Who is Skadi?

SMITE has a good number of hunters currently in-game, but there is one who has been played extensively in the past few weeks, not only because she is a relatively new addition to the game, but because of her overall feel. She is Skadi, the Norse goddess associated with winter, mountains, bowhunting and even skiing.

Skadi is the anglicized form of Skaði. Her name is derived from the old Norse common noun skaði which means “harm”; there is another theory that explains that her name comes from a different noun, skadus, which means “shadow.” Either way, she has a pretty cool name.


She is a jötunn, a giantess, and she lives in the highest mountains, where snow never melts, spending her days hunting with her bow while merrily skiing down the slopes of those high mountains. However, Skadi wasn’t always so content.

She is the daughter of the giant Thiazi, who was killed by the gods because he kidnapped the goddess named Idun; so the gods wanted to compensate Skadi for her loss, and offered her a place in Asgard through marriage, and as a homage to her father, the gods made stars out of his eyes. However, when she went to the gods to choose a husband, she could only judge the potential grooms by their feet (maybe the gods were “directed” by Quentin Tarantino, who knows). She chose the prettiest pair of feet she could see, thinking that it were the feet of Baldr, the most beautiful of male gods. But it turned out that the pretty pair belonged to Njord, a vanir sea-god. Skadi kept her word though, and after the marriage, they wanted to live together, of course. But sadly, things did not work out for the newlyweds.

You see, Skadi wanted to live in her father’s old place, where everything was cold, covered in snow, with mountains everywhere. However, Njord preferred his own hall by the seaside, because he was, after all, a god of the sea. At first, they thought that they could spend nine days here, and nine days there, but it didn’t work out either – Skadi wanted the snow, and Njord was in love with the sea. So after some time together, they split up, divorced, and Skadi relocated permanently to her father’s old home. At some later point in her life, Skadi remarried, however, the lore remains conflicted about whether she married Ullr or Odin. Either way, after splitting up with Njord, she remained in her mountains, hunting with a bow. Yes a bow – not a spear, as depicted in-game. However, if SMITE was 100% lore friendly to the max, we would see Ao Kuang eating children, and trust me, nobody wants to see Ao Kuang doing just that.


One part about Skadi’s lore that we haven’t talked about yet is her wolf companion, Kaldr. His name literally means “cold” in old Norse, and the most interesting fact about Kaldr is that… well, he is non-existent in the actual old Norse pantheon. There is no mention of Skadi having a wolf as a companion in both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda.

There is also a little story involving Loki and Skadi – according to one of the books in the Prose Edda, when Skadi chose her husband she also presented the gods with a seemingly impossible task – to make her laugh. In order to do so, Loki tied one end of a string to a goat, and the other end to his private parts, and the two begun to wrestle with each other. They drew each other back and forth, making hilarious noises, and Skadi laughed out loud. The Eddas also tell us that at some later point, when the gods captured Loki for being Loki, Skadi placed a venomous snake over his head, and the venom dripped into the trickster’s eyes, causing much pain to him. The gods also turned Loki’s son Narfi into a wolf, to which Kaldr could be a subtle reference. What a nice way to repay a laugh.

Finally, we should note Skadi’s role in the Ragnarök, the end times – or the lack of it. I looked through enormous amounts of information about Skadi, yet I could not find anything about her role in the Ragnarök, where every god will kill someone or be killed by someone/something (except a handful of lucky survivors); maybe this means that Skadi was meant to survive the end of the world, or the archaeologists just haven’t found anything on the matter yet. Either way, Skadi, in my opinion, is not only an awesome and exciting god to play in SMITE, but also, an exciting god lore-wise as well. Let’s have a look at her abilities.

Skadi’s main role as a hunter is to deal damage – what else. She can burst out quite a bit of damage in a short amount of time if given the opportunity to do that, utilizing her skills to her maximum advantage. Compared to other hunters, she has a quite large health pool, but no escape ability, like Hou Yi’s jump or Neith’s backflip, making her vulnerable to any kind of crowd control and ganks. Thanks to her health pool, she is also a good boxer, as she is able to take some damage before she needs to retreat. She also has an average mana pool, but she can always benefit from a larger one, so I suggest building Transcendence early (just as I would do on other hunters.)

