Vikings: Valhalla Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Become a Legend

According to pop culture, Vikings did mostly nothing but feast and fight. While that’s largely true, they also had a rich, less violent culture in their literature and religion (though admittedly those both had references to fighting). Unfortunately, our Vikings in Vikings: Valhalla are less of the “ruminate on the inevitability of death and approach life with a stoic but brave outlook” and more of the “punch the other guy in the face” kind of people. Oh well.

Vikings: Valhalla is difficult to pin to a specific genre; the best I can manage is “it’s a hybrid empire building and skirmish game with combat similar to Battle Cats”. In Vikings: Valhalla, you’ll need to carefully command your troops and secure rally points to push your foes back and lay waste to their settlements. But beware – those who live by the sword die by the sword, so you must be ready to defend your lands from the many foes you’ll encounter on your path. Will you rise to become a legend, or will you be a mere footnote in another’s story? The choice is yours.

Those undaunted by the challenges that lay ahead can get Vikings: Valhalla on the Google Play Store or the App Store. Do note that Vikings: Valhalla is a Netflix game, so you will need an active Netflix account to log in and play the game. But because this is technically a paid game, there are no ads or microtransactions!

Vikings: Valhalla is an easy game to learn thanks to its quick and easy tutorials. However, not all players may have played this kind of fast-paced game before. If you’re looking for a leg up on your competition or would like to go over the basics before starting the game, or are double-checking to see if you missed anything, you’re in the right place.

In this beginner’s guide to Vikings: Valhalla, we’ll be going over:

• Vikings 101: Picking fights with each other. How to fight, how to set up a warband, how combat works, how to command your units, unit types and advantages, and so on.
• Your settlement: Creating the resources needed to set sail to foreign lands, beat them up, and take their stuff.
• Making your army stronger: Increasing unit levels via the Training Camp, ranks, skills, and so on.

To Battle!

Battle! The bread and butter of most games. Just as you must learn to wield the sword to strike down your foe, you must also learn to use the shield to defend what’s yours. To that end, you’ll need to master the basics of combat. Combat in Vikings: Valhalla is simple, but there are a lot of intricacies to the system. Here’s what you need to know to get ahead.

Quick Tips:

• There’s both PvE and PvP combat in Vikings: Valhalla. Attacking a player requires a small amount of pennings (gold).
• Combat in Vikings: Valhalla takes place via a 3-minute skirmish where the attacker must destroy their opponent’s Great Hall to win.
• The attacker can also destroy their opponent’s Storehouse and Treasury to secure extra resources and pennings (respectively). In the Saga game mode, destroying these is necessary, while in PvP, you can skip these buildings if you’re pressed for time.
• If the attacker fails to destroy their opponent’s Great Hall in 3 minutes or less, the defender wins.
• The attacker can place units in rally points by spending action points (AP). AP slowly regenerates over time.
• The attacker’s placeable units are drawn randomly from their Warband (deck). A Warband consists of 9 cards. Used cards are shuffled back to the bottom of the Warband.
• You can hold up to 4 cards in your hand. You’ll also be able to see the top card of your deck, so use that knowledge to plan ahead.
• Attackers can command their units to focus down specific targets; this is done by tapping and dragging the portrait of a unit. Note that there is a cooldown before a unit can be issued another set of orders!
• The defender can repel attackers by placing defensive structures and rally points of their own. This is done in your Defenses screen as PvP is asynchronous.
• Defenders have an upper limit to build points (BP) and action points (AP). BP is consumed by defensive structures while AP is consumed by garrisoned troops.
• The attacker’s units essentially just attack-move to the Great Hall. They will stop to engage anything they can see, meaning that a clever defender can use defensive structures and units to create dead ends to waste the attacker’s time.
• The defender’s units will congregate around the rally point to which they’re assigned. They will fight enemies they see but won’t actively pursue foes.
• Most units are made up of several members. Stats on a unit’s page apply to each of its members.
• As a unit loses members, it loses efficiency. This is very important as you can’t dismiss wounded units nor replenish their ranks with healthy members.
• There are 5 unit types in the game. Each unit type has its strengths and weaknesses; attacking a type you’re strong against grants you bonus damage while hitting an enemy strong against your type means you do less damage.
• Shock beats light, light beats ranged, ranged beats shock. Siege units beat defensive structures but are weak to shock, light, and ranged.
• Tactics cards are powerful “spells” that can be activated to instantly create an effect.
• In addition to your normal unit types, you can also summon heroes to fight alongside your men. Heroes are often stronger and come with powerful abilities.
• Because you have the freedom to build your own Warband, experiment with different playstyles, and tweak your deck until you get it performing just the way you want it to.

