Assassin’s Creed Valhalla adds New Game+ and a sharper PS5 Pro mode in a free update

Ubisoft has handed Assassin’s Creed Valhalla a free patch with a telling name, The Most Requested Update, and its centrepiece is New Game+: players can now replay Eivor’s saga with their fully built endgame character. The update is live on PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.

New Game+ opens once the Holy Day quest is done, and every new cycle ramps up the difficulty. To keep those extra laps rewarding, the gear ceiling has more than doubled: each item now upgrades to level 27 instead of 13, fed by a new resource called Mithril that drops in New Game+ when players collect gear or knowledge books they already own.

Runes get the biggest overhaul. They can be upgraded for silver directly from the menu, up to a new Superior tier, and over 300 engravable rune perks join the game. An optional Extended Progression Mode makes upgrades, runes and masteries count toward overall power, and a new stash in Ravensthorpe holds spare gear and runes. Most of this also works without starting New Game+.

Lead game designer David Larouche explained the thinking on Xbox Wire:

We wanted the New Game+ experience to not simply be a do-over.

David Larouche, lead game designer, Ubisoft

PS5 Pro owners get a bonus on top: the game now runs Sony’s upgraded PSSR upscaler, already used in Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. According to engineering studio manager Priscilla Nguyen, it delivers a crisper, more stable 4K image and lets Quality mode run at 60fps, without reworking the game’s content or visual assets. For an open world this large, a second run with a maxed-out Viking is a generous offer.

Both announcements, published on the PlayStation and Xbox blogs, cover consoles only and say nothing about the PC version.

Reported by Xbox Wire, PlayStation Blog. Compiled with AI tools.