Assassin's Creed Valhalla reimagines the series' combat, drawing inspiration from modern action games like Dark Souls, while forging its own distinct identity. The focus is on brutal, impactful combat with weighty hits and visceral finishers, demanding a more thoughtful approach than simple button mashing. This guide provides tips and strategies to master Valhalla's combat system and become a formidable Viking warrior.
Before diving into advanced tactics, it's crucial to understand the fundamental mechanics that govern combat in Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
Like many action games, light and heavy attacks serve different purposes in Valhalla. Light Melee Attacks are low damaging, yet fast strikes you perform against enemies. They are best used in conjunction with dodging or parrying, as they allow you to deal some damage coming out of an attempted enemy attack. However, Light Attacks cannot break through enemies equipped with shields.
Heavy Melee Attacks inflict more damage against enemies at the cost of slower strikes. These attacks are extremely useful when battling opponents equipped with shields.
Mix Heavy and Light Attacks Like many action games, light and heavy attacks serve different purposes in Valhalla. Heavy attacks do big damage, but more importantly can break guard easier. Light attacks are faster, but they also build your adrenaline meter and refill stamina. But even beyond the utility factor, there is light combo potential depending on your order of operations. It changes based on your equipment, but you can actually string together lights and heavies in specific ways. It’s a good idea to experiment here, as you can often get in more hits than usual if you know your strings.
Read also: Choosing the Right Straightening Tool
Both Parrying and Blocking are useful moves that provide you additional safety. You may also fight more defensively and simply block an opponent's attack with your shield. Successfully parrying against an enemy's attack creates a small window of opportunity for you to counter-attack against them. The important information, however, is that you can't parry or block the red attacks. Certain enemies perform attacks that you can't parry or block by any means, but you can easily tell identify these from normal attacks. If an enemy glows red just as they're about to attack, that means you can't parry or block their next move.
Stamina is what allows you do combat actions. It is represented by a meter in the game that depletes every time you roll, dodge, and block. The meter also depletes when you perform unsuccessful heavy, special, and light attacks. Your stamina meter gradually regenerates over time, and also recovers faster the more enemies you defeat. Try to observe your stamina bar located under Eivor's health bar. If you run out of stamina, you won't be able to dodge or block for a limited time. You deplete stamina by doing rolls, blocks, and when you miss attacks. Stamina can regenerate itself. However, it will take much longer if you have completely depleted the bar. As for enemies, their stamina is represented by the defense bar above their heads. The easiest way to get rid of them is to parry their attacks - they are able to knock your opponents out of balance. An opponent who has lost the whole defense bar, or one of the slots of a longer defense bar, will be stunned temporarily.
Being able to dodge successfuly is a great way to remove yourself from tight situations. Dodging is also useful for when you're trying to move away from a group of enemies surrounding you. In previous Assassin’s Creed games, you could dodge enemy attacks indefinitely, and simply hope that your foe would never catch up. That’s no longer the case, as dodging drains a limited stamina bar, which you also need for heavy attacks. As such, you’ll want to dodge sparingly. Brush With Death ability is associated with dodges. It can slow time automatically if you avoid an attack at the last possible moment. It is a great technique mainly for fighting bosses.
The Bow and Arrow lets you strike against distant enemies, preferably before they have a chance to see you. When aiming your bow at an enemy, you will notice that certain parts of their body glow. These are their weak points and hitting them with an arrow takes a good amount of their own stamina/health away. When using a bow, it is definitely worth to use ranged abilities, which may allow you to "overwhelm" enemies with arrows, or to use fire, explosive or poison arrows. It is also useful to aim at orange weak points on opponents' bodies.
Other very helpful ways to eliminate enemies are abilities, i.e. special attacks activated by using the adrenaline bar. One of our favorite abilities is Dive of the Valkyries, which allows Eivor to rise into the air and then hit the enemy with great force. You can unlock this ability by visiting the Isle of Ely Monastery in the Grantebridgescire region in Anglia. For more information and tips, see the Abilities - how to unlock? Stunning enemies lets you unleash potentially combat ending strikes and finishers against enemies.
Read also: The Comb Knife: A Hidden Weapon
With a solid grasp of the basics, you can employ more sophisticated tactics to gain an edge in combat.
Hitting hard and fast is crucial in Valhalla, because if you’re in the middle of a raid or some other large skirmish, you have stuff to get done. Being walled off by multiple enemies only slows you down and gives you more chances to mess up. One way to maximize damage is to find ways to hit enemies while they’re down. The more ubiquitous (but potentially difficult) way is to master parrying, which gives you tons of stun opportunities. But depending on your build you have other options. The Bear tree contains a Stomp skill, which lets you get an extra hit on an enemy after a knockdown. For most grunts this is an assured kill. Another way is to dual wield with a hammer in your off-hand. Holding the left bumper will start a ground pound sequence that gives you additional hits if you mash it. You’ll be vulnerable here, but it’s one of few ways to bear down on an enemy if you knock them down.
