Hellblade: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Keep an Eye Out for Lorestones

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice Tips and Tricks

For the most part, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a fairly straightforward experience, taking you through a dark trip into Senua’s mind. Almost every trophy in the game you’ll get automatically, however, there is one aspect that you’ll need to track down, Lorestones. These are small stone pillars that are the only optional thing to get in Hellblade. You’ll definitely want to keep an eye out for them, however, as they give a ton of context into the world and lore of Hellblade, explaining more about mythology, Senua herself, the mysterious old man, and much more. They aren’t terribly hard to spot as they’re usually not hidden away, but you can still miss them.

Just keep an eye out as you keep traveling further into Helheim, and make sure to focus on each new Lorestone that you find. There’s 44 in total, so you’ll have plenty to look for. You can even see how to get each and every one with our handy guide.

Study the Environment to Get Past Rune Gates

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice Tips and Tricks

Rune Gates will block your progress in the game every once in a while, requiring you to solve a short puzzle each time. These giant iron gates are emblazoned with a specific rune, and you’ll need to find that rune in order to continue progressing. This may seem confusing at first, but getting past the Rune Gates is actually quite easy. What you need to do is study your nearby environment and look for some object, or combination of objects, that form the shape of the rune.

Luckily, Hellblade makes it even easier for you by having visions of the runes appear when you’re near the object you need to focus on. You can wander around each area until you see tons of flaming runes appear in your visions, which then means you’re right near the object you need to be looking at. Sometimes you may need to line up a tree branch or other object to form the rune. Just take a quick study of your environment and you shouldn’t have any trouble solving these puzzles.

Use a Mix of Dodging and Guarding

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice Tips and Tricks

Combat in Hellblade is much more technical than what you might expect from Ninja Theory’s other games. It’s all about timing, making sure you’re taking the right actions at the right time. There’re two defensive options Senua has to keep herself safe in battle, dodging and guarding. Both are equally important, but you’ll want to use a mix of the two options. Dodging is absolutely integral for big attacks, such as ones that cause AoE damage. Meanwhile guarding can help you deflect damage from smaller blows, and is even more important for parrying and counter attacking. If you time a guard right as the enemy blow is landing you can parry the attack, then quickly follow up with the attack button to launch an effective counter.

Make sure you’re remembering to use both dodge and guard and don’t become reliant on one or the other, since enemies will take advantage of that.

Don’t Get Greedy or Impatient in Combat

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice Tips and Tricks

The other thing to keep in mind with combat is to not get overly aggressive or greedy with your attacks. Senua attacks faster than enemies so it’s easy to get caught up, but getting too aggressive can lead to you getting punished. The best idea is to unleash three or four attacks on an enemy and dodge away before they can counter. This holds especially true if you’re facing off against more than one enemy. It’s critically important with more than one enemy that you only attack a couple of times, then back away to get the rest of your foes in your vision. Anytime you attack an enemy you leave yourself open to attack from the others, and it’s almost impossible to tell when they’re coming if they aren’t in your field of vision.

Enemies will sometimes go into attack animations while you’re attacking them, which can make things tricky. Just make sure you’re keeping a balance of offense and defense, and you should be able to prevail against the darkness.

For more on Hellblade, be sure to check out our wiki.