The Forgotten Saga

Over the past week, I've been playing the latest update to Assassin's Creed Valhalla, The Forgotten Saga. The Forgotten Saga is a free roguelite (ish) mode for the game that released on August 2nd 2022. It's insane (in a good way) that Ubisoft are still releasing content for Valhalla, almost 2 years after its initial release. We still have at least 2 more updates to go, Part 2 of Tombs of the Fallen and then what Ubisoft have said is "the last chapter of Eivor's story", more of those later!

So what is The Forgotten Saga? Well, it's a rougelite inspired game mode added to Valhalla where you play as Odin, trying to seek answers to what happened to your son, Baldr. The mode consists of 4 areas of increasing difficulty, on the 4th and final area, you finally meet Hel and discover the truth about Baldr.

You start with a randomly generated loadout, however upon completing your first run, you can spend what you earnt on "favours", some of which allow you to keep your equipment from your previous run and carry it to the next. Some favours can be bought using memories whilst others require gems.

Like other roguelite games, once you die, you start back at the beginning however depending on what you accomplish on each run, you can earn memories which you can then use to purchase things like increased health, increased melee damage etc. Much like the skill tree in the main game.

Each area consists of numerous randomly generated challenges, which involve killing a group of enemies in order to gain an advantage to help you out as you get further into the run, these advantages are:

• Pick a new weapon (out of 3 random ones)
• Pick a new rune (out of 3 random ones)
• Pick a new ability (out of 3 random ones)
• Upgrade a weapon
• Upgrade a rune
• Upgrade an ability
• Restore health (doesn't require you to kill enemies)

Once each challenge is complete, you also get memories, thoughts and coins to spend. Coins can be spent on the run itself, by visiting traders that are dotted around each area. Traders are useful as they allow you to purchase additional weapons, abilities, runes and also allow you to gain your health back.

Each area contains a quest, which once complete will grant you a permanent favour, which are applied to all of your future runs and give you a massive advantage. The best one is the favour you get by completing the quest in the first area as it allows you have a second chance, by giving you 50% health when your health gets to zero. This is really good in the boss battles if your equipment isn't the best.

Each area also contains a boss at the end, which you need to kill in order to progress to the next level. There's a trader before each one, so a good technique is to use them to make sure your health is full. Upon killing each boss, you get a new outfit, coins, memories and games. The only one I had a slight problem with was Nidhogg on the 3rd area, I had to restart it once.

Outfits are useful in The Forgotten Saga as you can upgrade them to gain additional advantages. They can be found by killing bosses, completing quests and finding them in chests in certain areas. My favourite outfit is the Dwarven Defender outfit because once that's fully upgraded, your health will replenish when you deal damage to an enemy that has damaged you. This means you can make it pretty far through your run, whilst taking no (or very little) damage. It also has some very effective stunning abilities too.

As for weapons, you start with a random weapon however as you progress through the run, you can swap this for a higher powered weapon or keep it and find challenges and traders that offer weapon upgrades. You can also tie your weapon into what runes you have as these can offer massive buffs to damage. I would heavily recommend finding Mjölnir, it's a legendary weapon so you may to have to do a few runs before it appears, but once you have it and have it fully upgraded, it does a crazy amount of damage. It made Hel, the very last boss, a walk in the park.

Once you've gotten to the end and discovered what became of Baldr, you can "Wake up", which will put you back as Eivor in your camp at Ravensthorpe. You'll awake with a new currency called "Dreams", which allow you to purchase exclusive items that you can only get from doing that mode. You're free to switch between England and Niflheim whenever you want, I just waited until I'd finished it before going back.

Now that I've completed the mode a couple of times, my tips would be:

• Ensure you have the Summoned Courage permanent favour
• When buying skills, focus on health and melee damage upgrades
• Get the Dwarven Defender armour and upgrade it to the max
• Get Mjölnir and upgrade it to the max
• Get the Lightning Strike skill and upgrade it to the max
• Try and get as many shock related runes possible, combined with Mjölnir it'll make you unstoppable.

Using the above, I was able to kill Nidhogg in about 5-6 minutes and Hel in about 2-3 minutes. You can probably get through the entire run in 50-60 minutes.

Overall, really fun mode! The nature of the mode does mean you have to run through it several times to be able to afford enough skills and what not to be able to make it into the final areas. You can probably get to the 3rd area without too much trouble, but the 3rd area contains druids which can do a lot of damage. The randomness of the mode though, means it doesn't really get boring, as every run is different.