He told her, "Take your daughter and whatever wealth you want."
She asked, "Do you mind the loss of your sword so much?"
"I'd have to lose a great deal of money before I minded as much the loss of that sword."
"Then you shall never have it, since you have treated me dishonourably."

 Laxdæla saga

I hadn't actually realised until coming onto this forum that one-handed swords weren't featured in this game. Absolutely baffling decision.
Swords in the Viking Era were afforded so much prestige and respect - any warrior worth his salt would own one; they were given names, passed down from father to son, buried with their owners, stolen from burial mounds, believed to have magic powers and there are quite literally HUNDREDS of them which have recovered from archaeological finds across Europe from Scotland to Russia.
Swords are intrinsically linked to the Viking Age and to have produced a video game set in that period without a single sword being available for use by the player is just utterly bizarre.

Please fix this glaring omission, Ubisoft.

Totally agree - the lack of cool loot seriously impacts my desire to explore locations other than just to see what a certain landmark looks like up close.

I can't tell you how disappointed I was to find the famous Sutton Hoo burial mound on the map, make my way there excited about what cool piece of armour might be there; maybe the beautiful helmet or the shield or maybe even the sword (as an upscaled two-hander perhaps ffs) and waddaya get? Some random bandit looking shield.
Travel to the site of what's believed to be King Raedwald's grave, one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th Century and you get a terrible looking shield. A cheap kite shield no less, 150 years before they even appeared in England. At the burial ground of a 7th Century king. WAT.

It's kinda depressing. I'm hoping they'll patch in more armour and weapon sets later on down the line.

So I'm actually really enjoying Valhalla so far; the world looks incredible, the story and characters are engaging and it runs really well, but there are a few issues I'm hoping you guys can iron out in upcoming patches:

First off, the generic Norse warriors - they look awful. All the other factions have a nice range of character models and equipment types, but the Norse warriors have literally 3 minor variations of the same uninteresting bright blue costume, no tattoos, no helmets, no weapon variation and in general they really are the worst looking NPC's in the entire game. Considering they're supposed to be the picked warriors of an invading army, it's bizarre the bandit faction have better kit. Please add a bit more variety, it's fairly immersion breaking as is.
More AA options would be cool - I think the game is using TXAA at present, which is decent, but really impacts the image quality - everything looks quite fuzzy at times with a LOT of ghosting and the overall image looks worse than Odyssey, despite the improvements to the lighting engine.
An option to turn off the in-game and map markers completely when using your raven - bit of a hardcore choice, but it would make exploration much more organic. Rather than heading to the next bright yellow or blue dot on the map, you'd head to points of interest you could actually see in the world - an interesting looking hill or tower or whatever. I've had the most fun exploring when I've stumbled across a side quest completely by accident, really adds to the sense of travelling in an unknown land.
Combat - it needs to feel more engaging and hard hitting. At the moment, your weapon impacts lack, well, impact. I think I've been spoiled by Ghost of Tsushima, but the combat in Valhalla just lacks a certain oomph - yeah, it's cool when you lop someone's head off or smash them into a wall, but it's missing weight and precision. I think it would benefit from greater feedback during hits, more blood, and probably a slightly closer camera. Also, it feels a little glitchy - characters have a tendency to teleport into positions for certain animations and the animations themselves, while cool, become very boring after you've seen the same one 20 times in a row.
Sound mixing - possibly subjective and linked to hardware, but the sound mixing seems really off to me - voices and footsteps are too loud, ambient sounds too quiet, the music is sometimes loud, sometimes soft - there are issues. The voices in particular, similar to Origins, are so loud it actually hurts my ears and I've had to fiddle with my PC's sound controls and the in-game options slider to try and find a solution which isn't unbearable. Odyssey did not have this problem.
Crew - probably a bug, but when selecting my crew, the characters as they appear in the selection screen do not match what they look like in-game. For example, one of the crew wears a helmet, looks kinda cool, in-game he looks completely different. Bit weird.
Iron ore - be nice if it didn't sparkle so. I get the idea is to make it easier to spot, but it looks really out of place. Personally, I'd prefer they blend more in with the world and can be highlighted by holding V or spotting them with your raven - it'd help keep the world looking more cohesive.
NPC's in the world - again, not sure if it's a bug, but often I'll arrive at a settlement or a farm and all the NPC's are stood doing nothing, staring into space. What's all that about? Also, day/night behaviour, why isn't that a thing? Skyrim was doing this in 2011. Entering a city at midnight should mean the streets are basically deserted yet you've got these poor NPC's working 24/7 without a break. Evil.
Scabbards? It's 2020 and bare swords are still hanging from character's belts or magically stuck on their backs with no scabbards. Come on now.
Clothing and fur physics - again, it's 2020, why are cloaks animated like blocks of wood and clothing/fur on characters completely lack any physics based movement at all?
Bugs - bugs, bugs, bugs. There's quite a few.

So yeah. Few gripes and there's definitely a few more I can't think of off the top of my head; but honestly, overall, this is a great game. Just needs a little improvement.

