Downloadable content (DLC) for Assassin’s Creed usually falls into one of two categories. First, there’s the “base game, but more” style. In this category, you get a new story that utilizes the parent game’s mechanics, but with a small addition in terms of environment or mechanics. Second, there’s the “big swing” style, where Ubisoft’s studios get really creative and lean into the mythology of the period or try out some interesting new concepts. Assassin’s Creed Origins had The Curse of the Pharaohs, which sent its protagonist to the land of the dead, while Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s The Fate of Atlantis took place in a mythical, shining city full of Greek gods. These tend to be the second DLC in the release cycle.
Wrath of the Druids is definitely the first style of DLC. If you’ve played Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, this is more of the same with some new mechanics. Whether that’s something you want after 60+ hours of Valhalla, an excellent PC game, is a matter of personal preference.
The Green Hills of Ireland
Having found a home in England, the Viking Eivor Wolf-Kissed finds a new land to conquer. A merchant named Azar lands in the Ravensthorpe settlement as an envoy from Eivor’s cousin, Barid mac Imair. It seems Barid landed in Ireland, settling in the port town of Dublin. With his Danish heritage, Barid is having trouble convincing the Flann Sinna, the current High King of Ireland, that he can be trusted.
Never one to leave family hanging, Eivor gets on a boat to Ireland. There the Viking gets involved in local politics, kills a couple of folks, and gets involved in a war for the soul of the country against yet another ancient cult, the druidic offshoot Children of Danu.
Ireland isn’t all that different from the English countryside. There are rolling green hills, dense mysterious forests, dreary bogs, and austere cliffs. Outside of distinctive ringforts, Ireland doesn’t feel appreciably different from England. You’ll walk, boat, and ride your horse across the landscape, killing bandits, soldiers, and evil druids while delving into the stories of the land.
Ireland is divided into four provinces here: Dublin, Meath, Connacht, and Ulster. Dublin is where you begin your journey and it acts as a mini-region. The latter three areas are about as large as many of the regions in the Valhalla proper, and it’ll take you multiple hours to fully complete each one. Connacht is the most visually appealing province, offering some sights that are a bit more interesting than most of the English and Irish countryside in the game. That’s not to say game looks bad. Ubisoft has mastered rendering real-world historical locations, and the vistas can be stunning when everything lines up just right.
As a smaller, bite-sized version of the base game, Wrath of the Druids is actually a bit easier to swallow. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was a monster of a game, with a story-only playthrough taking 60 hours and completionist runs easily taking more than 100 hours. Here, you’re looking at a good 30 hours, which is longer than I spent on Resident Evil Village. It feels much better to get in and out, and the sprawl doesn’t hurt as much.
Trade
Barid wants to establish Dublin as the hub of trade for Ireland. That means it’s up to Eivor to bring in goods and services, with the help of Azar. Dotted around the map are trading posts that you can take control of and restore to productivity. Each trading post produces a specific Irish resource: Clothing, Texts, Delicacies, and Luxuries. The names don’t really matter; the point is Azar has orders from different countries that need fulfilling, using certain combinations of each resource.
The rewards for fulfilling orders are various armor sets, tattoos, ship parts, and settlement items. Ubisoft is smart, as it uses internal trade as an excuse to provide cosmetic items you wouldn’t find in England or Ireland. You’ll receive armor from Egypt, Greece, and Russia for example; these double as callbacks to previous Assassin’s Creed games, and an expansion of the available visuals.
Taking control of a trading post is a two-step process. You have to first clear the ringfort location and then follow clues to the deed. Once you retrieve the deed, you bring it back to the trading post to rebuild it. Once that’s done, each trading post has a number of improvements you can build that increase the production of its resource or allow you to store more.
It’s more straightforward than Valhalla’s settlement and recalls the real estate system from the Ezio era of Assassin’s Creed. Everything else feeds back into this system. Do you require trading post materials to build an improvement? You can pick those up at settlement raids.
