This page details everything you need to know about how to defeat Gryla, Angrboda’s grandmother, during The Lost Sanctuary quest of Jotunheim in God of War: Ragnarok. We’ll cover the strategy of how to expose the cauldron throughout the fight, allowing you to shoot it and thereby inflict damage to Gryla. We will also explain how to avoid her special attacks by jumping up at the sides of the room.

How to Defeat Gryla in the Ironwood, Jotunheim¶

The boss fight with Gryla begins with Atreus attempting to destroy her cauldron by sneaking up to it. You’ll need to spam at this point as you attempt to break it, but it won’t be enough as Gryla throws you to the ground.

Gryla Boss Fight: Phase 1¶

Once you’re on the ground, you’ll notice that you can’t damage Gryla by hitting her with any of your attacks. Instead, you need to hit her magical cauldron, but only when you see the bright purple light on it exposed, as shown in the screenshot below. Gryla will use a number of melee and ranged attacks here, so you’ll need to keep moving around the room to avoid them. Her main melee attack during this phase is a foot stomp, while her ranged attacks involve her throwing some form of magic at you from the cauldron.

The magic that Gryla throws during this phase comes in two forms: one where she throws individual blobs of the magic at a time, as she hits the base of the cauldron to cast them out, and another where she uses an attack marked by a red circle, as she casts multiple blobs at you in a line. You’ll need to be ready to dodge these at any moment, and the best way to do this is to keep as much distance from her as possible, giving you more time to avoid the blobs before they hit you, and more space to keep an eye on Gryla’s animations.

As you move around the room to avoid Gryla’s attacks during this phase, you’ll occasionally see that the purple light on her cauldron is exposed. You should aim to hit this as soon as possible, before Gryla covers it up with her arms again. Each time you hit the cauldron, Gryla will sustain some regular damage to her health bar, but also a significant amount of stun damage. When her stun bar is full, she’ll drop the cauldron and fall to one knee, allowing you to run to the cauldron and hit it a few times before she regains her composure.

After you’ve hit the cauldron once while it was on the ground, Gryla will cast a spell which covers the entire ground in a red color, indicating incoming damage if you remain standing on it. You’ll need to press to jump to one of the table surfaces in the corner of the room, where you’ll be fighting the next phase of the fight.

Gryla Boss Fight: Phase 2¶

Now that you’re in phase 2 of the boss fight, you’ll find yourself on a much smaller surface area. You’ll have less space to run around, but you won’t be vulnerable to Gryla’s melee foot stomp attack from up here. However, Gryla will continue to use both of the ranged attacks from the first phase of the fight, and she’ll also introduce another type of ranged attack that you need to do more than just dodge away from. This attack casts blobs of damage from the cauldron which slowly float towards you, and you need to shoot them as soon as possible to stop them in their tracks and cause them to explode.

Aside from this new ranged attack, the other new element introduced to the fight in phase 2 involves shooting the candles with purple light coming from them. You’ll see these on almost every table surface surrounding the room, and they will be marked with the button, prompting you to use it when Gryla is close to one. This will cause Angrboda to shoot some magic it at, which will briefly stun Gryla and give you time to hit the cauldron while it’s exposed. The easiest way to avoid her other ranged attacks while up here is to run from one side of the table surface to another, but don’t run from one side to the other before the blobs have exploded.

Gryla Boss Fight: Phase 3¶

After some time, all of the table surfaces will light up in red in the same way that the ground surface did in phase 1. This is your cue to get off the tables and go back to the ground floor, where you can continue the fight in phase 3. This phase is similar to phase 1, but you’ll notice that the candles which Angrboda shot from the table surface can now be shot from the ground floor as well. This means that you’ll want to kite or goad Gryla towards one of them, then press to prompt Angrboda to shoot it and stun Gryla in the process.

While you’re back on the ground in phase 3, Gryla will become more aggressive with her ranged attacks, now spamming them more frequently, so you’ll need to be ready to dodge or run away from multiple waves. You’ll need to keep stunning Gryla by shooting the candles, then shooting the exposed purple light on the cauldron, until she falls to the ground again. At this point you can hit the cauldron in melee once more for a limited time, before she hits you away and picks the cauldron back up.

This is the last phase of the fight, and you’ll need to use all of the tactics you’ve employed throughout the fight during this phase as you keep stunning Gryla and then hitting the exposed cauldron. At some point Gryla will mark the floor in red again, so you’ll need to retreat to the table tops, and vice versa. Once you get Gryla down to the last bar of her health she will automatically be stunned, and you’ll have an opportunity to use and then on the cauldron to finish the fight. Destroying the cauldron will unlock The Cauldron trophy.