God Of War Ragnarok Gameplay Hard Mode 100 Percent Completion

What Hard Mode Actually Does to Your Progression

Hard Mode in God of War Ragnarok changes enemy health pools by roughly 30 to 40 percent, increases damage both ways, and adds aggro radius to several elite enemies. This means every collectible hunt you do on your second playthrough is measurably slower. Running around Midgard with a Spartan Rage build is still fine, but the Nornir chests, the gravestone collectibles, and the realm tears all start demanding better gear because brute forcing them just doesn't work anymore. I'll walk through the actual grind from when you first boot it up to the point where you see that gray checkmark. I'm assuming you already have a complete save file from your first playthrough on Normal or Above the Gods. If you don't, this list starts making less sense because I won't be explaining what a realm tear is. The game drops you into New Game Plus with everything you previously unlocked. That's the whole reason Hard Mode is feasible. You're not starting with Leviathan Axe basics; you're starting with Runic Attacks at decent levels, armor sets that already have engravings, and resources stacked from two prior completion runs. The catch is that some enemies scale differently than others, and a lot of new side content uses enemies that were niche before but are now the primary threat in their respective zones.

My first mistake on this run was going straight for the Valkyries. In my first Hard Mode attempt I cleared every other objective, went into the Sigrun fight expecting it to be a slightly longer version of Normal Mode, and died about six times before realizing the aggression timing is fundamentally different. She has an extra phase shift tied to when she's below 50 percent health that you can't anticipate if you're used to just blocking and running in. I went back to the Muspelheim trials, grinded the gear, then returned. That sequence alone saved me about eight hours of repeated failure. Here's the actual route I used and what each step typically costs in time.

The Step-by-Step Grind Order

Step one: Complete the main story on Hard Mode. It's roughly ten to twelve hours if you don't stop for anything. You get the option to enable New Game+ after the final boss. The quest log resets, but any unfinished side objectives persist and move into the NG+ state. This is important because several collectibles unlock after specific story flags, so skipping the story to go straight for 100 percent will lock you out of at least two dozen items. Step two: Hit all five realms for realm tears. There are exactly seventeen realm tears spread across the game world. Each one gives you a Nornir chest once you open it. I found it fastest to use the map from my previous completion and simply replay each area in one sitting. Each realm takes about twenty to thirty minutes depending on how many minor enemies are still alive. Total investment for this step is roughly six to eight hours. Step three: Clear the Draugr dens. There are seven dens, one per realm. They spawn elite enemies that in Hard Mode actually threaten low-level builds. If your level is below about seventy, you will struggle here. I ran through them at level eighty-two and it was manageable. Each den takes twelve to twenty minutes. The key detail most people miss is that the chests in these dens don't respawn on death, so if you die you have to backtrack through the same elite group. I usually just save manually before entering.

Step four: The Muspelheim trials. There are five trials, and each one requires defeating waves of enemies in sequence. The fifth trial has a boss that hits like a truck on Hard Mode. These trials reward a specific armor set, and that armor set matters if you want the combat to stay fast enough for efficient collecting. I spent about two hours across all five runs. The worst one is Trial 5 because the enemies spawn faster than you can clear them if you don't have area-of-effect runics ready. Step five: The alv farms. There are six alv hidden in the world. They give you a single chest each when you locate them. Finding them is the real task because the map doesn't mark them by default. You need to either follow a guide or do a thorough sweep of each realm. I estimate this took me about three hours spread across multiple sessions. Step six: Valkyrie queen plus the six regular ones. This is the hardest part of the run by a wide margin. The regular six take me roughly forty-five minutes each in Hard Mode if I'm prepared. Queen Sigrun takes about an hour and a half if you're fighting it cold. My workaround was building the Ivaldi armor with maxed defense engravings and using the Blades of Chaos with the Hel Ranak runic attack as a constant pressure tool. That runic attack pulls enemies in and stuns them briefly, which closes the gap in her aggression cycles. Without that setup I would have spent twice as long here.

Step seven: Gray throat stones and the final collection tally. After the Valkyries there are still a handful of collectibles left: some Nornir chests in optional areas, remaining gravestones, and possibly a few dragon tears if you missed them earlier. I usually do a targeted map sweep for anything under 90 percent completion. This takes roughly one and a half hours.

Pitfalls That Slow You Down

One thing beginners consistently mess up is prioritizing quest order over level requirements. Certain side quests in NG+ scale to your level at the time you accept them, not the level you were when you first met the quest giver. If you accepted a quest early in your first playthrough at level fifty and then come back at level sixty in NG+, the enemies haven't rescaled properly and some become trivially easy while others become irrelevant because the quest chain expects different enemy placements. I learned this the hard way with one of the Nornir chest side quests in Vanaheim. I just went back to the area later and cleared it directly instead of following the broken quest prompt. Another issue is resource management in NG+. Your crafting materials carry over, but some materials only drop from specific NG+ enemies. If you burn through your supply early without checking what still needs to drop, you'll end up stuck on an upgrade and unable to gear up for the Valkyrie fight. I made this mistake twice. The fix is to check a material tracker before committing to any big upgrade, especially for the final tier of armor engravings. There's also a timing quirk with realm travel in Hard Mode. The fast travel system still works, but the loading screens add up over a hundred trips. I stopped using it after my third playthrough of this route and started just walking between adjacent realms. It cut my total time by about forty minutes because I stopped reloading the same hub zone repeatedly.

Is It Worth It

Hard Mode 100 percent completion takes roughly thirty to thirty-six hours depending on your build and how many times you die to Sigrun. The rewards are cosmetic and stat-based, not story-critical. If you want the full Valkyrie armor set or the highest tier Muspelheim pieces, it's straightforward. If you're doing this purely for achievement hunting, the time cost is real. The biggest limitation of this route is that it assumes you already own a complete save. If you're starting fresh, this process doesn't apply because you won't have the engravings, runic levels, or resource pool needed to handle the Hard Mode scaling efficiently. For that case you'd want to finish Normal Mode first, then come back here. One more thing: I've seen people claim you can skip the Muspelheim trials and still get 100 percent. That's wrong. Those trials are hard-locked behind the completion tally. You need the chests they provide. There's no alternate path, so don't waste time looking for one.