God of War - The Sickness and Helheim
How to complete the part of The Sickness.
The Sickness and Helheim is the first part of the God of War story mission, The Sickness.
Here on this page, we'll take you through everything you need to know about this section of your quest, including how to solve any puzzles, take down any bosses and find any useful loot along the way. For guides to specific collectibles we also have pages on Valkyrie locations and how to open Hidden Chambers, Lost and Found locations and Faces of Magic locations, too.
This page follows on from God of War - Behind the Lock puzzle solution, Jarl's Port.
Otherwise, you can always cycle back to our main God of War walkthrough and guide hub, too.
The Sickness
The start of The Sickness is cutscene-heavy.
Begin by carrying Atreus outside to the boat, and sail under the half-chomped statue of Thor on the lake, back into the Witch's Cave (now Freya's Cave, technically), and up the lift to her home.
Watch the cutscene, and then exit her house out the back door, down to the river straight ahead and onto her boat. You're going home...
When you arrive home, some enemies are waiting for you. They're the frosty Reavers that can't be damaged by the Leviathan Axe, so take them out bare fisted and then head inside.
Watch the cutscene and... have some fun with your new (old) weapon: the Blades of Chaos. Rad!
Return to the Realm Travel Room
Back out the front of the house a few more waves of enemies appear - thankfully these frosty chaps are weak to the flaming attacks of your chains, and that's worth remembering given what's about to come. When they're dealt with, step through the Mystic Gateway door nearby and fast travel to Brok's Shop at Tyr's Temple to continue.
Upgrade the chains and unlock any new skills you fancy - you probably have enough XP to unlock all of them that are available so far, and we recommend you do, seeing as otherwise you'll have a pretty limited set of options available to you and, you know, you're about to use them quite a lot.
Realm Travel to Helheim
Your task now, in case you weren't paying attention, is to go to the dreaded realm of Helheim and kill a big lad called the Bridge Keeper, to grab his heart and bring it back for Freya to use in a spell to save Boy. Got all that? Good! Let's go tear up Hel.
Helheim
Reach the Bridge Keeper
Simple enough, right? Well in fact it actually is this time. First, cross this version of Tyr's Bridge, but immediately on your right as you step out onto it, grab a collectible for the Artifact set of Brooches.
Smash the enemies with your chains and press on - up ahead just on the left is a Legendary Chest to open (with a new Light Runic Attack for your chains, that's convenient!) and some Hel's Bramble blocking the path. That's right, you can now clear Hel's Bramble, by slapping it with your chains to burn it down. Nice!
Press on down the bridge, smashing enemies and the Hel's bramble to your left as you go, to get two Hacksilver chests, until you get to the end of the bridge with some creepy looking spectres queing up to get into Hel.
Clear the Hel's bramble and press on, until you reach a big locked door - your path is to the left, through some more bramble and down off the ledge.
Hop down, clear more bramble, squeeze through the gap and shimmy along the ledge in there until you come out in front of some more Hel-Reavers to slap away.
Behind some bramble on the right is another Hacksilver chest, then go to the left of the area to climb up the column, and around it to the left, and down the back side of the next column to a lower level.
Clear the enemies there, and look up at the column you just descended to clear some bramble that's half-holding up a Hacksilver chest (clear the rest of it from the other side for the chest to drop). On the side of that column is also another bit of bramble, right at the top, that you can burn to drop an Artefact down too.
Ahead, the ground suddenly sinks beneath you, and you're in an arena with more enemies - they're tougher, but still easy enough to defeat. Then there are a couple things to do to progress.
First, climb up the markings on the wall to the due north, and look ahead, to see another of Odin's Ravens. Switch to your axe and chuck it to get rid of it, then turn right.
To your right you'll see more bramble at eye-level. Clear that with more ranged throws and it'll drop a column of rock down into the arena.
Jump back down and now you can hop up onto the stone that just fell in to reach the markings and climb out that way, to the East.
Climb up, clear the bramble, and note that in the next chamber there's a Legendary Chest tucked behind some red sap that you'll need Atreus to clear later - for now, press on.
Soon enough, you'll come out at the Bridge of the Damned, and your next foe is dead ahead.