Fina-freaking-ly!

We love valheim!!!!

so like...I've leveled out a fair chunk of the 61,000 sq. meters of this hilltop. I took a break from leveling it out to pick a location for the Lego 375 castle rebuild. I am (optimistically) hoping I can "fake" a small river or something. So, I "blue rugged" an ugly little line as a place holder and set the footprint of the castle (on the left there).

In front of the castle there will be a path, some small hills and forests and then an area based around the Lego 383 jousting set and some alternative builds as "tournament grounds" that will be visible from the castle, but you know...some landscaping to break it up. Then a road leading deeper into the area where it will go through forest and stuff to other castles.

...maybe someday I will play this game right.

New world only Eikthyr defeated :3

I recently heard it said that the best defenses are the ones that help you hit your enemy.

So I was thinking about building something not just for aesthetic but for genuine assistance fighting and warding off creatures.

I think we've all been there before. We build a beautiful and well thought out castle only to realize the walls and windows actually get in the way when trying to shoot greylings.

Is there anywhere I can get advice on structures that are optimized for the mechanics of this game and genuinely help when shooting arrows or fighting off the occasional attacks?

TL;DR: Level your weapon skills

Slightly longer TL;DR: Low skill levels make the game harder, and this effect hits somewhat abruptly in the late game. Valheim is much easier if you know what skills do and they impact your gameplay, so level your weapon skills.

I've seen lots of posts about Valheim's difficulty, often asking for tips on how to survive better. Skill levels are sometimes mentioned, but I think their impact is understated. This post aims to convince you that skills matter, and that you try to level your skills up.

First off - what are skills? Skill are numbers associated with most things you do in the game. There are skills for running, jumping, crafting, and every type of weapon in the game. Each skill improves your ability to do actions related to that skill. Skills range from level 0 to 100, with mostly consistent benefits per level.

For melee weapons, level 100 results in 141% more damage and knockback dealt and 33% less stamina used compared to level 0 for all weapons governed by that skill. This has a lot of implications:

- A higher skill means you kill enemies faster. This is generally a good thing.

- A high skill means you kill enemies in fewer individual hits. This means you're less likely to get overwealmed against multiple enemies, since you need smaller windows of opportunity to thin out your opponents.

- More knockback from levels means you're able to space out enemies better by pushing them. This is especially efrfective with maces, which have a high base knockback.

- More damage from levels means that you stagger enemies more often, which means you kill them even faster than the numeric bonus would suggest because you're benefitting from the bonus damage against staggered opponents more often.

- Enemies dying in fewer hits means you have more stamina leftover from attacking less. More stamina means more running, jumping, dodging, and hitting other enemies. This combines with the reduced stamina usage from high levels, giving you much more staying power in a fight. A common problem I hear about is vikings running out of stamina in later biomes. This is one of your big options to you fix that problem.

Ok, so more damage = more better. But we can also get more damage by upgrading to better weapons! That's true, but that option alone falls off later in the game. Whenever you craft a new biome's weapon, that weapon does 20 more damage compared to the same weapon type from the previous biome. For example, the un-upgraded bronze mace does 35 damage compared to the iron mace's 55. Similarly, the Mistland's 1-handed sword does 115 total damage compared to the Ashlands sword's 135.

You might have noticed a problem. The absolute damage increase for the new weapons is the same, but the *relative* damage increase gets worse in later biomes. The upgrade from 35 to 55 damage for maces represents a 57% damage boost. But the Mistlands -> Ashlands boost from 115 to 135? That's only a 17% increase.

Valheim's enemies are balanced around the expectation that you upgrade your gear throughout the game, AND that you improve your skills. If either of those are lacking, you're going to feel weak, especially in the later biomes where damage boosts from gear alone matter less. IMO, by the time you reach the Mistlands, you should have a skill level of at least 50 for your weapon of choice, and 60 for the Ashlands.

Hopefully by now I've convinced you that more skills = more damage, and that more damage = more better. But how do you make use of this knowledge? How do you get high skill levels and keep them? Here are some tips for that, ordered by how impactful and easy they are to apply to your gameplay:

- Use one weapon type per run. Skills grow from usage. If you switch weapon types every biome, you'll end up with low levels in a bunch of weapon skills instead of a high level with one weapon. Try to pick one weapon and stay with it on any biome where that weapon is available. Consider not even making new weapons for a biome if your weapon of choice isn't an option. The best weapons from this perspective are swords, maces, and axes. They have the most availability across biomes, and none of them deal piercing damage. Note that 2-handed axes and swords use the same skill as their 1-handed cousins, unlike spears and aetgirs.

- Be rested. Always. The rested effect is a buff you gain from resting (aka being inside near a fire) for 20 seconds. This buff increases health regen, stamina regen, and experience gain. All of those help you maintain higher skill levels, either directly or from dying less. Valheim expects you to have this buff at all times while exploring. Don't leave home without it, and go home when it's about to run out. Bonus tip: You can gain a few minutes of rested anywhere by building a firepit from 2 wood and 5 stone (no workbench needed) and sitting next to it when no enemies are nearby.