Ah and before I forget; SWORDS - where the Hel are all the swords? Swords were a big deal back then; hundreds have been found in graves and rivers all over Europe, the historical accounts and sagas mention them constantly and we know people of the Viking era revered and treasured them. If you could afford it, the first thing you bought as a warrior was a sword. Swords were important. Every major Viking character in this game should have a sword, not just an axe. Eivor should definitely have a sword. This is a major issue, guys.

First off, one handed swords, they need to be in the game. Please fix this.
Secondly, Not sure if anyone has suggested this yet, but I'd quite like to see a better use for all the iron ore I'm collecting in-game and a far greater reward for mini-bosses - custom weapons.

So, new character / addon to the blacksmith, a master swordsmith; once they arrive in your settlement, you gain the ability to design and craft your own weapons. Doesn't have to be anything too fancy - blades, hilts, handles, etching and an option to name it - something similar to the gunsmith in Ghost Recon. You could collect parts in the world through exploring and looting, with unique weapon parts being a reward for defeating a boss etc and then use the parts to assemble your own unique weapons or complete a "set" to build a specific weapon. Each part could have a rating and unique stats / bonuses allowing you to combine them into your very own epic raven-feeder. As an incentive to Ubisoft management, it's also obviously very monetizable.

First off, one handed swords, they need to be in the game. Please fix this.
Secondly, Not sure if anyone has suggested this yet, but I'd quite like to see a better use for all the iron ore I'm collecting in-game and a far greater reward for mini-bosses - custom weapons.

So, new character / addon to the blacksmith, a master swordsmith; once they arrive in your settlement, you gain the ability to design and craft your own weapons. Doesn't have to be anything too fancy - blades, hilts, handles, etching and an option to name it - something similar to the gunsmith in Ghost Recon. You could collect parts in the world through exploring and looting, with unique weapon parts being a reward for defeating a boss etc and then use the parts to assemble your own unique weapons or complete a "set" to build a specific weapon. Each part could have a rating and unique stats / bonuses allowing you to combine them into your very own epic raven-feeder. As an incentive to Ubisoft management, it's also obviously very monetizable.

Can we pretty please get some better clothing variety for the Viking NPC's - I'm going to keep banging this drum because it's so immersion breaking having to see these weird blue clones all the time. There's literally about 3 outfit variations for the regular warriors and no variation at all for the berserkers.
Vikings wore trousers, cloaks, leg wraps, tunics, mail and helmets. Many of the Saxon warriors look more like Vikings than the Vikings do. This is a shame - especially given how important NPC's DO wear trousers, cloaks, leg wraps and tunics (although they should be also wearing mail and helmets).

Sell it to me if you have to; I will happily pay through the store for more interesting Viking outfit sets for my allies.

So, this is irritating. He looks kinda badass in the selection screen and in game... well. Not so much. Sort of like a weird Native American.
Bit of a running theme with regards to the allied Vikings in this game - they feel like the developers might have ran out of time and just went "yeah fine it'll do". The Saxons have this nice variation to them, individual classes and equipment types - helmets, authentic-ish padded tunics, trousers, helmets and mail armour. S'alright. The allied Vikings on the other hand are weird, heavy-metal fantasy types - leather everywhere, not a single helmet to be seen, no trousers for some ungodly reason (ever been to Northern Europe? It's really cold most of the year), no tattoos (weird), everyone owns a bear skin cloak (again, weird).
Hopefully this stuff will get patched in later and improvements will be made overall.

Totally agree - the lack of cool loot seriously impacts my desire to explore locations other than just to see what a certain landmark looks like up close.

I can't tell you how disappointed I was to find the famous Sutton Hoo burial mound on the map, make my way there excited about what cool piece of armour might be there; maybe the beautiful helmet or the shield or maybe even the sword (as an upscaled two-hander perhaps ffs) and waddaya get? Some random bandit looking shield.
Travel to the site of what's believed to be King Raedwald's grave, one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th Century and you get a terrible looking shield. A cheap kite shield no less, 150 years before they even appeared in England. At the burial ground of a 7th Century king. WAT.

It's kinda depressing. I'm hoping they'll patch in more armour and weapon sets later on down the line.

I can't be the only one who thinks this; enemy Vikings look absolutely badass and Allied Vikings look like sky blue milksops. And why does every. single. one of them have a bear skin cloak?

Please do something about this, Ubisoft. It's depressing. #HelmetsForTheRavenClan

Look how badass this dude is. I want this guy storming a fort with me.
I keep seeing corpses in the game wearing the above armour and other interesting variations, yet every living allied Viking NPC is bare-headed with the default shield type. Is this deliberate or an oversight or a bug? Feels to me like it might be an oversight or a bug - during a cutscene in one of the Ledecesrescire missions, some rando Viking NPC wearing a helmet appears, gets ordered to do a task by one of the Ragnarssons and is never seen again plus there is a helmeted Viking you can select as part of your crew, but in-game he's bare-headed.

