Ubisoft’s Viking adventure, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, adds some limited-time winter festivities today. Preparations for the Yule festival have been dropped, in addition to the game’s title update 1.1.0, which will also lay the groundwork for the settlement’s upcoming expansion. It all comes with a bundle of cheery bug fixes and game improvements – tackling the serious stuff like freezing and balancing, and the fun stuff like floating Eivors and affectionate NPCs.
“The Yule Festival is a limited-time event with several festivities to enjoy and get rewards,” Ubi said in the patch notes. “To bring this and future festivals to life, you will see the arrival of the revelers just east of the current settlement.”
As for the rest of this big update, the developers have made a ton of improvements that should make life in old England a little more fun. For starters, they fixed some annoying freezes on PC that could occur when players performed specific actions for the first time. They also balanced the NPC power levels for all difficulty levels, which changes a few things:
- The power of NPCs will now be up to 51 times lower than the player.
- NPCs that are 51 power lower than the player are highlighted in green.
- World bosses correspond to the player’s power level when the power exceeds the world boss’ base level. (also applies to: Alpha animals, Zealots)
Various graphics and animation issues have been fixed, including some deliciously crazy ones. Here’s a selection of my favorites:
- Fixed an issue where NPCs killed while unconscious would sometimes stand up during the animation.
- Fixed an issue that caused Tarben Eivor to follow everywhere when The Baker’s Plaint was not completed.
- Fixed an issue where Eivor would sometimes float during Assault Outros.
- Fixed an issue in Cruel Destiny that prevented players from advancing to the second stage of the boss fight. Quest name is correct.
- Fixed an issue that allowed players to shoot targets through walls.
- Fixed an issue where hitting a horse with a Saxon boat would cause the horse to disappear when climbing.
- Fixed an issue where NPCs could randomly start piroueting on a Saxon boat.
A lot more things have changed too, so check out the full patch notes to see the rest. And if you haven’t downloaded it yet, the patch size is around 5.6 GB.
Alice Bee noted some of the bugs and janky bits in her Assassin’s Creed Valhalla review, but they didn’t spoil the experience too much: “Valhalla is a vibrant grab bag of the best bits from Assassin’s Creed games past,” she says. “It is really entertaining for fans of the series. It may not have set the world on fire, but you can burn some virtual bits yourself if you want. “