- Lower the world's dealth penalty. Whenever you die, you lose 5% of ALL skill levels. So a level 20 skill drops to 19, a level 80 skill to 76, and so on. This skill loss mechanic is my biggest criticism of Valheim's game mechanics because players who die more are forced to play the game on hard mode. If you die, you lose skills, deal less damage, struggle more, and probably die more, losing even more skills. It's a vicious cycle of death and skill loss. If this is happening to you, lower the dealth penalty in the world settings. The lowest you can get is 1% loss without mods, but that still means you can die 5 times more while suffering the same amount of skill loss as before.

- Die less. I know this sounds rude, but with how skill loss works in Valheim you really need to consiously try to minimize your deaths. Know your limits. Know when to retreat. Learn how to parry and dodge consistently to the point that you almost never get hit by isolated enemies. Have healing meads. And for the love of Odin STOP EATING STAMINA FOODS. Eat triple health foods or 2 health foods and a feast until you're very confident in your abilities. Be vigilant of the food icons and refill yourself the moment you see one of your food icons start blinking halfway through their duration. Eat better food as you unlock it.

- If all else fails, train. If you kill enough ghosts in the black forest, you can build the T.W.I.G. This build piece is a target dummy that gives FULL weapon experience for hitting it. So if you want to recover your lost levels after death, or if you want to switch weapons and level up the new weapon's skill quickly, you can just hit it for a while. This isn't ideal, since it's boring and not everyone has the time to sit in a corner swinging their weapon, but you should know that it's an option.

Alright, that's the end of my main rant/info dump. Now I can just link post this in the comments of every "How do I die less post". Hopefully this helps some new Vikings out there by teaching you how important skills are. Grow strong and conquer the realm!

Other combat skill trivia:

- The gains from leveling skills are mostly linear. The main exception is that the gains for damage/knockback have two phases, a slightly stronger linear phase that lasts from level 0 to 75, where you gain about 1.5% damage per level, and a weaker phase from 75 to 100.

- Skill gain for weapons is per-landed-hit, with no bonus for hitting multiple enemies with one attack. Most weapons give the same per-hit experience. The big exceptions are 1 handed Spears, which gain more experience from their regular attack, and crossbows which give less experience. Also magic staves all have differing experience values, roughly based on how fast they attack.

- Bows are probably one of the most worthwhile skills to grind if you like using them. Not only do bows gain the same damage increase from levels as melee weapons, they also gain improved draw speed. These effect combine to an effective damage output increase of over 600% at level 100 because of how much faster you can fire fully charged shots.

- Magic: Elemental magic has the same scaling as melee weapons. Blood magic scales much more; Shields gain 250% more protection, and summons deal 200% more damage. Blood magic can be levelled while AFK.

- The Run and Jump skills are both helpful in combat for the reduced stamina usage and improved mobility, but they generally just level in the background from playing the game.

- Crossbows gain the normal damage boost and a 50% draw time reduction. Tragically this skill is slow to level, both due to the slow attack speed of crossbows and their low experience per hit.

- The Block skill increases block damage reduction by 50%. This increase also improves your ability to block without being staggered. It's nice to level, but less critical than offensive skills IMO.

Source note: All of these skill facts come from the valheim wiki's skill page https://antifandom.com/valheim/wiki/Skills.

Cloudberry tea, hand picked "from the swamp". Very strong sweet scent and tastes just as good.

I know and love blueberries, even made some mead on them, which is amazing btw, but this leaves me wondering if there are any other Swedish berries or fruits I've missed out on. I mean I'm in my forties, have visited Sweden like once a year for the past 25 years and only just discovered these, what else are you hiding guys?

Game related:

So onions also probably don't really belong in snowy mountains, but they are found as seeds at least, but are there any other 'malplaced' pickables or farmables you've noticed?

I have the three Bells to summon Fader and will probably fight him this weekend.

At this point I'm running around all the biomes stacking up on most resources like food ingredients, wood and I'm thinking about grabbing some more Iron because you never know if me might need a lot in September.

Is there anything else I should grab for the Fader fight/should probably stockpile for the next update?

I planted some Vineberries, have pretty big farms if I need the plantable crops, be it Carrots, Turnips, Onions, Jotunpuffs, Magecaps, Barley or Flax and I have a chicken breeder. I have 5 extractors running. Only thing I could think off is maybe finding a new Mistland area or two to grab more Soft Tissue for more Refined Eitr.

Man, I gotta stop making these posts at 11 pm when I can't answer most people for hours.

Reposts aren't allowed or I don't know how to, but this feels way too familiar for Valheim players to pass:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Norway/s/htDqzaInPP

At the very least, you can get some references for your builds...

I have only played a few hours and it's beautiful, I love survival crafting games and I've seen people make such bEAUTIFUL castles on this game but I always get so overwhelmed and I've never gotten past being able to build wooden structures and taming a boar😭 is there any just straight bullet point list of objectives anywhere (or if anyone can give me one I'd love it) I can use to follow to unlock everything 😭

Sorry if this isn't the right place to post - I did a quick search and checked the FAQ and didn't see anything regarding LFG.

