Sony God of War Ragnarok has finally made it to public release, managing to squeeze in before the end of the year and enter the GOTY conversation with amazing critical scores. We’ll see how many sales Sony makes in the short term here, but for now, everyone’s just jumping in to play. As someone who has already spent 40 hours on my review copy of God of War, I have some advice for you as you get started. No spoilers ahead, just some gameplay tips to help you have a better time. Here are ten things I wish I knew when I started God of War Ragnarok:

  1. You’ll have more XP and money than you know what to do with in the end I think it’s important to know how the economy of this game works beforehand. In short, you don’t really need to stress about what to spend XP or money on in the early parts of the game. Rewards scale, so you might get 1,000 XP or Hacksilver in the early stages, but you’ll get 10-20,000 when you complete quests and challenges towards the end of the game. So spend freely as you should be able to buy every major upgrade for you, Atreus and equipment for both of you by the end of the game. There is no real congestion. God of War Ragnarok Sony
  2. Vary your battle to upgrade your skills A new addition to God of War Ragnarok is that the more you use an ability, you can eventually upgrade it to boost damage, defense, item or other stats. As such, the more diverse you can make your ax and blade battles, the more overall upgrades you’ll unlock as opposed to just doing… easy combos. Use all skills often!
  3. Come back later for these puzzle obstacles This isn’t exactly a new mechanic in video games, but let me be clear about some confusing things you might encounter on some early maps. There are two things, what looks like a small gust of wind coming out of a wall and what looks like a yellow glowing patch, that you can’t interact with early on. You will get a tool that overcomes these obstacles later in the story. Second, there are weird, floating, broken rune things around you’ll see. You will need to advance the story to a certain point to learn how to use them. No amount of experimentation will get you past any of this. It will be clear when you get to the point where you can interact with them.
  4. You can Overlevel for tougher Minibosses There are new minibosses that replace the Valkyries that you will eventually unlock battles with around the map. I won’t say which ones they are, but many can be quite difficult. I found that for some of them, ignoring them and then circling when Kratos and his gear were at a higher level was the game, as you can level them, they won’t scale with you. The same goes for things like combat challenges, most of which won’t scale to your level. God of War Ragnarok Sony
  5. Side quests are basically not optional As my friend Gene Park noted in his review, the side quests here are almost on par with The Witcher 3, if not surpassing it. As such, I really wouldn’t consider most of the larger sidequests optional here. Some are straightforward, like hacking all of Odin’s spy ravens, which are just collectibles. But things that are actual sidekicks are often extremely important beat stories for certain characters in the game and shouldn’t be ignored. I would complete all the big sidequests before the finale to really flesh out the full cast as much as you can.
  6. End game currency to max armor sets By the end of the game, you’ll likely complete enough activities to max out a handful of full armor sets to their highest power. For the final piece of the puzzle, you’ll need to perform well in a final series of combat challenges that will push you to the true maximum for your plates. Side missions and challenges are also how you get to the latest damage levels of your weapons.
  7. You can and will return to almost all regions You may wonder if you need to do everything in a given area or you’ll miss content that you can’t complete later. With very, very few exceptions (a green realm that’s like a “break” I’d recommend doing all the sidequests), you’ll return to all the realms you unlock and be able to fully explore their mysteries. There is also no “point of no return” before the end of the game, another common question. You will be able to continue exploring, albeit in a slightly altered way. You will see. God of War Ragnarok Sony
  8. My Favorite Armor Set Of Them All There are several great sets of armor you’ll unlock, but my favorite was one crafted by a dwarf blacksmith that could be crafted fairly early in the game. Gives your fists poison damage when attacking unarmed enemies, then a massive 40% damage bonus against poisoned enemies. So I would often throw my axe, let it stick to an enemy, and then mash them with my fists for massive damage. I used it for probably 80% of the game and it was my main set.
  9. Don’t forget to upgrade your rage skills In Ragnarok, Rage is now a bit different in that you’ll have three different skills that bloom from it. One is pure healing, one is harm and healing, one is pure harm. They each have three tiers that you’ll only upgrade through XP to increase their power, and since they’re not in the skill tree and aren’t pieces of equipment, it’s something that can be easy to overlook. But they are very significant upgrades.
  10. Exchange weapons in battle often There are a lot more combat rewards for diversifying your weapon selection in this sequel. Early on, both the ax and blades will gain an ability where the blades do more damage to frozen enemies and the ax does more damage to burning enemies, so you want to switch often. Later, I unlocked armor sets that rewarded you for quickly using special action skills on different weapons. There is a lot of synergy like this, so watch out for it, except for some enemies that are weak to different types of weapons, similar to the previous game. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to my free weekly content collection newsletter, God Rolls. Take my science fiction novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.