No No No No No
The new skill tree is genius. People who like to tinker with builds can have a fun time. It's much more interesting than no brainer design. It doesn't require 300 IQ thinking process either. It is straighforward. Those who don't want to build a character but follow the easiest path to development just commit to one tree and keep spending points there. Once you fully unlock one tree, focus on skills in other trees that complete your build. You play a lot with bow? Go wolf and buy ranged damage, You don't parry a lot and prefer evasion? Go raven. It's simple as that.

Btw if you dislike the most recent skill you bought you can always reset a few skill points by right clicking them. You don't have to reset the whole tree. If you only reset a part then the path remains visible to you.

Anomalies are fun feature that remind us that we are in animus. They are completely optional. I appreciate that Ubisoft added something modern to the game considering the fact that modern story is short. I also like how we change to Layla. She is getting additional screentime at least. Those anomalies are also fun for those who miss parkour. Due to the era we don't have large cities and running on rooftops. Climbing up large buildings is no existent. Anomalies help fill that void. Assassin's Creed has always been a mix of sci-fi/fantasy/history. You clearly want to push out a part of the series identity. You push out sci-fi, you make the series a generic RPG like many others that are on the market.

If you are real AC then you should accept it for what it really is. And certainly it never was a full fantasy/historical game.

@chevy_man2010 it's not horrible design. It's different design. Not your taste and that is fine. But don't call it horrible design because it is present in other games. Your main character is powerful enough to overpower enemies but not to be totally overpowered. Also, did you consider maybe the problem is with you and not enemies? I'm on 153 power level and fight enemies with 160 with ease on 3rd difficulty. I don't find the game challenging that much unless I'm against Zealots or witches. From what I can see you only ask for god mode with no damage for your health bar.

In general the stealth mechanics that returned in Valhalla are heavily inefficient in open space villages and require too much set-up to replace aggresive stealth playstyle even for fun. There’s no reason to walk slow and look for drunkards or crowds because too much is sacrificed for too little. That's coming from someone who would love to use them. My observations are based on default stealth difficulty and these are suggestions what should be amended:

1. Moving away in the opposite direction should drastically decrease the gauge to stop guards from following asap. Even if a guard closes the distance the gauge should still decrease rapidly because the player turned his back and walks away. Currently when guards suspect us and we walk away the gauge still fills up because guards follow us and they are faster than the player. If NPC moved to a different spot and shortly after restarts his walk pattern in random direction like in the attached example the player is practically busted. Notice how despite of getting stuck the guard could still easily close the distance with his high speed.

2. Crowd could work like dancers in the past. We should actually lead them. Blending in crowds is not effective because NPCs walk their own path and Valhalla streets are wide and in general there is lots of open space. Therefore the alternatives are much better and the player will not look for crowd and wait until they go to the place he is interested in. Maybe implement the option to control the crowd by paying them with additional input? A little bribe as a gift for successful Norse-Saxon partnership

3. Drunkards should completely block suspicion from guards unless we are very close to them. Basically a 2nd grade "crowd". Guards suspect the player walking next to drunkard from a few meters away. Again, it's not worth the effort if we still need to walk around. I could do that myself without drunkard. Also the range of drunkards should be slightly larger when we leave them for luring in nearby guards.

4. Allow Synin to highlight drunkards and crowds. This would work like infiltration opportunity in past games. Synin unlike others birds encourage the player to actually explore restricted areas but could be more supportive in other aspects. Numerous times I entered the village and didn't meet crowd or drunkard on the way. When we fly over those camps drunkards and crowds could be highlighted with light gray colour as they are during Odin's Sight. This way we could place manual marker on them like we do with enemies? And then remove them automatically once we interact with NPC. Or simply make those highlights visible to Eivor for several seconds after leaving Synin's view so we have enough time to plan infiltration path as we go.

It could be great. Returning to the former format of shorter stories for expansions. Perhaps 10-15h story for each expansion. No bloated with filler. A possibility of getting Shao Jun in a game or Aya's adventures in Rome gets me excited. Maybe we could get a story with Arno meeting Shay. This new game that will serve as a platform for different eras could end up great if Ubisoft delivers quality gameplay focused on combat, stealth and parkour. Take the best elements from RPG trilogy and from pre-RPG games. I think the base game of Infinity will have new assassins that we can play with in open world and do co-op missions while expansions will get returning characters and new characters. Expansions will be solely focused on single player experience because they will replace standalone games. People that like side content, mini games, events will get those in the base game. This will allow to speed up the delivery of expansions which will expand lore and characters. This also means that a price for expansions will be lower than for a full game.

It could be great. Returning to the former format of shorter stories for expansions. Perhaps 10-15h story for each expansion. No bloated with filler. A possibility of getting Shao Jun in a game or Aya's adventures in Rome gets me excited. Maybe we could get a story with Arno meeting Shay. This new game that will serve as a platform for different eras could end up great if Ubisoft delivers quality gameplay focused on combat, stealth and parkour. Take the best elements from RPG trilogy and from pre-RPG games. I think the base game of Infinity will have new assassins that we can play with in open world and do co-op missions while expansions will get returning characters and new characters. Expansions will be solely focused on single player experience because they will replace standalone games. People that like side content, mini games, events will get those in the base game. This will allow to speed up the delivery of expansions which will expand lore and characters. This also means that a price for expansions will be lower than for a full game.

