God of War Ragnarök Endgame Content#

The “endgame” of God of War Ragnarök is not one standalone dungeon but six independent systems: the Muspelheim trials test your fundamentals, berserker gravestones and Valkyrie Queen Gna provide boss-tier showdowns, collectible cleanup closes the final gap in the progression chain, and New Game+ plus the free Valhalla DLC stretch the play cycle well past the credits. This page first spells out the rules and criteria of each system, then lays out a push order. Santa Monica Studio has never published enemy HP or damage figures, so everything here uses qualitative descriptions.

Endgame Systems at a Glance#

The six systems have no unlock dependencies between them, so the order is yours to arrange; what actually shapes the experience is the “progression gap” — the system rules below determine which gap you should close first.

Progression Ceilings: Endgame Gear and Rune Rules#

The gate to endgame challenges is not numbers but whether the gear and rune chains are complete. Commit three rules to memory first:

Weapon Upgrades Run on Flames, Not Material Piles#

• The Leviathan Axe eats Frozen Flames, the Blades of Chaos eat Chaos Flames, and the Draupnir Spear eats Gale Flames.
• All three Flames are exclusive collectibles bound to specific sources: story bosses, favours, Draugr Holes, and trials. Whichever Flame you are missing, go back to that source and grab it — no generic mob-drop substitute exists.
• Several key gaps in the Blades of Chaos upgrade chain sit inside Draugr Holes — the textbook example of collectible cleanup feeding directly into weapon upgrades.

Armor and Attachments: Capped at Level 9#

The Amulet of Yggdrasil expands its slots with Jewels of Yggdrasil, and enchantments provide both stats and passive effects. The core of endgame builds is to reserve enchant slots for survival and cooldown passives, and stack offensive stats through weapons and runic attacks.

Runic Attacks: Two Slots, Three Tiers — Cooldowns Are Your Damage Cycle#

• Every weapon has one light and one heavy rune slot; runic attacks can be upgraded to level 3 at the shop, with damage and effects growing each tier, costing Hacksilver and Shattered Runes.
• Each runic attack runs its own cooldown, so build around pairing a “crowd-clear” attack with a “burst” attack and stagger their cooldown windows.
• Taking the Leviathan Axe as the example, here are its ten runes and where they are actually found:

Light Runic Attacks:

Heavy Runic Attacks:

The Blades of Chaos and the Draupnir Spear likewise carry five light and five heavy runes each — ten apiece — such as Atlas Eruption for the Blades and Thrust of a Thousand Soldiers for the spear; the full list lives on the runic attacks page.

The Berserkers: Thirteen Gravestones and a King#

• Once you hold the Draupnir Spear, berserker gravestones appear across the nine realms; interacting with one starts the “Fit for a King” favour. Every gravestone fight is a single duel on a fixed stage, and victory seals the gravestone.
• The thirteen gravestones correspond to thirteen groups of berserker souls, and some fights are multi-enemy brawls — several souls gang up on you and must be split apart and killed one by one.
• Once all thirteen are cleared, the gravestone of King Hrolf Kraki surfaces in Midgard. He is this game’s true “Valkyrie Queen”-tier challenge — the previous God of War’s eight-valkyrie structure does not apply here, so stop hunting for valkyrie altars.
• The loot is Berserker Souls, used to forge the berserker sets and other legendary gear; the King’s loot is the ultimate reward of the entire favour.

Behavior Cues for Gravestone Fights#

Berserkers reuse this game’s general humanoid-boss framework, and these cues take priority over any memorized script:

Suggested Order#

Gravestone difficulty does not follow geography. Clear the gravestones you stumble into while doing favours first, spend the banked Berserker Souls to craft the set, then return for the hard ones; the King fight must come last — it is a skill check earned across thirteen duels, and skipping steps just donates resurrection stones.

Valkyrie Queen Gna#

Gna is this game’s only Valkyrie Queen, appearing in Vanaheim after the story is finished. Her role mirrors the previous game’s Valkyrie King, but her moveset is brand new and prior experience mostly does not transfer. Her fight alternates among three phase types: polearm melee combos, wing-wind pressure area attacks, and aerial barrages after she perches on the stone pillars.

Three Core Rules#

1. The spear is the breaker: once Gna hops onto a pillar and enters her aerial phase, all ground damage whiffs; throwing and detonating the Draupnir Spear blasts her off the pillar, both interrupting the aerial phase and setting up a chase window. This offensive-defensive swing is the pacing anchor of the whole fight.
2. Barrages are footwork, not blocking: her multi-hit barrages come out one volley at a time, and repeated side-dodges hold up better than holding your shield; greedily attacking into the third volley gets you clipped.
3. Read phases qualitatively: past half health, aerial pressure and area attacks take up noticeably more of her cycle; at low health every move speeds up — absorb the first wave with Spartan Rage, then hunt for a parry window to finish her.

