Hela Complete Walkthrough: Potions, Puzzles & Hidden Biome Secrets

I've now played through Hela's main story twice - once solo and once with my partner in split-screen. They feel like different games honestly. Solo forces you to get creative with the Shade System, while co-op lets you pull off puzzles in seconds that would take a solo player minutes of shade-switching.

This walkthrough covers the critical path. I'm not going to list every collectible location (there are hundreds) but I'll hit the stuff that actually matters: which potions to prioritize, how to solve the trickiest puzzles in each biome, and what you need before entering each new area.

The Meadow: Your Tutorial Biome

The meadow is deceptively simple. Rolling green hills, a few trees, butterflies everywhere. The main quest here is gathering enough ingredients to brew your first healing potion for the witch. But there's hidden depth:

• The double-jump scroll is in a rabbit burrow on the eastern hill. Chase the rabbit that steals from your ingredient pile to find it.

• Under the big oak tree (center of meadow, can't miss it) is a hollow root system. Crawl inside (press B to crouch through small openings) and you find your first cauldron. This is where you brew potions. Each biome has one cauldron, always hidden inside something.

• The meadow has exactly four pressure-plate puzzles that require the Shade System. They look like flat stone circles with a paw print. Stand on one, create a shade, switch to shade, stand on the other. The earliest one opens a chest with a Tailwind potion already brewed - saves you the ingredient hunt.

Exit condition: You need Tailwind potion to cross the Windy Gap at the meadow's north edge. Without it, the wind pushes you back. I tried tongue-swinging across for twenty minutes before giving up and brewing the potion. Save yourself the frustration.

The Wetland: Where Platforming Gets Real

This biome is all about the Froggy Backpack. Murky water, lily pad platforms, weeping willow trees with branches perfectly spaced for chaining tongue swings. The water is safe - you can't drown - but falling in resets you to the nearest solid ground, which is annoying.

The wetland's main quest involves collecting three bog pearls for the witch's spellbook. Each pearl is guarded by a different creature:

• The heron won't let you near the first pearl unless you bring it a fish. Use the tongue to grab a fish from the shallow water (look for ripples) and drop it at the heron's feet.

• The second pearl is in a hollow log guarded by territorial bees. Brew a Smoke Screen potion (charcoal from burned-out campfire + nightshade petals) to sneak past.

• The third pearl requires the Shade System: you need to simultaneously press two switches on opposite sides of a bog pond. Solo players place one shade on each switch, then stand on the third trigger platform that appears between them.

Hardest puzzle in the wetland: the Willow Bridge. You need to create a tongue bridge between two specific branches, then walk across it while maintaining the connection. The trick is that you can create a shade at the bridge's midpoint - the shade will hold the tongue connection while you walk. Place shade → walk halfway → shade anchors → continue. Took me six attempts to figure that out.

The Forest: Vertical Exploration

The forest introduces the paraglider upgrade for your Froggy Backpack. Hold jump in mid-air to inflate. The forest has massive redwood-style trees with platforms spiraling up their trunks. Your goal is to reach the canopy where a rare moonflower blooms only at night (in-game night, about every 30 real minutes).

Key tip: the forest has bounce mushrooms. They look like regular mushrooms but they're slightly more orange. Jump on them and you launch upward. Chain bounce mushrooms with the paraglider to cross huge gaps between tree platforms.

The forest cauldron is inside a hollow stump guarded by a badger. The badger wants honey. There's a beehive three trees east - use tongue to grab it without getting stung (aim from maximum range).

The Mountain: Endgame Traversal

This is where the plunge slam gets introduced. Drop from height, hold the slam button, and you crash through thin rock surfaces to reveal hidden cave systems. The mountain has the game's most complex puzzles because it combines every mechanic: shade plates, tongue bridges, paraglider gaps, bounce platforms, and slam entrances.

The mountain's final challenge is the Summit Ascent - a gauntlet of platforming that requires chaining every traversal ability in sequence. The game doesn't tell you the order, but I found this sequence works: double jump → tongue swing → mid-air shade placement → switch to shade → paraglider → bounce mushroom → tongue bridge → plunge slam → final ledge.

The cauldron at the summit lets you brew the Awakening Potion - the story-critical item that heals the witch. You need one ingredient from each biome. If you've been collecting everything, you should have them. If not, the magpie fast-travel makes the backtracking tolerable.

What Comes After the Main Story

Healing the witch doesn't end the game. The world stays open and new spellbook quests appear - these are post-game challenges that use every mechanic at max complexity. The village NPCs also get new dialogue reflecting the witch's recovery. Windup Games packed a surprising amount of post-game content into what looks like a short cozy game.