Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Post-Launch Content Updates (2023)

The Ubisoft+ subscription cost €1 again for a month and it was time to go back toAssassin's Creed Valhalla, which finally received the latest update to its story late last year. And surely a lot of content has been added in the two years that the game has had active support after launch. In total, Valhalla has received three paid expansions and around five free additions that can be considered separate core features. I finished the full game with 270 hours played.

I had serious trouble figuring out what order I should do things in. I ended up getting some kind of release order, albeit not a very strict one. For example,river attacksthey were updated twice after an expansion was released, so you may end up visiting expansion-related areas early in the mode. He knew when there were features that were likely to be introduced correctly in the actual expansions. But it doesn't really matter.

However, before I got to any of the added stuff, I had to finish all the fishing missions I hadn't done. It turned out to be quite an undertaking, chasing fishing spots all over England and Norway to find specific sizes of different fish. This was a good opportunity to readjust the controls and game mechanics. I tried all of Valhalla's weapons this time, but in the end I went back to double daggers. Your special quick attacks return the adrenaline so fast that you can stun all enemies that aren't immune to Tyr's Kick. This includes most humanoid bosses.

river attacks

Then I did the River Raids that I had already started before. While raiding in the main game is a fun activity, in this mode it becomes tedious even if you only play a little to get only some of the available rewards. I feel like whenever a Ubisoft game wants you to do a replay activity, it's always immediately boring on the first replay. Clearing out a monastery for a unique skill or item is fun; doing the same thing over and over again with generic resources is not.

Your Jomsviking mercenaries could also end up injured in a river raid and unable to participate in the next raid or two. You can help a downed viking before he leaves, but you need a ration to do it. And the Vikings go down so easily that you soon run out of rations anyway, and raids start even without rations. I do not know whatUbisoft MontréalI was thinking of making you take care of your team like this. The natural conclusion is to leave the Vikings on your ship and clear the outpost on your own before launching an attack so you can open the supply chests.

A weekly Connect challenge was 50 windows removed: a bit of work

Sufficient Grinding mode allows you to upgrade your jomsviking hall to hire vikings up to level 5. Max rank ones are definitely more durable, but also hardly invincible. There are places on river maps where two enemy crossbowmen can easily take out your entire crew if you're not there to do something about it.

Jomsvikings are custom lieutenants of other players and can have some pretty fancy looking gear, especially if the player has endgame/money shop gear skins to choose from. I'm not sure if the re-customization of the lieutenant was a thing before or I just missed it, but at least now you can edit your appearance after creation. I liked that because I created mine when I only had very basic stuff. I think people would rather recruit a viking in flaming armor than a generic looking one. You are unlikely to get rich from other players hiring your lieutenant, regardless.

I feel like AC Valhalla had more problems with morality than other Assassin's Creed games. Raiding settlements didn't make the Vikings the good guys in history. Maybe that's why Ubisoft decided to keep desync when attacking civilians like in games where you play as a real assassin. But it sure is ridiculous for the game to say that the Vikings didn't do this. I think Ubisoft would have done better if their attacks didn't connect with neutral NPCs and didn't show such a stupid statement.

mastery challenges

After completing the River Raid quest chain, I started makingmastery challenges. There are quite a few of them now after all the updates. Doing them side by side can be exhausting, especially if you're trying to get the gold medal on each one.

Each challenge location has a bear, crow, and wolf challenge: melee, stealth, and ranged, respectively. You play with certain skills and equipment active, but your passive perk points count as is. Getting gold requires a perfect run most of the time. Based on your medal, you get tokens to buy mode-related quest character items.

Initially I reattempted the challenges until I got the gold, but then realized (as they were getting tired) that I didn't really need to do this as I didn't care about the achievements in this non-Steam game and the related. Ubi Connect challenges. does not require 100% completion. In the end, I still managed to get enough gold medals to buy the full set of armor, which seemed to be the main reward.

I'm not sure, but I think the name of the mode implies that you should have passed max character level with points in all three passive domains. I originally had this, but an update widened the passive tree and I no longer had things maxed out when I got back into the game. I think this could have made some of the challenges a bit more difficult.

While doing masteries (and looking for help on Youtube), I found out that the mythical Excalibur and Mjölnir are in AC Valhalla. I had done the necessary pre-work to be able to collect them, but the game doesn't offer quests for any of them, and therefore I lost them.

wrath of the druids

The first big expansion is basically more of the same stuff as the main game, just set in Ireland. Druids weren't as prominent in the story as I would have expected based on the title. The writing for the expansion also struggled a bit. It also brought back the space limited coin chest feature that was missing from these later games.Syndicategames.

Eivor's connection to the island is another cousin of hers. I knew instantly that things were not going to go well for the boy because he issued suchdragon ageis it Alistair orGuardians of the GalaxyStar-Lord vibes. This type of character always seems to end up dead in AC Valhalla.

The stone stacking puzzle from the main game also appears in this expansion, but I think it was much easier. I remember seeing several frustrated comments about the originals, and having problems with some of them as well.

the siege of paris

In the second expansion, Eivor travels to France: even more familiar Vikings there (to Eivor), but also a possible future Frankish invasion of England. Eivor wants Carlos III el Gordo to promise that there will be no attacks. The expansion's narrative felt oddly convoluted, as if the writers had a hard time wrapping everything around historical events.

The murders were more complicated than usual and required a proper investigation. Scouting the locations beforehand can spoil the fun of discovery.

I think the mice in the expansion were a failed puzzle feature. I think the developers were inspired byplague talegames, but the creature implementation in this game was just annoying.

