Hela Creature Encounters Guide: How to Befriend Every Animal Guardian

Let's address the elephant in the room - or rather, the complete absence of anything resembling a boss fight. Hela of Mice & Magic has zero combat. The developers at Windup Games were very clear about this: no violence. Your mouse doesn't have a health bar. Nothing can kill you.

But the game does have encounters that function like bosses. Creatures that block your path, that you need to "defeat" through befriending rather than fighting. These are the game's set-piece challenges, and some of them are genuinely tricky if you don't know the trick.

The Badger: Your First "Wall"

Location: Forest, guarding the stump cauldron.

This grumpy badger is the first creature that will actually stop your progress. You can't walk past it. It charges, knocks you back, and resets you to the edge of its territory. My first encounter, I tried to dodge around it for ten minutes. Doesn't work. The badger has a surprisingly large aggro zone.

The solution: honey. There's a beehive in a tree about three tongue-swings east of the badger's stump. You need to tongue-grab the honeycomb from maximum range - get too close and bees swarm you (they don't hurt you, but they reset your position, same deal). Drop the honey at the badger's feet and it becomes docile immediately. Then it leads you into its stump, shows you the Smoke Screen recipe, and digs up the shiny thimble you need for the magpie chain.

The badger is really a lesson. The game is telling you: creatures aren't obstacles, they're puzzles. Figure out what they want.

The Owl: Territorial and Impatient

Location: Northern forest clearing, near the canopy entrance.

The owl is harder than the badger because it's airborne and its dive-bomb animation plays faster than you can react. If the owl spots you in its clearing, you get scooped up and dropped at the forest entrance. Annoying when you're deep in the forest and suddenly back at square one.

The owl wants glowworms. Specifically, the rare glowworm from the cave behind the wetland waterfall. You need to have visited the wetland first, found the hidden cauldron, and collected a glowworm (only one spawns per night cycle). Bring it to the owl's clearing, hold it up with the tongue (the owl won't approach if you're holding it in your paws for some reason - tongue presentation is key), and the owl lands, takes the glowworm, and drops a feather.

That owl feather is the ingredient for the Shadow Step potion. So befriending the owl isn't just about clearing the path - it's gating an essential late-game movement tool.

The owl also becomes a nighttime guide. Once befriended, it hoots when you're near hidden ingredients in the forest. Another one of those audio cues Windup embedded that most players never notice.

The Magpie: Fast Travel Gatekeeper

Location: Northern cliff above the village lake.

The magpie is the most important creature encounter in the game and also the easiest to miss entirely. The game never tells you fast travel exists. You just have to figure out that this aggressive bird circling a cliff is the key.

The magpie requires the creature chain. You need to have befriended the rabbit (gave it a carrot from the village garden) and the badger (gave it honey from the forest). Only after the badger digs up the thimble does the magpie become approachable. Any shiny object before that point gets ignored.

Once the thimble is in your inventory, approach the cliff base, place the thimble on the flat rock near the nest, and back away. The magpie lands, inspects the thimble, and from that point forward responds to your whistle (hold down on d-pad).

The magpie can carry you to any previously visited biome entrance. It won't take you somewhere new - you have to discover a biome on foot first. But once discovered, the magpie makes traversal between biomes trivial.

The Heron: Wetland Gatekeeper

Location: Wetland, guarding the first bog pearl.

Compared to the chain-gated creatures, the heron is straightforward. It stands in shallow water next to the first bog pearl and won't move. You need to tongue-grab a fish from the water (look for ripples on the surface) and drop it near the heron. It eats the fish, steps aside, and you get the pearl.

The heron is more of a teaching encounter than a challenge. It introduces the idea of trading items to creatures. Every subsequent creature encounter follows the same pattern, just with more complex chains.

The Fox: Optional but Worth It

Location: Wetland, far eastern edge near the marsh.

The fox is missable - no main quest requires befriending it. But it's worth the detour because the fox reveals every berry bush location in every biome. Berries are used in approximately one third of all potion recipes. Knowing where they all are is a massive quality-of-life upgrade.

The fox wants a rabbit - not to eat, just to play with. If you've befriended the rabbit, the rabbit follows you (slowly, across any biome). Lead the rabbit to the fox's den in the eastern wetland marsh, and the two animals become friends. The fox then marks all berry locations on your map with small paw print icons.

This is peak Hela design. A fox and a rabbit becoming friends. Zero percent edgy, one hundred percent wholesome. Windup won Most Wholesome at Gamescom 2025 and encounters like this are why.

The Final "Encounter": The Witch Herself

At the end of the game, when you bring the Awakening Potion to the witch's cottage, there's no boss. No final challenge. You deliver the potion, the witch wakes up, she thanks you, and the credits roll to Frida Johansson's soundtrack.

It's the most anti-climactic ending in the best possible way. You didn't defeat a villain. You helped someone. That's the whole game.

And then the post-game spellbook quests open up and the real challenge begins. But that's a different guide.