A few weeks ago, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla players saw a handful of new skills in the game’s elaborate skill tree. Then, those skills disappeared.
Follow Valhallain mid-december update, which precipitated the Christmas Festival Event, each of the game’s three skill trees (Bear, Raven, Wolf) seemed to expand into two nodes. The first in each tree was a carbon copy of the “let fate guide your way” node that allows you to let the game allocate your skill points for you; the second was a real skill. The bear tree received the Fight Ready skill, which gives you a full adrenaline slot at the start of each fight. The wolf tree can unlock the Looter of arrows, increasing your chance to loot arrows from archers. The Raven tree won the Assassin Carry, an ability that allows players to automatically pick up a corpse after a murder. All three of these new lines branched directly from the center of Valhallaskill tree, so you don’t have to put dozens of points on each branch to clear a path and unlock them.
The problem is that these three skills do not always appear in Valhallaskill tree of.
None of the three skills were mentioned in patch notes for the December update. Some players I saw them appear briefly, before they disappeared during subsequent game sessions. Today, at least on the Xbox Series X, I can still see the “destination” nodes branching ineffectively from the center of Valhallaskill tree of, while the three new skills are wrongsing.
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I can make them appear again by disconnecting my console from the Internet and restarting my game, at which point I am greeted by a notification that the Yule Festival is over. Connecting my console to the Internet eliminates them again. Some players tell they lost all skill points awarded later. Mine, it was worth it, were returned. When I go back online, the skill points refunded are automatically applied to any of the new skills I have unlocked.
Basically, if your console is connected to the Internet, you will not be able to access these features. If you are disconnected, you can.
When asked about the problem, Ubisoft acknowledged that some players can access these skills, but said that “they are not yet ready for launch” and recommended that players play online, if possible, to “avoid any problems with the gameplay”.
Truth be told, you are not losing much. None of the skills change the game terribly (although Assassin Carry is admittedly a good quality of life update). But they suggest great things saved for Valhallathe already Byzantine web of skills. Why include a “target” node for just one skill? Why do these new skills appear after the ostentatious end of the Christmas Festival?
The Yuletide Festival ends on January 7. Ubisoft has not announced specific release dates for Valhallathe two expansions announced, Wrath of the Druids and The Siege of Paris, nor detailed any new skills that might come into play with these campaigns.