Summary
God of War Ragnarok: Valhalla is a gauntlet unlike any seen throughout the franchise. In this rogue-like mode, Kratos embarks on a personal journey through Valhalla tomaster both his combat skills and himself.Throughout the mode and between every run you do, you’ll soon have the ability to purchase upgrades from the Tablet of Reflection.
Those upgrades feature various stats, resources, and even cosmetics to buy and upgrade. From maximizing your overall health to gaining more lives on each run, here are the best runes to invest in during your stay in Valhalla’s ever-changing labyrinth.
10Vitality
Health is going to be your best friend during your stay in Valhalla, and even though your Vitality and Max Health are similar stats, they’re quite different when it comes to the game’s deeper mechanics. While Vitality does increase your max health, it’s important to see that it also increases your stagger resistance.
With stagger resistance, you have a better chance of not flinching if enemies hit you. With health items so scarce in Valhalla, you’ll want to avoid getting hit as much as possible, but with a little bit of vitality, getting hit will be a bit more forgiving.
9Starting Resurrection Stone
If there’s one universal truth about Valhalla, it’s that you’re going to be getting knocked out a lot, and buying Starting Resurrection Stones will see to it that Kratos gets right back up (and with a little bit of health to boot!). you’re able to get up to two basic Resurrection Stones through the Tablet of Reflection, and they can stack with the Simple and Superior Resurrection Stones you can grab from the Tablet of Endeavor you’ll encounter through your runs.
These can help when:
8Defense
Defense is quite important in the grand scheme of things in Valhalla, and while maintaining your health is very important during your runs, keeping a high defense stat is essential for being able to tank through attacks that do hit so that they don’t do too much damage. In this mode, getting ganged up on by multiple enemies is going to be the norm, and you can easily fall to just a few attack strings.
Upgrading your max defense will see to it that these multi-attacks don’t do as much as they used to, and can make getting hit seem less like a run-ender. As they say, the best offense is a good defense, usually.
7Max Health
The Max health stat in Valhalla works similarly to obtaining the Idunn Apples throughout the main game, as you’ll get a much larger boost to your health using this rune instead of the Vitality one. However, you don’t get the stagger resistance like you would with Vitality.
Putting your early Mastery Seals into Max Health before spending them on Vitality might be a good option if you look at Vitality as a stagger resistance stat, but going with a more defensive build, you might be better off spending your points on Vitality. Still, Max Health is a stat you’ll want to spend some Seals on.
6Rage
Increasing your rage works the same as upgrading your Max Health, that being it’s like getting a Horn of Blood Mead in the base game. This is the only way to increase your maximum Rage, and with the various rage forms featured throughout Valhalla (and a familiar form from Kratos' past), this is a stat that’s essential for evening the playing field.
Rage lets you do many different things, such as:
5Critical Health Regen
Critical Health Regen is awesome if you’re walking the line of defeat after every bout, and can be the difference between life and death between fights. This rune lets Kratos regenerate up to 30% of his health after a fight is over if he’s anywhere under that 30%.
This is useful if there aren’t many health items around, as it will help keep Kratos in the fight for much longer. Between this and the Health Looter rune just under it, Critical Health Regen is the better pick since you’ll be getting into fights more often than looting chests, so this rune is perfect for keeping Kratos alive, even when close to death.
4Runic
Some of your heaviest-hitting attacks in Valhalla come from the various weapon skills you can pick up for your armament during your runs. The Runic stat not only increases the damage of your special attacks, but it’ll also increase the strength of your elemental damage that comes from each weapon when you use the L1+Triangle combination, or when an attack does specific elemental damage.
You might be using a different main weapon throughout each of your runs, so pay attention to each weapon’s elemental status and when/how they start building up on enemies. Upgrading and mastering the Runic stat will put you ahead of Valhalla’s trials.
3Strength
When you’re backed into a corner with your weapons skills on cooldown, it’s time to put Kratos' years of physical violence experience to good use. Upgrading the Strength rune will make Kratos more powerful on all fronts, so he’ll do more damage with his basic attacks and combos alongside the special weapons skills you pick up along the way.
Strength is essential for putting sizable dents in the enemies' health while also allowing you to get through areas without as much hassle from the enemies. That, and it’s a pretty tangible testament to your improvement after each run. Put some points in here.
2Glyph Slot
Glyphs are the most common upgrades you’ll come across during your runs in Valhalla, mainly coming from the chests you open after defeating each enemy in an area. What this rune does is give you up to five more when fully upgraded, letting you go from 10 equipable glyphs up to 15.
Having so many glyphs stack at once is a blessing during combat and can spike Kratos' power upwards in various ways. Not only that, but the glyphs range from:
1Mastery Seals
Finally, once you start gaining access to the Tablet of Influence, specifically the Spirit Seals that come with them, you’ll be able to trade that currency for the Mastery Seals used to buy/upgrade everything listed above and more. This is not only the perfect way to use the unused Spirit Seals you’d have picked up through your various runs, but also get everything you didn’t spend points on beforehand easily.
Using this functionality, you’ll be able to quickly start maxing out your abilities on top of those you might’ve ignored. It’s here thatKratos starts to feel like the end-game Ragnarok version you finished the base game with, and as Mimir says, it’s never been easier to be better.
