Few optional encounters in modern action games have the reputation of God of War’s Valkyries. Ragnarök carries that tradition forward with nine punishing fights spread across the Nine Realms, capped off by a superboss encounter that many players consider the single hardest fight in the entire game. This guide focuses purely on that endgame gauntlet: what makes the Valkyries different from the rest of Ragnarök’s roster, and how to actually beat them, including the Queen of the Valkyries herself.
What makes the Valkyries different
Unlike most story bosses, the Valkyries are entirely optional, hidden behind Hidden Chambers of Odin that you need to locate and solve as environmental puzzles before the fight even begins. Eight named Valkyries are scattered across Midgard, Alfheim, Helheim, Niflheim, and Muspelheim, each guarding a chamber that tests navigation and puzzle-solving as a gate before the actual combat test starts. Four are found across Midgard alone, with others tucked into Alfheim, Helheim, and Niflheim, while one is folded into Muspelheim’s trial gauntlet rather than a standalone chamber.
Every Valkyrie shares a similar core moveset, flying, diving, and unleashing wide sweeping attacks with long, punishing combo strings, but each one has unique variations and additional attacks layered on top, so no two fights play out identically. They hit far harder and far faster than almost anything else you’ll face outside the endgame, and their attacks frequently mix yellow, red, and blue-ringed telegraphs in quick succession, forcing you to react correctly to two or three different defensive inputs within a single combo string.
General strategy for beating a Valkyrie
Before challenging any Valkyrie, make sure your armor and Amulet of Yggdrasil enchantments are upgraded as far as your current story progress allows, since raw stat gaps matter enormously against these fights. A shield with strong parry timing and block strength is essential, because these fights are built around punishing bad blocks and rewarding well-timed parries with real stagger damage.
Learning each Valkyrie’s core combo strings matters more than raw skill or reflexes alone. Because their attacks often chain three or four hits with only subtle tells between them, players who succeed usually spend their early attempts purely on observation, dying repeatedly while noting which attack follows which, rather than trying to win outright on a first attempt. Runic attacks with wide area coverage help punish the brief openings you get between combo strings, and Spartan Rage is worth saving for moments when a fight is close to slipping away, since the healing it provides can turn around an otherwise lost attempt.
Defeating the eighth Valkyrie and reaching the Queen
Once all eight named Valkyries across the realms have been defeated, their helmets can be brought to the Council of Valkyries, which summons the ninth and final Valkyrie: Sigrún, the Valkyrie Queen. She is widely regarded as one of the toughest fights left over from the original God of War, combining every mechanic the earlier eight Valkyries taught you into a single longer, harder encounter. Beating her is typically treated as the benchmark for whether a player is ready to take on Ragnarök’s own superboss equivalent.
Gna, Queen of the Valkyries: the true superboss
Ragnarök’s answer to Sigrún is Gná, an entirely new post-game superboss found by completing all fifteen of Muspelheim’s Trials in the Crucible arena. Once every trial is cleared, a previously inaccessible marker opens up to the side of the central arena; climbing down through a series of chain-assisted handholds leads to a campfire where Gná ambushes Kratos.
Gná’s fight has no phases or health-bar segments; it’s simply one long, grueling health pool that has to be worn down through a single continuous encounter. She throws an unusually wide range of attacks that often share similar wind-up animations but branch into different follow-ups, which makes her genuinely difficult to read even for players who have already beaten every other Valkyrie in the game.
Tips for beating Gná
Staying aggressive rather than purely defensive tends to pay off, since landing sustained hits can interrupt her attack strings before they fully develop. Sonic arrows or similar ranged interrupts are useful for chipping away at her stun meter from a distance; once that meter fills, she takes a significant chunk of direct health damage on top of being staggered. The Blades of Chaos are a popular weapon choice for this fight specifically, since their speed and Burn damage keep pressure on her consistently, and fully charging the blades’ immolation gauge before triggering it adds an extra damage spike at a key moment.
An endgame shield with strong blocking, such as the Onslaught Shield, is worth equipping, because several of Gná’s attacks arrive with very little warning compared to her more clearly telegraphed wing-swinging melee strikes. When she begins slamming the ground repeatedly to send shockwaves outward, that’s a yellow-ringed attack that can and should be parried, since a successful parry here leaves her briefly vulnerable to a real damage window.
Above all, treat every attempt as a learning pass rather than a loss. Gná’s moveset only starts to feel readable after several rounds of trial and error, and most players report the fight clicking suddenly once they’ve identified even one or two of her attack patterns reliably, rather than improving gradually across dozens of small increments.
Preparing before you fight the hardest content
Before attempting either Sigrún or Gná, it’s worth revisiting your build rather than relying on whatever gear got you through the main story. A fully upgraded armor set, a shield suited to aggressive parrying, and enchantments that reward stun or status buildup all make a measurable difference against fights this demanding. For the broader picture of story progression, realms, and side content that leads up to these superboss fights, check out our complete God of War Ragnarök guide, which covers the full journey alongside this endgame-focused breakdown.
Difficulty settings and the Valkyries
It’s also worth remembering that Ragnarök’s difficulty setting directly affects how punishing these fights feel, since higher settings remove some of the safety nets, like boss checkpoints, that lower settings provide. Players attempting Gná or the Valkyrie Queen on higher difficulty settings should expect these fights to demand near-perfect execution across a long, uninterrupted encounter, while those on more forgiving settings can lean more heavily on trial and error without losing as much progress per attempt. Either way, the Valkyries remain the clearest test of whether Ragnarök’s combat systems have truly clicked, and beating Gná in particular is widely considered the game’s ultimate mark of mastery.