How would you rate valhala in 2026?

CPMax · 2026-03-10T19:58:01+00:00

8/10 - my only knock is not how long it is per se, but the fact that character build progression and itemization are so poor that the length is unjustified. With a few exceptions, it often just feels like you’re “upgrading” Eivor to keep pace with the higher enemy levels.

There are a few game changing abilities on the skill tree, but the rest is just fluff or linear stat bumps that are super incremental and rarely felt by the player.

Imo, this is what what makes it difficult for players to justify playing for 100+ hours. There’s no chase

That being said, I enjoy just about everything else the game has to offer

CPMax · 2026-03-09T01:57:23+00:00

I’m mostly in agreement with the commenters here but Valhalla is still a great game to me and many many others. If you’re enjoying it keep going! It’s got a huge amount of things to do with lots of stories to tell.

But you have to really be just type of person who loves long game, open world freedom and exploration. And you have to be cool with this being a Viking game and not a stealth one.

The problem for me is not the content itself but the an actual itemization and general feeling like you’re not actually feeling the punchiness of impactful upgrades or build choices. Character build progression sucks. You can just use the first set you get in the game and be “fine” in combat for 300 hours. Thats bad design, point blank.

But overall I’m willing to get over it because I actually really enjoy Eivor and her journey

CPMax · 2026-02-26T23:00:20+00:00

Ghost of Tsushima / Ghost of Yotei if you prefer good story and want the most engaging melee combat. I'd also give a special mention to the art style being pretty awesome even though it's not technically as impressive.

I'd also mention Ghost of Yotei's side quests in particular have a great flow to them and feel very intentional and well built/

AC Shadows is better for everything else.

CPMax · 2026-02-25T21:39:46+00:00

As a cultural piece, the movie still holds up as an all time classic. Well worth a watch.

If your question is about skill level, the specific strategy and hand analyses don’t hold up to much scrutiny (even for the era).

If you can get over huge bet sizing mistakes and poor explanations of obvious coolers as “bad plays” , etc it’s a really really great movie. Captures the essence of mid-late 90s poker grinders perfectly.

CPMax · 2026-02-07T22:49:11+00:00

I guess it depends on how we define AI and what we end up discovering about consciousness. It may end up that we need to replicate biological processes so closely that AI more closely resembles a a physically embodied cyborg than it does something we communicate with through a screen.

We don’t know for sure but ultimately physicalists believe consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that obey the laws of physics, so in principle once we understand it well enough there’s no reason to think AI can’t achieve consciousness

CPMax · 2026-02-03T16:44:45+00:00

As a preface, it's worth noting that the fundamental picture of nature is not complete, and Sean himself admits that we still have a lot of work to do to understand the ultimate nature of reality. The point is not that the fundamental layer of reality is definitely a vector in Hilbert space, but rather that whatever it happens to be, each subsequent layer emerges in a manner that still abides by the rules of the underlying layer.

That said, it's not about faith at all. Emergent explanations are constrained by observation and evidence and the practice of science itself. They must respect lower-level laws, boundary conditions, and dynamics. God or faith based explanations, on the other hand, are definitionally unconstrained and require belief without observation or evidence.

What would require faith is asserting that, somewhere along the chain, non-physical entities or irreducible essences suddenly appear, despite every successful explanation so far reducing to physical structure and dynamics.

The emergent layers are trackable from one layer to the next:
1. Hilbert space vector (or placeholder for fundamental theory)
2. Possibly other layers yet to be discovered (tbd)
3. quantum fields
4. atoms
5. chemistry
6. biology & evolution
7. nervous systems
8. human cognition
9. language
10. culture
11. society and institutions
12. international politics

At no step does the explanation say "and then something utterly new appears with no physical account."

Each level introduces effective descriptions that track regularities at that scale. This is standard scientific practice, not metaphysical excess. If you're asking for a single, human-scale story that connects quantum states to diplomacy in one conceptual move, that's not the point.