Recommended Preparation#

For a phase-by-phase breakdown see the boss guides page; for how she differs from the previous game’s valkyrie framework, see the valkyries page.

Muspelheim Trials#

You must first collect the realm-specific seeds to unlock travel to Muspelheim; its landmark, The Crucible, is a ring-shaped arena lined with a series of trials that carry special rules.

Rule Cues#

• Each trial attaches one rule modifier: restricted weapons, compressed healing, empowered enemy affixes, changed victory conditions, and so on. Trials test your ability to translate a rule into a game plan on the spot, not stat brute-forcing.
• Once every regular trial is done, a final gauntlet opens that chains multiple combined rules back to back — the graduation exam for your fundamentals.
• Trials pay out Smouldering Embers, a key currency for high-end forging and exchanges; when you run short on materials, replaying trials beats grinding mobs in the wild.

Collectible Cleanup: Ravens, Rifts, and Draugr Holes#

Collectible cleanup is not trophy-hunting busywork — three of these items feed the progression systems directly:

Odin’s Ravens#

• There are 48 ravens across the map; after breaking them, return to the Raven Tree in Niflheim and open reward chests by cumulative count.
• Rewards come in tiers: at 28 ravens you claim the axe heavy rune Breath of Thamur, the most valuable stop on the raven cleanup route; clearing all 48 takes the final reward.
• Sound is the efficiency core: ravens chirp when you get close, and sweeping along map edges and overhead angles beats blind map-crawling by a wide margin.

Yggdrasil Rifts#

• Yggdrasil Rifts are scattered across the realms; walk up and hold the interact button to close them, yielding Dust of Realms plus enchantment and rune rewards.
• A few rifts spawn ambushers mid-close; clear the adds first, then resume holding — never stand next to a rift and tank it.

Draugr Holes#

• Draugr Holes are underground nests scattered across the nine realms; clear them wave by wave, and a named elite, Miklimunnr, shows up to close things out.
• Hole loot includes Chaos Flames, and clearing every Draugr Hole patches the key gaps in the Blades of Chaos upgrade chain — which is exactly why they rank so high on the endgame checklist.

If any Idunn Apples or Horns of Blood Mead (health and rage increases) are still missing, sweep them up in this phase too: your margin for error in the hardest endgame fights rests entirely on those two stat lines. The full collectible map is on the collectibles page.

Valhalla: The Free Roguelite DLC#

“Valhalla” (God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla) is a free DLC launched in December 2023 — a roguelite mode fully independent of the main save that you can enter at any time.

Structure of a Run#

Mode Cues#

• Don’t treat one failure as the end: a roguelite’s positive feedback lives in permanent growth. Falling short early is normal; bank settlement resources into permanent upgrades and the difficulty curve visibly flattens after a few runs.
• Pick Blessings for fit, not rarity: temporary Blessings only last the run; prioritize ones that match your current weapon plan over surface-level numbers.
• Narrative role: the mode doubles as the epilogue after the main story, following Kratos as he confronts his Greek past, with story content unlocking gradually run by run.
• The Cycle mechanic: after completing the story line, you can raise your Cycle rank tier by tier — a New Game+ inside the mode, where enemy strength and rules scale up accordingly; it is the most replayable challenge pool after the endgame.
• Reward shape: payouts are mostly collectible-oriented content such as armor dyes and weapon appearances, plus trophies; none of it touches main-save numbers.

New Game+#

Carryover Rules#

New Game+ can be started from the main menu after clearing the story; gear, skills, resources, and collectible progress all carry over — anything left unfinished from the first playthrough continues seamlessly, so there is no need to rush cleanup before the credits.

What New Game+ Adds#

New Game+ Goals#

Fold whatever remains on your endgame checklist (the berserker King, Gna, leftover collectibles) into New Game+ and close it all out there — pushing toward the level 10 ceiling goes smoother with full inheritance; if you want maximum pressure, raise the difficulty settings when starting the file.

Endgame Progression Route#

Ordered by dependencies, minimizing backtracking:

The common thread across all endgame content is a “mutually reinforcing loop”: collectibles feed gear, gear feeds challenges, and challenges produce new materials. When you hit a wall, look back at which link is missing instead of bashing the same fight over and over.

Revision Notes#

The previous version of this page mixed in figures the developer never published and invented lore; all of it has been removed and corrected item by item below: