God of War Ragnarok: The Crucible, The Final Challenges - walkthrough God of War Ragnarok guide

The Crucible and Final Challenges are Muspelheim's challenge quests from the game God of War Ragnarok. The guide page explains how to unlock trials, how to pass challenges and what unique rewards the Crucible offers.

Last update: 13 December 2022

In God of War Ragnarok, you can enter The Crucible challenge from Muspelheim. The walkthrough in our guide explains how to start trials in The Crucible and their objectives - these are favors called The Crucible and The Final Challenges. You will also learn what rewards you can get for completing the Crucible trials.

• The Crucible - unlocking a favor and visiting Muspelheim
• The Crucible - completing challenges
• The Final Challenges - unlocking and completing challenges
• Rewards for completing The Crucible challenges

The Crucible - unlocking a favor and visiting Muspelheim

The favor involving visiting The Crucible will be added to the log after finding half of the Muspelheim Seed.

We have described the location of both halves on a separate page, How to unlock challenges in Muspelheim? in the FAQ section.

After you get both of them, you can visit any Mystic Gateway and choose the Crucible in Muspelheim as a quick destination.

The Crucible - completing challenges

In the Crucible, there are 3 large swords stuck in the ground - they have the runic letters F, R, and N. By default, each of these swords offers 2 challenges, but a 3rd challenge for each will also be added later.

The initial challenges of the F sword are:

1. Weapon Mastery - You have to defeat enemies in a limited time. You have to switch to an offensive style of play. Use rune attacks and Spartan Rage when attacking tougher opponents.
2. Flawless - You must win the battle without taking damage. The safest way you can accomplish this is by running around the arena constantly and using ranged attacks with Leviathan Axe and spear. Hide behind cover while fighting enemies who attack from a distance.

The initial challenges of the N sword are:

1. Ring Out Challenge - You must fight opponents that regenerate at a very high rate. This requires some revised combat tactics - attack enemies who are close to chasms and lava to push them into hazards.
2. Feed the Rift - You have to pick up orbs and throw them towards the rifts. A good idea here would be to focus on orbs and attack enemies only if they are interfering with your task. This challenge consists of 2 parts (6 and 15 orbs).

The initial challenges of the R sword are:

1. Population Control - You have to defeat an elite opponent all the while maintaining the lesser enemies' population below the limit. Overpopulation triggers a time limit and once it concludes, the challenge is failed. To avoid failure, stop attacking the miniboss once the timer appears and switch to lesser enemies as fast as possible.
2. King of the Hill - You must survive for a certain amount of time and not allow the enemies set themselves around circles in the arena (the number of opponents increases with each new phase of the battle) At the beginning of each wave, memorize the locations of the circles and train reaching them quickly. To quickly defeat enemies inside the circles, use heavy attacks.

Completing all 6 challenges will end The Crucible favour, allowing you to collect your reward from the runic chest in the central part of the region. This is not the end - you can now undertake further challenges (we describe them below).

The Final Challenges - unlocking and completing challenges

To unlock the second Crucible quest, interact with the new sword - it will appear in the same location where the runic chest was.

There will be an additional, third, challenge appearing at F, N, and R swords.

1. Rampage - a new challenge of the F sword - you must defeat 20 enemies in the allotted time. Don't forget to place seals on enemies and stun and ride ogres.
2. Health Steal - a new challenge of the N sword - Kratos's health will decrease over time during the challenge and can only be regenerated through damage dealing. To be successful in this challenge, you need to switch to an offensive style and attack as often as possible.
3. Kill Fuse - a new challenge of the R sword. You need to quickly kill enemies to add additional seconds to the time counter. When it comes to more problematic opponents, make sure to use heavy attacks and companion skills.

There are 6 new challengesavailable at the sword in the center. To unlock them, you need to complete challenge pairs from the previous 3 swords.

You'll be informed of the available challenge pairs through runes visible on the ground. In the example in the picture, the runes F and R mean that you must complete one challenge from the challenges of sword F (of the 3 available) and one challenge from the challenges of sword R (of the 3 available). Once that is done, you can return to the central sword and begin further challenges.

New central sword challenges include:

1. Endurance - you must survive the battle against 99 opponents. Most of them will be lesser ones, but there will be a few stronger enemies on which we recommend using Spartan Rage and runic attacks.
2. Boss Rush - You must defeat a few mini-bosses in one go - the boss list includes Traveller, The Huntress, and elite varieties of elves Bosses appear one at a time. Try to avoid losing health, as healing items appear rarely and are scarce.
3. Phantom - you have to defeat Fire Phantom - an enemy known from the main campaign. To defeat this opponent, you need to focus on its core and destroy the nearby Runic Springs once they are vulnerable.
4. Ring of Fire - Kratos must stay inside a moving red circle - getting out of its boundaries means receiving serious damage. Don't let enemies push you out of the cricle. When a poisonous plant appears on the arena, freeze it with the Axe.
5. Shield Breaker - Kratos has to defeat lesser enemies accompanying a mini-boss in order to break through the boss's defense. After defeating each group of enemies, attack the mini-boss quickly before another group spawns.
6. Onslaught - you must survive 5 minutes of combat. Stay in the boundaries of the circle that appears in the arena. You don't have to defeat every enemy in the arena - it is better to play defensively and focus on saving your health points.

Rewards for completing The Crucible challenges

There are a number of rewards associated with the two Muspelheim challenge quests. Above everything else, there is a legendary chest to loot after each completed challenge. Each contains various items and crafting ingredients, for example:

1. Unique equipment - among others, you'll find parts of Surtr’s Scorched Armor Set which when equipped can increase Kratos's resistance to enemy attacks.

1. Unique crafting ingredients - These include Blazing Embers, Glowing Embers and Glowing Embers which are needed to upgrade equipment won in The Crucible.
2. Hacksilver and Divine Ashes - the two main currencies in the game. Divine Ashes is the rarer and the more sought one, as it is used to buy top-tier upgrades.

Additional prizes include:

1. Kratos XP - 10000 (rewarded for completing The Crucible Favor);
2. Companion XP - 2500 (rewarded for completing The Crucible Favor);
3. Trials by Fire silver trophy - received for completing all of the available challenges (not just the 6 from the first Favour).