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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a big world – perhaps not as big as Greece in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, but big enough to explore a large section of Norway and England and beyond.
Before you go running off to raid, be sure to take the time to explore and do these things first in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla:
- Take some time to explore your settlement in Fornburg before making the trip from Norway to England. You’ll have to rebuild your settlement from scratch after the move, which means there may be a bit of time before you can access certain features like customizing tattoos and hairstyles.
- Fornburg also has a Flyting rap battle tutorial, drinking challenges, and a dice game called Orlog. You can even get some rewards for taking part in them!
- West of your Norway settlement is a larger viking town called Stavanger. It’s chock full of hidden collectibles, including wealth, side quest World Events, and more Flyting to raise your charisma – which may unlock dialogue options down the line.
- Combat can be tough early on, as skill points alone won’t unlock big flashy moves. You’ll need to seek out Books of Knowledge instead. There are three you can obtain in Norway even before you make the trip to England: Throwing Axe Fury is at the Nottfall camp you raid early on in the story, Thorn of Slumber can be found just south of the camp at a place called Gryttirsand – hidden below a tower, and Rage of Helheim is located high up in a waterfall (break the ice wall) beyond Kjotve’s Fortress that you’ll also attack early in the story.
- Try collecting different types of weapons to experiment with different playstyles. You can find a Flail at Kjotve’s Fortress during the main story, a War Hammer south of the viking town called Stevangar at a Marauder’s Camp, a two-handed Bone Biter Axe on a small island in the middle of the region called Ikke en Oy, and a predator style Recurve Bow at a shipyard north of the central island.
- Weapons and armor can be hard to come by, so be sure to invest in what you have by upgrading their stats using leather and ore. Once your gear is maxed out, you can increase the number of upgrades (and their looks!) and slot them with runes by trading in carbon ingots.
- If you want a tough challenge early on, explore Hildesvini’s Crag northeast of your Norway settlement. In the caves you find a lost viking whose last wish is to die in honorable combat. He’s pretty tough, but defeating him will earn your skill points and Fafnir’s Spear!
- As you pillage, loot, and hunt, you’ll amass a lot of goods that can be sold at merchants for silver. However, many trade goods are more important than others. Mysterious altars around England may ask you to bring them animal parts, and you can also bring fish and animal parts to people in your settlement to exchange for rare rewards – don’t sell anything you get from animals to be safe!
- Once you begin to build up your settlement at Ravensthorpe, don’t wait too long to upgrade a few buildings. In particular, the Hidden Ones Bureau unlocks a whole questline of assassination targets. This also unlocks a short quest to use the Leap of Faith (Eivor isn’t great at leaping off tall buildings into safety otherwise)
- Build a Stable early to teach your horse new skills, like swimming, better endurance and even give it more health. England has a ton of rivers, and being able to swim through them on horseback will save a ton of time.
- Build your fishing hut as soon as you can in Ravensthorpe — fishing is a great way to earn some quick silver and you’ll often need fish to complete altar-related World Events.
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