One of the best things that a triple-A, open-world action game can offer players is a reason to keep playing after the credits roll, and God of War: Ragnarok has dozens of them. Truly, the game is brimming with enough side quests and optional content to easily add 20-30 hours to your gameplay time, making your purchase all the more worthwhile.
All the same, one of the last quests on the docket will likely be the Combat Challenges of Muspelheim, which also appeared in the previous entry of the series. Also, like those challenges, the trials of the fiery wasteland this time around will test your mettle considerably, though God of War: Ragnarok makes it a little easier to adjust your difficulty in relation to them.
More God of War: Ragnarok Guides
How to Fully Explore the Crater – How to Upgrade Armor and Weapons – How to Jump – How to Heal and Use Ragestones – How to Use Enchantments – How to Give Kratos Witchtime – How to Unlock the Secret Muspelheim Realm – How to Increase Your Healthbar – How to Upgrade from PS4 to PS5 – How to Fully Upgrade the Amulet – How to Complete Across the Realm’s Favor – All Cosmetic Armor – Best Graphics Settings – Atreus Combat Guide – How to Unlock the Crater – How to Transmogrify Weapons – How to Use Crystalline Shards – How to Regenerate Health – How to Beat Bjorn, the Giant Bear – How to Increase Spartan Rage – How to Open All Gates in the Wetlands – How to Earn More Hacksilver – How Long Does it Take to Get the Blades of Chaos – Best Runic Attacks You Don’t Want to Miss – Is There a Photo Mode – What Are the Difficulty Settings? – How to Enable High Framerate Mode – How to Solve the Dwarven Village Bug – How Many Chapters Are There? – How to Get and Use Shattered Runes – Is There a New Game+ Mode?
How to Complete the Muspelheim Combat Challenges in God of War: Ragnarok
There are 15 Crucible Challenges that the player must undertake in order to gain 100% completion for the realm of Muspelheim. While the first 6 unlock automatically once you arrive at the Crucible area, the others are unlocked in some unexpected ways. That’s alright, though; we’ll take you through them all one by one. Remember, if you find yourself getting frustrated with any of these challenges, you can lower the difficulty or change up some gameplay options without any penalty whatsoever. To access these first trials, simply access the three giant sword markers that can be found around the map. The first six trials are as follows:
1. Weapon Mastery
For this challenge, you just need to keep killing the enemies that arrive without dying. It’s that simple. How many enemies you must fight will change based on your difficulty setting, but they’re all pretty standard enemies that you’ve no doubt defeated many times already in God of War: Ragnarok, so they shouldn’t give you much trouble.
2. Flawless
This challenge is similar to the first one, only with a few less enemies and the caveat that you can’t get hit during combat. Utilize your companion’s bow attacks and axe or spear throws to attack without getting too close if you’re struggling with this one. Remember, you can also use your runic attacks to hit from a distance as well.
3. Population Control
For this challenge, you must kill enemies quickly enough so that there are never more than four enemies on the battlefield at a time. Once again, bow or throwing attacks can help you with this as they’ll allow you to hit further off enemies, killing them without wasting the time of running over to them. Any time there are more than four enemies around, the counter at the top of the screen will begin to count down. As you might have guessed, if it hits zero, you have to start over.
4. King of the Hill
This time around, you’re going to have to kill enemies as they encroach on your territory. Though it will only be one circle at the beginning, by the end, there will be three. Swing around the arena, clearing enemies out of each circle as quickly as possible. If you’re doing this toward the end of the game or in the post-game, then it shouldn’t give you much trouble.
5. Ring Out
For this God of War: Ragnarok challenge, your enemies will be invincible. Fret not, though, as you can still kill them; you’ll just have to use knockback attacks to do it by knocking them off of ledges into the burning magma below. Once again, this is pretty straightforward and shouldn’t cause you too much of a headache.
