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This hub covers the 2018 God of War, the one that moved Kratos to the Norse realms and put Atreus beside him. Our coverage of it is four deep guides and three pieces of news from the years before it shipped. The four guides all circle one number: the Power Level the game prints next to every enemy, which our enemies page tells you to respect, and which the other three guides are, one way or another, about raising. So the hub is arranged around that number. First what it is measured against, then what raises Kratos's side of it and what that costs, and finally the three stories that explain what kind of game this was going to be before anyone had played it.
The Road Through It
Before the number, the route. The game is seventeen chapters long and almost every upgrade in it is locked behind a specific beat of those chapters rather than behind grinding, which is the organising idea of our God of War walkthrough: the chapter order with the unlock ladder laid over it, so you know which fight opens which rung and when spending materials is premature. Our length guide puts hours against the same structure, about 20 for the story, 30 to 35 with the Favors and 50 to 55 for everything, and explains where that second half actually goes. The boy walking beside you through all of it is about eleven years old, a figure the game never states and our page on Atreus traces to the novelization.
What The Number Is Measured Against
The enemies guide is the page to read first, because it explains the three bars every foe carries: the Power Level, the health bar, and the Stun Meter that fills under fists, environmental hits and Atreus's arrows until an R3 prompt ends the fight regardless of health. It then walks thirteen enemy families with their variants, from the common Draugr in seven forms through Revenants, Broods, Nightmares, Reavers, Tatzelwurms, Travelers, Vikens, Wolves, Wulvers and Dark Elves, to the Hel-Walkers, which the page describes as frozen upgrades of everything before them, resistant to Frost and weak to fire. Our enemies and upgrades guide reads that page as a table of tools, matching each family to the weapon the page hands it, and then shows when each weapon grows.
What Raises Kratos's Side Of It
Four things in our pages move Kratos's number. The upgrades guide lays out the weapon ladders: six rungs for the Leviathan Axe, five for the Blades of Chaos, six for Atreus's Talon Bow and four for his Quiver, each rung tied to a story beat such as killing the Ogre in the Foothills or Magni and Modi at Thamur's Corpse, with the final Axe and Blades rungs bought for 5,000 Mist Echoes and for Muspelheim's Raging Inferno. Armor is three pieces, chest, wrists and waist, each upgradable at a shop and each carrying up to three enchantment sockets, with upgrades adding sockets. Skills are bought with XP per weapon and some only fire above a stat threshold: Cooldown 125, Defense 300, Runic 250, Vitality 225. Which set of that armor is worth the materials, and why a mid tier piece with three filled sockets often beats a famous one with a single socket, is our armor ranking's argument.
The sockets are where the enchantments guide comes in. It describes 60 perks and 55 named unique enchantments in three rarities, and it prices the randomly generated ones the shops sell in Hacksilver and Enchanted Dust together, up to 15,000 Hacksilver and 250 Dust for an Epic. The materials guide pays for the rest: 44 crafting materials from the Svartalfheim Steels that upgrade armor through the single-use pommel and talisman materials dug from treasure maps, plus the seven Yggdrasil's Dews around the Lake of Nine and in Alfheim that add two points to a stat each and the Mark of the Dwarves that adds four to Runic. Our enchantments and materials guide sorts both lists by whether their source will ever pay twice, and finds that 22 of the 55 enchantments can be had again while 33 are single finds, nine of them from the nine Valkyries the pages name. Where each of those nine waits, from Kara in the Witch's Cave to Sigrun at the Council, and what else her chamber pays out, is our Valkyrie locations guide.
Where The Costs Are Paid
| Currency in our pages | Where it comes from | What it buys |
|---|---|---|
| Hacksilver | Everywhere; the materials page names treasure map caches as one source | Generated enchantments (3,000 to 15,000 each), Talon Bow upgrades with steel, shop stock |
| Enchanted Dust | Dismantling enchantments you own from a shop's sell tab | The second half of every generated enchantment's price, 2 to 250 Dust |
| Mist Echoes | Niflheim chests | The sixth Axe upgrade (5,000), the Eye of Niflheim chest (2,500), Niflheim alloys (500 to 2,500) |
| Raging Inferno and chilling mist | Muspelheim and Niflheim | Chaos Flame and Frozen Flame, the weapon upgrade materials, by exchange at a shop |
| XP | Playing | Skills, one tree per weapon plus Rage |
How The Game Was Announced
Three news stories in our archive bracket the game's arrival, and since the dates on the files are migration dates, the order below is taken from what the stories themselves describe. The earliest is the first details after the E3 2016 reveal: Norse mythology, a story set many years after God of War 3, Kratos as the only playable character, a new gameplay style at the old level of accessibility, and no open world and no quick-time events. The next is the report of an 18 rating in Europe from the run-up to E3 2017, which noted a Father's Day marketing image, expected more of the game at the June 13 to 16 show, and expected no release before 2018. The last is the story that no DLC was planned, after the April 20 launch on PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro: director Cory Barlog said nothing had been held back, and the piece also notes that the one-cut camera means cutscenes cannot be skipped, to the annoyance of speedrunners. The update at the top of that story, dated May 27, says the position had not changed.
Questions Our Pages Answer
Does God of War 2018 have DLC?
Our news story from the year of release says no, and quotes the director saying everything made went into the base game. Nothing in our pages covers anything added later.
How many enchantments are there?
Our list describes 60 perks and 55 named unique enchantments, 16 of them Rare, 24 Legendary and 14 Epic, with one carrying no rarity label. Generated enchantments from the shops are extra and are not counted.
What does the Stun Meter do?
It fills as you hit an enemy, fastest with Atreus's arrows, and when full an R3 prompt lets Kratos execute the enemy whatever its remaining health. Our enemies guide leans on it for Revenants, Dark Elves and anything you cannot hit through.
How long does the game take?
About 20 hours for the seventeen chapters on their own, 30 to 35 if you take the Favors and the realm detours, and 50 to 55 to finish everything, which our length guide breaks down. The Valkyries and the two challenge realms are most of the difference.