This week, Ubisoft launched the River Raid update for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. This adds two massive new areas to the game for players to explore, each of which can be endlessly raided for as long as you feel able. It’s a change I’ve never really seen before in an Assassin’s Creed game, and I think that it’s one of the best Ubisoft has ever implemented. I’ve still not completed everything in the main story or world, but I find myself raiding these new rivers all the same because this is the best part of Valhalla, and now it’s even better.
Raids are an activity you can undertake in the core game of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but there’s only so much raiding you can do. There are supplies and settlements dotted around England’s rivers, but once you’ve raided them all and have built everything in your settlement, that’s it. Sure, you can go out and raid the locations again, but you won’t get anything close to the rewards you did the first time around.
The River Raid update ups the ante by giving you the ability to raid locations after they’ve had a chance to rebuild. In this way, you can earn more Exotic Supplies and continuously upgrade your ship and settlement back home. The rivers have a sort of wanted system, which sees more reinforcements at the locations you raid when you raid a little too hard. This can result in you losing your crew, or even your supplies if you die.
Overall, the new game mode feels like a great fresh piece of content. While there are only two rivers in this new section of the game right now, I think Ubisoft must be planning to add more. There’s a new quest for some elusive gear and weapons and the general draw of enjoying the best part of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla in general. I can already see myself spending endless hours in this game mode.
However, it’s important that Ubisoft doesn’t leave players to get used to these two rivers for too long. We need more complications to keep the raids interesting, more gear, and even more rivers to pillage our way through.