Battle Basics – Attacking

The goal of Vikings: Valhalla is simple – raid and pillage. Battles are always between 2 players and are separated distinctly into the attacker and defender roles. Let’s talk about the basics of being the attacker first.

Attackers can select either PvE (saga) or PvP targets. Attacking anyone in PvP costs pennings, or gold, so try not to pick fights that you know you can’t win. In PvP, you’ll be given a preview of the enemy’s base and expected enemy types so you can still bow out if you think you’ve got a low chance of winning.

The attacker has 3 minutes to destroy their opponent’s Great Hall to secure the win. If they can destroy the Great Hall, they immediately win. But while focusing on the Great Hall is a shortcut to victory, you may want to take the time to destroy your opponent’s other structures, such as their Storehouse and Treasury. Destroying these nets you bonus resources and pennings, respectively.

Note that while the Storehouse and Treasury are optional targets in PvP, you must destroy them in Saga (single-player) mode to clear the stage!

As the attacker, you can summon your forces by spending action points (AP). Units can only be deployed into deployment zones. The attacker’s initial deployment zone is by the beach, but you can also capture rally points as your units defeat defenders and take key points. The starting beach is always a free deployment zone for the attacker.

Each unit has an AP cost indicated in the upper left of its card. As a general rule, the more expensive a unit is, the better it will perform in battle – though of course, that’s not set in stone. AP regenerates slowly over time. On a side note, you can also only have 6 units active at a time.

Unit cards are drawn from your Warband, or deck of cards. A Warband consists of up to 9 cards that are randomly added into the attacker’s hand. You can’t run out of cards – when a card is spent, it’s shuffled back into the bottom of your deck. To summon a unit, drag its card from the right side of the screen to any deployment zone – this will spawn a new unit of that type in that zone instantly. You can hold up to 4 cards at once, and you draw a new one each time you spend a card from your hand. You can also see the top card of your deck to the left side of your hand; make use of this information and plan ahead!

Finally, as the attacker, you can give your units orders if you want them to focus on specific structures, such as when you’re trying to beat the clock. To do this, tap a unit’s portrait (on the left side of the screen), then select a new target on the map.

Note that issuing direct orders has a cooldown. After receiving orders, a unit can’t be given new orders for a while!

Battle Basics – Defending

Now it’s time to switch perspectives. You won’t always be on the offensive – while you’re away, other players will attempt to attack your settlement for gold and glory. It’s up to you to build an efficient defense to push them back!

Defense is done by building defensive structures and assigning units to rally points. You don’t have an infinite amount of these – your defensive buildings, such as towers and palisades, are limited by build points (BP) while your units (deployed automatically at rally points that you set, and each rally point can have up to 3 units) cost AP. Defenders have an upper limit to their BP and AP consumption, so try to find spots to defend and hold out from. You can have up to 3 defense layouts saved.

To place defenses, tap on the “Defenses” button while in your town – it’s on the lower left of the screen. Doing so will bring up this screen…

…where you can tap and drag defensive structures from the left side of the screen and place them anywhere there’s space. You can also tap on the blue rally point that dot the map and assign up to 3 units to them, which will spawn in once invaders get too close. While you won’t have enough AP to man all the rally points, be careful of which ones you yield to your foes – the enemy getting a foothold in the center of your town often spells disaster.

Remember, too, that your goal is to defend your Great Hall for 3 minutes. Killing all invaders doesn’t automatically clear the battle as the invader will just regenerate some AP and try again. Your goal is to defend and slow them down long enough that they won’t be able to burst down your Great Hall.

PvP in Vikings: Valhalla is asynchronous, meaning that you can’t give orders during defensive battles. Upgrade your defenses as much as you can and try to think of some tricky layouts to frustrate and repel would-be invaders!

Combat Basics

It’s one thing to know the rules of combat, and it’s another to actually plan and execute a successful raid. A good commander understands how units act on the battlefield and factors that into their strategy.

Units that the attacker deploys are essentially on attack-move towards the Great Hall. This means that they’ll take the shortest path possible – which means they tend to pass through the middle of town (defenders, take note!). However, interrupting attackers is very easy. If they see something they can attack, they will move to attack it. This also means that while you don’t need to prepare overly complicated defenses, you should take measures to entice attackers to engage with your defensive structures and waste time – the barricades that you unlock by clearing Saga 2-1 are great at this.

