Mythical easter egg
One puzzling thing about Valhalla is an easter egg for which you earn an achievement/trophy. I'm going to use spoiler tags but realistically this is not something you would find during a normal playthrough without the help of a guide or video.
On Xbox there's a secret achievement called:
I call it an easter egg because:
- There are no in-game clues that it exists. Even the achievement is hidden.
- During the normal course of the game you may collect all the things needed to go unlock it. The game does not indicate there's a larger purpose for these items.
- The final location is a named place on the in-game map but no "point of interest" pin is ever dropped there. So you would have no reason to explore this area, neither before you obtained all the necessary items nor after.
Given all the above, it's impressive that some players figured out what it was, how to get it, and where to find it. These folks then made guides for other players. Now 8.5% of tracked Xbox players have this achievement.
For further reading, there are a couple of Reddit threads asking the question "how did they expect you to find this?" The most common answer "just Google it" misses the point entirely:
Reddit 2022
Reddit 2023
Besides the achievement, the reward for finding the easter egg above is a mythical weapon. It's part of a set of four mythical weapons, all of which are hard to find and generally not available until the later part of the game. For completeness I will go over the other three. The spoiler tags below hide only the name of each weapon and what hoops you have to jump through to get it. I won't say exactly where on the map to go.
- The other one for which you get an achievement: Spoiler: Highlight to viewMjolnir, also known as Thor's Hammer. This one isn't hidden inside a cave or anything. It's just in a part of the map you'd be unlikely to explore. In order to pick it up you must be wearing the complete set of Thor's armor. I obtained these pieces of armor naturally during a complete playthrough.
- A true easter egg where you're supposed to decode a secret language: Spoiler: Highlight to viewNoden's Arc. First you must obtain Excalibur (see main post above). On the way in to pick up Excalibur there's a stone with some writing in a fictional language. Bonus items included in the collector’s edition of AC Valhalla contain clues for decoding that language. The upshot is you have to take Excalibur to a certain location at sunset and use it to smash a rock. There you may collect Noden's Arc.
- The one that isn't really an easter egg: Spoiler: Highlight to viewGungnir, also known as Odin's Spear. This is freely available in a location that you will visit during the normal course of the game. The only tricky thing about it is it comes up during a main quest where you're following another character who turns the other direction at a fork in the road. It would be rude to stop following that character just to collect Gungnir, so come back later and pick it up.