I was hoping it would be something like Bloody Palace from Devil May Cry. Maybe i didn't watch the trailer properly, so my bad. But what i hate the most is when developers adds conditions to the gameplay. Like "you need to kill all enemies, but must use only this or must not do that". Which is exactly what this mode does. You may say it's not obligation to complete the challenge, but it is obligation if you want the gold medal. So for example, instead of fighting properly, i am trying to position myself to throw enemy into fire or from the ledge, resulting the whole fight looking stupid. Why? I don't see a challenge in this. Put some hard enemy in front of me and let me do whatever i want to survive and beat him. That is challenge. If you add rules, it also reduces immersion. In the game world it feels unnatural. There are rules made by whom? A developer god, i guess. This mode is just boring frustration. Sorry.

@freestepper it wouldn't even be that bad but for the archery ones you have to HIT EVERY SINGLE shot or you won't get full score and thats just not fun

The Developers who dreamed up this Mastery Challenge have to themselves do some of the challenges. Make sure you make a video of your game play. You designed them, lets see if you can complete them. Oh I got one gold medal to get the Skadi's AX. Now I am done with the challenges. Some of them are so far left field to complete they are a waste of time. Oh and the rewards available from the Mastery vendor are not worth the time and trouble either.

@ChuckKatse
Those are all great points, and I certainly agree!! I'm just wondering where the devs came up with the mastery challenge idea. Did we, the community, ask for this? Unless I'm missing something, I don't think we did. I personally would have loved some new side missions or daily missions to fill in the gap between the Paris DLC. Gosh, I would have preferred almost anything but these ridiculous challenges.

I actually really like the idea of the mastery challenges, but I find them frustrating, which is something completely different from hard. A lot of times Valhalla simply does not do what you expect. Eivor gets stuck a lot during the challenges, or does not have enough space to move freely. NPC’s get randomly killed when you kick them back, immidiately after being kicked once, without falling. NPC’s suddenly have eyes in their back (but not always). Assassinate option suddenly disappears in resulting Eivor striking the enemy and blowing his/her/it’s cover. And I can go on. I would love it if it was just hard, but I hate it because now it is mostly frustrating. I have to restart 20 times, not because I do something wrong, but because Valhalla behaves at its own will, completely random and buggy.

I agree with everyone here. I had an easy time of it yesterday, but today was just frustrating. I almost rage quit. It was challenging for all the wrong reasons. There is no consistency with what happens and skill or ingenuity is not rewarded. And it did look stupid. Its more like, figure-out-how-to-cheese-the-game mode.

In the game world it feels unnatural. There are rules made by whom? A developer god, i guess. This mode is just boring frustration. Sorry.

Have you played it, or just watched the trailer? There was something about a meteor and some version of a magic Meteor-Valka. I honestly couldn't pay attention. They rationalized it somehow? It was somehow obscure and vapid and lengthy all at the same time. I had to put my head on the desk for it.

Put some hard enemy in front of me and let me do whatever i want to survive and beat him. That is challenge. 

I wish for this SO MUCH. I don't know if I was spoiled by Odyssey's infinitely generating mercenary system, but this Mastery Challenge is like a slap in the face. It's like the devs who make this content do not have the skill to program in actual difficulty, so they handicap the player and exploit the existing erratic behavior instead.

Honestly, I would accept the constraints but only if they actually allowed me to use my gear and abilities as I see fit.

What's the point of me grindning materials for upgrades? What's the point of spending real money on store items? I can't use any of those.

Other than that, these challenges highlight everything that is broken about the game.

Ridiculous hitboxes for weak points. Absolutely broken and utterly **** stealth. Enemies are using some military grade radars because they can see you even if they are turned back. Extremely easy melee.