The defender’s units, on the other hand, will gather around the rally points that the defender set. They’ll engage enemies that come near them but will return to their rally point if there’s nothing going on that they can see. Be careful of placing units in a rally point that sees no action as that’s a lot of AP and fighting men wasted!

Each unit is made up of a number of troops. Regular units are usually comprised of 3 members, while bigger or stronger units like heroes or siege weapons only have 1 member. Each of these units has the stats listed on that unit’s page…

…and each of them will attack. An archer with an attack power of 7 essentially means that a fully uninjured unit will be doing 21 damage, as all 3 archers will be firing on the same unit.

On the flip side, this also means that as units lose members, they become less effective. Take care not to end up with a bunch of wounded units as you’re both working under a unit limit (that’s 6 units, if you forgot) and you can’t dismiss units!

Unit Types

Elemental rock-paper-scissors systems are ubiquitous these days, so of course they’re also in Vikings: Valhalla.

There are five unit types in Vikings: Valhalla:

• Shock units are indicated via a red axe. These units go the whole hog on the offense, forgoing silly things like shields or heavy armor. Shock units are good against light units.
• Light units are indicated via a blue shield. These warriors utilize a blend of offense and defense, granting them unmatched versatility. Light units are good against ranged units.
• Ranged units are indicated via a green arrow. Thanks to their armaments, these fighters can strike their foes before they even get a chance to retaliate. Ranged units are good against shock units.
• Siege units are indicated by a purple battering ram (at least, I think it is?). Siege units are second to none when it comes to laying waste to buildings and defensive structures, but beware – their crews carry no weapons, and thus they’re weak to shock, light, AND ranged units!
• Defensive structures are indicated by a yellow shield. Only the defender has access to these in combat. These structures can take the form of towers, palisades, and more. They’re not strong against any unit type but are weak to siege damage.

You can see a unit’s class both on its card and via the symbol above its head when in battle.

Tactics Cards

There is one more card type in the game – yes, a card type, because it’s not a unit. These are black tactics cards, and they can be played to activate their effects immediately.

Be mindful that while tactics cards are very powerful and a well-placed one can easily turn the tide of battle, they’re also expensive, and playing a tactics card means that you’re forgoing AP that could be spent on deploying units. Once again, go into battle with a plan in mind and add tactics cards that further your strategy.

Heroes

Deploying an army of rank-and-file mooks is well and good, but your hordes need leadership. That’s where heroes come in.

Heroes are much more powerful than normal units, though this comes with the caveat that they’re alone in their unit – meaning that, despite their stats outclassing a regular unit, the regular unit still deals more damage as each member attacks. What really sets heroes apart is their skills.

Early in the game, you’ll get a copy of the hero Aire Farmaor (Aire is an archer-type hero – yes, they still have classes – who is far bulkier and does much more damage per shot to individual targets than your regular archer. However, Aire is notable because she not only has a passive skill that slows targets that she hits but also has a self-buff ultimate that causes her attacks to hit every enemy in range while it’s active!

Naturally, you can’t always pop a hero’s ultimate skill. To use their ultimate, a hero must first accumulate rage by fighting and taking damage. Once their rage is full, tap on their skill icon (above their portrait) on the left side of the screen. Depending on the type of skill that their ultimate is, you may have to select a target; self-buffs like Aire’s just need you to tap the button to use the ultimate.

Deckbuilding 101

The freedom to build your own deck is a much greater responsibility than most people realize. Yes, it’s a basic part of the game and no, nothing’s stopping you from going unga bunga and just stuffing it full of the highest attack cards you have. But it always, always pays to enter battle with a plan in mind. Here are some of the questions you’ll need to ask yourself when building your Warband:

• Do you prefer more expensive but more powerful cards that cost more AP, or would you rather deploy armies of cheaper but weaker troops?
• Do you need tactics? Do you have any tactics that push your general game plan?
• Do you have a hero that helps your game plan?
• What types of defenses are you struggling with the most? How do you propose to overcome them?
• Are there particular units you struggle against?
• Would you rather double down on your Warband’s strengths, or add cards to cover its weaknesses?

Remember: deckbuilding is more art than science, so don’t be afraid to experiment with a new Warband until you get exactly what you’re looking for!

