Must Fafnir be defeated first??

[Cornhole Von Diggler]

One thing I loved about the first one was that for the first few guardians, they could be taken on in any order - in fact I could go back and utterly destroy the snakes with the axe.

In this one, I'm only able to access the Icefire Treetops by cheesing Nidhogg, but all other exits in both the roots and icefire are blocked off by other paths. I've researched all I can but can it truly be I have to beat this boss first??

[Citronvand]

There is no strict path to beat the bosses but you're also not completely free to pick and choose. This is because of 2 things:
Soul gates only open when X amount of guardians have been defeated where X can be anything from 1 to 9. Secondly, bosses now give an item after being defeated. Some, not all, of these items are required to make progress.

In the case with Fafnir, defeating him will unlock a soul gate in Yggdrasil.

[Cornhole Von Diggler]

I have played the game and beaten it already. I was trying to collect everything I could before activating hard mode. You could do an absolute lot of collecting before activating it in the first one. In this one.. you're pinholed hard.

[uncertainObserver]

I'm currently doing a second playthrough to see what you can do out of order, and yeah, I don't see a way you can get outside of the roots and treetops without killing Fafnir. It does open up a lot more than I thought it did after that though.

[Cornhole Von Diggler]

well poop.. thought maybe there was a new secret uncovered. Really disappointed in this.

[Morsk]

I also couldn't find a way to skip Fafnir. You can get through some of Icefire Treetops, but the path into most of Immortal Battlefield is blocked until the switch is pressed on the other side.

[Aquillion]

I think this is because in order to beat Fafnir, you have to release Loki. The Divine Fortress and Valhalla assume you did so, and they didn't want to write alternate dialog and events for absolutely everyone in that area. So you're forced to go through that before you can do anything else. It's also possible that preventing people from proceeding too far without activating Hard Mode if they want the achievement is intentional.

[subanark]

I did notice in one of my games (after killing Fafnir) that the upper left exit in fire-ice became unlocked without using a weight on the other side of it (which required damaging boosting to get out of that cooridor). Any idea what the alt trigger is?

[Diviner Baltasar]

Wow 3rd time correcting my post! I was playing and found out a lady that can lift hard mode ONLY ONCE (dialogue says) but turns out once she does, you can't turn it back on! Cost me the game file ... so careful with that!

Yes, Fafnir locks about everything aside from some exploration past Nidhogg that doesn't give anything that'll early unlock things. Weapon upgrades are much appreciated because leather whip can be a struggle in hard mode