So, there's been a few posts here and there about this game and I figured it warrants its own thread.

If you haven't heard of it, Valheim is a "survival" game in which you play as a fallen Viking, brought to a realm called Valheim in order to defeat the ten "Forsaken" - giant boss monsters of various types. Resource gathering, crafting, and building are the main hallmarks of the game. It's built on an impressive game engine that is low-poly and uses low-res textures, but has a surprisingly good lighting, particle, and physics engine. Long view distances, and a very large open world make for fun exploration. However, be warned that it is quite difficult, unforgiving in some respects. It's currently in open beta, available on Steam for $20, and offers solo and coop play. For a beta, it's remarkably polished.

Here's a few game trailers:




It's a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it. Think Skyrim meets Minecraft and you're in the ballpark.

I've been playing for almost two months now, taking my time, and I'm into the iron age. I've got a home base with high stone walls around it, and a longboat I've been using to explore and ferry ore back to my base for processing. Haven't done any coop stuff yet, but I'd like to.

This was posted in another thread, but I figured I'd answer it here:

quote:

Originally posted by myrottiety:
Any of you guys playing valheim that made it to the bronze age. I got super annoyed with how little I could carry for smelting and the cart sucks on the terrain. I started a 2nd world and named it "backpack". So when I'm mining I can just log out and store metals in chests in my backpack world. Then log back into my main world and mine away. Rinse and repeat. It's a bit of an exploit.

But the nearest x2 dark forest biomes are quite the strech from my main base. And the terrain is all over the place & usually breaks my cart or flips it. So I don't really feel bad doing it. I'm about to start prepping to take on the 2nd boss. Usually only play a few hours on the weekend. This game is gorgeous. The developers nailed the lighting. Lot to in this game for the $20 or whatever it is.

I haven't been doing the holding world, despite how bad the cart sucks. What I did was figure out the most direct routes to the nearest large copper deposits (I built my base on the border of the black forest on my starting island), and then clear and even a path with the hoe. I heard about the holding world exploit, but decided to just play it straight up. Something you may or may not know is that once you defeat the second boss, it will not longer be "The forest begins to move.." but instead "the ground begins to shake..." Yep, trolls will be coming to smash your base to shit. I highly recommend crafting a bronze pickaxe and digging yourself a deep, wide trench around your base before you go after the second boss. Alternately, you can just go kill him and then mine out a new home under the platform he spawns at - it cannot be destroyed by trolls or anything else. I did not do this, but thankfully, I did build the deep trench and built a high wall of stone before the first troll raid happened. One of them blasted me off the top of the wall and I died from the fall. Many of the stone blocks were damaged to between 30-50% health. One of the trolls got stuck in the trench, and since I was so high out of reach, I was able to pelt him with fire arrows from the safety of the top of the wall.

Before you take on the second boss, I recommend scouting out a swamp biome that borders a black forest biome, sailing there and building a portal in the black forest on the coast. Your other portal back at your base, of course, and make sure to build a fence around the portal at the border of the swamp so it doesn't get destroyed. This serves a few purposes: One, you're going to want to immediately start gathering iron scraps once you defeat the second boss so that you can unlock the stone cutter, and thus start building with stone to withstand troll attacks. The best way to do that (if you're not doing the holding world thing) is with the longboat, which you'll be able to build as soon as you get iron, and you can load that sucker up like crazy and it doesn't change the handling characteristics like loading the cart does. Being able to book it straight back to your base to repair your stuff and dump off collected items via the portal is a plus. I've been mining iron, dumping it next to the portal or loading it straight into the hold of the longboat moored right next to the portal in the blackforest by the swamp I'm exploring, going back through the portal to my base to fix up my stuff and offload my loot, coming back and doing it over again.

You don't really want to hang around in the swamp at night, and you don't really want to go in there without poison resistance meads and bronze armor. I've been doing it with troll armor, and being extremely careful, but it hasn't been what I'd call easy. A fully leveled stag breaker will be your friend for skeletons, and blobs. Parry Draugrs and kite them one at a time - if you get surrounded, you're toast. Surtlings suck. Bring a hoe and level out the ground between crypts and your portal so leeches are less of a problem. Sausage is your friend. That's about all I've got right now.

I'll upload some screenshots tomorrow!

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
Surtlings suck. Bring a hoe

If you haven't already tried it, for fun and profit (surtling cores!) another use of the hoe is to dig around so the surtling spawn location is under water.

