God of War Ragnarök has an intense optional boss fight against a creature known as The Hateful. Found tucked away in a side area, The Hateful presents a challenging battle for early game Kratos. Defeating this difficult foe rewards the player with experience, resources, and powerful gear attachments to aid your quest. This guide will breakdown everything you need to know about finding and defeating The Hateful.
Who is The Hateful?
The Hateful is a large, grotesque creature clad in piecemeal armor with patches of molten, glowing skin visible underneath. Wielding two deadly axes, The Hateful leads a band of creatures to attack Kratos.
Despite his intimidating appearance, The Hateful is not a major story boss, but rather a strong optional enemy that the player can choose to fight or avoid on their way through the Applecore mine.
While skipping this confrontation is perfectly viable, defeating The Hateful nets exceptional rewards that give players an early game advantage.
Where to Find The Hateful
Players will first encounter The Hateful while traversing the Applecore mine during the main story Quest for Tyr. This winding cave network leads to Tyr‘s prison and contains various dead ends and optional areas to explore.
One such optional pathway leads to the southeast tunnel sealed behind a large metal door. Interact with this door to trigger the ambush by The Hateful and his minions.
A towering stone overlook signals the arena for this intense skirmish. Defeat all of the enemies to progress or escape back the way you entered.
How to Defeat The Hateful
Despite being an optional enemy, The Hateful still presents quite the lethal challenge, especially for an early game Kratos still getting his bearings. Here are some key strategies for taking down this formidable foe:
Take Out the Minions First
The Hateful arrives with a posse of smaller creatures. Make these enemies a priority target before focusing fire on the leader itself. Crowd control abilities like Frost Awaken and Freezing Storm help greatly in demolishing the minion ranks rapidly.
Time Dodges Against The Hateful
Once alone, The Hateful unleashes an array of lethal close quarters attacks augmented by flames and molten rock. Well-timed dodges prove essential to avoiding significant damage from the boss‘ unblockable strikes.
Players should particularly focus on dodging The Hateful‘s fireball spit attack and the circular swing from his molten axes. Getting caught in these moves too often will quickly overwhelm Kratos. Patience and properly timed evasive maneuvers are key.
Use the Shield to Stun
While The Hateful‘s axe swings remain difficult to parry, Kratos can bait out and reflect the creature‘s molten spit move by raising the Guardian Shield.
Time the shield bash perfectly to send the sizzling projectile hurling back at The Hateful, stunning him briefly. Use this window to unleash a weapon combo for bonus damage.
Utilize Spartan Rage
As the fight drags on, saving Spartan Rage can provide an excellent advantage once Kratos‘ health drops too low. Activating Rage replenishes health, boosts damage, and even offers some hyper armor against The Hateful’s attacks.
Well-timed Rage transformations can quickly turn the tide back in the player‘s favor. But use the limited resource judiciously at critical moments for maximum impact.
Rewards for Defeating The Hateful
Vanquishing the vengeful Hateful brings worthy spoils for the early game Warrior. Here lie the concrete rewards for persevering against this intense enemy:
Experience Points
- 250 XP awarded to Kratos
- 75 XP awarded to Atreus
This healthy experience bump helps nudge players closer towards their next character level faster. Combined with the coming story quests, defeating The Hateful makes reaching level 3 a bit quicker.
Resources
- 2 Sovereign Coals
- 5 Dust of Realms
- 1 Chaos Spark
- 250 Hacksilver
These precious crafting materials allow upgrading Runic Attacks and gear sooner. Again, collecting these resources early compounds savings for future use.
Gear Attachments
Two powerful attachments round out the spoils gained from conquering The Hateful:
- Fortified Frost Knob – Boosts Leviathan Axe frost damage. Excellent support for Runic attacks.
- Cursed Empress Handle – Augments Blades of Chaos fire skills. Improves the damage of combustion effects.
Attach these items to Kratos’ signature weapons to noticeably amplify the impact of certain Runic Attacks typed to those elements. These attachments can be invaluable when tackling future challenging boss fights.
Conclusion
While entirely skippable, God of War fans seeking extra challenges and rewards will find plenty enticing them to battle The Hateful lurking in the dark of the Applecore mine.
Smart use of crowd control, well-timed dodges, parries, and the clutch Spartan Rage mechanic help turn this intense early skirmish in the player’s favor. Toppling the towering Hateful pays dividends in experience, rare crafting materials, and weapon augmentations perfect for giving Kratos’ growing arsenal more bite.
For those eager to squeeze every last drop of adventure from the epic Norse saga, the optional clash against The Hateful provides another solid combat test worth braving. Can you topple this fiery foe and claim your just rewards? Pull back the Applecore door and step forward to find out!
