Win the war of words with this Assassin's Creed Valhalla Flyting guide

If the phrase "You fight like a dairy farmer!" means anything to you, you'll already know something about Flyting in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. These Viking rap battles are a tough, but essential skill to master if you wish to access the game's most elusive dialogue options. Flyting lets you increase Eivor's charisma, which in turn reveals hidden dialogue prompts in conversation. These can resolve quests or curry favour with the people you meet throughout the game's story.

This Valhalla Flyting guide will teach you the vital benefits of this battle of lyrical wits, showing you how to find and dominate the many Flyting competitions spread across Norway and England. With our help, you should be able to embarrass the most eloquent of enemies with your withering words.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla Flyting: Why it's worth doing

Not only were these proto-rap battles an important part of Viking culture, Flyting will be important to you because it gives you the ability to upgrade your Charisma stat.

This'll be of great benefit to ambitious conversationalists in the early game, as high charisma allows you to access special dialogue prompts that can instantly resolve life-threatening disputes. It works in a similar fashion to the Speech statistic in Bethesda's Fallout series, where you can pass a check to escape a sticky situation, cut out some boring legwork, or sway somebody's opinion. 

Charisma prompts will appear in-game at random. If you meet the corresponding skill level shown in the prompt, you'll be able to choose it instead of the standard options, allowing you to access hidden dialogue and unique quest resolutions. Beyond instanced Flyting Competitions, Eivor will also be prompted to Flyt as part of the main quest, so it's useful to understand how these puzzles are won, regardless of whether you're interested in boosting your charisma or not.

How to find Flyting Competitions

You'll take part in your first Flyting competition in Fornburg as part of the main story, but you may come across others first in Norway if you explore this area first, as Andy recommends. You'll find plenty more in these colder climes, in Britain, and beyond. Flyting competitions are marked by the symbol of a blue mask on the map (don't get them mixed up with the white mask: This is a Roman Artefact). 

If you find any populated hamlet or town, chances are there's a Flyting competition waiting for you there. To activate them simply talk to the quest-giver and get ready for a Flyt.

How to win Flyting battles

Flyting in Assassin's Creed Valhalla is all about working with syllables. You'll go back and forth trading insults with your opponent, and you must do your best to turn what your interlocutor has said on its head with clever wording. You're looking to make your response rhyme, but not in a stunted fashion that undermines your wordy riposte. 

Be mindful that you can always ask your opponent to say their piece again if you didn't catch the rhythm of their insult. In most cases, there will be three options for Eivor to pick from. They are responses that:

• Won't rhyme with the preceding phrase at all.
• Rhymes, but doesn't match the flow of the preceding phrase.
• Rhymes and matches the preceding phrase's rhythm.

As you can guess, the trick is making your choice as close to the final response type as possible: It should rhyme and flow the best when read by Eivor. 

The best approach is to go over the prompts in your head or even say them aloud to yourself. Which one rolls off the tongue best? In many cases, an unnecessary comma may interrupt a response, making it redundant in verse when compared to a less pithy, but better flowing prompt. 

In some special cases you may face up against a unique Flyting opponent who doesn't play by the above rules. One Flyting partner I came across was deliberately terrible at Flyting. In cases like this, you must shape your responses around the fact that their attempts at Flyting are absurd, or rhyme with their response even if it is already failing to rhyme. With this knowledge, in either case, I trust you'll be able to Flyt like a butterfly and sting like a bee.