God of War Ragnarok builds off of the 2018 game in many new and interesting ways, and while there are many tooltips and tutorials, there’s still plenty of information that isn’t always explained to you. You’ll either have to seek out these easily missed points yourself, or check this list of Things God of War Ragnarok Doesn’t Tell You.

• See Also: Essential Tips and Tricks
• Skills and Gear to Get First

Starting Tips

• Break small environmental pieces (barrels, tables, etc.) for free Hacksilver! This can include distant pots in the scenery - destroying them with your axe will still give you the rewards.

• Stop by Mystic Gateways to restore your health and rage to full at any time. Simply interact with it by stepping up to the door, and then back out. Do this before taking on minibosses to ensure you’re fully prepared.

• The Blades of Chaos can be used to pull enemies towards you, but certain enemies like Nightmares and Exploding Wretches can be grabbed and thrown like bombs to damage other enemies.
• God of War: Ragnarok allows for 60 manual save files. Save often, and if you’re on a linear story mission and are feeling underpowered on higher difficulties, you may want to explore a bit more first.
• Certain skills allow you to perform new combos or attacks by spacing your button presses. If you no longer wish to perform them by accident, you can disable skills you don't like in the skills menu by pressing Triangle.

• Poison in Ragnarok isn’t just about damage over time. Take enough damage, and the poison will weaken you and (temporarily) increase an enemy’s level compared to you. However, you can use certain companion skills, gear, and hazards to do the same to enemies (including bosses), which will lower their level and their stats making it easier to kill them.

• Enemy Health bars will change color relative to your level - and while regular enemies display their power level number, bosses do not. Green health bars are a bit lower than your level, while yellow is equal to you. Orange health bars are enemies one level higher, purple are two levels higher, and red health bars are 3 or more levels (and should be avoided!). Poisoning enemies will cause their color to change - but also if you are poisoned!
• Poisoned enemies may sometimes become weakened enough that their unblockable attacks are now blockable (but can still stagger you if not perfectly timed).
• As you progress through the game, more optional challenges will appear in the Labors tab of your goals menu. This allows you to get exp for doing various things enough times (Swinging Trees, Throwing Rocks, shattering frozen enemies, etc), so be sure to vary up your moves!
• It’s easy to forget that experience you earn is not just used to purchase new skills. You should also plan to allocate some experience towards increasing the power of your Runic Skills and Runic Summons, and also improve the ability of Kratos’ Spartan Rage.
• Atreus starts the game with a very small skill tree, but you should expect it to expand over time. With that being the case, don’t feel like you need to unlock all of his early skills at once if you would rather save it up.

• In different realms, you may notice certain hazards or objects in a fight that can be used against other enemies. Throwing your axe at twilight stones can stun foes, while poison flowers in Vanaheim can be triggered to spew toxins at nearby enemies.

• Depending on what shield you equip, it’s easy to forget how powerful your shield bashing can get. Whether charging up its power or parrying at just the right time: If your shield isn’t glowing, a bash will do a normal amount of damage and stun. When it glows yellow, you’ll deal a bonus to damage and stun, and a red glow can unleash a maximum damage bonus and stun impact - and nearly always interrupts an enemy or boss unless they are heavily armored
• Most regions will have at least one or two things you can’t unlock until later in the game, so don’t worry too much about trying to 100% an area on your first time through. If you see something marked as “undiscovered”, it’s likely part of a later side quest.

• Watch out for Ormr, as they can be a great source of crafting resources. They look similar to the Wretches that you fight in Svartalfheim, or the Tatzelwurms from the first game, but these creatures won’t harm you. They’ll sit on the surface making a repetitive barking cry, and when they catch sight of you they will burrow underground. Find a vantage point nearby where the Ormr can’t see you before taking it out with a ranged attack to claim your bounty.
• Charging up your axe or blades will usually last for a little bit, which means you can preemptively charge your weapons before heading into a fight.

• Certain attacks will render you invulnerable during the animation. While it doesn’t apply to Runic Attacks, moves like Serpent’s Snare, tossing Nightmares and Wretches, and using a Stun Finishers will stop enemies from hitting you once the animation begins.

• Activating Spartan Rage can sometimes interrupt incoming enemy attacks if they are close enough, staggering them as you explode with rage. This can even work with stomping on health or rage stones.
• Certain health and rage stones found naturally in the environment will respawn every so often, so always top yourself when possible.
• No matter the difficulty, the main bosses you’ll encounter have certain checkpoints - so if you die you won’t usually have to go through the entire fight again. The same is also possible for mini-boss fights, but you’ll have to enable these in the options menu - but it won’t work on the highest difficulty levels.

Advanced Tips

Later Things God of War Doesn't Tell You (covering mid to late game features) Coming Soon!