Assassin's Creed Valhalla players are dying on purpose to help fellow fans get a bugged achievement
Avengers assemble.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla has a tough achievement the game's community is now working together to help everyone unlock.
You can help too, by letting yourself get killed in a specific location.
The troublesome achievement, named Hall of the Slain, requires you "Avenge the death of 10 players". It's one of many awards accessible via the built-in Ubisoft Connect platform, and also one of many that suffers from bugs.
In about 150 hours playing Valhalla, I've only come across the ability to avenge another player twice - and one of those times was last night while testing out the community's new method. Fans say the game's avenge system is outright broken, while Ubisoft has acknowledged in a list of known issues that "avenge quests are difficult to spot".
Avenge quests highlight where another real-life player has died while playing the game. Use Odin Sight on their body, which is shown as a generic Viking, and they'll glow blue. Interact with their corpse and you'll be asked to kill the group of enemies they were slain by.
While this achievement is not one of the ones in the game's official Xbox Achievement or PlayStation Trophy list, fans care about unlocking it to gain XP on Ubisoft Connect, which grants cosmetic rewards such as Bayek's outfit from Assassin's Creed Origins.
The issue has gained traction within the community this week because, on top of the permanent Hall of the Slain achievement, a new time-limited challenge has popped up that awards Ubisoft Connect XP and in-game premium Opal currency. Some fans claimed that avenging a player was currently impossible, but others took it upon themselves to brute force a place in the game for people to give it a try.
I remember coming across the avenge system once last year - while playing Valhalla for review using a pre-release unpatched version of the game. After launch, I never saw an avenge quest marker again until last night, after following the instructions laid out by Assassin's Creed reddit user TheeElf.
"It was recommended I post here just to get the word out further," TheeElf wrote. "With a seemingly impossible weekly challenge to Avenge a player, quite a few folks chipped in to try and hammer out how since there had been reports of some people having avenges early on and others not. It either has to exist or it doesn't. Since it was occurring very infrequently we set out on a journey..."
Here are the steps I followed, as laid out on reddit:
- Fast Travel to the High Point "Ruined Tower" in East Anglia
- Ride south toward Scotthoh Farm
- Kill all enemies
- Sit on the roof idle for five to 15 minutes.
- Wait for Eivor to make a comment. Comments can vary each time.
- Use Odin's sight after the comment and you should have a blue highlight with an objective.
- Interact with the body and "confirm kill" on the already dead bodies. Avenge Complete.
- (Optional but courteous): This can be completed before step three or you can come back after the enemies spawn but DIE a few times to potentially spawn your body for other players.
Travelling to the right location, clearing it and climbing onto the roof to wait took me all of two minutes. And then I waited. After around 10 minutes of doomscrolling Twitter on my phone, I heard Eivor mumble "well then..." A quick scan of the area revealed a player's body had indeed appeared for me to avenge, and the quest could then be completed.
So, why there? Why Scotthoh Farm? Well, it's the work of TheeElf and other players who have been getting killed there repeatedly over the past week to test that the avenge system still works. TheeElf authored this post on Ubisoft's support forums calling for volunteers to die there en masse - and it's one of these players I was asked to avenge.
So, thank you for that - I will be letting myself die there again tonight to pass on the goodwill. And if you end up avenging me, do let me know.