You completed everything in the game, acquired all 38 abilities and upgraded the 32 that had Level 2 bonuses... but there were always those six abilities from the River Raids that were always at Level 1, abandoned by the developers.

Back when TU 1.1.2 was released, the newly minted River Raids content featured three promising abilities...




When TU 1.3.0 was released with placeholders for three upcoming abilities, I commented on the hopes of new River Raids content going into Francia with Level 2 upgrades for previous abilities. I even speculated on what bonuses the Level 2 upgrades would entail... but alas, nothing came of it. Instead, TU 1.3.1 was released only featuring three new abilities for the additional River Raid locations...




One thing that was unusually new with TU 1.3.1 was that we started to see specific weapons highlighting the use of abilities to unlock or enable a perk, which is entirely ridiculous, and one of the new weapons featured a River Raid ability...

This seemed to suggest that the developers might have decided to take more interest in the River Raid abilities and perhaps might have considered creating content for Level 2 upgrades... but of course, that never came about. The last hope was with TU 1.5.2, where we got new rewards from Vagn, but nothing more.

I’ll be honest though... most of these abilities are crap and would have needed significant Level 2 bonuses for me to even consider using them. I will sometimes use the Spinning Harpoon for fun, but it’s not very practical in terms of clearing out a lot of enemies quickly. A few times I used the Berserker Trap, but the ‘berserk’ or ‘hallucinogenic’ feature in this game doesn’t really have the same level of fun as it was in Liberation, Black Flag, Rogue, Unity, and Syndicate. Ubisoft nerfed the feature in Origins (Bayek could not throw berserk darts) and eliminated it in Odyssey, so it’s no surprise they watered it down for Valhalla. The rest of the River Raid abilities don’t have any real replay value for me, and perhaps that’s why the developers never ultimately decided to go through the trouble of setting up Level 2 upgrades for them... they’re useless fillers for the empty spaces the developers knew they were going to end up with. Still... for the sake of consistency, it would have been nice if these six abilities had been given Level 2 bonuses like every other ability.

Ironically... when it came to the Forgotten Saga content, we got abilities that could be upgraded to Level 3, and with unique functions not seen in the rest of the game, which makes me wonder if the developers over-extended themselves in the first place. Maybe the game would have felt more balanced and focused if we had, say... half as many total abilities with opportunities to upgrade them with three or even four additional bonuses. What Ubisoft Quebec did in Odyssey with the Mastery Level System was genius, and it’s a shame Ubisoft Montreal never considered implementing something like it instead of the simplified and boring Mastery Point System. Wouldn’t it have been cool if we could have dumped our Mastery Points into specific abilities to further enhance the speciality and uniqueness of Eivor? Alas... it was never so. We can only hope that Ubisoft Bordeaux learns from Montreal’s mistakes for Mirage...