and having unintentionally recalled the axe, thus dying to poison, I still completed the encounter, as all foes had been slain before that happened. Hopefully you will be luckier than me in that regard.

A second successful attempt during a subsequent playthrough came from just dealing damage to the soul eater as opposed to going for stun finishers, hitting it whilst its chest was open of course. Doing this repeatedly as well as utilising the fragments it drops when correctly hit seemed to end the fight reasonably quickly, albeit on story difficulty.

End Of Boss Fight

Nav assisting onwards, keeping an eye out for poison areas, aim and throw your axe into prompts in front of you, the first one drops some loot down and the second a little further on dislodges an obstruction.

From here, move forward and aim every few steps until you find a companion prompt. If you hear a squeaking kind of sound, you’ve aggroed the spitter plant, which is attached to a brain plant which you are actually looking to destroy in this instance.

If you step backwards enough, you’ll de-aggro the spitter and should hear a kind of scrunching noise.
You may be able to use the plant’s breathing as a locational beacon for positioning as well.

Make sure your blades are drawn and sigil arrows are equipped.

Using nav assist, approach until the plant aggros, then step backwards manually just enough so that you heard the de-aggro scrunching noise mentioned earlier.

After holding aim, do not let go of it until specified in the instructions.

Sigil Puzzle

Whilst aiming, shoot 3 arrows at your companion cue, then turn right for about half a second. Shoot 3 more arrows to overlap the sigils.

Now move to your right then down for about half a second each and fire your final 3 arrows.

Here comes the tricky part.

Using only left stick, walk towards where you place the final 3 arrows and after a short while you should get a blade ignition cue. Hit this and if you’ve done everything correctly, you should hear the sigils erupt into flames and be able to aim and hit a newly revealed throw cue.

just as a note, make sure to raise your shield after hitting the ignition prompt to block the spitter oncoming projectiles (as you’ll have had to walk into its aggro range to trigger ignition in the first place).

This might take you a few tries, but restarting the checkpoint resets you back before the poison totems that you have to throw at from earlier.

Once you hit that new throw cue to get the rest of the bridge down, run through and don’t stop as Freya gives dialogue and the spitter tries to fire at your back.

Deal with the nightmares you’ll run into, though note the spitter can still reach you.

<!–check for consistency and for the correct cue

Important!

We recommend fighting these enemies from range and not moving, due to the fact that you can actually destroy the brain plant here, as per the following instructions.

The Big Brain Play

Battle done, listen out for a chirping cue that denotes the brain plant and turn so that it is to your left by around 60 degrees or so. Aim and you should get a sigil cue; freeze this with your axe once you’ve hit it to free some loot from a chest.

Then aim your axe and throw at a hanging pot next to the brain plant (with said plant still to your left).

Now face the brain plant then with it slightly to your right, you should be able to run until your feet stop moving and drawing your blades, aim and ignite for an explosion and a screech from all sides, meaning you’ve destroyed the brain and the spitters will no longer fire at you.

Progression

Brain plant taken care of, –>
Run forward to face more enemies round the corner.

Defeat these and grab any interactables you see, one of these might have Mimir say Good Thing you learned the runes brother and you’ll get some XP from it.

Note that if you restart checkpoint, you’ll be put back after the bridge was fully freed but before you got into those two fights.

Continuing onward, you’ll come to an interact where, once hit, Freya will say My circlet is here.

Moving forward, you will have to fight off two revenants and, once dealt with, nav assist to an optional conversation prompt that then triggers more dialogue and continues the quest with an update.

Nav assisting will take you to a chisel door, though opening this will have Freya say she can’t read that from here.

Nav assist and aim, you should be able to get a companion prompt. Shoot this with sigil arrows then burn it with the blades to clear a path.

Moving on with Freya saying I feel nothing as a part of dialogue, you’ll encounter another chain to climb.

Climbing down this and nav assisting will get you into combat, but there is poison around as well, though you’d have to move pretty far in to accidentally stumble into it.

After you defeat the enemies, from range ideally so as not to perish in the attempt, nav assist forward and freeze the poison totem.

Nav assist forward until you get a companion cue, to be used with sigil arrows, as part of another

Sigil Puzzle

• There are two torches and you should be looking at the left one via nav assist, though you won’t know that directly.
• Nav to the door, then roll back three times, then look for this companion cue again.
• Fire 3 arrows at this cue, then turn half a second to your right and fire a second set of 3 arrows. There is no cue here but as usual, you want the sigils to overlap.
• Finally repeat again, turning half a second to your right, firing 3 final arrows.
• Now, without moving forward, hit nav assist and aim to snap back to the original companion cue. Walk forward and whilst aiming, you should be able to hit a heavy blades ignition prompt.
• If everything is in place correctly, you should see 3 flaming explosions and hear a low shimmering whooshing noise indicating the door is now able to be opened.
• If you are not successful but still burn the bramble that is the source of the companion cue, we highly recommend restarting checkpoint here, as this cue is the source for orientation to complete the above puzzle.
• You don’t have to hit an interact prompt to get through, the door opens when you light all the torches. This of course marks the end of the puzzle.

