Warning: This article contains spoilers for late-game elements of God of War Ragnarok.
Go where the wind blows.
In the 2018 God of War reboot, Kratos ended the game with two sweet weapons: The frosty Leviathan Axe and the scorching Blades of Chaos. In the recently released sequel God of War Ragnarok, he eventually winds up with a third weapon called Draupnir, a wind-based spear that’s seriously fun to use thanks to its high speed and long range capabilities.
The only peculiar thing about Draupnir is that it’s weirdly difficult to find the items you need to upgrade the weapon. Instead of banging your head against the Norse mythology-inspired wall, allow me to clear up Draupnir’s strange upgrade path for you.
How to find Gale Flames to upgrade Draupnir in God of War Ragnarok
Just like the other two weapons, Draupnir’s skill tree doesn’t fully open up until you upgrade the weapon to a certain level. In this case, you need to hit level 7 to unlock all of its abilities. You can keep going up to level 9, but all that does is beef up its base stats. In order to level up the spear, you need items called Gale Flames. One Gale Flame equals one level.
This is tricky because Ragnarok doesn’t just dole out Gale Flames at the same pace it doles out upgrade items for the other two weapons. You’ll get one of them late in the main story (when you fight the two valkyries in Muspelheim), but you’ll need at least one more to hit level 7 with the spear. Here’s where to look.
Berserker buddies
To start, fast travel to the area known as The Applecore in Svartalfheim, but only after you’ve gotten the sword hilt that unlocks the late-game Berserker Gravestones side quest. You’ll see a gravestone icon on your map near the center of the Jarnsmida Pitmines area nearby.
This will start a fight against not one, but two pissed-off berserker homies. I’m not going to lie: It may be best to hold off on this one until after you’ve finished the main story. These guys are jerks and only a sufficiently leveled-up and geared-up Kratos will come out on top. Thankfully, you actually don’t need to fight these guys if you just want to unlock the whole Draupnir skill tree. Go ahead and skip this one if you’d like.
Wispy mischief
This next one is much easier and will take us to the pleasant jungles of Vanaheim.
Fast travel to the Eastern Plains area of the map after you’ve unlocked the ability to go to the Crater and switch from day to night in Vanaheim. Use the pedestal right next to the fast travel point to make it nighttime and look out into the plains directly to the west of it.
You should see some glowing wisps that are violently feeding on the local wildlife. There are three in total and they’re all pretty close to each other. Use the Blades of Chaos to extract the three wisps from the animals and get ready for a fight. A quest waypoint will guide you to a circular plate in the middle of the area, which will spawn a Flame Phantom miniboss.
By this point, you’ve fought at least one of these guys before. Be patient and hit the glowing orb when it’s vulnerable. Once the Phantom’s stun meter fills up, go destroy one of the nearby glowing monoliths, which will take a huge chunk out of its health bar. These are highly visible in the nighttime, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding them. The only caveat is that you’ll need to throw your spear at a couple of them because they’ll be out of melee range, but that’s not a problem.
Do that a few times and the boss will go down without much trouble. He drops a Gale Flame, thus bringing you closer to glory.
Plucking worms from portals
Lastly, after you get the spear, speak to Ratatoskr near Sindri’s house to get a side quest to retrieve some wayward worms hiding out in Yggdrasil portals throughout the nine realms. This one is simple: Find all six worms and you’ll get a Gale Flame.
These portals show up on your map as little swirly icons. I’ll leave the worm-hunting to you, but just know that there are four in Svartalfheim alone, with the other two hiding out in Vanaheim. They’re really not hard to find and you don’t even need to fight any difficult enemies or anything to catch them. It’s as simple as walking up to a portal and pressing a button.
I’m sure some of these side activities sound annoying, but the good news is that you only need to do one of them (on top of the Gale Flame you get from the main story) to unlock the full Draupnir skill tree. Happy hunting, gamers.
