The Best Skills and Armor to Get First – God of War: Ragnarok Wiki Guide

• Glacial Rake – Glacial Rake is a powerful ability that you can get fairly quickly if you save your XP first. You should have enough XP (750) if you save it all until just before returning home after tracking the bear. By holding R1, Kratos drags his axe through the ground, sending forward a shockwave of ice. This attack is very fast to use, it almost always applies frost to the enemies that it strikes, and it can hit many targets in its path. You can of course choose a ranged ability like Vengeful Sickle, or more varied movement attacks like Whirling and Evasive Storm if you prefer, but this is the strongest singular skill that you can buy for the Axe when you’re starting out.

• Hyperion Grapple – After a particularly fateful encounter with Thor, Kratos will pick up his Blades of Chaos, which grants you a whole other set of skills to unlock. There aren’t too many options here to start out with, but we recommend saving your XP after Glacial Rake and putting the points towards Hyperion Grapple (750), which you should be able to buy before your next big fight. By holding R1 when aiming, Kratos will yank himself towards enemies, rather than pulling them towards him. This inflicts a large amount of stun and also allows Kratos to get close at a moments notice. For an extra 250 Experience Points you could instead buy Blazing Surge to increase the power of your Ranged Heavy attack instead, but we think that Hyperion Grapple is an essential movement technique that offers players a lot of flexibility.

• Serpent’s Snare – Use the Frozen Flame you get from defeating one of the first early bosses to upgrade your axe and increase the number of skills available to you. If you only bought Glacial Rake and Hyperion Grapple, you should have just enough points to buy anything you want for the Axe. We suggest purchasing Serpent’s Snare for a satisfying and powerful heavy attack that makes your target double as a ranged frost detonation bomb. You have plenty of purchasing options at this point, so you could also get away with another Ranged or Movement ability, or perhaps another skill for the Blades of Chaos if they are your preferred weapon of choice.

• Permafrost and Immolation – Also unlocked at weapon level 2 is Permafrost for the Leviathan Blades and Immolation for the Blades of Chaos. For those confident in their combat abilities, these skills allow your weapons to be supercharged on successive hits (so long as you don’t take any damage). You can see the circle with the weapon icon start to fill next to your health as you are successful, and a fully charged weapon will deal a ton more damage for a short duration. Even better, get the next skill in the tree when you upgrade your weapon again to press L1+Triangle when charged to expend your charge and shoot out waves of frost or explosions!
• Watchful Protector – At this same time, you will finally have enough points to unlock something for Atreus. His skill tree is quite small at the moment, so you may choose to save his XP and buy something more powerful later on, but we would suggest buying the first upgrade here, Watchful Protector. This allows Atreus to distract enemies if Kratos is becoming overwhelmed, which can give you enough breathing room to finish a tough fight.

Best Armor to Get First

• A New Shield – Once you visit Sindri’s House for the first time, there are a number of things you can do. First on the list is Brok’s kind offer to make you a new shield while he repairs your Guardian Shield, and you have two options to pick from. The Dauntless Shield is the classic God of War 2018 experience, rewarding parries for last-second blocks. By comparison, the Stone Wall shield cannot parry enemies, but it absorbs damage from normal and even Yellow attacks. When you charge either shield by parrying or absorbing damage, you can unleash that energy at your enemies by double tapping L1. If you’re looking for a more straightforward defending experience, we recommend the Stone Wall shield to start with. The upcoming enemies have some unpredictable parry timings and ranged attacks, so you may be grateful for the extra defense from the Stone Wall. Otherwise, take the Dauntless shield if you want a more risk vs reward approach, as its parry attacks can not only stagger enemies but send them flying when you unleash a shield bash in response!