For some reason whenever I try to get close to a bonfire for the “will o the wisps” side quest, it tells me that I must be anonymous... there are no soldiers or predator animals around that I haven’t killed already. What do I do?

Right, so the expectation, at least with me for River Raids was a veritable feast of goods, i.e. new and unique armor sets, maybe even some new weapons to balance things out, i.e. more one handed hammers to offset the dozen or so shields we have, etc. to bring weapon diversity up to an equal amount per weapon.

What I got was bland, uninspired, and pretty much how I sum up Assassin's Creed Valhalla, a missed opportunity.

Completely ignoring my melanin enriched Jomsviking contact (it's Ubisoft, I'm not surprised a box had to be checked at this point) I ventured into the River Raid initially thinking alright, it's like a tutorial system to get me used to how things go, using his crew and his boat to get a feel of things.

Well after that, I found out that I in fact, don't even use my own crew, or my own boat, though I can customize the boat later on to give it the same appearance, I'm left with some elite warriors at least right? Not so much. It seems the more challenging aspect of River Raids didn't mean for us, the player, but for these weaponized idiots called Jomsvikings. The number of times they have dropped like flies doing things from literally standing there while getting shot in the face with crossbows, to I believe, actually drowning in a small puddle (as I had to go pick one up literally a few meters in front of the boat in water), or even setting themselves on fire, is honestly astounding. Sure they're beefy and can pretty much one shot all five enemies you fight in these huge fortresses, but their stupidity outweighs their usefulness outside of open red door, open big chest.

Speaking of which. Why did they decide to bring "door is barred from the other side" into this? The amount of times I was faced with this, thinking that, "Oh ok, the Saxons locked their valuables behind these doors to make it harder for us Vikings to raid them.". Seemed like a swell idea, but nope. I get in and find, breakable crates, or cooked rations, or a chest full of iron ore and leather, or even worse, I'd find a huge chest and feel like "Wow this is it, some new and interesting gear!" but nope, I get yet another Tungsten Ingot.

Speaking of the actual gear chests themselves, when I heard we were getting new gear I was much excite, because new gear is awesome right guys? Well color me absolutely shocked that surprise we get yet another reskin of an armor set which I personally hate, the Thegn Set. Here I was expecting something you know, based on historical, realistic armor worn by the Vikings, but nah, we get this.

The rewards themselves are just a feature of grind. More tattoos, and more ship cosmetics. I can't complain much there, more cosmetics are better imo, but the rewards could have been something like new weapons and armor exclusive to the Jomsvikings, missed opportunity yet again.

I think some aspects of River Raids are neat, like how a previously raided place looks destroyed and have to be populated and built back up again, and how you'll run into barriers along the way from prepared enemies. You'll even face more (which isn't saying much) enemies as you continue to raid and pillage (but only as long as you have space in your cargo hold). Personally I think these River Raids could have been localized to the main map, removing the need for loading times or a completely different map to raid on. Maybe it could have been needed if you wanted to raid in Frankia when we get to that expansion.

But we get the excuse of using a completely different crew and ship (even though we can literally use the cosmetics from our other ship) so as to not disrupt our Alliances in those regions. Another missed opportunity for cause and effect where allies, especially the Christian ones, would become agitated with you for raiding their villages, monasteries, and fortresses, forcing some interactions with them in say, paying restitution for their losses, which meant you giving them resources and silver as payment for your misdeeds, or if you refuse to pay, they send large parties of soldiers to hunt you while you River Raid, something to mix up and add to the supposed challenge this game mode is supposed to have. But alas, yet another a missed opportunity.

I honestly couldn't even bother finishing this. I don't care about the rewards since I can grind them at my leisure if I wanted to, and the armor set is completely worthless to me so there's no point. The enemy density isn't there to offer a challenge, and my Jomsviking crewmates are absolutely useless. I expected a feast of new things, and I might as well have eaten sand for all the tastes I'm experiencing right now.

I can at least hope as abysmally low as my hope is, that more Raids will be brought into the system, and actually offer unique and interesting armor and weapon rewards. Ah well, off to play another game until something actually meaningful drops into Valhalla. Gods why did I spend $120 for this?

So here's the thing, Assassin's Creed Valhalla has a custom controls feature, and i use it to keep my controls to the closest possible to the legacy controls of the previous 2 games, they do warn of a possible incompatibility, but i hadn't had any,... until the update, since then, when i call the horse for example, eivor pulls out a torch, not only that but also, she just doesn't crouch, and this came in the same patch as the mastery challenges, this means that i have to do the stealth challenges in conspicuous mode, which is hard, safe to say. She still performs climb down, which is mapped to the same button natively, but crouch is just something she doesn't do, my R1 button is effectively only useful for alternate shooting arrows and to climb down. No more stealh for me.