SegmentNextMechanics
Kratos carries a small kit: an axe that comes back when thrown, a pair of chained blades, a shield, his own fists, and a boy with a bow who fires when told to. Our two God of War combat pages are about that kit from opposite directions. The enemies guide names a tool for nearly every foe it describes, and the upgrades guide says when each tool gets stronger and what the story asks of you first. Laid side by side they become one table: which tool does this job, and how far into the game is that tool any good.
The Three Bars Over Every Enemy
Before the tools, the enemies guide explains what you are looking at. Each enemy carries a Power Level, a relative difficulty figure the page tells you to respect rather than fight above. Under it sits a health bar that changes colour as it drains, and some enemies carry several. The third bar is the Stun Meter, which fills as you land hits, faster with fists or by knocking an enemy into the scenery, and fastest of all by having Atreus rain arrows on the target. When it is full, a prompt to press R3 triggers an execution that empties the health bar whatever is left in it. That third bar is the reason Atreus appears in so many rows of the table below.
Which Tool Each Enemy Wants
| Tool | Enemies the guide hands to it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Atreus's arrows | Revenants and Hel-Revenants, Draugr-Speed, Dark Elves, Revenant and Dark Elf Summoners, Hel-Reaver Lords, anything you want stunned | Arrows strip a Revenant's shroud, which nothing can be hit through; they pin a fleeing Draugr for a heavy attack; they interrupt a summon; they distract or stun an Elf that dodges melee; and they chew through a Reaver Lord's frost armor |
| The Leviathan Axe, thrown or freezing | Draugr-Explosives, every Nightmare variety, Shadows' projectiles, Tatzelwurms, Dark Elf Summoners, shielded Reavers, Hel-Shadow Scouts | A throw kills a suicide Draugr at range and takes its neighbours with it; frozen Nightmares become bombs to throw at other enemies; freezing a Tatzelwurm stops it burrowing; R2's freeze slows a Summoner; a throw at the legs opens a shield |
| The Blades of Chaos | Broods and Hel-Broods, Nightmares to reel in, Hel-Reavers with or without shields, Hel-Reaver Lords | The sweep clears a swarm; the reel pulls a flier in; and the page says the Blades, fists or arrows pierce frost armor the Axe cannot |
| Fists | Shadows, Dark Elves, Hel-Reaver Lords, and any enemy whose Stun Meter you want filled | Shadows are weak enough to punch out; Dark Elves resist Shock but are vulnerable to bare hands; fists build stun faster than the Axe |
| Shield skills: Block Break and Countering Blast | Shielded Draugr, shielded Reavers, shielded Hel-Reavers, Draugr-Projectiles, Hel-Shadow archers | Block Break drops a guard that also stops Atreus's arrows; Countering Blast returns a projectile to its sender |
| Runic Attacks and Spartan Rage | Travelers and their Champions, Hel-Broods, Poison Wolves | Runics and Rage, with arrows, weaken a Traveler's armor for the melee that follows; Runics thin a Hel-Brood swarm; Poison Wolves are vulnerable to Rage attacks |
| Dodge, parry, or simply keep away | Heavy Draugr, Dual-Wielding Draugr, Wulvers, Vikens, Traveler rune casts, Cursed Tatzelwurm spit, Hel-Revenant ice breath | A Heavy Draugr's hit cannot be blocked and kills Atreus outright up close; a Viken blocks ranged attacks so you time its three-swing mace; the Hel-Revenant's breath freezes and kills Kratos in one go |
Two patterns come out of that table. First, the page treats Atreus as the answer to anything with a protective layer: shrouds, frost armor, summoners mid-cast. Second, the Hel-Walkers, which the guide describes as frozen upgrades of every family above them, share one weakness the page states outright: they resist Kratos's own Frost attacks and are particularly vulnerable to fire. The kit's fire weapon is the Blades of Chaos, and the upgrades guide puts the Blades' first bought upgrade in Helheim itself, after Mattugr Helson, which is where the Hel-Walkers live.
When Each Tool Grows
The upgrades guide gives every weapon a fixed ladder, each rung opened by a story event or a purchase rather than by grinding. The Axe cannot be upgraded at all until the Frozen Flames are returned to Brok or Sindri, and the Blades wait for the Chaos Flames in the same way; the enchantments and materials guide covers where those and the rest of the upgrade costs come from.
| Tool | Rungs | What opens each one, in order |
|---|---|---|
| Leviathan Axe | 6 | Owned from the start; escape the ruins and meet Brok; kill the Ogre in the Foothills; kill Jarn Fotr in the Heart of the Mountain; kill Magni and Modi at Thamur's Corpse; buy the sixth out of the chest in Niflheim's Center Chamber, 5,000 Mist Echoes |
| Blades of Chaos | 5 | Owned when they arrive; kill Mattugr Helson in Helheim; kill the Trolls in Tyr's Vault once you hold the Black Rune Stone; kill the Hel-Traveler during the Helheim escape; buy the last with Muspelheim's Raging Inferno after beating Valkyrie Gondul at the summit |
| Talon Bow (Atreus) | 6 | Owned from the start; reach the start of River Pass; reach the Lake of Nine; return to Midgard after Alfheim; return to the Mountain Summit with Mimir's head; heal Atreus. Paid in Hacksilver and Svartalfheim Steel at the Huldra shop |
| Quiver (Atreus) | 4 | Owned from the start; reach the Lake of Nine; return to the Mountain Summit; after the second water drop |
| Guardian Shield | Skills only | The one weapon whose skills unlock without upgrading it |
Skills sit on top of the rungs. They are bought with XP, one tree each for the Axe, the Blades, the Guardian Shield and the Talon Bow plus a Rage tree, and the page is explicit that every weapon except the shield has to be upgraded before its deeper skills appear. Some skill bonuses only switch on once a stat reaches a threshold: Cooldown at 125, Defense at 300, Runic at 250 and Vitality at 225. The page gives no threshold for Strength or Luck. Runic Attacks are separate again, one Light (L1 and R1) and one Heavy (L1 and R2) per weapon and a Summon for Atreus on Square, each on a cooldown, and each improvable for shorter recharge and more damage.
The Ten Skills The Guide Buys First
The upgrades guide ranks ten skills to take early, and mapping them back to the enemies table shows why they were chosen. Permafrost and Precision Frost Burst are crowd control, the frost build-up and splash that slow the swarms the enemies page keeps warning about. Pride of the Frost is the heavy finisher on R1, R1, R1, R2. Countering Strike is an unblockable counter. Precision Throw Combo doubles the damage of every other axe throw, which is the throw the table above leans on for Nightmares and suicide Draugr. Leviathan's Fury charges and knocks back, and can put enemies off ledges. Three of the ten are Atreus skills: Teamwork makes him distract, Ferocity lets his arrows stun so Kratos can finish, and Acrobatics builds the combo. The tenth, Executioner's Cleave, charges finishers so that nothing escapes them, and the page says who that is for: late enemies with health regeneration, which the enemies guide identifies as Reavers healing when low and Vikens closing their own wounds.
Armor, Talismans And Pommels In One Paragraph
Kratos wears three pieces, chest, wrists and waist, each with enchantment sockets, three at most, and upgrading a piece at a shop adds sockets as well as stats; Atreus wears a single piece that upgrades the same way. Pommels fit the Axe and the Blades and add a perk plus stats. Talismans come in Rare, Legendary and Epic, some with an ability you trigger yourself, and the page rates the Epic ones as worth the hunt. What fills those sockets, and what each pommel or talisman upgrade costs in materials that may or may not come back, is the other guide's subject; the God of War hub puts the two together under the number the game shows beside every enemy.