How to beat the Beast of the Hills in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

The Beast of the Hills has its intimidating name for a reason: this large bear lurks deep within a set of abandoned ruins and puts up a very solid fight. As part of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s legendary animals, the Beast of the Hills is going to be one of your targets if you are looking to tackle everything the game has to offer.

The Beast of the Hill’s location

You can find the Beast at the Uriconium Ruins, northwest of Wenlean Abbey and southwest of Quatford. At the ruins, you will see a large entrance into the hill; this is the way to the Beast’s lair.

Go into this entrance and follow the large hall until you find a crawlspace for Eivor to slip through, right into the Beast’s home.

How to defeat the Beast of the Hills

The Beast’s power level is 190, so you will want to be sure to be around that level when you take it on, or else you are in for a long, difficult fight. Even at the proper level, the fight isn’t the easiest so we really recommend being at 190 or even higher to be safe.

The Beast’s attacks rely heavily on charging you and swiping at you with its paws or biting at you. Some of these attacks can be parried but we didn’t find much success when trying to do so; they are just too fast to be able to time it properly. Plus, their build-up is so similar to that of its red rune attack (which you have to dodge) that we found it easier to just always dodge its attacks and get a few hits in.

The first thing you will want to do in the fight is pull out your bow and target its three weak points: both of its hind-legs and its chest. We recommend using the Focus of the Nornir, as it slows time down and allows you to easily target these weak points and dish some good damage.

Targeting these points will take down its Stun Bar, and allow you to perform a Stun Attack on the Beast to take out a good chunk of its health.

After this, it’s just a matter of dodging and patience. The best method is to perform a Perfect Dodge (dodging just as its attack is about to hit you) to the left or right, as that will slow time down and allow you some extra room to get a few hits in on the animal before having to dodge back.

If you can get some separation, ranged attacks are always a great way to whittle down its health; just be ready for its charge attacks to close the distance quickly.

Also be aware of when the Beast dips its head into the water on the floor; this means it’s about to heal itself. You can stop it from doing so by attacking so close the distance between you two and hit it as fast as you can to minimize its healing.

A possible bug

There is a bug that has been reported with the Beast, but it really isn’t a bug that is detrimental to you. It’s more just confusing.

Sometimes, the Beast won’t spawn in its lair; it will just be an empty room. If this happens to you, head back out of the ruins and head up the hill that the lair is in. You will find an enemy camp here, and the Beast will have spawned outside of it, stuck in the terrain. Luckily for you, it can’t fight back when it is stuck in the terrain so you can take your time and unload into it, eventually taking it down.

However, once you have killed it, you will notice that the game has not given you credit for killing the Beast. This is easily fixed by going back into the Beast’s lair, where the completion should be triggered.