Just filled up my roster with Lvl3 Jomsvikings and wondered why they all looked so similar. Armors from a really small subset of those available. Not a single one without a helmet or a corona mask, after countless hammering the bell.
Then I realized it - they don't have an owner attached! You see it in the hall, and also in the roster. The old lvl1 have an owner name, all the lvl 2 and 3 don't.

So once you have done a few raids you will never get your JV hired again probably, because all JVs outside the hall are lvl1. And you can't hire friends or community's JVs for the river raids - only procedural generated crap.

Now why is this? Why can't we hire good looking JVs from other people anymore?

It seems that ringing the bell at the Jomsviking Hall merely seems to randomly generate NPC Jomsvikings, rather than player owned ones. They are similar to the ones you receive for free on your very first tutorial raid. AKA Vagn's crew.

They look weird because the computer seems to randomly jumble whatever gear you have in your inventory and put it on an NPC body, without any design or reason. This creates some pretty freakish looking creations which I always do my best to avoid.

It seems that only the first 'wave' of them to appear in your settlement/hall are the player owned ones. This normally happens to me when first loading up the game, or sometimes fast travelling - but it seems to be hit or miss. The Jomsviking system as a whole is a bit of a mess at the moment. It really needs some fine-tuning. What if we get sick of how our guy looks? At the moment once you've made them, you're stuck with them. Similarly, finding your friends seems to be pure luck.

I really hope that we see some further quality of life updates to make these work better in the future.

@orcbeard92 Ok, that was good info.
Saving / reloading resets the hut to all community JVs.
Reloading again (without saving first) creates a mix of generated and community JVs.

Problem is community JVs are always only LVL1 and thus useless.

This may also explain why hiring JVs from the hut doesn't fulfill weekly challenges.

@kormac67 It is a bit bizarre at the moment and doesn't seem to be working as intended. The Jomsvikings don't seem to use their rations either when in battle, so it may be something we see addressed in the patch next week.

It begs the question as to how exactly the ranked lvl 3 warriors work - my guy keeps getting hired, and I get the silver for it, so where is he going? Who is using him and how is this benefitting other players, if others like yourself can never seem to find them? The return and incentive for your Jomsviking at the moment and lending them to other people seems very low.

There was a game called Dragons Dogma that had a similar system, where other players could use an NPC you create, and you would get rewards from it etc. But in that game, people could actually rate the NPC, give them gifts or even gear to then carry back to you when you next logged in. I was hoping the system here in Valhalla might be the same.

I think an improved UI or something needs to be added to the Jomsvikings so we can see what is going on a bit better. Higher ranked vikings get better rewards? Lending one to your friend gets you something interesting? Just something to give it a bit more incentive would be nice. Would also add to some world-building, creating a mercenary network for your people, operating out of Ravensthorpe. Jomsvikings are mercenaries, so we should be able to hire them and use them in a less arbitrary way too.

Odyssey at least had rare NPC's out in the world for you to capture into your crew. Valhalla needs something a bit more dynamic than just picking up dudes at your clubhouse.