@thegardener25 You just reminded me of something that makes Odyssey more worthwhile than Valhalla. Acquiring items in Odyssey often went hand-in-hand with acquiring the engraving of that item to apply on another piece of gear. As a player, you were incentivized to acquire as many gear items as possible, and especially legendary items, to obtain the greatest variety of engravings, or otherwise to hunt down those engravings that were most desirable.

The radical change in gameplay mechanics seen in Valhalla sadly removed this fun feature from Odyssey. The most we can hope for in terms of variability and customization of our gear with Eivor is to combine two different gear sets to unlock their first level attributes, and then only apply diamond runes to the body armor, bow, and two weapons, in addition to whatever regular runes. That’s an application possibility of six ‘special’ rune combinations (gear runes and diamond runes) in addition to the three permanent runes on a chosen bow and two hand weapons. In Odyssey, you could theoretically apply eight different legendary engravings to Kassandra/Alexios, and in addition to four permanent engravings depending on which weapons and gear set you choose... a total of twelve engraving attributes.

So... if Ubisoft really wanted to encourage us to BUY more sets from the store, they should have gone beyond what Odyssey implemented and had something like double the total possible number of engraving/rune applications. Imagine Eivor decked out with 24 possible different special engraving/rune powers, and they don’t all have to be legendary, but with all these sets the developers have rolled out, it sure would encourage more collecting (i.e., purchasing) by players.

Slightly odd one today. The exclamation mark was there for the Huldufolk Shield, implying it is a first-time appearance but it isn't, it's the third appearance. The Head tattoo has never appeared though everything else has in the set's 57 outings in the shop. This is the closest set to completion, after the Draugr set which is still the only set that Reda's Rubbish has sold in entirety.

One of the less bad weeks, with six items that hadn't appeared previously. That does still mean seven items that had already appeared when there are still more than 200 items that haven't appeared once.

new week off to the usual poor start

Modern Day Pants and Viking Pyre Hull for the fourth time
Charlemagne Figurehead for the third time
Knight ISU Pants and Einherjar Bracers for the second time

Yesterday Niflheim Pants repeated, 2 from that set have never appeared.

Today Bear-Claw for the fourth time, 4 from the Berserker set have never appeared.

Poor.

More of the same nonsense from Reda's Rubbish. Hel's Damnation (Left Arm) for the third time; three from that set have never appeared.

Can't have too many repeats, can we Reda?

Bayonet Sword for the third time, not one of the half-dozen Modern Day items that have never appeared.

So, over the last week . . .

4 for the first time
3 for the second time
3 for the third time
3 for the fourth time

Over 200 items have never appeared

@spirantcrayon22 Ugh, bayonet sword again. I guess we should feel grateful that Reda has new jokes?!

Meanwhile in Odyssey, I finally got Pegasos as well as a set item last week, then 3 set items this week from the random jars. So hooray for that at least.

Here's a good article that Ubisoft should read: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-60304123

@needtocontrol

Reda made a joke about a loyalty rune. Ha, nice one.

Today the usual awful offering in Reda's Rubbish.

Huldufolk (Right Arm) for the second time; it had the exclamation mark for "new item" but that is incorrect. The 11th time a tattoo from the set has been in the shop but one has still never appeared.

Viking Pyre Totem, Valkyrie Cloak and Einherjar Pants all for the third time. These sets have appeared 168 times - but seven of the 72 have never appeared.

Mystical Pants for the fourth time - more than the other armour pieces combined - while seven from that set have never appeared.

@spirantcrayon22 Reda f*king sucks. This Opal system is the reason I am not buying Ragnarok. It will be the first AC DLC that I have not pre-ordered/purchased.

We have been respectfully posting our complaints and offered suggestions for a year now. @Ubisoft doesn't care whatsoever about their users. It's only about the Helix dollar for them.

Sad.

@la_frankie Hear hear! I know a lot of players are just gonna buy Ragnarök just to ‘keep up with the Joneses’, and the fact that Ubisoft has now launched a new ‘Complete Edition’ packaging everything together implies that the company is pretty much done with Valhalla. We’ll see them completely abandon the game by the end of this year, or sooner, so they can focus on their next cash grab with AC Infinity.

@thenorfolkian

I'm a bit similar. I did use Microsoft Rewards to buy the Ragnarok thing but am more likely to avoid the next one. Thing is, I suppose, I've "invested" in Valhalla, it's been largely pretty good but fallen short of being the great game it could have been due to the Ubisoft attitude. As I've repeatedly said, the bitter taste the attitude leaves contributes directly to toxic gaming environments, they must know this and yet do nothing. So, I haven't invested in the next one and might well not bother.

@spirantcrayon22 Hehe... I too am planning to spend my Microsoft Rewards points on Ragnarök, but I’m thinking I will wait for it to go on sale. You know, that Twilight Pack isn’t really an incentive for pre-ordering because it will eventually be available on Ubisoft Connect any way. They did the same thing with the other ‘bonus’ content that was presumably exclusive to prior pre-orders. If Ubisoft really wants players to feel special for pre-ordering something, they need to do something else other than what they’re doing now.

@la_frankie No pre-order for me, that's for sure. I'll be waiting to see the feedback on it. Not keen on the direction of this one and by the sounds of it, it'll "force" us to upgrade absolutely everything, again, with this new level of gear. I'm sure we've all got a horde of a million iron ore and enough leather to cover the whole map by now, but there's going to be a new resource which will restrict it again I expect.

I wonder how that'll affect those that have bought sets through the store, will they also have to upgrade them? I'd be pretty [censored] off if that was the case lol

Anyway, they did talk of changes to how Reda works, or at least expanding the missions so I'll be interested to see how that works out. I look forward to reading all about it and seeing what hilarious bugs they can introduce this time next week!

@spirantcrayon22 Thanks for the update.

Is this the first time for the Shinobi Oni Bracers?

@needtocontrol The modern day set in Odyssey is the one I have the least of. I'm slowly getting closer to collecting all the items in Odyssey - most weeks are repeats for me now.

@holyhalf-dead

yes, even though the first Shinobi one appeared two weeks ago they've failed to do a duplicate so far . . .

@ubi-milky

The rotation system is not a rotation system. There remain nearly 200 items that have never appeared, over 250 have appeared 2, 3, 4, 5 or even 6 times. Only one set has appeared in entirety in the time since launch. I have analysed it and it is basically random, as stated long ago by Ubisoft developers. The problem is that it does not serve the customer base very well.

To be honest I'd be extremely surprised if Ubisoft is not fully aware of how bad it is, it's entirely intended to be awful to push people towards paying real money. The "justification" (such as it is) is the argument that it is mostly random - that is not a lie. If it's random then it's not manipulated. If it's not manipulated then it's not immoral. That does of course miss the point that the set-up was created. The statement that it was going to be improved in the long term means the developers were completely aware of how bad it was and is. Therefore it was created to be bad.

QED.

@spirantcrayon22 Yeah, I agree, but think about it like this... By moving the thread out of Player Support, they’re basically saying that the issue with Reda’s Store is not a bug that can be ‘reported’. The thread has become an ongoing discussion about a broken feature in the game that will never be acknowledged as something that needs fixing.