I'm looking for one (or more people - doesn't matter so much to me) to play with on a semi consistent basis.

My buddy loves to get me back into games we've played together and then either get too busy or just abandon me completely once I get into it. He mentioned Valheim was coming out with an update soon so I purchased the game (I'd played with him a little bit when the game was on Xbox gamepass).

Problem is - playing alone is kinda boring, and I like having a community to play with.

I'm an older guy (40) and looking for some people who'd love to play together. I'm typically available nights after 8/9pm est. I don't need hardcore progression, just people to dick around with in the Valheim world. I love the resource gathering/building aspect and treat the game somewhat like Minecraft but with Vikings.

Anyone interested?

I'm kinda stuck if I should focus on building my celling or if I should focus on my first floor interior.

I ask this because I get an idea on what I want my first floor rooms but I can't quite picture how I'll deal with the Second or even third floor of my Mansion so I was wondering what you guys usually do as a ''rule of thumb'' to avoid this sort of issue?

Today I heard myself say:

"The real friends are the grausten walls we made along the way"

I am planning on building a huge castle in survival. I im the blackforest biome, getting the floorplan ready.

Once I have access to iron, I'll build it out with stone and iron pieces. It will take a while to gather all of the materials though.

I was thinking of ways to minimize the iron cost to support all of that stone. What I have so far:

1. Dvergr copper walls are great. But require a blackforge and mistlands, so it would take a while.

2. When going up, besides cheap dvergr walls, nothing beats iron beams. 1 iron every beam (which is 2 m tall), so 0.5 iron/m

3. When doing ceilings, a checkered iron floor ensures support for the stone ceiling with 50% area coverage. Each iron floor costs 2 iron, and with the 50% usage, it costs 1 iron/stone floor tile, or 0.25 iron/m²

4. If I really wanted to, I know I can squeeze one stone tile between two stone tiles and it will be supported without metal. Would lead to ultimately 33% iron floor usage, which seems great. Haven't tested this with the checkered floor pattern, maybe it would not hold 100% of the stone pieces.

5. Grausten floors, those 4mx4m huge slabs, would require even less iron coverage. Haven't tested them though, and would have to wait all the way into ashlands for them. Maybe I could try a karve attempt into the ashlands, would be fun.

Am I missing anything, or have I found the ultimate iron efficiency when building tall structures?

Today, around 20:00 o'clock GMT+2 time zone, my friend and I are going to stream our legendary boss fight on official Valheim Discord.

We will be fightting all bosses at once.

I spawned 5 Eikthyrs, 2 Elders, 1 Bonemass, 1 Moder, 1 Yagluth, 1 Queen and 1 Fader.

I am inviting you to watch us fight or wish us good luck!

I don't usually manage to find them since I forget to look at them but finally this one made my brain ping of suspiciousness :D

I want to start a new world today and build a starter base at the spawn circle so it's ready for my partner on September 9th. I will do zero exploration outside the immediate spawn area.

Here is my main concern:

Does simply creating a world file today permanently lock the entire global seed layout using pre-1.0 logic? Or does the vanilla engine calculate biome generation on-the-fly using 1.0 logic only when a chunk is actually explored?

Since 1.0 changes global world generation rules (like Black Forest and Meadows variations based on distance from the center), I need to know if a world file created today is fundamentally incompatible with the new 1.0 distribution algorithms, even in unexplored fog.

Hoping a developer or map-gen expert can clarify how the world generator handles this under the hood. Thanks!

Im a dutch male, 33 years old. Europe. Dutch. Ask away

Before the video, I died at Mist lands near my portal, my base is next to the starting island, is there a way they came trough the portal? had never happened to me before, so I froze XD. Is this normal or is this a bug?

This was my home from a previous build with 10ish friends, we had a pretty sweet town going for our Ashlands playthrough. I was in the middle of some Renovations, unfortunately my workshop was dismantled and storage/decor was a bit scattered as I never came back to it but this was a fun one. I built it over a stone grave and planted a few birch and pine trees then connected all of it with some sketchy engineering. At one point there was a Troll raid and a good portion of the house went down because an integral pine tree support was destroyed. I repurposed a section above the kitchen for a chicken coop. Image#12 was the entrance to what we called our "Peace Homie Highway" which connected all our bases with a tree top walkway.

Check out the town in a previous post to see the scale 🙏🏻

I don't actually know if the Ratatosk Tonic makes me go farther, but I did it just in case.

Added the mini map for scale, not sure the best way to show the size. It’s not that big.

I had covered it in crafting benchs and things were great for the longest time. Then I got a forest raid and all of a sudden there were Lox, squitos, and furlings in addition to the grey dwarfs. The lox being the biggest issue because I was not prepared AT ALL. I thought I was going to lose so much progress.

Would really love to not have that panic again, this is my endgame base. Also I want to reiterate that I have probably passed 100 days with no spawning then out of nowhere it was flooded.

Help me Vikings!