Ubisoft has released Title Update 1.2.0 for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which adds numerous in-game improvements including a weapon and armor transmog feature that fans have been requesting since launch. I'm happy it's finally here but I'm not thrilled by how it's been implemented.
The Assassin's Creed franchise shift towards RPG loot became fully realized in 2017's Origins, a system that was refined upon in 2018's Odyssey and finally feels in a fairly good place in 2020's Valhalla. In all three games, you're always chasing better loot in order to become stronger, allowing you to survive during higher level side quests and campaign missions.
But who cares about how powerful you are if you can't look good while doing it?
That's where the transmog feature comes in, which was first introduced in Odyssey during a post-launch patch. It allows you to transfer the appearance of your favorite-looking gear to your most-powerful gear, ensuring you keep getting stronger while also rocking your ideal look.
After its popularity in Odyssey, the hope was that Valhalla would just launch with it. No dice, unfortunately. But it is finally here. The problem is that Ubisoft has put restrictions on it.
See, in Odyssey, you could transmog whatever gear you wanted from the inventory menu at any time. The process didn't cost you anything either. However, in Valhalla, you have to return to your settlement and speak to your blacksmith in order to transmog a weapon or armor, and it will cost 50 Silver for each piece of gear you want to change.
Granted, Silver is incredibly common to come by early on--you'll regularly keep earning it as you kill and loot enemies and complete certain campaign arcs. But that process slows as you approach the end of the game, and Silver is a lot harder to come by once you've completed the campaign--unless you've just been hoarding gear and weapon runes and are willing to sell them. All in all though, this update feels a bit punishing for folks who have already put the hours into Valhalla.
I'm not so naïve to not notice that the Animus Store does allow you to pay real-world money for Silver. Valhalla is a bit better this time around when it comes to pushing microtransactions (Odyssey's structure definitely felt like it encouraged you to buy "time saver" packs a lot more), but I can't help but feel like Ubisoft's decision to put a price tag on the transmog feature is an underhanded way of getting folks to consider dropping a few more dollars on the game.
Plus, why force players to return to the settlement over and over again whenever they find a new sword that they want to make look like Excalibur or a piece of the sleek-looking Mentor's Armor Set that they want to imbue with the amazing critical damage dealing properties of the chonky Thegn's Armor Set? That just seems silly and such a waste of time, unless you're still in the midst of playing through Valhalla and thus regularly returning to your settlement anyway.
That's my one major gripe with Title Update 1.2.0. The rest of the update is pretty good. As seen in the full patch notes, it adds in-game support for Valhalla's next season, The Ostara Festival, and new cool-sounding skills for Eivor to unlock. Plus it fixes that terrifying bug that was causing dead baby pigs to rise back up, which always unnerved me a bit.