Building Your Settlement

Now that you know how to fight, it’s time to learn how to build. What’s the point of all this raiding and looting if you aren’t going to build anything fantastic with all those materials, eh?

Quick Tips:

• Each settlement has multiple facilities. Upgrading a facility improves its performance.
• The arrow outside a building denotes if it can be upgraded. Red means you lack materials, while green means you can upgrade it now.
• The Great Hall is your town hall and the seat of your power. Upgrading it unlocks new buildings and gives it more health. Uniquely, the Great Hall also needs experience points to be upgraded.
• Excess experience points that go over the required amount by the Great Hall are lost. Upgrade this whenever you can!
• The Storehouse is where your raw materials are kept. Upgrading it increases its health and raises the cap on storable materials.
• The Treasury stores pennings. Upgrading it increases its health and penning storage.
• Only the aforementioned three buildings can be attacked. All other buildings are simply treated as invulnerable obstacles.
• You can’t change the layout of your town. This stops players from walling up with invulnerable buildings.
• Resource generators such as the lumber mill and tannery yield valuable materials used to upgrade other buildings. Each building can only store up to 6 hours’ worth of materials.
• The Builder’s Hut controls your defensive structures.
• The Training Camp allows you to increase the levels of your fighting men.
• The Longship is where you launch raids from. It must be upgraded to unlock more stages in Saga mode and more PvP nodes. Note that PvP nodes refresh over time.
• Don’t forget to tap the “Build” menu at the bottom left of the screen to construct new buildings, such as new research generators or more defensive structures.

Town Basics

Each player has a town where they rest when they’re not beating up somebody else in the world.

Your town serves as your economic and research hub. It’s not always about fighting – sometimes it’s about kicking back, relaxing, and thinking of newer and better ways of fighting. So I guess it still is about fighting.

More to the point – each building in your town serves an important role in combat. Whether that’s logistics, making your guys stronger, or letting them sail further away to punch somebody on the other end of the globe, all buildings can be upgraded, increasing their potency. Because upgrades are both instant and important, make it a point to always upgrade your buildings.

To help you quickly determine which buildings can be upgraded, pay attention to the arrow that appears outside each building:

A red arrow means you currently lack the resources to upgrade this building, while a green arrow means you should go ahead and upgrade it. As in right now.

The Great Hall

The Great Hall is the seat of your hopefully-not erstwhile power and losing it in combat means defeat!

Fortunately, the Great Hall can be upgraded. Great Hall upgrades not only increase its health, making it much harder to destroy during raids but also unlock technologies such as new structures or upgrade levels for existing buildings.

Note that, unlike other structures, the Great Hall also needs experience points on top of its material cost to be upgraded. Experience points can be earned from (how else?) fighting other players or NPCs and raiding their settlements. Be warned: Any experience points that go over the amount of experience points your Great Hall needs are lost forever. For example, if your Great Hall needs 500 experience points to become upgradable, and you’re currently holding 450, any experience gained over 50 is lost and wasted.

The Storehouse

The Storehouse is where you store all your stolen acquired goods from raiding. Oh, and from manufacturing too.

The higher the Storehouse’s level, the more health it has. Each upgrade level also increases the Storehouse’s storage limit per resource.

The Treasury

The Treasury is where you keep your pennings, or gold. Gold is used not only to pay for some upgrades but also to keep your fighting men supplied when attacking other players. Protect your gold!

The higher the Treasury’s level, the more gold it can store, and the more health it has, too.

A Sidenote

Only the Great Hall, Storehouse, and Treasury have a health stat because they are the only structures that can be attacked and destroyed in battle. Other buildings simply act as invulnerable obstacles that the attackers will ignore and move around. Nifty, right?

However, this also means that you can’t change the layout of your town; presumably, this is to prevent players from delaying by using a wall of indestructible, unpathable buildings.

Resource Generators

Resource generators passively generate (what else) resources for your use, whether that’s for building new buildings, upgrading existing ones, or for some other third thing. In the beginning, you’ll only have access to the Lumber Mill; you’ll need to upgrade your Great Hall to gain access to new resource types. If you haven’t been upgrading your Great Hall for whatever reason, take this as a very strong suggestion to do so – you will need large amounts of different types of resources to make progress.

Note that resource generators will only produce items 4 times a day at 6-hour intervals. Anything uncollected will be wasted, so be sure to pop in and collect your resources every so often!

The Builder’s Hut

The Builder’s Hut contains the architects responsible for designing the defensive structures that you use to protect your settlement.

