Ubisoft recently updated Assassin's Creed Valhalla to once again include the Ostara Festival, and since then, many players have been completing side objectives to earn seasonal rewards. However, some Assassin's Creed Valhalla players are noticing some issues associated with Update 1.5.1 because, since its addition to the game, NPCs have been flickering in and out of existence.
Reddit users Shiny_puffy_llama, TripleWhiteBoi, and Ragesploit87 are among several Assassin's Creed Valhalla players reporting issues with the game since the Ostara Festival was brought back. The most recent Assassin's Creed Valhalla update was added to the various platforms at the end of April, and since then, progressively more players have experienced the aforementioned flickering. This flickering has been noticed by Assassin's Creed Valhalla players in multiple areas of the game, which suggests that the bug causing it isn't simply affecting Ravensthorpe and its Ostara Festival.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla's Ostara Festival celebrates Easter with various activities, such as egg hunting and drunken brawling, and it allows players to take a break from the usual action RPG gameplay to play some mini-games for unique rewards. While most Assassin's Creed Valhalla players may be able to take part in the festivities like any other year, others have made videos showing NPCs flickering in and out of the environment like strobe lights. Each video confirms the same issue, which suggests it isn't limited to a player's hardware.
Each Assassin's Creed Valhalla video showing the flickering characters confirms that they aren't all disappearing in unison as one will be affected before another, and they rapidly exchange the flickering indefinitely. Eivor is also impacted by the same issue that's affecting the NPCs, which suggests that a bug or glitch is tied to all character models, and it may have been introduced with the Ostara Festival patch. Update 1.5.1 that brought the Ostara Festival back to Ravensthorpe also included a new Mastery Challenge pack, which could alternatively be the cause of players' issues.
Although many players have confirmed that they're experiencing the flickering issue since Update 1.5.1 for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, it remains unclear how many players have been negatively impacted. Because it's been several days since Ubisoft last updated Assassin's Creed Valhalla, it's currently unclear if it is aware of players experiencing this issue. However, with so many players recording their experiences with Assassin's Creed Valhalla flickering, it's likely that Ubisoft will implement a fix for the problem in the near future.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla is available now for Google Stadia, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.