Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Exploration - big cities, missions, sailing Assassin's Creed Valhalla guide, walkthrough
This page of the guide to AC Valhalla is a collection of information about exploration. With it, you will learn all about exploring new lands, traveling around the world, and the activities you can encounter.
Last update: 04 January 2024
On this page of the Assassin's Creed Valhalla guide, you will find complete information about the exploration of the game world. You will find out, among other things, when you discover the next lands, ways of traveling around the world, what things are waiting to be discovered, and how you can make it easier for yourself to find secrets and other important content.
This page has minor spoilers about the lands you can visit in AC Valhalla. We do not explain the exact meaning of these regions, nor do we mention the important events that take place in them. You can read this chapter without worrying about major spoilers.
- Difficulty level of exploration
- Main lands in AC Valhalla
- Basics of exploring the world of AC Valhalla
- What happens when you reach the edge of the game's world?
Difficulty level of exploration
Assassin's Creed Valhalla allows you to set the difficulty level separately for exploration. You can do this for the first time when starting a new game, or later in the options menu. The three main difficulty levels are:
- Adventurer – the easy difficulty
- Explorer – the default normal difficulty level
- Pathfinder – the high difficulty
The difficulty level affects how much information the game displays on the screen to help you find locations. By choosing higher settings you can, e.g. limit HUD and compass, and reduce the number of icons appearing on the world map.
Regardless of the selected difficulty level, you can also enable/disable the distance and nearest activity icons.
It is worth noting here that even if you do not change the default difficulty level during the game, the game may force you to look for something related to a particular quest without any help.
In the later regions, more and more quests can contain only a textual description of the location that Eivor must reach – its marker may not be visible on the world map. This may mean that you need to analyze the map to find the key locations and viewpoints listed in the quest's description. Fortunately, this search is never very complicated. You can always read our walkthrough.
Main lands in AC Valhalla
There are four main lands available in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Each of them has a separate world map, and Eivor can travel between them quite freely. Each of these lands has unique locations, treasures, quests, and optional activities.
Norway, the Viking land where you start your adventure. It consists of two vast regions – you return to one of them later in the campaign.
Anglia is the largest and most important map in the game. It consists of a dozen or so regions and every larger region is associated with a separate saga – a series of quests. On the Anglia map, you will also find your Viking settlement – you can develop it as the game progresses.
Vinland is additional land – you visit it to complete one of the storylines. This map isn't large – it will take you at most several hours to fully explore it.
Asgard is a mythical land from Nordic mythology. The AC Valhalla's version of Asgard will take you about 10 hours – you can explore two not very extensive maps and complete a separate saga.
Basics of exploring the world of AC Valhalla
Each region in AC Valhalla (with two minor exceptions) has a suggested power level. This is advice regarding the suggested order of exploring the main regions. It's definitely not recommended to visit regions with a suggested power clearly exceeding (30+) Eivor's current power – the hero will have huge problems with eliminating even ordinary opponents.
The good news is that many adjacent territories have the same or slightly different suggested power. This allows you to choose the order of their exploration or cross their borders without fear of suddenly being in a very dangerous region. For more information, see the Suggested power and Regions - exploration order? pages.
All unexplored areas are initially covered by the so-called. fog of war. Even then, when you zoom in the camera, you can see drawings showing you what may be found in a given location (e.g. village or a lair of a tough animal). This can be a hint on where to go first.
As you move through the map, you will notice small points appearing on the map – they symbolize optional places that can be examined. These can be wealth (golden dots), mysteries (blue dots), or artifacts (white dots). We discussed this in more detail on the Colored dots on the map - what are they? page.
Vantage points/synchronization points, which also serve as fast travel points, are very helpful in discovering the world map and moving from point A to point B faster. The game marks them on the map even when you are far away – you can always determine where to go to reveal a large part of the map around the synchronization point.
It is worth noting here that synchronization points are not the only available fast travel points. Eivor can also move to ports and the Ravensthorpe. For more information, check out the Fast travel - how to activate? page.
You can move around the world much quicker by riding a horse. You will get free access to the mount shortly after starting the game. Eivor can summon the animal by whistling. The horse will help you get to unknown areas you can't access with fast travel.
More information can be found on the Horse - how to unlock? page.
One of the most important things to remember when exploring the world is to avoid falling from great heights because they can deal Eivor damage. Fortunately, this is a rare cause of death. However, you can have only a few health points left.
The problem described above can be partially solved by unlocking the Breakfall ability from the skill tree. With it, Eivor will automatically perform roll after landing, which can significantly reduce the received damage.
AC Valhalla has two mechanics that help you find objects in the surroundings. The first is Odin's Sight, which scans the area around you. After that, you will see for some time traces of different colors that may symbolize, among others, enemies, treasures, blockades, passages, or mission objectives. All this can be helpful to some degree.
One of the great advantages of Odin's Sight is that its use is unlimited. Activate it once every few seconds if, for example, you are investigating a location with a treasure or an enemy camp and want to avoid missing an opponent.
Sending a raven for reconnaissance is slightly less helpful, although still worth using. It can be useful in all those situations where Odin's Sight has failed (due to its limited range).
We recommend using the raven mainly for searching quest-related areas faster (e.g. to find the quest's target), as well as to locate and mark enemies, rare raw materials, and other objects lying in plain sight.
When searching for various treasures, you must be aware of that:
- Some secrets may be underground or on high shelves and balconies. When using Odin's Sight, move the camera vertically to avoid missing anything.
- Some secrets may be in places that are locked. The solution to this problem may be to find the key to the door (Eivor cannot use lockpicks) or a weak wall that can be destroyed.
For more tips and tricks, see Locked door - how to open? and Weakened wall - how to destroy it? pages.
The game has two options to make it easier for you to discover locations on the map. You can:
- Build a cartographer's hut in the settlement and buy advice regarding the locations on the map.
- Talk to people marked with a question mark encountered while traveling around the game world. You can also buy advice from them.
In our opinion, however, these are not cost-effective methods, as these NPCs don't sell maps of the most valuable treasures. The exception to this is the maps from the game store, i.e. those purchased with Helix Credits currency which you can get for real money. Our world atlas has maps and descriptions of all regions.
What happens when you reach the edge of the game's world?
The world of AC Valhalla has some limitations and you cannot go beyond each of the main maps. When you reach the edge of the map, you will see an Animus simulation wall, which will turn you back to the main game area.
The good news is that the game does not block access to areas with very high suggested power levels. If you want to take a risk and explore them with weak Eivor, you can do that.