James GordonAssassin’s Creed Valhalla is full of secrets and surprises, but perhaps the biggest one has finally been revealed. It’s a testament not only to the developers who created such a complex mystery, but also to the fans and the saviors who finally unlocked it. It all starts with the collector’s edition of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which happens to contain some hidden clues. They would never have been found without the help of Access The Animus, who released a video in January showing that they had deciphered the Isu language that is part of the game (via IGN).
Now that they have the language, they can use it to decipher any message, including some messages on the collector’s edition packaging. These messages included terms like Hidden Inside, This Lake and Now knowing they were on a trail, the team continued.
Let’s go! We found the right way to get Dougie Noden’s arc through #AssassinsCreed Valhalla!
We show you not only the right steps to take, but also the reasons why!
Full video: https://t.co/oPCQZyNKR4 pic.twitter.com/6G7FaR9L5x
– AccessTheAnimus (@AccessTheAnimus) 27. January 2021
You got a helping hand from JorRaptor, who posted a video showing that you can find Isu’s secret bow in a game called the Arc of Nodens. All you had to do was touch a piece of unbreakable iron ore, exit the game and reload your inventory to unlock it, but Darby McDevitt, Valhalla’s narrative director, revealed that it was a brute force method to solve the puzzle, and Access The Animus eventually found the steps to correctly solve the problem.
This matched the translated text in the Collector’s Edition window, which read Key is Key, located under a raven drawing. Crow had another secret, the sword Excalibur, so the key she was talking about was a sword, or rather Excalibur, because it could break anything.
In the previous video showing the brute force method, fans had noticed a place, a lake in Northumbria that looks a lot like the island of Singapore, and it turns out Ubisoft has an office there. This was the big missing piece, as the office was in the exact location of the undestroyable ore. This situation was further reinforced by the fact that the Isu language was created by the designer Antoine Henry, who works in this agency.
The final important part was the realization that the lithographs in the collector’s edition represented symbols that, when combined, obscured the image of the sun. Access Animus realized that this referred to the time of day when the ore would be mined.
When you add it all up, it means that you had to hit Unbreakable Ore with Excalibur at sunset to unlock Noden’s Ard Bow, and that must have been one of the hardest unlocks ever.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is available now for PS4, Xbox One, PC, Xbox Series X, PS5, Stadia and Luna.
Have you ever discovered the legendary arch? Let us know in the comments or follow me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB for all things Assassin’s Creed!
James Gordon
