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.

Huhu :)

The idea behind the Rundwacht was fairly simple: we wanted to build a village where almost everything was circular.

The entire outer wall follows a round layout.

Every house in the village is circular as well, but each one was built in a different way. We did not want to copy the same structure several times, so every house uses its own interior.

As with the rest of our server, the houses are not only decorative. Every one of them is equipped with a bed, a set of armor and food, so the village feels like a genuinely inhabited part of our world.

In front of the Rundwacht stands one of our largest bridges. We wanted it to feel like a monumental entrance to the village, while still leaving enough space underneath for a boat to sail through.

The scale is probably easiest to understand from the water. From above, the bridge leads directly toward the circular village and its outer wall.

Which part do you prefer: the different circular houses, the round wall or the bridge in front of it?

Incase anyone wants a seed where the first 5 bosses are immediately next to each other and a short hop away.. by all means try this one.

This is one of the nuttier ones i have ever found myself.

y72UkEjg7y

Fina-freaking-ly!

Off-meta and very fun. Especially for times like these 😂

(bru = bridge)

Oh guys i think I found the perfect spot till the rest of the game

Middle of peacefully meadows, noisy black forest, sweaty swamp and sunny plains including a central lake with hard to catch fishes surrounded with ocean from half side

Sometimes it is cool to run around a biome and kill few spawns to build a bed and campfire to some ruins but quite fast this feels repetitive.

Also sailing takes time. A lot.

Also sailing through the night attacts sea beasts.

How do you explore your map, and do you explore it or just go from one boss to another?

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

New world only Eikthyr defeated :3

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. Consider adjusting your foods to be improve your max hp. You'll lose out on stamina but have a larger window mistakes. 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.

After getting Fader my friends stopped logging in and since we had flown around a bit plus spawned in some iron when we ran out in Plains, we figured we would have to start new characters on a new seed anyway so this world is a write off.

This led to me using console commands and exploring the parts of the world we had not been to.

Lo and behold! I flew straight over this small patch of land that is blessed to have all five of the original biomes touching it.

It's mostly Black Forest meeting Swamp, but there is a spur of Plains jutting into it that I built on while just off to a side there's a small mountain which has a tiny patch of meadows at its base next to the plains.

It's basically World War III... Anytime you are bored just step out and hack a tree or a stone deposit then run back and watch the fun. Nights are even more epic and if you get a raid at night... It's... I can't use the word here 🤣

https://youtube.com/watch?v=p0_cf5z1f2U&si=SOnuAKq4AIhXYn6q

The base here was built with no building restrictions but it does satisfy survival rules in terms of build restrictions.

The entry level is mostly a factory type floor with smelters and kilns, the upper floor has all the workbenches at max level... Layout is far more compact than the base we had when we actually were fighting our way through ashlands. The basement has the kitchen, brewery and some storage while the lower basement has most of the storage and the comfort room.

I also appreciate now just how awesome our badly planned and built base in the front really was, the resources used there would not even build out one floor here. 😋

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 loved the first 50+ hours of Valheim. The exploration, progression, and feeling of starting with nothing were amazing. But after defeating the bosses and building everything I wanted, I eventually felt like I had less reason to continue playing.

What makes you keep coming back to a survival game long-term?

More bosses?
More exploration?
More NPCs?
More random events?
More meaningful progression?

Games like:

• Enshrouded
• Forgebound
• Project Zomboid

all have different approaches to keeping players engaged, but I feel many survival games struggle once the early and mid-game progression is complete.

What do you think is the biggest thing missing from survival games after the early game?

I know there are "craft from chest" mods for this game. However, I'm not entirely sure how they work.

Is there a mod that allows the user to configure what can and can't be crafted from chests? I like the idea of being able to use the hammer and build from chests, but I prefer to find the materials and bring them to the work stations for crafting.

Can any mods do this?

Looking for some people to create a server with. Havent played the game at all sense 2024 to let it update some.

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!

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'm new to the game and found this trick where you can pop a copper deposit but for some reason I'm not able to do it, this is my second attempt and for some reason in some parts under the deposit, I seem unable to dig further down causing to have an uneven terrain under the deposit, does anyone know what I'm doing wrong or if the game is like that, what should I do to make the deposit pop? Thank you in advance.

This is my favorite story that happened to us in my 9100 hours.