Sehr frustrierend. Bei weitem das schlechteste Add-on aller Zeiten.

yeah, some of these are absolutely horrible. I really hope they get patched, or this will be the first AC game I have not 100% completed. The Odins Mine Wolf challenge is by far the worst. A lot of the times that very beginning the enemies will straight up just kill each other or yeet themselves off the platforms and kill themselves. This immediately locks you out of gold. Its pretty ridiculous. Ubisoft PLEASE patch this to make this easier and fair. At least just add some extra enemies on the level to give just a tiny bit of wiggle room for glitches and AI acting poorly.

@cyberdragon92 More like patch this and remove the silly conditions, add some real challenges without any stupid conditions and let us play the game without limits.

All the archery challenge did is point out how utterly broken the Aim Assist and bows are in general .....

This is how bows should work ... Same studio, same game engine, same lead developer

@freestepper I agree!

Agree with everyone.

Was hoping for some boss fights like zealots, lolerian sisters or animal, but again couple locations to fit some crazy rules with broken mechanics.

I cant believe how great was Odyssey with base game, dlcs stories and roadmap and how bas is valhalla. Really lack of repleability, lack of interesting actitvities in suck awesome setting.

And waiting for this strong support ever like festivals of mastery challanges for half a year, really? To get pointless axe with no activities to use or to do same three river rads for 50 times when thr whole big England\ Norway map is empty and pointless?

Plus empty ending - so we'll need to wait for another 6 month to get something new.

Totally dissapointed.

I was so excited about this mastery challenges....now I am frustrated and disappointed as is ridiculously difficult so I literally don't play them.
Would love an arena mode with our builds that we worked hard to get,gear and runes. Put us challenges but no with such capped gear and ridiculous demands.
I don't play Royal demands,useless and boring. This mastery challenges I had put all my hopes in just to find they are utterly difficult and frustrating.

River raids. Same old.

Bah,honestly,am done.
This week they ask us 50 river raids for 5 opal.But Doesn't count the amount of camps,abbeys,forts you raid in each river. It only counts as 1 even if you raid the whole river. And they ask us to do 50 for the sake of nothing?

Definitely am parking the game until the siege of Paris comes out.

Well a lot of people were complaining that the game was too easy and that you get too overpowered too soon and so forth

So they made this part of the game harder and nerfed the overpowered builds

Moral of this story: Be careful what you wish for

In fact since a lot of the changes made to Valhalla as compared to Odyssey were things people complained about (side quests, too much loot, etc.) I would call this game

Assassin's Creed: Be Careful What You Wish For

@longjohn119 I suposse leason learned

@freestepper even worse, you can't even see how many rules or conditions you have filled. Wouldn't think it would be that hard to add a counter next to it and some extra enemies, especially because of how broken the stealth is without a hood.

Unpopular opinion, ... i like it.

Not the execution, but the idea.

I only cleared the first statue on gold (all 3), and combat was ... challenging.
Stealth was ok, but not to many movers.
Archery was .. odd, because shooting a pot and making explode did not count, cargo dropping from above did not count, only fire shots that don't initially kill them but make them burn out do. Intended or bug? Frustrating. Cause had instances where pots chain exploded and would not get the award from undirect kills, causing me to restart.

It's ok, but feels like not properly tested.

@lysvander A real archery challenge would be getting all insta-kill headshots .... I'm intentionally supposed to not kill them in one shot? For me that only happens when I screw up

That's got to be the dumbest archery challenge I've ever heard of ..... And I've been shooting bows since I was 10 (That's over 50 years experience)

@longjohn119 I get that, how good can you aim with a bow? But it does not have to be that.. What if, ... what can you do with a bow? Get all headshots seems like the "standard" challenge, to do with a bow. It's different now. Add fire, try to not go for the instant kill, it's different, but not executed perfectly.

I did not get the award when i shot the cargo from the trees, or when i shot the pots, but it would be a lot better then.

I try to immerse myself a bit. Here's a bow, but you can't directly kill your targets. Do your best.
But it's not tested very well, and thus works only so-so.