Given that Eivor is trying to bring Irish kings together, there are also royal demands. You can find these randomly generated quests at pigeon coops near each town. Most of the quests are the same—go here, kill these people, steal this thing—and reward trading post materials and Irish resources. One interesting wrinkle that puts the “Assassin” back in “Assassin’s Creed” are the Kings’ Plea sub-objectives. Each sub-objective leans on the combat-light side of the game: “No unnecessary kills”, “Don’t get detected”, “Take no damage.” Completing these doubles your rewards for the royal demand, and fulfilling them tends to require alternate methods of entry rather than going in screaming with dual axes in hand. Given that the series has lost a little of that identity, it’s good to see it coming back.
Both the trading posts and royal demand system are basic, but honestly, I enjoy them more than some of the mechanics in Valhalla. Trading posts are straightforward: get more buildings, get more resources. And the royal demands push you towards more stealthy play, which I’ll never say no to.
The Celtic Hit List
Since Assassin’s Creed Origins, each game has included a hit list for you to sink your hidden blade into. Odyssey expanded upon Origins’ simple list of targets with the Cult of Kosmos, an expansive list of enemies you had to uncover with clues and kill one by one. Valhalla carried that system forward with the Order of the Ancients.
Wrath of the Druids sees a smaller list that works largely the same way. The Children of Danu are a druidic cult that seeks to undermine King Flann. The list overall is much shorter than the base game, with only a few targets, but you’ll still have to find notes and clues to figure out many of them.
The druids you fight also bring some new combat tricks to the battlefield. In their strongholds and camps, you’ll find the area bathed in a green fog. This fog causes hallucinations, making your enemies seem more powerful than they are in reality. An enemy throwing burning objects with a sling becomes a fire-breathing powerhouse in the fog. A grunt can teleport behind you. And the rabid wolves that follow the druids become powerful werewolves. Yes, full on half-human man wolves.
I like the idea, but I dislike the inability to counter this in most cases. In some situations, you can pull a werewolf out of the fog, turning them back into wolves, but it’s rare. You can find the braziers creating the green fog, but there’s no way to shut it down, even temporarily.
The more powerful enemies come in combinations that somewhat break the combat in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. A werewolf can do combo strikes, throw boulders, and leap across the battlefield. Combined with the other enemies, you can run into a situation where you have to try to parry two to three enemies back-to-back or dodge and hope you don’t run out of stamina. And getting hit can sometimes be a full-to-zero death sentence, as you’re tripped by one enemy, set on fire, and then slammed to death by a werewolf. There needs to be some way to balance out the fog, like a way to clear it out even for a few seconds, or the combat system needs to shift a bit to allow parrying for multiple enemies at once. As it stands, it feels a little like Valhalla isn’t built for some of these enemy combinations.
There are some new skills in the mix here, but nothing that really feels groundbreaking. The Smoke Arrow ability is keen, but the Viking Salute is just a stun and the Irish Wolfhound is the Wolf summoning ability with a different type of dog. Some of the skills added in Title Update 1.1.2 feel more impactful than the new abilities.
Luck Be With You
Wrath of the Druids is not for anyone who hasn’t already played Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. There’s no hard limit to engage with the DLC, but the starting area is recommended for power level 55 characters. Beyond that, it’s clearly more of the same—smaller region, fewer targets to kill, and some slightly different mechanics, but still Valhalla. This is the “base game, but more” DLC. If you want more Valhalla, here you go. If you burned out on that 100-hour romp through England, this isn’t bringing you back.
Wrath of the Druids is fun—being able to get in and out in 30 hours is a plus, given how big Assassin’s Creed games are these days—but the base game showed us a huge chunk of England and Asgard. It’s hard to follow that up with something that almost looks like England. Perhaps the upcoming Siege of Paris expansion will fulfill the “big swing” side of Valhalla’s downloadable content.
