An assassin is nothing without their arsenal of weapons, be that a hidden blade or trusty axe.
The weapon system in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla works a little bit differently to previous games in the series, but here’s where you can lay your hands on some of the best weapons in medieval England.
This time around, instead of two independent weapon slots that you can switch between, you can equip each of your character’s hands individually. Meaning you can either turtle up behind a big shield, or go full Viking berserker and flail with a weapon in each hand.
Or, if you’re feeling extra tactical, you can forgo the explicitly offensive or defensive routes and opt for a two-handed weapon. These long-reaching armaments tend to be slow, but strong – perfect for the huge melees that erupt during Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s castle sieges.
However, although there’s plenty of powerful weaponry to sniff out in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, through most of the early and mid-game, you have relatively few options to choose from until you can make your way into the main open world.
First, we’ll run through some fun options to look out for in the early and mid game, and warn against a few which don’t feel as great, so you can get your Viking invasion in full swing.
Finally, we’ll list off the best legendary weapons we’ve found so far across our pillaging of England. The strongest and most powerful weapons that you’ll want to keep and upgrade until the end of the game.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – Best Weapons for the early game
Unlike in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, you’ll be holding onto your favourite early game weapons for a while.
In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the loot and level up systems have been completely revamped. So, instead of constantly switching between loot as you find it, you now have to specifically go out into the world in search of wealth.
Some of this wealth will turn out to be useful new weaponry, which you can try out and upgrade if you like it.
Here are a few of our favourite weapons we’ve found:
Your father’s weapon – Varin’s Axe – despite being given to you as a basic weapon in the game’s main story, is actually a perfectly decent weapon to chop through the early game with.
You upgrade it as part of the game tutorial, so it’s already more powerful than a lot of things you pick up, and it’s one-handed weight means you can wield it with a useful shield or off-hand weapon.
Speaking of off-hand weapons, I really liked using the Iron-Star flail in Eivor’s left hand. If you have your parry timing on-point, then you’re not leaving yourself open defensively.
But the best part is that if you hold L1, then Eivor absolutely yeets the flail around their head – hitting anything unlucky enough to be caught in the way.
You can find the Iron-Star as one of the wealth icons in Kjotve’s fortress that you visit as part of the main story.
An early way to get your hands on a Superior-level light bow, is to visit the Ubisoft CONNECT store from the main and pause menus. This isn’t the microtransaction Animus store, but a proprietary Ubisoft service where you earn coins for unlocking trophies in their games.
For 100 coins, you can buy an Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Spartan Bow, which is quite good.
Generally, I’ve found the two-handed weapons like the Dane Axe to be very clunky in the best cases and near-useless in boss fights. However, I really like the Fafnir’s Fang spear you get as a reward for beating the Lost Drengr, Erik Loyalskull.
What it lacks in short-range utility, it makes up for in range and damage output. Many enemies don’t really seem able to do much about getting hit by a spear. The R2 attack can hit multiple enemies for crowd control, while the hold L1 attack does a quick stab followed by a leap backwards that’s great for zoning.
You can find it in the cave to the north of Fornburg.
Then, once you reach England, you can buy new weapons from the shop in Ravensthorpe. Of these, I particularly like the 2-handed greatsword.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – Legendary Weapon Locations
We can get a peak at some awesome Legendary Weapons from the in-game Helix Store.
In Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, weapons which inflicted statuses were particularly powerful, and we know about two which induce poison in enemies.
This legendary hammer powers up your critical hits, imbuing the weapon with poison every time you crit. When this happens, follow-up hits or attacks against new foes will cause poison build-up which eventually drains their health.
The Hag’s Bite is more direct, when you knock down an enemy, either with a skill or through battle, a heavy hit with this flail will instantly poison them. This lets you move onto a new target while the weakened foe is finished off by the status.
To avoid spoilers just as the game’s released, we’ll add more late-game Legendary weapon locations soon.
For more on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, check out our run-down of all the best skills in the game, here.
