Mechanics

Every system in this bucket is keeping a tally you cannot see. Sigurd is counting how many times you have disappointed him. Hildiran is counting medals. The settlement is counting buildings. Even the rap battles are counting wins and paying them out as charisma. None of these counters appear anywhere in the interface, and three of them are irreversible by the time you notice.

So this guide takes the seven mechanics pages in order of how much a miscount costs you, starting with the one that changes the ending of the game.

Three strikes and the ending changes

The single most expensive counter in Valhalla is the one tracking Sigurd's opinion of you. Our choices and consequences page calls the failures Sigurd Strikes, and both it and our best ending page agree on the threshold: five moments are graded, and three wrong ones lose you the good outcome. You have room to fail two, and no more.

Get those right and Sigurd's respect holds. Our best ending page describes the result: he declares his time as Jarl over and names Eivor in his place, and both brothers stay in England. Get three of them wrong and he goes back to Norway.

The second and third of those are the ones people trip over, because neither reads like a moral test. The Randvi one in particular is a straightforward romance option with a heart icon next to it, and taking it is exactly the sort of thing an RPG normally rewards. Our romance guide says so outright: going through with Randvi before she and Sigurd have parted is a strike.

The counter that decides who you can bring home

The romance system has a rule that most of the others do not: one relationship at a time. Nine characters are written up on our romance page, which sounds generous until you read them individually.

Bil wants her comb retrieved from the bottom of a lake. Petra wants an archery date and likes you whether you win it or not. Broder wants a conversation at his sister's wedding. Stigr the Amorous is won by beating him at flyting, which is the only romance in the game gated behind a minigame. Tewdwr and Vili both arrive as a regional storyline finishes, and Vili moves to your settlement regardless of what you say, as long as you did not make him jarl. Gunlodr needs Thor's Bridal Circlet from the Asgard section as a gift.

Two of the nine are not really nine. Stowe's entry ends with him not being interested, because he is interested in Kere, so the list of characters you can actually romance is shorter than the list of characters the page covers. And the tenth romance in the folder is not on that page at all: Ciara arrives with Wrath of the Druids and is explicitly a fling you cannot take back to Ravensthorpe.

The counters that pay you back

The Ravensthorpe settlement keeps the most visible tally in the game and it runs on two currencies that come from opposite activities. Raw materials and supplies, and the price per structure rises in fixed steps as the settlement grows.

The part worth planning around is the food buildings, because they are the only structures that hand you a permanent combat stat. Cattle Farm gives 3% ranged damage, Grain Farm gives 3% armour, Fowl Farm gives 3% melee damage, and Hunwald and Swanburrow's House gives 2.5% assassination damage. All four also feed the Feast Buff, as do the Bakery, the Brewery and Alvis and Holger's House. If you are a Bear build there is a farm with your name on it, and it costs 60 raw materials.

Everything else in the settlement is a service rather than a stat. Gunnar at the Blacksmith is where your ingots go. Olsen at the Cartographer sells maps that mark valuables for you, priced by what they find: 50 silver for abilities, 35 for gear, 35 for raw materials and 15 for ingots. The Stable and Aviary trains the horse in swimming, endurance and strength. Octavian's Museum wants Roman artifacts. The Hidden Ones Bureau is what starts the Order of the Ancients hunt.

Supplies come from raiding, which is the loop the whole settlement sits on. Point the longboat at the yellow circle, take the prompt, and the raid does not end until every piece of wealth on the map is found. The tip that matters most on that page is that your crew is a distraction: on high difficulty, let them fight and go straight for the barricaded doors rather than clearing the camp first.

The endgame counter

Mastery Challenges is the only system here with a hard entry requirement: power level 221 and the Uninvited Guests story finished. What follows is three trials at a shrine in Sciropescire named Bear, Wolf and Raven, which are the same three names the entire gear and skill system uses. Bear tests combat, Wolf tests ranged, Raven tests stealth, and the gear you use is chosen for you, so it is a test of the playstyle rather than of your build.

Medals are the currency and there are two pools. Mastery Energy buys weapons at a flat 15 each, six of them including Dokkalfar's Revenge, Icy Death and Brokkr's Pride. Battle Energy buys cosmetics, from 30 for a brazier or a statue up to 100 for the Tundra Tree, with tattoos at 50 apiece. The real counter is the vault: it opens at 9 silver and 15 bronze medallions, and inside is Odin's Eye.

A bronze medal is enough to get paid at all, which is the useful floor. Anything above that is a better exchange rate rather than a different reward.

The counter that only buys dialogue

Flyting is the gentlest system in the bucket and the one with the widest reach: seventeen rhymers spread across fifteen regions, from Manning in Rygjafylke to Ratatoskr the squirrel in Jotunheim, with Thor himself waiting in Asgard. Each duel is three lines and each has exactly one correct answer, and winning raises Eivor's charisma, which unlocks dialogue options elsewhere.

Two of the seventeen are worth knowing about before you get there. Fergal the Faceless in Grantebridgescire cannot be lost, so pick whatever you like. And Stigr the Amorous in Snotinghamscire is the crossover between this system and the romance one, since beating him is how you romance him. The blue mask icon on the map is what you are looking for.