End Of Sigil Puzzle

Unfortunately, the next fight you come to includes a Nokken. The problem with this one in particular is that it’s tucked away behind a wall to your right.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Nokken is shielded by a bramble, with an invincible enemy blocking your way, that is being buffed by said Nokken.

This is the hardest fight in the entire game, no contest, without sighted assistance.

What you want to try and do is draw the single enemy to you by staying at the back of the arena when the battle starts and he’s aggroed (signalled by the rage cue playing), then when he’s close enough run towards him, roll past him and disable lock-on to get towards where the Nokken is singing.

Turn and leave the Nokken to your right and slightly behind you, then fire a sigil and attempt to ignite. You’re looking for a bramble to burst into flames.

Once done, you can follow the Nokken’s singing, first forward then round to the right once you clear the wall that should be to your right-hand side, though of course you will have to just negotiate this by luck.

You’ll come into an area with Seidr warriors throwing poison, as well as the Nokken and the shielded enemy that will have probably followed and caught up to you from earlier.

Consider the Nokken your priority target, run at him and hit him with everything you’ve got to take him out, then deal with the rest of the enemies as normal.

Note that the enemy that starts this fight closest to you is shielded, so you might have to keep damaging him with differing attack strategies to finish him off.

Again, this puzzle battle is incredibly luck-based in terms of finding the bramble and navigating and is hard to get right consistently with a verifiable method.

Restarting this from checkpoint and trying a few times, I managed to get it, but it was only after it was explained to me in the first place that it was easier.

I have had instances where this fight has taken me a single try on Give Me Grace, with some skill upgrades and improved armour, but other times where it has taken me several attempts. Essentially, be patient with it if you’re undertaking this quest and you can hopefully get through it.

Emerging victorious, Freya will say I see the chalice

Nav assisting to another optional conversation prompt allows Freya to break it, as with the previous icon, thus updating the quest again.

With a similar runic-style sound to before, nav assist onwards once again to another chisel door.

Freya will point out that The word is complete, but I still can’t read it from here.

Navigate forward and aim and you should get a throw cue; hit this to drop a hanging pot containing a small amount of loot.

There may also be an interact to your right to which Mimir will say a line of dialogue and you’ll receive some XP.

You may also happen to see a companion prompt when aiming. If you shoot this one and throw your axe at it, you should hear some loot drop right at your feet. These are present throughout other areas, but they aren’t always easy to find consistently.

Nav assisting onwards, as a part of her dialogue, Freya will ask What more do I need to do?. Keep aiming as you go and you’ll see some more loot opportunities, including another one of those sigil drops and a hanging pot.

Hit an interact on your left and Freya will point out it’s a denouncement, you should receive some more XP from this.

From here, nav assist might get you slightly stuck, so when your feet stop moving, turn to your right and move forward until you can run again. Keep moving and aiming until you find a throw cue, which is for a poison totem that you’d want to keep frozen.

Nav assist and you should get to a distant interact prompt on your left, which then turns into a companion cue. Hit this cue and Freya will speak the runic word.

Freya then asks Why does the other side of this door scare me most?. As you move towards the next prompt, keep an ear out for an interact on your right which can earn you even more XP.

With Kratos answer, nav assist onwards and interact, the door’s minigame will complete on its own and a cutscene will commence.

Once that cutscene is over, you’ll get a trophy if this is your first time through this quest, and a message saying New sword choice unlocked, followed by a tutorial which takes you through selecting said sword, though of course some of the screens aren’t spoken.

Use OCR to change swords should you want to, as the default one Freya uses applies stun to enemies and the other that you just obtained applies Bifrost.

Nav assist and hit the interact to your right to get even more XP, then one to your left if you can find it for a similar result.

Nav assisting to leave the area will get you into combat where, if you selected the new sword, you get to see it in action. Note there is poison around here as well, so freeze it if you can or stay back and wait for the enemies to come to you.

If you restart checkpoint after dying in the poison, you’ll get the chance to throw your axe at it knowing it’s there before your enemies are aware of you.

Be aware, there are two targets. The target you want to hit is to the left of where your enemies are when they aggro, should you have to find it manually. Do not recall the axe until you know it is safe to do so.

As an alternate strategy, you can freeze both targets via sigil arrow additions to run through them to your enemies and take the fight directly to your new foes.

Once you defeat those enemies, Mimir will talk to Freya about the situation they’re currently in.

Nav assist to another companion prompt and the door will open once hit.

Keep nav assisting and you should find a climb prompt. Just hit this and keep going forward, you’ll eventually reach the other side.

Don’t use nav assist here. Manually move forward and to your left, and nav assist should then take you to a companion prompt for a sigil.

Burn this with your blades to clear a path, then keep moving to a blades grapple interact.

Nav assist will then take you through some more climbing and a blade swing down, then to an interact prompt where a cutscene plays, leading into:

Boss Fight: Dual Dreki

This is the same as the previous Dreki battles, but you still need to be careful as always. Block, counter when you can and remember the electrical AOE that happens once they get below a certain point in their health bars.

Combat over, nav assist onwards and interact to get into a boat, with the dialogue triggering the end of the quest and its completion sound.

You may now return to any other in-game activities you were undertaking previously.