When players first start their journey in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, they'll have a default horse mount with a pretty standard saddle. While this mount is more than capable of traversing the large map of Valhalla, players wouldn't be faulted for wanting to spice things up a bit and change mounts.
For the most part, mounts are simply cosmetic, as all the mounts available in the game have the same stamina, speed, and other capabilities. Regardless, with how much exploration players will be doing in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, it makes sense to do it in style with a fancy horse or other type of mount.
Initially, the default horse will be the only one available to players, but other mounts can be purchased as well. Furthermore, those players that got the Ultimate edition of Assassin's Creed Valhalla will also start with a giant wolf mount. Again, though it looks ferocious, it will perform identically to even the default horse.
In order to change mounts, players must first make it to England. This isn't terribly far into the story and can be reached within around two hours of gameplay, but that number could be a lot more depending on how distracted players get exploring. Once there, players will need to build stables in order to access their inventory of owned mounts, or they can alternatively find a stables in an already established town in England. Doing either of these will enable the player to buy new mounts or switch between currently owned ones.
Switching mounts is as simple as finding a Stable Manager NPC and selecting the mount the player wants from the Owned section. In order to unlock new mounts, though, players will need to spend some of their hard earned silver. Certain other mounts require expenditure of real world money, with the aforementioned wolf mount costing about $8 to those players that didn't get the Ultimate edition. Once a mount is purchased, it stays with the player throughout the entire game, and can be switched back and forth between. Since players have to find a stable to do so, it's easier to change Eivor's gender than it is to change their mount.
Mounts can also be upgraded at the stables, allowing them to swim or increasing their stamina. These upgrades are not restricted to specific mounts, as these act more like skins for the player's mount rather than separate mounts altogether. With that in mind, players can freely upgrade their mount regardless of which mount they're riding at the time.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla is available now on PC, PS4, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X, and will release on November 12th for PS5.