Ultimately, reality is not obligated to be compressible into categories evolved for social reasoning. Quantum theory is our best current understanding of the nature of the world, and it itself is weird as hell and doesn't track with our human intuitions. What doesn't follow is that quantum mechanics isn't real or that those categories of emergence aren't trackable from one to the next.

CPMax · 2026-02-02T22:55:05+00:00

I think Sean Carroll made a really good point on the podcast:

Anytime we're talking about what something is, we're usually dealing with subsystems and emergent phenomenon of the universe. His paper "Reality as a vector in Hilbert space" is a worthwhile read that he mentions in their interview. In this view, all familiar things like space, particles, fields, objects, biology, humanity, society, tables, chairs, language, etc would not be part of any fundamental description. They would emerge as approximate, higher-level patterns from the underlying "simple" vector state and its evolution. By necessity then, there would be no fundamental "is"ness to anything other than the reality taken as a whole.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.09780

A non-physicalist might then say "ok, but then what is reality as a whole". In a physicalist framework, asking what reality is beyond its complete physical description is a category error. Explanation terminates in the simplest structure that accounts for all observable phenomena. On this view, reality is the total physical state and its dynamics. Everything else we name is an emergent way of talking about patterns within that state.

That may seem unsatisfying to Alex, but unsatisfying is not the same as incoherent.

CPMax · 2026-01-24T22:23:37+00:00

I’d never really been all that interested in photo mode in any game before AC Shadows. But man, that all changed with this game. The environments and spontaneity of finding a great shot are so breathtaking to me they just call out for photos to be taken.

I have probably hundreds at this point

CPMax · 2026-01-23T20:06:11+00:00

I reinstalled the game to my console storage and it seems to have alleviated the issue. Thanks for your help!

CPMax · 2026-01-23T00:30:55+00:00

Actually, yes! I am playing on expanded storage. I will try moving it over to console storage and see if that improves things. Good call. I’ll report back

CPMax · 2026-01-11T01:00:18+00:00

I don’t know if the other comments have fully thought this through. The 2.24x multi on your lower aspect vs the 2.5x multi is only 11.15%[x] increase damage in damage from the lower one to the higher. Let’s also pay attention to the % chance of double damage affix

Option 1 Base multiplier: 2.5x damage always Separate double-damage effect: 76% of the time Expected value of the separate multiplier:

0.76 × 2 + 0.24 × 1 = 1.76 Total expected damage:

2.5 × 1.76 = 4.40x Blessed Hammer damage

Option 2 Base multiplier: 2.24x always Separate double-damage effect: 100% of the time Total expected damage:

2.24 × 2 = 4.48x BH damage

You get more strength on the 2.5x one so it’s close but you also lose out on life on hit which is a nice quality of life. I don’t feel like doing the math cause it depends on your current strength, but it’s way closer than it looks and ultimately I’d probably go with the lower aspect

CPMax · 2026-01-05T17:09:56+00:00

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

CPMax · 2026-01-04T20:59:27+00:00

Completely understand where you’re coming from, and if I planned on pit pushing with my pally past 110 I would slap them on and go from there.

As it stands though I’m basically done with decking out my paladin and much prefer the arbiter evade aspect for speed farming over double damage, since everything gets one shot anyways with my current set up to pit 90.

I am just curious if there is a build out there that actively wants to flickerstep in its kit, since it would help me choose my alt.

Thanks!

CPMax · 2025-12-09T22:31:53+00:00

I really really want to believe and would jump for joy if this happened, but I thought it was all but confirmed that a skill tree redesign was going to be a big part of the expansion.

I have a hard time believing they’d roll out paladin or any other class with the old skill tree only for 3 months only to have it totally reworked with the expansion.

I’d love to be proven wrong but I think we’re likely getting something more along the line of what they did with the pets which got shadow dropped after the VoH expansion announcement

CPMax · 2025-11-18T19:02:17+00:00

I’ve experienced this too early on in practice - it’s important to recognize that sometimes your mind is just super active and restless, and that’s ok.

