Bosses

Thirteen pages sit in this bucket and only six of them are what most games would call a boss. The other seven are lists. That distinction is the useful one, because a fight the story puts in front of you needs a strategy and half an hour, while a list of targets scattered across England needs a route and a decision about whether you are doing it at all.

The two halves also connect in one place, and it is the most consequential choice in the bucket: a single dialogue option after a story fight decides whether the largest kill list comes to you or you go to it.

The six fights the game hands you

These are one-off encounters attached to a quest. You cannot miss them and you cannot postpone them, so the only question is how they are fought.

Two of those pay out in a way the others do not. Balor is the only one on the list that hands you a named weapon for winning. And Leofrith is the only one whose outcome you choose, which is what the rest of this guide turns on.

The choice that moves fifteen fights

Beat Leofrith and the game asks whether to kill him or spare him. Our Leofrith page and our Zealots page describe the same consequence and disagree about whether it is good news, which is the most useful thing about it.

Kill him and the Zealots come after you for the rest of the game. Spare him and he gives up the location of a Special Scroll. The boss page frames the first option as making the game harder. The Zealots page frames it as a convenience, because the alternative is combing fifteen regions for horsemen who are only visible on the map when you are already within a few metres of them. Both are right. If you want the Order finished, killing him is the fastest route to it and you should expect ambushes. If you would rather clear England at your own pace, spare him and hunt them with Odin's Sight.

The kill lists, and how many are on each

Seven pages are hunts rather than fights. Sorted by how much of your time they ask for:

The Order of the Ancients is the spine of four of those rows and the arithmetic is stated plainly on the Zealots page: 45 targets in total, split as 15 Zealots and 30 Order Members. The Zealots roam, the Order Members hide behind clues, and the difference in how you find them is the difference in how the pages are written. A Zealot page is a list of regions and power levels. A Warden page is a list of clues, because the game will not even tell you the target's name until you have found two or three notes.

Yohanes Loukas is the clearest example. Our Wardens of Faith page has you find a clue at a festival east of Hengefarm, a second at the Readingum Abbey pig farm, and a third down a well beside the same pen, and only then does the game name The Oil and put him at Fearnhamme. That is three separate errands for one assassination, and there are six Wardens of Faith alone.

One caveat on the Order arithmetic, and it is worth knowing before you plan a completionist run. Two of our pages list the Order's branches as Zealots, Warden of War, Warden of Law and Warden of Wealth, which is four and does not include the Wardens of Faith. The Wardens of Faith page itself says the Order is divided into six sets. So our own coverage is two branches out of somewhere between four and six, and the branch list you read depends on which page you opened. The 45-target total is consistent across the pages that state it; the breakdown is not.

The two lists that are not about the Order at all

The Lost Drengr are the purest thing in this bucket. Six warriors from Ragnar Lothbrok's old guard, scattered across Norway and England, waiting in caves and on hilltops for someone to duel. They scale hard: the one in Hordafylke sits at power level 370, which is above almost anything else our guides quote, and there is no reward beyond winning. You talk to them and the fight starts.

The Legendary Animals are the other list with no faction attached, eleven named beasts including the Black Shuck in East Anglia, the Corpse's Feeder in Perie and the Beast of the Hills at the Uriconium Ruins. The pattern across the entries is consistent enough to be a strategy in itself: every one of them is easier with a bow than with an axe, and every one of them drops a head, a ration and leather. Deliver the pelts to the Hunter's Hut and the trophies go up in the longhouse.

If you are working out where to start, the Frankish Nobles are the shortest complete set in the bucket at three targets, and the Children of Danu at ten are the only list that pays a resource rather than a trophy. For the fights themselves, Leofrith first, and decide what you want to do with him before you swing.