Be pretty sweet if Ubisoft would adjust the variations of the allied Viking NPC's so we had these awesome looking helmeted warriors cutting around with us - at the moment, I dunno, the Viking NPCs just don't look cool enough.

He told her, "Take your daughter and whatever wealth you want."
She asked, "Do you mind the loss of your sword so much?"
"I'd have to lose a great deal of money before I minded as much the loss of that sword."
"Then you shall never have it, since you have treated me dishonourably."

 Laxdæla saga

I hadn't actually realised until coming onto this forum that one-handed swords weren't featured in this game. Absolutely baffling decision.
Swords in the Viking Era were afforded so much prestige and respect - any warrior worth his salt would own one; they were given names, passed down from father to son, buried with their owners, stolen from burial mounds, believed to have magic powers and there are quite literally HUNDREDS of them which have recovered from archaeological finds across Europe from Scotland to Russia.
Swords are intrinsically linked to the Viking Age and to have produced a video game set in that period without a single sword being available for use by the player is just utterly bizarre.

Please fix this glaring omission, Ubisoft.

Ah and before I forget; SWORDS - where the Hel are all the swords? Swords were a big deal back then; hundreds have been found in graves and rivers all over Europe, the historical accounts and sagas mention them constantly and we know people of the Viking era revered and treasured them. If you could afford it, the first thing you bought as a warrior was a sword. Swords were important. Every major Viking character in this game should have a sword, not just an axe. Eivor should definitely have a sword. This is a major issue, guys.

So I'm actually really enjoying Valhalla so far; the world looks incredible, the story and characters are engaging and it runs really well, but there are a few issues I'm hoping you guys can iron out in upcoming patches:

First off, the generic Norse warriors - they look awful. All the other factions have a nice range of character models and equipment types, but the Norse warriors have literally 3 minor variations of the same uninteresting bright blue costume, no tattoos, no helmets, no weapon variation and in general they really are the worst looking NPC's in the entire game. Considering they're supposed to be the picked warriors of an invading army, it's bizarre the bandit faction have better kit. Please add a bit more variety, it's fairly immersion breaking as is.
More AA options would be cool - I think the game is using TXAA at present, which is decent, but really impacts the image quality - everything looks quite fuzzy at times with a LOT of ghosting and the overall image looks worse than Odyssey, despite the improvements to the lighting engine.
An option to turn off the in-game and map markers completely when using your raven - bit of a hardcore choice, but it would make exploration much more organic. Rather than heading to the next bright yellow or blue dot on the map, you'd head to points of interest you could actually see in the world - an interesting looking hill or tower or whatever. I've had the most fun exploring when I've stumbled across a side quest completely by accident, really adds to the sense of travelling in an unknown land.
Combat - it needs to feel more engaging and hard hitting. At the moment, your weapon impacts lack, well, impact. I think I've been spoiled by Ghost of Tsushima, but the combat in Valhalla just lacks a certain oomph - yeah, it's cool when you lop someone's head off or smash them into a wall, but it's missing weight and precision. I think it would benefit from greater feedback during hits, more blood, and probably a slightly closer camera. Also, it feels a little glitchy - characters have a tendency to teleport into positions for certain animations and the animations themselves, while cool, become very boring after you've seen the same one 20 times in a row.
Sound mixing - possibly subjective and linked to hardware, but the sound mixing seems really off to me - voices and footsteps are too loud, ambient sounds too quiet, the music is sometimes loud, sometimes soft - there are issues. The voices in particular, similar to Origins, are so loud it actually hurts my ears and I've had to fiddle with my PC's sound controls and the in-game options slider to try and find a solution which isn't unbearable. Odyssey did not have this problem.
Crew - probably a bug, but when selecting my crew, the characters as they appear in the selection screen do not match what they look like in-game. For example, one of the crew wears a helmet, looks kinda cool, in-game he looks completely different. Bit weird.
Iron ore - be nice if it didn't sparkle so. I get the idea is to make it easier to spot, but it looks really out of place. Personally, I'd prefer they blend more in with the world and can be highlighted by holding V or spotting them with your raven - it'd help keep the world looking more cohesive.
NPC's in the world - again, not sure if it's a bug, but often I'll arrive at a settlement or a farm and all the NPC's are stood doing nothing, staring into space. What's all that about? Also, day/night behaviour, why isn't that a thing? Skyrim was doing this in 2011. Entering a city at midnight should mean the streets are basically deserted yet you've got these poor NPC's working 24/7 without a break. Evil.
Scabbards? It's 2020 and bare swords are still hanging from character's belts or magically stuck on their backs with no scabbards. Come on now.
Clothing and fur physics - again, it's 2020, why are cloaks animated like blocks of wood and clothing/fur on characters completely lack any physics based movement at all?
Bugs - bugs, bugs, bugs. There's quite a few.

So yeah. Few gripes and there's definitely a few more I can't think of off the top of my head; but honestly, overall, this is a great game. Just needs a little improvement.