Also, I did the GPU replacement on my desktop PC that I mentioned thinking of myfar away 6post. With the latest card, AC Valhalla ran at 60fps at 1080p on high settings. However, in this and subsequent expansions, I noticed that my PC often had trouble transmitting assets when I was traveling the world, resulting in Eivor's mount slowing down or the game stopping outright to load. All that monster 150GB of game really needs to be installed on an SSD (like all new titles these days). Reducing the world details and clutter settings to medium helped considerably with the loading issue.

a fated meeting

AC Valhalla's crossover story has a different actual crossover thanAC Odyssey. On the Isle of Skye, Eivor meets Kassandra, who is searching for Isu's artifacts. For once it wasn't Eivor, but me who found a familiar face. And for the first time in this game I cared about an NPC.

Kassandra has become a recluse for the 1300(?) years she has already lived by the time Eivor meets her. It's understandable that she's keeping a low profile, but I think she could have been less shy around Eivor, who's already run into all kinds of weird stuff. I liked the detail of how Kassandra becomes glowing when you use Eivor's Odin visor.

Isle of Skye is a great free upgrade and I quite enjoyed it. You also get some easter egg gear pieces, like the Spear of Leonidas. I was excited when I saw the name on the loot because I thought it would look amazing like the broken spearhead did at the end of Odyssey. But it turned out to be more like the modest appearance of the entire spear in the prologue when it was in Leonidas' hands, and a non-canon thing, anyway.

It's funny how in Odyssey I originally never considered the fact that Leyla has the actual spearhead in modern times. Why did Cassandra leave him? What happened to your powers? I blame the length of the game for making me forget about the spear. But if you were wondering, the crossover story in Odyssey would have answered that mystery. Also a pro tip: don't rush to progress through the main cross story quest in Odyssey until you've fully explored the island. Clearing outposts without any of Kassandra's powers is a pain. (You still have all the island powers so the rest of the game doesn't become unplayable later.)

graves of the fallen

Another free content update (or two) wasgraves of the fallenwhich add puzzle locations across England. They're not as fun as the dungeons (which occasionally had combat as well) in earlier titles in the series, but they were still reasonably enjoyable. They do not take long to receive the welcome, although the last one is quite long.

the dawn of ragnarok

The final expansion has Eivor once again dreaming of Havi (Odin), essentially depicting more of the Isu's final moments in Norse mythology disguise. This time I changed Eivor's gender to male, which was a good decision. Havi is clearly a different character. Not having Eivor's female voice made things feel less like a weird recreation than in the main game to me when doing the other dreams.

the dawn of ragnarokIt takes place in Svartalfheim, which is inhabited by dwarves (and not dark elves, which I think svartalf is based on the word alone). Havi tries to save her son Baldr, who has been captured by the fire giants of Muspelheim.

The expansion is one of the best that Ubisoft has done, although I don't like the three regions, the three stories that have been repeated over and over again. How about a great sequel for a change? I think this modular approach makes content production more efficient: split regions for different teams to work on simultaneously. I liked the location of the expansion and the new powerups. Being able to fly was particularly cool, even if it's a bit limited and weird: essentially the same as controlling the bird your character has in these new AC games.

It's hard to like Havi as the lead: so utterly arrogant and overconfident. Perhaps his past great deeds made him such a person, but the way he constantly exaggerates his greatness makes one wonder if the stories about him are only half true. It is not difficult to guess how things will go; you know that the search for him is doomed to failure. At least Loki isn't involved in this to make things annoying.

the forgotten saga

the forgotten sagait was a free update, but it's pretty much a continuation of the last expansion - another havi dream. The god chases Baldr to Helheim to resurrect him. Instead, Havi ends up stuck in a looping limbo, which fits perfectly with the roguelike-inspired premise. I liked the perception of the purpose of the thing.

It's a shame that the big studios rarely dabble in roguelike elements. In particular, I would like to see procedural map generation in a first or third person game with AAA quality assets. The Forgotten Saga doesn't do that either - the randomness is found in gear and abilities, and even those are easily removed. The mode is fun, another great addition. It's a shame it's not a deeper action roguelike.

The Forgotten Saga is also easy, and I don't think the overall difficulty will affect that. In my first run I got to the second boss, in the second to the final, which I beat in the third. But I still did a few more races because the mode was so much fun.

oh last chapter

The final story update in December was rather minor: only Eivor said goodbye and left for North America, where his body will be discovered in the present day. The update also ties AC Valhalla to the upcoming game,Assassin's Creed Mirage, which should be out later this year, developed byUbisoft Bordeaux. The protagonist of Mirage will be Basim, who was also in this game. I'm a bit conflicted on this because I think of him as a bad guy, Loki being reborn and all. I really didn't like how AC Valhalla ended with him surviving.

There was previously another update related to AC Valhalla, in which Basim's mentor Roshan briefly meets Eivor in England. Roshan is voiced byShohreh Aghdashloowhom he previously knew basically as a voice. (She was one of the quarian admirals onmass effect2mi3.) But after her role as Avasarala inThe expansionshow Now I also imagine how you look when I hear your voice. This is unfortunate because I'd rather not know what the voice actors look like, so I just see their characters, especially when the actor has such a recognizable voice.

Mirage will be something of a return to the roots of the series in terms of gameplay and setting, taking place in Baghdad and also featuring Alamut, the original stronghold of real-life assassins. I think the last one is a really cool inclusion. AC Mirage is also supposed to be smaller than previous AC games, which is surprising because you'd think longer games would be a better fit for Ubisoft+'s subscription service. Longer games make people pay for the service.

However, Mirage is not the only AC game in development: in fact, there are quite a few. I'm more interested, even a little excited, about how it's called Codename Red. It will be set in Japan and will be directed byUbisoft Quebecwhich is my favorite Ubisoft studio thanks to the hugely fun combat in AC Odyssey andImortais Fenyx Rising.

Edited 2023-03-24: Changed Isolated to Recluse