Assassin's Creed Valhalla's new take on transmog is controversial and Ubisoft is listening

Assassin's Creed Valhalla
(Image credit: Ubisoft)

The latest Assassin's Creed Valhalla patch notes included the long-awaited arrival of a transmog feature, but it's not the free and easy fix fans may have been expecting.

The new system allows players to take their equipment to Gunnar's blacksmith in Ravensthorpe and change its appearance to resemble anything else in the same category of items (without changing any of its statistics). You also need to pay a 50 silver service charge for each item you want to transmog. This is a change from how it worked in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, where you could change any item's appearance right from the menu, for free, requiring players to spend significantly less effort in order to keep their in-game fashion on point.

Since it's purely about altering your character's looks, transmog is one of those features that frequently is added to loot-based games after launch. However, it looks like many Assassin's Creed Valhalla fans were surprised and frustrated by how Ubisoft eventually implemented the system, especially considering how it worked in the last loot-based Assassin's Creed game, judging by the official Reddit thread for the update.

While Ubisoft hasn't made any official statements about whether it will or won't change how Assassin's Creed Valhalla transmog works, Ubisoft community manager domvgt said they will pass fans' concerns along to the developers. We'll have to wait and see if any other changes to transmogs follow, but at least dissatisfied Viking fashionistas know Ubisoft is looking into it.

Playing through Assassin's Creed Valhalla prompted GR's Sam Loveridge to learn more about the town she lives in.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.

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