It has been months. Several threads regarding this subject on reddit with hundreds or thousands upvotes. YouTube vidoes. Twitter posts.

And still no fix.

This clip was recorded after the most recent patch. We are still dealing with:

• instant detection without warning
• instant detection by going suddenly yellow to red because of enemy afar

This is Apprentice difficulty. The issue is not difficulty which only changes the timer on slow down and search duration.

And this classic that went viral Probably it has been already seen by devs.

@ubi-borealis Thank you. I noticed one more issue with Needler. Headshots not always spawn the cloud despite of remaining in stealth. I included another video on YT for a better resolution. Three clips showcasing interaction smoke -> sleep, sleep -> smoke and Needler at the end.

@ubi-borealis General Borealis! We meet again.

I know there was little time left before the expansion release so any fix and buff to sleep arrows will come later. Please make sure the development team will fix and buff sleep arrows in coming months (I'm realist lol) because they don't work well alongside smoke arrows either. Putting enemies to sleep beforehand or afterwards always ceases to work the moment smoke cloud reaches those enemies.

While we are at it, there is a bow Needler with the ability "Stealth headshot creates a Sleep Cloud around the body". Since it is the same small cloud as in our ability the bow is of no practical value. The cloud almost never reaches out enemies around our target. In the case of this bow it would be a good idea to not only increase the cloud but also make the cloud remain on dead body like a trap from Bullseye bow or traps from AC Origins.

Thorn of Slumber has been bugged for months and it has not been adressed yet. Please @Ubi-Borealis or someone pass feedback to the team. Can you increase the cloud from Thorn of Slumber? Targets in group are usually not registered. Arrow puts to sleep 1 or 2 out of 3 guards etc. It is inconsistent. Realistically the player is unable to put 3 guards to sleep in normal conditions. They need to be extremely close. That means this is only possible when the player lures them in with whistling. Kinda defeats the purpose of sleep arrows as a range tool. Currently this skill is RNG which is bad for stealth play.
Video

/p>

@revenantsp1 The speed is fine. I don't see much difference between walking fast without hood and with hood. To be blunt... since November I thought I had to press walk button not to get spotted easily and only today after reading this thread I realized the mistake. Back in the day detection while being hooded was broken and instantaneous without pressing walk so I rarely walked faster ^_^''

@reborncraig because you have picked it up earlier? There are many players with the same issue. They have the quest name but the quest objective didn't update properly. The white text advising to return to Hunwald is not visible on screen and Hunwald doesn't have updated dialogue either.

@siliconhobbit I think the game doesn't tell it to the player but we are supposed to press direction that is the opposite of the direction the fish took. That's how it worked in Far Cry 5 and we all know that Ubisoft teams borrow ideas from one another. So if fish goes right, you press left and mash spacebar. The most it took for me for bigger fish was about 20 seconds. Not 5-10 minutes. Maybe I was lucky.

@chevy_man2010 it's not horrible design. It's different design. Not your taste and that is fine. But don't call it horrible design because it is present in other games. Your main character is powerful enough to overpower enemies but not to be totally overpowered. Also, did you consider maybe the problem is with you and not enemies? I'm on 153 power level and fight enemies with 160 with ease on 3rd difficulty. I don't find the game challenging that much unless I'm against Zealots or witches. From what I can see you only ask for god mode with no damage for your health bar.

In general the stealth mechanics that returned in Valhalla are heavily inefficient in open space villages and require too much set-up to replace aggresive stealth playstyle even for fun. There’s no reason to walk slow and look for drunkards or crowds because too much is sacrificed for too little. That's coming from someone who would love to use them. My observations are based on default stealth difficulty and these are suggestions what should be amended:

1. Moving away in the opposite direction should drastically decrease the gauge to stop guards from following asap. Even if a guard closes the distance the gauge should still decrease rapidly because the player turned his back and walks away. Currently when guards suspect us and we walk away the gauge still fills up because guards follow us and they are faster than the player. If NPC moved to a different spot and shortly after restarts his walk pattern in random direction like in the attached example the player is practically busted. Notice how despite of getting stuck the guard could still easily close the distance with his high speed.

2. Crowd could work like dancers in the past. We should actually lead them. Blending in crowds is not effective because NPCs walk their own path and Valhalla streets are wide and in general there is lots of open space. Therefore the alternatives are much better and the player will not look for crowd and wait until they go to the place he is interested in. Maybe implement the option to control the crowd by paying them with additional input? A little bribe as a gift for successful Norse-Saxon partnership

3. Drunkards should completely block suspicion from guards unless we are very close to them. Basically a 2nd grade "crowd". Guards suspect the player walking next to drunkard from a few meters away. Again, it's not worth the effort if we still need to walk around. I could do that myself without drunkard. Also the range of drunkards should be slightly larger when we leave them for luring in nearby guards.

4. Allow Synin to highlight drunkards and crowds. This would work like infiltration opportunity in past games. Synin unlike others birds encourage the player to actually explore restricted areas but could be more supportive in other aspects. Numerous times I entered the village and didn't meet crowd or drunkard on the way. When we fly over those camps drunkards and crowds could be highlighted with light gray colour as they are during Odin's Sight. This way we could place manual marker on them like we do with enemies? And then remove them automatically once we interact with NPC. Or simply make those highlights visible to Eivor for several seconds after leaving Synin's view so we have enough time to plan infiltration path as we go.