Like I said, the hammer thing is great but it also makes you vulnerable. While it’s important to be efficient, it’s also important to be mindful of Eivor’s limitations. If your enemy has a spear, you won’t be able to just charge them head-on. If your enemy is named or just generally chunkier, you’re going to have to go on the defensive. Enemies can and will recover while you’re hitting them, and if you just keep attacking you’re going to eat a parry yourself. Figure out stopping points and stick to them; that extra hit is never worth it.
Even if you’re running a Bear build, there are times you have to be sneaky. The thing about Valhalla, though, is that unless you’re dumping points into Raven, you’re going to be unable to assassinate. So if you can’t reliably take people down quietly, the next best thing is maneuvering around for as many one on one situations as possible. If you’re fast enough, you can follow up a stealth attack with a killing blow without alerting others to the scuffle. If you’re in an encampment you can’t raid, this is your best way to keep things under control without access to one-shots. Locking on to the enemy is useful in situations where you're fighting against more than one enemy. When up against groups of enemies, it's advisable to take down Archers first to avoid constantly dodging arrows.
Get Harpoon Impalement ASAP There are all kinds of abilities you can find out in the world as you pick up those Books of Knowledge. But one in particular is a godsend. If you head to the west and then slightly to the north of your settlement, you’ll cross a river into Ledecestrescire. Keep moving west along the water and get to the nearby vantage point. In that vicinity there’s also a Book of Knowledge, which will grant you the Harpoon Impalement ability. Even without the upgrade, this move is amazing. Basically, this is a long range attack that lets you yank an enemy in whatever direction you choose after hooking them. You can pull them towards you, or fling them into walls, junk, or other enemies. Not only is it badass, it also does tons of damage! You can potentially take out one or two enemies, even the big ones, out in an instant. If you’re careful you can even leverage this one to stay sneaky in a difficult situation. It even works to some extent on bosses! After a while, Harpoon Impalement was practically the only thing I used my adrenaline on.
Read also: Benefits of Fin Combs
There’s a lot of flammable junk scattered all over the place in this game. If you see a jar with a little bit of flame sticking out of it, that’s basically an Uncharted-style explosive barrel. But anywhere there are patches of grass, or other potentially flammable debris, you can probably spread some flames there. You can also ready an arrow and poke it into a flame for an instant fire arrow. If you can, setting a fire where people are standing is a great way to get free kills. Just, you know, watch where you’re standing too. If you catch yourself on fire, roll a couple times to put it out.
Eivor's effectiveness in eliminating opponents is influenced not only by how well you are controlling the character but also by how well they are developed.
As you gain new skills in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Eivor’s “power level” will increase. Each new area you explore will also have a recommended power level. Naturally, if your power level is higher than the recommendation, the area will be pretty easy. If your power level is lower, the area will be pretty hard. As far as I can tell, you don’t get any special reward for tackling high-level content at low power levels, so your best bet is simply to tackle low-level areas first, then high-level ones later.
The most important thing is Eivor's Power - having a high power level lets you visit regions with higher suggested power level and face opponents. You increase power by spending skill points in the skills tree. For more information, see Suggested power - what does it mean? These skill points allow you to buy new skills from the skill tree. We have compiled the skills recommended by us on a separate page Best main skills. While developing Eivor, don't focus only on skills, abilities and runes that boost stealth and assassinations. This can cause unnecessary problems during one of the obligatory fights - you won't be able to use, e.g.
As you start to build Eivor’s skills, you’ll have three possible paths: Bear (melee combat), Raven (stealth) and Wolf (ranged combat). While all three paths have some overlap, you’ll generally want to pick one and specialize in it, at least early on. That’s because each skill path improves your stats whenever you wear Bear/Raven/Wolf-aligned gear. By focusing your skill distribution, you’ll also focus your equipment loadout and general playstyle. Bear is the most straightforward path, but Raven has the most useful skills.
Shoot for Sets One major difference between Valhalla and the last two Creed outings is that it’s much less loot-oriented. You won’t be finding armor and weapons everywhere. Instead you’ll be picking up individual gear options as you explore the map. Gear has style affinity, just like your skill tree. And if you get multiple pieces in the same group, you’ll get pretty substantial stat bonuses. You can see exactly what those bonuses are in the inventory menu. Skill trees also have various points that will boost adjacent equipment, so it really pays to pick a style. In addition to improving items, try to use armor elements from matching sets.
You can probably guess based on the above, but Valhalla really encourages you to specialize your skill point spending. If you don’t lean heavily into one style over the other, you’ll likely end up with an Eivor who can’t really tear it up on the battlefield as well as you want to. You don’t have to go 100% all-in on one style though, as there will be skills you don’t need. You can absolutely dip into a secondary style, to pick up some extra ranged or stealth damage. Always pay attention to the connections between skill spaces, and don’t be afraid to refund your points if you don’t like what you’re seeing. The last group is the improvement of the equipment, which enhances our weapons and infuses them with additional properties. In addition to the standard improvements purchased with common crafting materials, it's also worthwhile to go to blacksmith Gunnar, who will be able to improve your gear. This is done by giving him the right ingots - higher quality equipment can be improved more times and can accept more runes that provide further bonuses. These topics are discussed in more detail on the pages of Ingots - how to get?
