Assassin’s Creed Valhalla revels in its juxtaposition of brutal berserkers and crafty assassins, so it’s no wonder that it offers you a versatile range of combat builds to choose from. From piloting arrows toward the perfect headshot to cracking skulls with dual shields, Valhalla gives you options when it comes to fighting, to the extent that it can be a bit overwhelming at times.
To make things a bit easier, we’ve taken the liberty of putting together an Assassin’s Creed Valhalla best builds guide based on our time with the game so far. Its skill trees may be complicated and sprawling beyond anything the series has ever seen, but with a little bit of help, you'll be able to create some of the best Eivor builds in the game in no time.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla Best Builds — Understanding The Skill Tree
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s skill tree extends in three different directions: Way of the Raven, Way of the Bear, and Way of the Wolf. Each one of these three branches is directly associated with a different kind of combat, and features several distinct sub-sections within it. All of these smaller segments also have their own specific skill that can be unlocked alongside minor buffs to stealth, melee damage, assassination damage, and so on.
The Way of the Raven is the most assassin-esque path, offering you powerful skills like Chain Assassination, which allows you to silently take down two unsuspecting enemies in one go. It also specifically buffs stats tied to stealth, evasion, and damage from cover. The Way of the Bear is more aggressive, leaning towards the berserker aspect of Viking combat, while the Way of the Wolf is quite balanced, featuring utility skills like Last-Chance Healing and Stealth Recon. All three paths are viable and you can mix and match as you please — you don’t need to irreversibly commit to one specific route.
The most important thing to know from the get-go is that you can respec your skill tree to your heart’s content, meaning that spending skill points on abilities isn’t a huge risk. It’s an experiment, and you can reclaim your skill points if you discover a certain style doesn’t quite work for you — this is especially helpful when you’ve racked up a lot of points over the course of the game, and have learned which abilities from each path are your favourites. On top of that, you get skill points for everything, so there's no need to be too frugal with them — you’ll have another two to use in about ten minutes. I often realized I had six or eight unspent skill points before I actually bothered opening the menu to upgrade my tree.
That being said, we had the most success committing to the Way of the Raven path, which makes sense given that Eivor is from the Raven clan. Here’s a more detailed look at what this particular skill tree has to offer..
Assassin's Creed Valhalla Best Builds — Way Of The Raven
The Way of the Raven skill tree provides you with a pretty great balance of old-school Assassin’s Creed abilities and genuine combat viability in a Viking raid. Some of the best abilities on offer here include Chain Assassination, Advanced Assassination — which is a complete game-changer and only takes eight skill points to unlock from the very beginning — Brush With Death, Miasma, and Counter Roll, which is sort of like Sekiro’s Mikiri Counter. Having these abilities alone makes you an assassin to be reckoned with, while also giving you two dodge-based advantages in one-on-one combat, as well as a devastating poison attack to deal with mobs.
It’s worth noting that you don’t need to unlock every minor ability in a subsection to earn its major one. As you can see in the screenshot below, there are several skills I haven’t acquired, but I’ve still been able to extend multiple micro trees further outwards without them.
The one minor skill you’ll want to pick up in every single branch is Way of the Raven itself, which buffs your Raven gear. You can acquire this ridiculously early in the game and as long as you upgrade it, it remains viable right up to and through the endgame. In fact, you can have the vast majority of the best Way of the Raven skills and fully buffed Raven armor by the time you reach power level 80, which is less than halfway through the game. You’re basically a silent assassin and a bulldozing berserker all in one, offering you the best of both worlds and introducing an intriguing hybrid of old-school and modern Assassin's Creed.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla Best Builds — Weapons And Armour
As previously mentioned, I think the Raven clan armour you get early in the story is as good as any you’ll come across for the vast majority of the entire game, especially if you commit to the corresponding skill tree as recommended above. You’ll need to upgrade it at Gunnar’s forge in order to open it up to rune slots, but you can easily obtain the necessary materials for doing so simply by playing through the main narrative — you probably won't even need to raid extra monasteries unless you've already fully committed to upgrading Ravensthorpe. There are heavier sets of armour that can absorb slightly more damage on offer, but the Raven clan kit is light, durable, and has an excellent evasion stat. It also looks the best, I think.
As for weapons, you’re honestly pretty spoiled for choice. Shields, axes, spears, hammers — you can play around with all kinds of steel. On top of that, your bow and hidden blade are always equipped, meaning that you’ve got ranged and assassination weapons automatically included in your main build, regardless of whatever else you to choose to equip.
Because you can dual-wield in Valhalla, I tried all kinds of permutations here. Personally, I found the most success wielding double axes, although knocking about a monastery with two berserker shields is admittedly pretty fun. I liked Varin’s Axe and Bear Claw, because they increased attack speed and damage output in tandem with one another to reward aggressive play. It’s worth noting that this depends on your playstyle — if you’re more of a parrier than an aggressor, the Briton Shield is a great pick due to the fact it restores health for every successful parry you execute. This is particularly good for boss fights, where healing items are generally in very limited supply.
For my bow, I chose to use Bullseye. You don’t get it until about midway through the story, where it’s looted from a mandatory assassination target’s corpse, but it's a real game-changer. It has a different aim-down-sight interface to other bows, which makes it immensely effective at range but difficult to use up close. This is a worthy trade-off, because you should be using melee weapons up close anyway — bows are for when you're silently infiltrating a busy encampment and need to pick off soldiers one by one. Bullseye also automatically spawns a trap whenever you successfully pull off a headshot from stealth, which means you can take out multiple enemies with a single cleverly-placed shot. It's the perfect weapon for an archer who likes to hang out in the shadows.
Ultimately, I think the strongest Assassin’s Creed build is composed primarily of Way of the Raven skills, fully upgraded Raven clan armour, dual axes, and the Bullseye bow. Obviously you can experiment with other abilities, weapons, and armour, but if you want a build that can allow you to go from assassin to drengr at the drop of a helm, this is definitely the way to go. It's also easy to max out very early in the game, meaning that you'll be exceptionally powerful for early, mid, and late-game areas for the entire duration of the experience.