Assassin's Creed Valhalla Finally Adds New Game+, Reversing a 2022 Refusal

Six years after launch, Assassin's Creed Valhalla is getting the one feature Ubisoft spent 2022 telling fans it would never add. A free update rolling out today, November 5, introduces New Game+ across every platform, timed to a milestone the publisher says the Viking-era entry only recently crossed: 40 million players. The announcement, part of a broader Assassin's Creed franchise update Ubisoft posted on October 29, calls it "the (very, very, very) long-awaited New Game+."

What the Update Actually Changes

New Game+ lets players restart Eivor's saga from the beginning while carrying over a large share of their original progression, rather than resetting to a blank slate. Ubisoft paired the mode with an optional progression overhaul: Gear, Runes and Masteries now all feed into a single overall Power score, replacing some of the more opaque scaling the base game shipped with in 2020.

• A dedicated New Game+ scaling system for a second or third playthrough
• New runes and two new achievements
• A stash system for storing gear between playthroughs
• Mithril, a new resource used to upgrade Divine Gear and strengthen runes
• A Master Assassin outfit modeled on Naoe's look from Assassin's Creed Shadows

Ubisoft says full patch notes, plus details on the current-generation console rollout, are coming "in the coming days," which suggests some of the finer mechanical details are still being finalized even as the update goes live.

A PS5 Pro-Only Graphics Upgrade

Alongside the gameplay changes, Sony used its own PlayStation Blog post to detail a PS5 Pro-exclusive upgrade: a newer version of PSSR, Sony's machine-learning upscaler, swapped in for the Temporal Upscaler Valhalla has used since launch. Ubisoft says the goal is 4K image quality at a steady 60 frames per second in the console's Quality mode, without reworking the game's underlying assets.

The same upgraded PSSR build previously shipped in Assassin's Creed Shadows and Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, and Ubisoft engineering studio manager Priscilla Nguyen said porting it into an older codebase was more straightforward than building it from scratch.

Why Ubisoft Changed Its Mind

The reversal is notable because Ubisoft was unusually blunt about ruling New Game+ out the first time. In a November 2022 post wrapping up Valhalla's content roadmap, the studio said it had found "limited options to make replayability unique and rewarding" and confirmed the feature would not be built. That statement, tied to the game's final paid content update, stood for four years.

What changed is scale: Valhalla has kept accumulating players well past its original launch window, through Game Pass, PlayStation Plus rotations and steady discounting, and Ubisoft is framing the 40 million-player figure as justification for revisiting work it had previously shelved. The publisher has not said whether a similar New Game+ pass is planned for other older entries in the franchise.

Where This Fits in Ubisoft's Bigger Franchise Update

The Valhalla changes were only one part of Ubisoft's broader Assassin's Creed update. The same post ruled out further full remakes of past games for now and confirmed that a bigger update on the in-development title Hexe is being held back to 2027, alongside a final major update for Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. For a six-year-old game to headline any part of that update, let alone with a feature the studio had publicly rejected, says more about Valhalla's staying power than about the update's focus on newer titles.

Ubisoft is inviting feedback on the New Game+ mode through Discord and Reddit, which typically signals the studio expects to tune scaling or rewards in a follow-up patch once more players have run through a second playthrough. The Steam listing for Valhalla had not added update notes as of this writing, though the mode is live on console per both publisher posts.

“The upgraded PSSR is more efficient than the original, and easier to implement in the game source code.”Priscilla Nguyen, Engineering Studio Manager, Ubisoft

What to Expect if You Jump Back In

Players returning for New Game+ should expect a shorter climb back to a strong build: kept gear, Runes and Masteries roll straight into the new unified Power score, and the added Mithril resource gives veterans something fresh to farm for even if they already cleared England, Norway, Francia and Asgard. The Naoe-inspired outfit functions purely as a cosmetic reward tied to starting the new mode rather than a late-game unlock, based on Ubisoft's description of the update.

Beyond the mode itself, the update is a reminder that six-year-old open-world games with a large enough install base can still justify engineering investment most publishers would redirect toward a newer release. Whether that calculus extends to Valhalla's immediate predecessors, Assassin's Creed Origins and Assassin's Creed Odyssey, remains an open question Ubisoft has not addressed.