...That’s genius.... I’ll try that out today.

I've been enjoying it still. Haven't had time to play in the last 3-4 weeks. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow I should definitely get some time in.

Killed the 2nd boss and sailed my boat to the nearest black forest. Landed and got mobbed and 1 shot killed by what I think was a 1 star or 2 star dragur. I just turned it off. Luckily I had put my crypt key in "back pack" world. I should have enough bronze to just build bronze armor. I was running around in troll.

Have they given a release date of Hearth & Home yet?

quote:

Originally posted by Skull Leader:
Have they given a release date of Hearth & Home yet?

Not that I've seen. I think last I heard they were planning x3-x4 releases this year. I know there are x3 empty biomes with little to nothing in them. So they could have some new bosses.

quote:

Originally posted by myrottiety:
Killed the 2nd boss and sailed my boat to the nearest black forest. Landed and got mobbed and 1 shot killed by what I think was a 1 star or 2 star dragur. I just turned it off. Luckily I had put my crypt key in "back pack" world. I should have enough bronze to just build bronze armor. I was running around in troll.

I had the exact same thing happen. All of that, even quitting as soon as I got killed.

So there's a website where you can type in your world seed number and it will show you your world map, and where everything, and I mean everything is located. You can find it here: https://valheim-map.world/

I decided that one of the first things I wanted to do was find the trader. So I typed in my seed and found that he was a few islands over. I was in the stone age. A raft wasn't going to get me there. So I got to work an eventually built a karve and immediately set sail. Now, my trader was a bit inland at a narrow point in the island. I saw a nice, open place to land and immediately set about building a little shack with a bed to save my game. Then these little goblin motherfuckers came out of nowhere and started chasing me around. I took one hit from one and most of my health was gone, so I backpedaled in a panic, trying to pelt them with arrows to little effect. And then a giant mosquito came and finished me off with one hit. All my good stuff was stuck several islands over and no way to get to it.

So I mined more copper and tin, built a second karve, built more weapons and loaded up with arrows and supplies to build a portal and embarked again. I arrived and there's nobody there! I turn off vegetation to get a great look and sure enough, the coast is clear. I hop off my ship and head to where I was building the little shack and start doing renovations to house a portal. Then, two goblin motherfuckers came racing out of nowhere and one-hit me.

I build a third ship, and load up with more arrows, determined to kill everything from the boat this time, and I embark. I arrived and there's nobody there. In a fit of stupidity, I leap off the boat, and the same thing happens again, but this time I don't even make it to the shack twenty feet from the shore before the little giggling assholes killed me.

By this point, I'm pissed and feeling more than a little defeated. I read up and find out that there's such a thing as the Body Recovery Squad, and I join their discord and put in a ticket and wait. Then I cancel that, load up Valheim, build a fourth ship, and load up with only the supplies to build a portal and a hammer. I sailed down there again, turned on god mode, landed on the shore, got mobbed by a group of the little goblin fucks and I typed in the nuclear code "killall" and everything within about fifty meters of me exploded. I gathered up my shit, went inland to the trader and built a walled-in portal, recovered and warped all my dropped stuff home, destroyed the ships and took the parts.

I rage-quit the game every time I got killed. I hate resorting to cheats, but it was getting to game-breaking levels of frustration for me, and this had been going on for the better part of a week. Watching fuhlings explode in revenge was beyond satisfying. I maybe took it one step further and nuked their entire village that was nearby.... I also learned that one does not venture out into the plains with lvl 1 troll armor, for what that's worth. Anyway, I've got a portal next to the trader and I go straight there to sell loot. Haven't messed with the fishing rod yet, but the Dverger circlet (headlamp) and Megingjord were absolutely worth it.

Oh, and the surtling farm works nicely. I dug out around one of the fire spouts so it was all water within about a thirty foot radius and had thirty cores in very little time. I need to go back to collect the charcoal now, as I've run through pretty much everything I processed before making iron.

Hearth and Home in third quarter, Mistlands hopefully near the end of the year. They've been focusing on bug fixes.

When a game goes down the rabbit hole and gets so technical that the type of food you consume affects your character's abilities that's when I'm out.

The premise sounded interesting though.

Still haven't had time to log back in and go build a boat and fetch my body. Sigh...

quote:

Originally posted by Skull Leader:
Have they given a release date of Hearth & Home yet?

Heart & Home is out today. Went to play some with my son and noticed the game had to update. Gonna check it out now.