God of War Ragnarok Beginners Guide

God of War Ragnarok Beginners Guide

Starting out in God of War Ragnarok can be a little difficult, even when you are not playing on the harder difficulty levels. There is quite a lot to learn about how combat works. The traditional methods of heavy button mashing produce very little results in this game. You need to be far more tactical which can be more challenging for beginners.

To further complicate the challenge, the gear you equip will provide you with various different stats that will benefit you in combat too, you just need to know what starts you need to work on and then have to figure out how to find the crafting components needed to upgrade gear.

This beginner’s guide to God of War Ragnarok will help you out when you are getting started on your adventure. Everything I wish I had of known when I first started playing the game and some useful tips to help you get stronger a lot faster.

Don’t Rush Into The Main Story

God of War Ragnarok has a fairly lengthy story that can take over 20 hours to complete. On top of the main story, there is a huge amount of stuff to keep you occupied outside of the main story. There is no need to be rushing ahead with the story too fast. Take your time and absorb all there is to do, it will benefit you greatly and help you get stronger in more ways than one.

There are many side quests, some of which will reward you with armour or even key components needed to craft armour such as Nidavallir Ore, which is going to be a lifesaver early on in the game as it is a really good armour set to have during the early stages of the game when you would be otherwise stuck with the armour you start out with.

Make Sure You Explore All Paths

Similar to the benefits of going away from the main story, you should also explore as much as you can. You need to keep an eye out for all of the stone chests with the red glow inside of them. These chests often have important crafting components that are needed to upgrade armour and gear. These upgrades will often provide some large stat increases that will make you a lot stronger as soon as you purchase the upgrade.

finding resources in God of war ragnarok
Chests like this often have valuable crafting items to upgrade your gear with

Gold chests are another benefit that you can get from searching off the beaten path. These chests are often a lot more difficult to unlock but if you get stuck, I also have some guides to unlocking gold chests here.

One of the last things to look out for are the tears that can be found hanging off roots in various different locations in the game. When you pick up one of these, it can give you an instant upgrade to one of the six different stats in the game. These are often very easy to collect so there is no reason not to go out of your way to get these. They are well worth it.

how to get stronger
Gathering these tears from the roots is a handy way to get stronger.

Dodge & Parry Are ESSENTIAL

There was a time when you could just mash attacks in God of War and it would be enough for you to kick ass in combat. The recent reboot has changed this and while it has made Kratos feel a lot weaker than he did before, it has added a lot more variety to the combat in the game that requires you to be more tactical.

Dodging is a fairly easy mechanic to get to grips with. When enemies attack you and a red ring shows around them, this means they are about to unleash a tack that cant is blocked. This means you MUST dodge it. It takes some time to figure out the best direction to dodge with different enemies. A soldier with a sword who is lunging toward you is likely going to still damage you if you dodge backwards. In these cases, you need to dodge to the side. If an enemy is attacking with a large swinging attack, dodging backwards is ideal. You will not get any temporary invincibility from dodging so you need to make sure you dodge the right way to avoid the attack.

god of war beginners guide
Watch out for the red circles during combat. These attacks cant be blocked, you must dodge.

A parry takes advantage of the block mechanic. When you press the button to block at just the right moment, you will stagger the enemy. This does not stagger bosses for very long unfortunately but it is very useful against normal enemies.

You will often find enemies attack you with a sort of light green or yellow coloured circle when they attack. These attacks are going to stagger you if they hit, even if you are blocking. These attacks must be either dodged or parried. The timing for the parry on these attacks can be overly precise. It is often better to just dodge the attack instead of attempting to parry it but it does pay to get good at parrying these attacks. It will do you as lot of good during boss fights where dodging is often difficult due to the large attack radius.

Unlock Every Nornir Chest You Find

Nornir chests are very elaborate chests with three blue runes on the front of them. You will need to interact with something nearby such as lighting a brazier or smashing a vase in order to unlock the chest. When you unlock it, you will get an item that will contribute toward increasing your maximum health or maximum rage. Having more health may not make you stronger but it will allow you to take a lot more abuse during combat.

nornir chests
Nornir chests are what will give you health and rage upgrades, always unlock them when you find them

Some of the Nornir chests can be tricky to unlock but the good news for you is I have spent some time putting together guides showing you how to unlock them all. You can check out all of the Nornir Chest guides here.

Gather All the Hacksilver You Can Find

Early on in the game, you will find you have far more hacksilver than you know what to do with. Don’t get too used to this, hacksilver will soon vanish very quickly when you start purchasing some of the higher-level armour upgrades. You might feel rich now but later on, you are sure to find that hacksilver is one of the things that is preventing you from being able to upgrade your gear.

hacksilver chest
Chests like this are often a great source of hacksilver and sometimes some even better items. Always keep an eye out for them

Keep an eye out for various different chests of all shapes and sizes as they nearly all provide you with some hacksilver along with some other useful items. You should also keep an eye out for hanging buckets which are weirdly common. These buckets have a blue disc above them that you can hit with your Leviathan Axe to make the bucket drop. The hacksilver can be picked up then.

Selling Artifacts Is Worth It

One thing that you may be wondering if you have picked some up is whether you can sell artifacts or should you keep them? I have completed the game and a large amount of the side quests and other activities. I am not aware of any reason to keep these artefacts in your inventory. Even when you sell them the game lets you know that this will not reset the collectable counts. You are better off getting rid of these when you need some Hacksilver. These can fetch a huge amount, sometimes 1500 for a single relic.

If you visit the forge, you can easily sell these in bulk for a lot of hacksilver. You may also find that you have a lot of other junk that you can sell to increase your hacksilver stash.

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