Upgrades! Upgrades make a huge difference. Because gear doesn’t flow constantly, you should absolutely pump resources into something you find if you like it. There’s no telling when or if you’ll find something better. Once you graduate past the iron ore, bronze ingots, and leather requirements, you’ll need to find nickel ingots. You’ll be able to find these in wealth points on the map, anywhere that’s at recommended level 55 or above. Once you find one, that’ll also put nickel ingots in shops for 250 silver. That’s a lot, but if you’re really wanting that next upgrade and haven’t found enough yet, that’s an easy way to cut a corner.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is downright conservative with equipment after Origins and Odyssey all but hurled new weapons and armor at you with each mission. You can find some gear, you can buy some gear and you can upgrade some gear, but your overall selection is fairly limited. You may find that your money and resources are limited, too, considering that upgrades can get pretty expensive in this game. My recommendation would be to find one particular set of equipment that you really like and focus on upgrading one piece at a time.
Rather than equipping a shield to your secondary hand, you can equip most One-handed weapons as sidearms that allow you to Dual Wield.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla allows you to separately set the difficulty level for fights. You can do this for the first time when you start a new game. Skald - is the easy difficulty Vikingr - the default normal difficulty level Berserkr - the high difficulty level Drengr - the very high difficulty level The difficulty level affects mainly the number of health points your enemies have. They also have modified resistance and inflicted damage. In addition to choosing the main difficulty level for the fights, you can also go to the options menu and choose additional settings. It is best to test all three options and choose the one that is the best for you. The shield and weapon variant offers, in our opinion, the safest and most balanced gameplay.
Try to always have as many rations as possible. This will allow you to heal Eivor's wounds. This is important because by default the health bar cannot regenerate itself. In AC Valhalla, you can also prepare for more difficult fights by holding feasts in the settlement. Eivor can thus receive a 3-hour buff/bonus to statistics, e.g. longer health or stamina bars. Assassin’s Creed, as a series, flip-flops back and forth between “regenerating health” and “manually restoring health.” Valhalla falls into the latter camp. When you take damage, there are only three ways to restore your health: Find some food, eat a ration or perform a Stun Attack on an enemy. The first is the simplest method, but there’s not always food around. As such, your rations are highly valuable - but extremely limited - resources. Save them for tough enemies and boss fights whenever possible, particularly since most bosses change their attack patterns about halfway through a fight.
Eivor and the Raven clan start out in England with just a longhouse; it’s up to you what to build next. During the course of the game, you can construct everything from a fishing hut, to a hunters’ lodge, to a bakery, to a stable, to a shipyard. My recommendation would be to prioritize the Hidden Ones Bureau, as this is where you’ll work alongside the Assassins - and what’s Assassin’s Creed without those?
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is an enormous game, and players generally approach enormous games one of two ways: Either zoom through the plot and handle side content later, or clean up an area’s side content before tackling the plot. Neither approach is ideal in this game, however. If you do the plot missions and nothing but, you probably won’t be strong enough to tackle the next set of missions. On the other hand, there’s no real reason to hunt down every last optional objective, as following the plot will take you in close proximity to many of them.
Generally speaking, you’ll reach new areas by traversing England’s waterways in your longship. On almost every river, you’ll find a church or monastery, just overflowing with valuable resources. While you can try to infiltrate these monasteries stealthily to thin the enemy ranks, you’ll need to call in the rest of your crew to finish the job. Hold the down button on the D-pad and select the “raid” option to initiate a mass battle, where, if victorious, you’ll walk away with plenty of supplies and raw materials to build your home settlement. In addition to improving items, try to use armor elements from matching sets. In Assassin's Creed Valhalla, you can distinguish two distinguishable types of combat. The first of them are raids, i.e. attacks on locations marked on the world map. In each of these locations, you can play a big battle. You don't have to always get rid all the enemies inside the abbey. You just need to reach the rations (marked with barrel icons). In some battles, you can be accompanied by allies - they can make the fights much easier, as most opponents won't be focused on Eivor. Look for the opportunity to attack enemies focused on fighting someone else from the back.
Yes, many of the fights in AC Valhalla are unfortunately mandatory. The obligatory fights take place mainly during many main and side quests. These can be both ordinary fights and larger battles (e.g.
The tactics of fighting these enemies do not differ significantly, although you must be aware that they will not be defeated so quickly. Try to deplete their defence bar to expose them to stronger attacks. You can also try to weaken them before the actual fight starts by sneaking up on them from behind and using the hidden blade.
The second unique category are duels with bosses and mini-bosses - the latter cattegory includes zealots (strong mercenaries), Daughters of Lerion and Legendary Animals. Before each duel, make sure that the boss' power level does not significantly exceed Eivor's power level, because you may have huge problems with winning. Also, stock-up on rations and adrenaline.
tags: #assassin's #creed #valhalla #combat #guide