Her passive ability is called “Kaldr, The Winter Wolf”. Skadi fights with a pet wolf, Kaldr. Kaldr has five hit points, which regenerate with a rate of 1 hit point / 10 seconds. He also has the 50% of Skadi’s attack speed as well as 110% of her movement speed. Kaldr can have two forms: Elemental and Beast. While in elemental form, Kaldr cannot be attacked and regenerates hit points. In Beast mode, Kaldr becomes damageable and attacks the target Skadi told her to attack.


Skadi’s first ability is called “Piercing Cold”. She throws an icy spear forward, damaging and slowing enemies. This ability scales pretty well with physical power (up to 80% of her total physical power at max), and is ideal to clear minion waves later in the game, while still dealing significant damage to enemy Gods on top of slowing them. The ability also comes handy when harassing enemy Gods.

Her second ability is called “Rune of the Hunt”, and this is where Kaldr comes into play. Skadi can select a target that Kaldr attacks, switching into beast form. Kaldr has 100% of Skadi’s basic attack damage at the max level and has a dash, making this ability a pretty good way to take out an enemy from the fight, or to chase and finish escaping targets. Unfortunately, based on my experience playing with her, Rune of the Hunt is not a good ability if used to harassed enemies because of the fact that Kaldr will immediately enter Elemental Form once his health pool is depleted, and enemies will immediately focus the wolf when they are targeted by it. Fortunately, the ability is a toggle, meaning Skadi can cancel it whenever she wants Kaldr to stop attacking and regenerate his health. Kaldr can also be utilized to tank jungle minions for a small amount of time.


Her third ability is a mild CC called “Permafrost”, which freezes the ground at the target location. It deals damage immediately after cast to enemies and slow them when they step on in, while they loose control of their movement and slide around the ground where Permafrost was cast. Moreover, enemies continue to take low amounts of damage while they are sliding around. This is an excellent ability to prevent enemies from either reaching Skadi or escaping from her, and as an added bonus, Skadi also gains 25% bonus movement speed when she steps on the ground with Permafrost on it, allowing her to reach her targets quicker. This ability excels on the Joust map if cast on the right point of the map, and can make enemies completely unable to move, making them slide from wall to wall.

Her ultimate ability is called “Winter’s Grasp”. When Skadi casts Winter’s Grasp, a snowstorm begins to surround both her and Kaldr, and enemies in range of either Kaldr or her become rooted for 2 seconds at max level (1 seconds at level 1), making this ability ideal to disable targets who are either coming too close to Skadi, or trying to escape. The root enables her to burst down the intended target, while also dealing a small amount of damage every .5 seconds for the 4 second duration of the ability. Kaldr also becomes completely immune to attack, enabling him to deal significant damage to whatever poor sod Skadi chose to attack. While this might not be the most damaging ultimate in the game, Winter’s Grasp can be utilized in certain ways, for example, to prevent an enemy carry close down Skadi, or to further disable targets affected by other CC abilities. The ultimate synergises very well for example with Tyr’s first ability, Fearless – try knocking over enemies with Tyr then apply the root with Skadi’s ultimate.

Skadi is a well rounded, bursty god with amazing lore, and it was right for her to appear in SMITE, with her icy spear and cold aura – and she has a nice kit as well. Of course, she requires some basic micromanagement skills, but if you can learn how to utilize Kaldr, she has great damage potential, and an ultimate with root as well, making her a viable addition to a great number of team compositions.



Written by Gregory “Extremeburial” Bishop

This article will appear in Issue #25 of The Official SMITE Magazine.

"Kaldr can also be utilized to tank jungle minions for a small amount of time."
Please don't. Just don't. every hit they do lowers his healthbar by one point, meaning you will be left kaldr-less.

( Piercing Cold) "The ability also comes handy when harassing enemy Gods." if you are srsly gonna use it to harass and not to zone down/ kill/ engage with Kaldr, The Winter Wolf, you will be countered by the cooldown. this is her clear, and her main way of killing enemy adc's and dealing mass amounts of damage with Kaldr, The Winter Wolf, fights with Kaldr are way less efficient when not having this up for the slow and extra damage with Kaldr, The Winter Wolf. please dont use it to simply harass.

This seems to be heavily joust centered, keep in mind that i will probably dig through this again to find mistakes that apply to conquest.

Well, all the pictures are of Joust, so it probably is Joust-centered.