God of War Ragnarok Dec 18 patch notes: Valhalla nerf for Tyr boss & bug fixes

God of War Ragnarok’s newest patch introduces several bug fixes for the Valhalla DLC; according to patch notes, the new update also nerfs a Tyr boss battle.

Ragnarok’s free Valhalla DLC has proven to be much more than most anticipated. It’s a God of War-fueled roguelite, sure, yet it runs deeper by forcing Kratos to reflect on his past and face some hard truths.

The new DLC isn’t exactly a walk in the park when it comes to difficulty, though. Plus, it launched with a fair few glitches in tow, several of which may hinder the experience for some players.

Fortunately, developer Santa Monica Studio has pushed out an update that tackles these issues and others.

Sony

God of War Ragnarok patch nerfs Valhalla DLC’s first Tyr battle

The Valhalla DLC features five different difficulty settings, the easiest being ‘Show Me Will’ and the toughest being ‘Show Me Mastery.’ While Kratos will “spar” with (the real) Tyr on several occasions, the first battle against him in ‘Show Me Will’ may prove too difficult.

As a result, Sony Santa Monica has deployed patch 05.03, which nerfs the first fight on the easiest difficulty. Some challenge arenas receive a difficulty buff, on the other hand. And, of course, the patch also comes packed with a whole host of bug fixes.

Sony

God of War Ragnarok Valhalla’s 05.03 patch notes read as follows. (Note: the regular game patch weighs in at 376.2MB, while the Valhalla-specific changes require 93.33MB of space.)

PS5 users

Please ensure that both God of War Ragnarök and God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla have been updated before accessing the game again.

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