Ubisoft explains why Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s DLC was delayed

When Ubisoft announced that it was delaying Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s first major DLC, Wrath of the Druids, it promised to publish an article explaining the delay. Ubisoft recently delivered on that promise, and the main reason for the delay is that testing title updates is a lot of work.

According to the article, the Valhalla team is shifting from a four-week cycle to a five-week cycle for its title updates. That means that, instead of launching once a month, Title Updates—which fix bugs in the code and add or remove assets—will launch a week later.

This leads to a slightly updated title update roadmap. The next one is coming April 27th, followed by Wrath of the Druids on May 13th. The title update after that is scheduled for “late spring,” which—given the five-week release schedule—probably puts it in early June. A new game mode called “Mastery Challenge” is also scheduled to launch in late spring.

Ubisoft also provided updates on several fixes, including populating England’s rivers and ponds with fish. A partial fix is coming with the April 27th update, but the full fix will have to wait for another title update. The “Pig of Prophecy” quest should have a fix coming in the April update, but the “In the Absence of an Ealdorman” quest is still proving too tricky, and a full fix is still in the works.

The rest of the article gives a little more insight into the process of releasing a title update, for those of you who might be interested in learning about what goes on behind the scenes. In essence, delivering a title update is a six-step process, and when two teams are working on both bug fixes and new content, those six steps can take longer than expected or desired.

What this updated roadmap means for Valhalla‘s second major DLC, The Siege of Paris, is unclear. That DLC was originally scheduled to launch in the summer, but with this new five-week schedule, don’t be surprised if there are ripple effects and The Siege of Paris misses that deadline.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is available on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, and Google Stadia.