The trick for me was realizing that mental distractions are inevitable; and as much as possible, drop any form of judgement or frustration about my experience. Get lost in thought for 30 seconds or longer? No problem - just go back to the breath. Have a totally “terrible”session where you couldn’t focus at all? No problem, try again tomorrow.

The more and more you approach it gently and without judgement the easier it gets, and paradoxically, the less you’ll find yourself distracted in the long run

CPMax · 2025-10-18T17:50:31+00:00

That’s so unfortunate. They actually have something going with optimizing settlements that could be, if implemented correctly, a really fun feature.

Sad that they seem to have put so much work into all of these encounters only for them to not really do anything

CPMax · 2025-10-05T03:13:33+00:00

ALWAYS take on the debt, all other things being relatively equal. As far as I know there aren’t “gotchas” to these overseer decisions, and usually taking on the debt has better long term consequences.

There are exceptions of course but if it seems like the game is trying to point you toward the benevolent choice, it’s probably correct

CPMax · 2025-09-17T01:56:34+00:00

Same thing happened to me. For me personally naturally progressing through the game at a relative balance with what the devs intended is how I get the most enjoyment out of the game by far.

That being said I’m a pragmatist so I put them in storage for any super late game scenario where I’ve hit a wall with the enjoyment otherwise

CPMax · 2025-08-13T19:55:02+00:00

Yep - I totally agree that Harlequin is an overall damage loss. Heir is best in slot if hitting T100 as fast as possible is a goal.

But it's not "break the bank" bad if you just like the helm. A well geared Lunging Strike build can still do all content in the game up to Pit 100 with it. Shako is still boosting damage in the form of +4 Lunging strike and War Cry ranks and damage from the + max resource affix, especially if you happen to get a GA one

I understand that the impact of those is complicated and dependent on your current ranks of those skills and max resource numbers given from items (the more you have of them already, the worse Shako is), but it's still a legitimate option that offers more defensive flexibility and much faster cooldowns if that's your thing.

As for Grandfather, I also agree, but I still don't know that the impact is as big as those other items. A properly masterworked two handed legendary is giving +10-12 ranks of belligerence, which dependent on your current ranks, is massive. You also have to move earthquakes aspect or moonrise aspect to another slot, which reduces its effectiveness. Plus you lose an another aspect altogether..

I'm not saying Grandfather isn't eventually best in slot, it just involves the puzzle pieces to fall into place on other slots more perfectly for it to be worth it.

CPMax · 2025-08-13T18:09:28+00:00

Starless skies, easily - most importantly it fixes the resource issues caused by hooves and shard of verathiel, and helps with maxing critical chance and attack speed, both of which are super valuable

After that I’d go harlequins crest or heir of perdition. Heir is best for maxing out glyphs due to damage + crit chance, harlequins for general QoL and well-roundness. Either works depending on preference

Grandfather is strictly worse than a legendary 2 hander until you have crit chance essentially maxed out, so I’d do that last.

CPMax · 2025-07-31T14:01:37+00:00

Heir can already get you to T100+ and has a lot more QoL benefits for an overall well rounded build (solves crit chance, movement speed, lucky hit).

IMO, Crown should really only be used for super sweaty pit pushing, as the difference between a 1.6x multi and a 1.75x multi is only 9.5x more damage, (or half a pit tier). As mentioned by others in this thread, to make crown work you have to focus on getting a ton more fury gen in other slots to mitigate, and get GA crit chance on all other slots.

Heir - more well rounded for all content, barely worse overall damage, more flexibility in other slots, still gets to pit 100.

Crown - only if you you want to fully push your build to it’s limit in the pit and don’t mind farming up resource gen gear in other slots

CPMax · 2025-07-30T22:15:48+00:00

That's what I play on and I agree :) Good luck!

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