How runes work in Assassin's Creed Valhalla

Assassin's Creed Valhalla has runes that are integral to obtaining the best equipment possible for Eivor. Compared to Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Valhalla has changed quite a bit when it comes to the gear and equipment systems. One of the most major changes was done to the statistics on equipment. Stats are now upgraded through skill points in a massive tree, rather than armor with a ton of stats.

However, armor still has its own set of bonuses, and it can be upgraded. Upgrading armor and bringing it to a blacksmith is the backbone of the rune system in Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

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Using runes in Assassin's Creed Valhalla

How to use runes (Image via Ubisoft)

The first step to being able to use runes is to enhance armor and weapons in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Upgrading equipment and having Gunnar the blacksmith enhance them are two different things. The former increases stats, while the latter provides both rune sockets and changes the appearance of the given weapon or armor piece.

Having Gunnar enhance armor and weapons requires ingots, specifically carbon for the first level. The subsequent levels will require nickel ingots and then tungsten ingots. Once Gunnar enhances a piece of equipment, it will have a rune socket, and each subsequent enhancement will give that piece of armor or weapon another rune socket.

Runes themselves are simply placed into armor by going into the inventory screen and hitting the rune key to add a new one. The best part about runes in this Assassin's Creed game is the fact that they can be taken out of equipment and placed into something new at a moment's notice. It makes the system far simpler and worthwhile when it comes to collecting runes.

What will take the most time for runes in Assassin's Creed Valhalla is actually finding them. In an attempt to further incentivize exploration across the map, finding runes was tied to opening chests. That means players will need to explore the map with Eivor and carefully search every area that they can.

There are all kinds of runes to be found in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. In general, they fall into two categories, which are armor runes and weapon runes. As they suggest, armor runes can only be placed in armor sockets, and likewise for the weapons.

For the most part, the runes provide increases to base stats, depending on the rune itself. Some examples include extra armor, attack damage boosts, or light and heavy attack enhancements. As players progress, they'll have access to more powerful runes, as well as more slots.