Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Dritch Glitch continues to get weirder

Every time my Viking hero Eivor dies Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, she returns to drunk life. This is a known bug that the developers seem to be ready to fix, but trying to fix it last night, I somehow made it worse. Although, in this case, “worse” also means “better”. And now I am in conflict as to whether I want this to be remedied.

This is how the problem originally arose Valhalla a few weeks ago. I would upload the save file to my Xbox and see a upload screen. Then came a part of ninth-century England, along with Eivor, which was faltering. The graphics would become blurred and then clarified. Then Eivor would stagger.

It was weird, but tolerable. The drunken effect fades quickly. In addition, Ubisoft game designers had pointed out Valhallaofficial support page that this was an unintended side effect of the new Valhalla Yuletide Feast, a party that Ubisoft added to the game’s Viking headquarters in mid-December.

“Was the drunk effect applied during and after loading the screen?

Solution: Meditation or sleeping in bed should eliminate the effect of the state. (or you can just walk away ..) ”

The holiday adds a big tree, a horde of partygoers, a bow shooting challenge and an option for a drunken brawl. In a way, all this drink-based game code has been removed, but, I realized, it would have been resolved by the time the holiday is scheduled to end on January 7, or so I hoped.

This permanent light drunkenness seemed, if not really good, at least an interesting, passing inconvenience, something like a passing storm. It’s also an example of the kind of error that can prove to be more common, as more games are running more and more on an update schedule: seasonal failure.

And there I was last night, after I wrote a sketch of this post waiting for distribution with Kotaku a funny, harmless error to readers. I planned to publish the article in the morning and that would be it.

But last night, after I finished my work and put the kids to bed, I loaded up Valhalla back. I decided to explore the Hamtunscire region, which is suitable for players at power level 340. My eivor was only 170, but I thought it would be interesting to explore.

On the outskirts, we found an enemy attack camp and spent half an hour trying to tear it down. The enemies were really much kinder than my regular opponents. They killed me a lot. Eivor continued to return temporarily drunk, but eventually eliminated the base. In the process, I shot all my arrows and did not recover. (This will be important).

I ventured deeper into Hamtunscire and saw a marker for a side mission. It involved Eivor taking a drink, unless the drink was poisoned and I suddenly got the most severe drunken effect I saw in the game. My screen didn’t just become blurry. It turned black and white. When this happened, an enemy attacked. It was too high for me, but I fired my bow and watched for a weak spot, except … no arrows.

I ran. The black-and-white intoxicating effect persisted. I kept running. The normal effect of drunkenness would have disappeared by now. This did not have. I jumped on my horse, galloped to the town of Wincestre. The effect is finally over. The fade stopped. The colors are back.

I approached some of Wincestre’s guards. They didn’t like my face and they killed me.

Eivor came back to life, but she wasn’t just drunk. It was – oh no! – intoxicated by poisons. Everything was black and white and turbulent.

It wasn’t that funny. And it hasn’t disappeared. At least, not fast enough.

I had read that sleeping makes the usual drunkenness go away, so I teleported Eivor back to her settlement, and put her to sleep. She woke up sober, the colors restored.

I quickly traveled back to Wincestre, told myself to play carefully, and climbed into a tall building to explore the city.

Then I jumped, hoping to land in a haystack, but I misjudged and died.

Eivor came back to life above the tall building and, you guessed it, was poisoned again.

It was annoying, but I had an idea. Maybe the game reminded me of my most recent drunkenness. Maybe if I get drunk (without poison) I could at least come back to life hesitantly, but without the world being bleached by color. But it didn’t work. She continued to revive after the subsequent death in the state of poison drunkenness.

I could continue to travel quickly to the settlement for some shuteye after each death, but that would be too difficult. Could I try to die less? I probably should have given up the game in such a treacherous region, but what’s the fun in that? No, I had to find a way to heal quickly from being drunk on poison while stubbornly playing several missions that I wasn’t prepared for.

I made Eivor meditate. But that didn’t work.

Then I agreed to listen to a man talk about Jesus. That worked!

As I was doing all this, I noticed something unexpected. Whenever I was poisoned by poison, Valhalla it has reached an austere beauty. The game looks great in general, but the elimination of colors allows light to more clearly define its protagonist and the landscape around it.

I started taking more screenshots.

I take many screenshots of Valhalla, and usually does this using the game’s photo mode. I like to use that tool in the game to interrupt the action, to reformulate a scene, to zoom in or out, although I’ve never used any of its filters, which include a black and white one. Instead, I just ran with the whole game world in this poisoned black and white state, then stopped to enter photo mode. When I aligned one of my photos, I discovered how the magicians who made the game did this black and white trick.

The poisoned effect was an illusion. After all, the game world had not been transformed into black and white. The developers had just placed a filter between my character and the camera. And using the photo mode, I could see exactly how they took this rabbit out of the hat.

Amazing!

I could have fun with that. This filter could co-play in the screenshots.

It could also create some interesting / interesting GIFs:

Suddenly, I was having too much fun. I realized I would miss it. I wouldn’t miss the game shaking, but I’d love to see it through this filter. I would miss playing with an unexpected visual trick and I would miss the feeling that I violated the game code and found something beautiful in an error.

I would like Eivor to come back to life without the whole world being unclear. So bring that patch.