God Of War: Valhalla DLC Just Got Harder, With One Big Exception

Valhalla, the setting of God of War Ragnarök’s new, free roguelike expansion, is full of tough challenges and fights. And unfortunately, the going’s only going to get tougher as developer Santa Monica Studio just dropped a new patch that tweaks the difficulty of certain encounters—though there is one change that may make your Valhalla trip a little less punishing at the start.

Ragnarök’s Valhalla DLC, out now as a totally free add-on for PlayStation consoles, isa roguelite mode for the 2022 action-adventure game. You’ll run through a series of trials comprised of procedurally generated levels, battling new enemies and helping old friends on a quest of discovery and redemption. It ain’t easy, though, as many of the fights absolutely kick Kratos into the ground. And thanks to update v. 05.03, released on December 15, the Valhalla expansion is even harder.

Santa Monica Studio has increased the difficulty of “some arena challenges” within Valhalla, though these tweaks weren’t specified in the patch notes. The Forum, Valhalla’s colosseum that lets you duke it out against even tougher opponents, has been adjusted to make its “difficulty more appropriate,” though that wasn’t explicitly detailed in the patch notes, either. The patch notes do get specific when it comes to the Draupnir Spear’s Hind of Deadly Vitality perk—Kratos will gain less health when successfully getting kills with it, so apologies if you were using that to help get through the more difficult areas.

At least there’s one bit that’s easier thanks to the latest patch notes. You remember Tyr, the multi-god—he’s the God of Justice, Honor, Law, War, and apparently much more—that Freya and Kratos freed in Ragnarök? You fight him a few times as you traipse through Valhalla, as he appears at the end of each loop you finish. And though he’s still a tough foe to brawl with, but with update v. 05.03, Santa Monica Studio reduced the difficulty of his encounter the very first time you two meet. Slight caveat here, though: This tweak only extends to the Show Me Will difficulty setting, the lowest of the five options that, unfortunately, comes with no bonus rewards. Hey, sometimes it’s worth taking an easier fight over an increase in rewards, amirite?

You can check out the full patch notes for update v 05.03 down below:

GoW Ragnarök Valhalla Update v. 05.03 Patch Notes

Bug Fixes

Cinematics

• Fixed an issue where audio would not play and characters would be out of sync during the first cinematic after death
• Cleared lingering Draupnir Spear particles when cinematic starts

Gameplay

• Reduced difficulty of first Týr fight on the ‘Show Me Will’ difficulty setting
• Increased difficulty of some arena challenges
• Tuning adjustment to ‘The Forum’ to make difficulty more appropriate
• Slightly reduced health gain and chance of proc on Spear kill perk while in Valhalla
• Various combat tuning and balance updates
• Fixed an issue where Greek Labyrinth Mastery would not increase in the “Open Greek Chests” value if Kratos forfeited a reward selection after spending Fleeting Echoes to open a chest
• Fixed an exploit when using the Spear against Ormstunga
• Fixed an issue with the encounter not ending when kicking Einherjar outside of the arena
• Fixed an issue where Týr would teleport away and not come back
• Fixed an issue where not all Hunter armor pieces were available
• Fixed an issue where encounter would not end if Nightmare was ejected from a creature near the arena boundary
• Fixed an issue where Kratos could erroneously stay in Spartan Rage when interacting with Shield Maidens

General Stability

• Resolved multiple crashes including when opening certain chests or rifts, non-English language specific crashes, and memory leak on PlayStation 4
• Fixed an issue where Kratos would be falling through the world
• Fixed an issue where Kratos would fall out of the arena when interacting with a rift on the Aegean Ship
• Fixed an issue with Kratos falling through the world after walking through a Mystic Gateway
• Fixed some issues with textures not streaming in properly when entering arenas

UI/UX

• Fixed an issue with the “Time Extended” message displaying in timed challenge trials when it should not
• Fixed an issue with subtitles overlapping UI when in vendor menus
• Fixed some instances of the navigation assist pointing to incorrect locations
• Fixed an issue where the timer would overlap the Warrior Soul health bar
• Fixed instances where the “Elites Killed” counter would remain after timer expired
• Corrected the “Costly Damage” burden to show appropriate duration in description
• Fixed the King of the Hill challenge timer overlapping progress bar
• Fixed an instance when the timer would never reach zero on the Aegean Ship encounter
• Fixed an issue which would cause a screen reader to read the Tablet of Reflection prompt twice in a row
• Fixed instances where subtitles were not formatted properly
• Fixed an issue where “Flawless Kills” and “Flawless Parries” Challenge UI updated any time Kratos was hit
• Added a ‘Download in Progress’ screen if attempting to launch God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla before God of War Ragnarök is fully installed
• Fixed an issue with the options menu displaying when opening the glyph tutorial for the first time

Kotaku reached out to Sony and Santa Monica for comment.