6. Feed the Rift
Though this one might confuse you for a second, it’s super easy once you realize what’s going on. To cut through the mystery, a rift will appear above the lake of lava in the center of the room. Each enemy you kill will drop a stone that you must hurl into the rift to score points. Score enough points before the timer runs out to achieve victory.
Now, with the first six challenges out of the way, you can go and open the Nornir Chest at the center of the Crucible. You’ll also notice that a fourth sword has appeared in the area, which will grant you access to three further trials: one at each of the other swords. They are as follows:
7. Rampage
For your next God of War: Ragnarok challenge, you just need to kill a certain amount of enemies before the timer is up. If you’re on Give Me Balance or Give Me Grace, this should be pretty easy to complete.
8. Health Steal
The next challenge will see your Vitality slowly being drained throughout the fight. The good news is that if you kill enemies fast enough, each kill will refill a portion of your health. If you play smart, this one is once again quite easy. The only caveat is that if you start to take damage from the enemies as well, your health bar is going to be drained in a hurry.
9. Kill Fuse
For this challenge, a timer will count down for every second that goes by without you killing an enemy. It’s relatively simple, but if you find yourself desperate or struggling, just look around the arena for a weaker enemy, as they can generally be killed off quickly with bow or throwing attacks, putting you back on track.
From here, things are going to get a smidge trickier. The next challenge you unlock will be at the center of the Crucible again, where the new sword appeared. However, there are six remaining challenges, and all must be unlocked by doing two challenges in a row in a certain order. Whichever one you unlock first, you can cross off the remaining challenges list, but just for posterity, we’re going to put all six below, as well as what to expect from them and how to unlock them.
10. Endurance
How to Unlock: Play Rampage and then play Health Steal.
*Afterward, return to the center sword. This will remain true for the next five challenges as well*
For this challenge, you will have to fight 99 enemies back to back without dying. They come at you at a pretty reasonable pace and are mostly weak enough that you shouldn’t have too tough of a time getting through this one.
11. Phantom
How to Unlock: Play Kill Fuse, then play Rampage.
You will have to fight a phantom and some other enemies to complete this trial. Since you’ve no doubt fought plenty of these creatures by now, we won’t bother explaining how to kill them, However, do note that you must kill all of the extra enemies before gaining access to the final kill animation for the phantom and completing the challenge.
12. Shield Breaker
How to Unlock: Play Rampage, then play Kill Fuse.
For this one, you will be fighting an Einherjar Charger and a Stalker. Only one will appear at first, but eventually, you will be fighting both. The catch is that they will remain invincible until you kill 4 enemies to break their shield. Once you do, wail on them to your heart’s content because their shield will return, forcing you to complete the cycle again. This should go without saying but obviously, finish off the first boss before focusing on the second.
13. Ring of Fire
How to Unlock: Play Health Steal, then play Rampage.
The goal of this one is to stay in a shifting ring that moves around the arena while battling off enemies. However, the first thing that you’re going to want to do is throw your axe at the poisonous blight tower across from you and leave it there. Fight with either your spear or your blades because you definitely won’t want to be scrambling to get rid of it while fighting off enemies once the circle shifts over there. Aside from that, this one is also pretty straightforward.
14. Onslaught
How to Unlock: Play Health Steal, then play Kill Fuse.
This challenge is similar to Endurance, only with a timer instead of an enemy counter. You will have to survive the incoming enemies for five minutes, and naturally, harder enemies show up as the challenge goes on. Overall this one shouldn’t give you much trouble if you’re well-equipped, as these are all enemies you will have fought dozens of times by now.
15. Boss Rush
How to Unlock: Play Kill Fuse, then play Health Steal.
The final challenge is battling five bosses back to back. You will face off against a Dark Elf Lord, a Light Elf Warrior, a Fierce Stalker, an Einherjar Brute, and a Traveler. Though this challenge is among the toughest, once again, these are enemies you’ve faced many times before, so you should be able to get it in a couple of tries at most.