Upgrading the Builder’s Hut is very important as it improves the levels of your defensive structures. Unlike the Training Camp, the Builder’s Hut upgrades the maximum level of all ofyour defensive structures at once. Like it or not, you will be doing a lot of PvP in Vikings: Valhalla, so it’s best to be prepared with an effective defense!

The Training Camp

The Training Camp is where you go to increase the tech levels of your units.

In the beginning, you’ll only be able to raise the maximum level of your shock units. The higher your Training Camp’s level, the more unit types you’ll be able to effectively train, and the higher you can push their levels!

We’ll talk more in-depth about unit training in the “Strengthening the Horde” section.

Your Longship

The Longship is how your raiders get around. And no, you only have one ship, because “shipwright” isn’t a valid profession yet.

The Longship is perhaps the single most important structure you should upgrade in Vikings: Valhalla as it directly affects your ability to perform in both PvE and PvP. PvE-wise, the Longship unlocks new regions, while in PvP, it affects the number of PvP nodes you get per refresh (the number of attackable players). PvP Nodes refresh over time, so try and upgrade the longship as soon as you can so you get more PvP fights – and potential loot.

Note that the Longship is located all the way down from your main settlement, by the beach.

Constructing New Buildings

Just because you’ve unlocked a new building doesn’t mean that you automatically get a copy of it. You’ll need to build that structure by tapping on “Build” in the lower left of the screen while in your settlement.

This menu not only lets you construct newly researched buildings but also allows you to build more of a defensive structure, which is extremely important!

Strengthening the Horde

Enough with the building stuff. It’s time to fight again, but this time, we’re applying science to it. Here’s how to make your Vikings the best they can be:

Quick Tips:

• You can raise the maximum levels of a unit type in training camp by paying pennings. To get more maximum levels, upgrade the camp further.
• You can also increase the maximum level of tactics cards via this method for stronger spells.
• Cards are not automatically upgraded after increasing their maximum level via Training Camp. You need to go to that unit’s info panel in the Warband screen, then upgrade them from there.
• Each card can also have its rank upgraded by using materials acquired in PvP.
• Higher ranks improve a unit’s skills and become much more powerful at max level.

The Training Camp

We already talked about the training camp and how it improves the maximum level of your units.

By paying pennings at your Training Camp, you can improve the max levels of each of your unit types, including tactics. By increasing the maximum level of your units, you pave the way for them to become much stronger and much more reliable down the road.

In the beginning, you’ll only be able to improve the max level of your shock units. To unlock more level boosts, you need to upgrade your training camp.

Increasing Unit Levels

Like building new structures, your units don’t automatically get upgraded to the max level just because you paid for the level cap increase at the Training Camp. Stingy, right?

To increase a unit’s level, you need to visit that unit’s page on the Warband screen, and then tap the upgrade button below its model. Remember – the Training Camp to raise the level cap, then the unit screen to increase a unit’s level. This can get expensive, so try to spend only on cards that you’re sure you’ll be using!

Skills and Ranks

Finally, you can also improve a unit’s rank and skill levels. By sacrificing materials you get from PvP, you can vastly boost a unit’s combat power by improving its skill. What, you thought only heroes had skills?

By boosting a unit’s skill levels, you not only push the numbers of its skill higher but also give it more add-ons and can even change how said skill works. As with upgrading unit levels, this can get expensive quickly (especially since rank-up materials come almost exclusively from PvP battles) so focus on key cards in your Warband.

To increase a unit’s rank and skill levels, go to that unit’s page, tap on “Rank” on the right side, and then select “Rank Up” at the bottom of the screen. This panel will also show you exactly what material that unit needs so you can plan your PvP battles better.

Note that for units with several skills, such as heroes, each rank may affect a different skill. Aire, for example, boosts her passive at 2^nd rank but gets a stun on her active skill at 3^rd rank. Read and plan ahead!

Yours For the Taking

It’s a brutal affair, being a Viking, so don’t think about it too much. Grab your helmet and your weapon, get in the longboat, and get ready for another raid on another unsuspecting player. After all, if they can’t protect their lands, what right do they have to claim ownership over them?

That concludes my beginner’s guide to Vikings: Valhalla and I hope I was able to help you get a solid understanding of the basic concepts you’ll need to plant your roots and build your own hill fort. If you have any suggestions on how to improve this guide or are feeling generous and would like to share some of your tips and tricks, make yourself heard in the comment section!