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?

@fylkirpanzer

your post made me laugh and not in a good way. Your right in everything and i can feel your pain while reading it.

As i said in another post they could have just easily given all forts and monastaries in England this exact purpose. Which would be unlocked after having completed all mission ofcourse.

That way at least you had some purpose in England once more, instead we get 3 maps that look exactly the same.

The total time to complete everything was between 6-8hours for me and then there is nothing left to do once more.

@asgardian02 Indeed. Why didn't they use the assets (the very diverse assets mind you) on the base map, when we run into copy / paste villages and forts all the time during River Raid? After as you said, completing them for initial gains, they could then be expanded upon with even more reinforcements, or built up defenses, etc. to show that they're a more challenging location to deal with, meaning that you couldn't play them the same way twice. But alas, missed opportunity.

@fylkirpanzer Dang this is like "The Review" for river raids. Thanks and I'm sorry to hear that. Perhaps they should make some kind of a new gear or mastery system of sorts, if they don't want to make new gears. You know, like bracelets, rings, necklaces, whatnot. As for mastery system, it would be a motivation for end-gamers who already reached max level. Just my opinion.

@fylkirpanzer

Could not have written it better myself. I seriously thought this was the turning point. I did enjoy the story but then end game is non existent.
The River Raids were announced, to be honest I was looking forward to it, couldn't wait............and then completed it in 8 hours. Have been rewarded everything and there is no need what so ever to do them again. What a joke. They labelled this as "Exciting new content" "Raid for glory".....LOL ok then, or until you have all the loot then its back to England Grinding Tungsten ingots off 3 sets of troops in Wessex. Or should i say uninstalling this waste of money to go play Odyssey again.

@fylkirpanzer completely agree with everything you said but will keep it short as I already posted my rambling rant elsewhere.

The excuse for using a different boat is ridiculous, and as the maps are new, we don't have alliances there anyway. They should have just added new areas to the normal map and let us go there in our normal boat; these would be regions where we cannot make friends with anyone. Why would we raid from our allies? That's simple-minded at best.

My advice. Don't jump out of your ship when you first load into the map, run around the land solo raiding every location by yourself, end the raid yourself without collecting any chests to come back later & collect it all with your crew, because it just freezes in that state and you can't collect anything because you can't restart the raid.

The reason I made this my tactic was because after the first raid I was already fed up reviving Jomsviking for stupid things like just standing around getting hit by arrows, at least side step? Don't get hit? Something. So I thought, I'll go on ahead to the next raid & kill everything, end that & move on to the next raid, kill everything. Rinse & repeat. Then I'll go back to the first place & call a raid so I can just collect the chests. Not possible, you can't restart the raid, so all content is froze & lost.

Pointless.

@sykoactiv8d that's because Valhalla has linear mechanics for about everything in spite of being an open world game. Try to raid a fort used in the main story before you officially are meant to - enemies just respawn infinitely. Raiding the fort in the main story - you have to follow the objective given or again, the enemies just respawn. The same is obviously true here: your function in the raids seems to be to nanny a bunch of nitwits and any attempt to approach it differently has a high chance of breaking the game.

Another oddity unrelated to River Raids, is that there's one blockade somewhere in southern England, where all your allies are hanging out. Attack it, and they'll help you, then go back to standing in strange places staring blankly into space. Apparently they were all lobotomised along with Siggy.