God of War Ragnarok has an enormous world with various side regions and activities to tackle pre and post-game. The Crater, for example, is a vast side area filled to the brim with optional boss encounters, quests, and much more, with its Wishing Well being an excellent way to earn very rare upgrade materials and equipment.

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While this region is entirely optional, you should make time to visit it and see all it has to offer, as the rewards and enhancements obtained are more than worth your time and effort. If there's any area you need to take a detour to check out and sink hours of time into, make it The Crater and toss those gathered Crystalline Shards into the Wishing Well.

How To Unlock The Wishing Well

The Wishing Well is found within The Crater, an optional region located in Vanaheim. However, you will need to meet a few requirements before accessing this area, which won't be too much of a hassle, except for the fact that you have to progress quite a bit into the main story of the game, meaning that it can be several hours into your journey before you reach this point, especially if you like to explore and take on side-quests. Nonetheless, you can find the prerequisites for accessing The Crater below!

Requirements

• Complete the main quest, "Creatures of Prophecy."
• Begin the side-quest, "Scent of Survival."

Once you meet the above prerequisites, you will be on the path to The Crater and have to follow Helka's footprints, leading you to an area where you will have to use your newly acquired Skidbladner boat to soar into the new region, which will be The Crater. When reaching this area, your primary objective will be to find and rescue Birgir, but you can freely explore this region as you please, allowing you to access the Cleansing Pool earlier if you so wish.

Wishing Well Location

To reach the Cleansing Pool, you will have to head to the western side of The Crater from the initial Mystic Gateway of the region. Once here, you must use the Celestial Altar in the area to turn the time of day to nighttime. From here, a pathway will open that leads you towards the south end of The Crater called "The Jungle," take this path until you reach a cave entrance with two dragon heads on either side of it.

Head through the cave to trigger the side-quest "Return of the River," and continue through the cave, fighting all the enemies and using Sigil Arrows and your Blades of Chaos to burn any of the brush needed to traverse further into it. After making your way through the cave, you will encounter a dam with even more enemies. Take them out and then use your Drapunir Spear to create a pathway onto the other side of the dam.

When here, you will have to use more Sigil Arrows and your Blades of Chaos to get rid of more brush on the wall immediately to your left. You can get rid of the first half as soon as you enter this area. However, the second half will require some strategery on your end. You will see entended pieces of the ground near the crank that reach out towards the wall. You will have to shoot Sigil Arrows that chain to one another leading from the brush to in front of the platform to the right of the wheel, allowing you to run to the edge of the walkway to use your Blades of Chaos to ignite the brush, killing the Nokken hiding away in the wall, allowing you to defeat the remaining enemies in the area, turn the wheel, and restore water to The Crater, completing the "Return of the River" side-quest.

Now that you have returned water to The Crater, you can use boats to reach new areas. When you first came to The Forest, you may recall the moment when you stumbled upon two Ogres hurling boulders at you while simultaneously being healed by Nokkens with no way to reach them. Now, you can finally take the boat from the dock near the entrance of The Jungle and sail it around the island where the Ogres are. Make your way onto the island, target the Nokkens first, and then focus on one Ogre until you can climb onto it and use it to bludgeon the other to make quick work of this section.

Defeating the Ogres will allow you to open a gate on the island that leads you into a cave. Heading through this cave will lead you to the Wishing Well, where you can toss gathered Crystalline Shards and Crystalline Fragments into the pond to receive unique equipment and valuable materials. As you explore more of The Crater, you will discover more entrance points to the Wishing Well, so you will have multiple ways to access the Cleansing Pool to exchange even more Crystalline Shards or Fragments you obtain when further exploring The Crater.

All Wishing Well Rewards

You can gather Crystalline Shards and Crystalline Fragments by destroying the large orange Crystals found throughout The Crater and gathering the materials that pop out of them. Some will drop Shards, while others will drop Fragments. From what we can tell, both offer the same rewards, but tossing Fragments into the pond is more or less the equivalent of throwing in several Shards, making them worth more 'points,' so to speak.

When Mimir starts hinting that you should return to the Wishing Well to cleanse some of the Crystals, that's your queue that you will get something in return, whether that be Level 9 Crafting Material or unique equipment or even a mix of both, considering how much you have saved up. You can find the complete list of everything you can receive from the Cleansing Pool below!

Since you throw all Crystalline Materials you have gathered into the Wishing Well all at once, you cannot track how many you need for each piece of armor, so you will likely have to keep coming back to the Cleansing Pool after accumulating more Crystalline Shards and Fragments. Additionally, after you obtain the Fallen Stars Armor Set and the Axe Handle and Enchantment, you will only receive Hacksilver and Crafting Materials from the Wishing Well.

Wishing Well Rewards

Depending on how well you explored The Crater before making it to the Wishing Well for the first time, you will have to gather more Crystalline Materials and continually revisit the Cleansing Pool to obtain the complete Fallen Star Armor Set for Kratos. Additionally, this is where you will get the majority of upgrade materials for late and end-game enhancements, so be sure to put them towards something worthwhile, such as the Dragon Scale Armor Set or another high-end set!

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