You’ll mostly need this for boss battles
On higher difficulties, God of War Ragnarok keeps up some of the high tension antics of the series proper: so you may want to know about something as crucial as uh, healing.
I even went several hours thinking “there’s got to be more to this:” but no, it’s actually pretty straightforward.
Crack green orbs in combat
The most simple method for healing is to locate green orbs while fighting. They’ll literally appear at your feet/across the battlefield as glowing green power-ups, and interacting with them will heal you a small amount. Keep this in mind as you’re running across bigger arenas: and make a mental note of where orbs are, so you can go back to heal them like running back to a “stash.”
So there’s actually an options setting that will either help or hinder your quest to crack as many green orbs as possible. In the accessibility menu, you can toggle the ability to automatically collect orbs while fighting: which could assist in some tougher fights. Of course, saving orbs for later might be a problem if you’re automatically gathering them, so just swap the setting to whatever you prefer (or try both for a while).
Use Rage of the Gods/Spartan Rage
This is my favorite way to heal, and arguably the most reliable.
Just like old games (and the 2018 iteration), Kratos (and now Atreus) can make use of the “Rage of the Gods/Spartan Rage/Rage” mechanic: otherwise known as a triggered temporary super/enhanced state, or “Devil Trigger” in Devil May Cry. By pressing in both sticks after your meter is full, you can Hulk out, deal more damage, take less, and most importantly: heal.
There’s actually three types of Rage of the Gods that you can level up and equip separately:
- Fury is my personal favorite, and the traditional form of Rage of the Gods (each hit will heal you, and you can upgrade it to last longer, which means more healing)
- Valor lets you heal outright, and if you “parry” an attack with it, it’ll heal more and buff your melee damage (this last bit is important to remember as you’ll get more mileage out of it)
- Wrath is the other main modification, and can be considered one big “burst” attack, which also heals Kratos (this is especially useful on big elite enemies in groups)
Always keep at least one revival item on hand
So at the shop in God of War, you can actually purchase resurrection stones, which allow Kratos to come back to life after death so long as he has a companion (which is 90% of the game, roughly). Don’t be shy about using these in a pinch, especially for boss battles, because losing/getting a game over after popping them will still let you use them again after the game reloads.
