Assassin's Creed Valhalla just got the feature its players have been asking for: New Game+. Ubisoft's free update, called The Most Requested Update, went live on November 5 on PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, according to Ubisoft's posts on the PlayStation Blog and Xbox Wire.
That is a big return for a game Ubisoft itself says had its final content update years ago. It isn't only a replay button, either. The patch reworks Valhalla's endgame, adds a heap of new rune options and gives PS5 Pro owners a sharper picture. So if Eivor has been gathering dust, here's what's waiting.
How New Game+ works
Xbox Wire lays out the details. You unlock New Game+ by finishing the Holy Day Quest, and the difficulty scales up with each run, so going around again won't just be a victory lap.
The update also brings a new resource, Mithril, which upgrades divine gear. You pick it up in New Game+ when you receive a piece of gear or interact with a book of knowledge you already own, and it can also be found in the Nilfheim, Mastery and River Raid shops. The maximum level for each piece of gear jumps from 13 to 27. In New Game+, Carbon, Nickel and Tungsten looted from a Wealth Chest turn into Platinum instead.
The rest of the list is aimed at build tinkerers:
- A new progression mode. When it's active, gear upgrades, runes and masteries all count towards your overall power level.
- A Stash in Ravensthorpe, where you can store any piece of gear or rune from your inventory.
- A Rune Forge update that lets you upgrade runes for silver from the menu, up to a new Superior tier.
- More than 300 new engravable runes.
The two posts name that progression mode differently: Xbox Wire calls it Extended Progression Mode, while the PlayStation Blog list says Enhanced Progression Mode. The PlayStation Blog's list also adds two new achievements, a new Power calculation, a Master Assassin Naoe outfit and an Animus Hub synchronization update.
You don't have to start over to get most of this. Lead game designer David Larouche says on Xbox Wire that the progression mode, the extra divine gear upgrades, the new rune tier and the new rune perks are "available without New Game+ as well."
Larouche also says almost every perk that was on an item is now an engravable rune, including perks from expansions and the Store. "I'm sure there are many overpowered combinations to be found!" he says, which is a pretty direct invitation to go and break things.
What PS5 Pro owners get
The PlayStation Blog post covers the one platform-exclusive piece: upgraded PSSR upscaling for PS5 Pro. Engineering studio manager Priscilla Nguyen says it is "much crisper and more visually stable" than what the game had, and that the team used it "to enhance 4K image quality and deliver our Quality mode at 60FPS on PS5 Pro."
Nguyen says the game's content and visual assets didn't need an overhaul. The upgraded PSSR was already in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced and Assassin's Creed Shadows, and Ubisoft wanted it in Valhalla too.
Neither post lists any visual upgrade for Xbox. The Xbox Wire post sticks to the gameplay features.
Why it's happening now
Larouche's answer is simple enough. "We know New Game+ is something the community has wanted for a long time," he says on Xbox Wire, adding that the update is about giving longtime players "another reason to return to a world they've invested so much time in."
The update is live now and costs nothing if you already own the game. Neither post mentions another update for Valhalla, so for now, this is the whole package.
Beau's take: Good on Ubisoft for this one. A gear cap that more than doubles and 300 new runes is a proper excuse to dust off a save, and letting players use most of it without New Game+ is the friendly call. If you bounced off Valhalla's late game, this is a decent reason to give Eivor one more voyage.
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