It's now in game pass for anyone who wants to try it on the cheap btw.
I need some beginners tips if any veterans can give me some advice.
:meow-bug: keep your fires outside!! Or at least make sure theres a way for the smoke to vent outside of your house. You can die, very quickly, from smoke inhalation.
Nah you need to build chimneys/smokeholes. You can leave gaps at the gables of your roof, leave a whole in the roof, flip a roof segment around to create a vent, and a bunch of other stuff. Notably, a smoke hole that's not directly over your fire allows you to keep the fire going when it's raining.
Fun fact: Mobs can obstruct your smoke hole, causing you to choke to death in your tiny cabin while surrounded by horrible monsters you have no chance of fighting.
The number one thing that people often miss: you can repair your gear for free at a base level station of the relevant type. Unlike most survival crafting games, equipment durability is not a resource churn but instead a soft timer to force you to return to your base or an outpost.
Beyond that, be careful of falling trees, learn to dodge and/or parry like it's dark souls, wait to make a boat until you get to the second tier, remember that you can deconstruct almost anything back to its full material cost (torches and fires don't return their fuel, and spikes either don't refund anything or only partially refund themselves), get beehives going early and stockpile all the flowers and berries you see in a chest, and be careful of new biomes when exploring because they're usually difficulty spikes.
More advice for after you beat the first boss and start raiding tombs:
Always keep an unattached exploration portal at your base and bring the materials to make a portal with you. When sailing, always put down a workbench and a portal as soon as you land in a safe spot so that if you die you can return to the same landmass without making another boat and traveling all the way there again.
Oh, and if you get trapped respawning at a bed far from your base with no materials or gear to help you get back, break the bed and it'll reset your respawn point to the stone circle you started at, which at least theoretically should give you an easier trip home from there.
What should I be doing at absolute star in the meadows biome? I crafted a makeshift bed and house for now.
You'll want to create most of the stuff you can, get a good stone axe and so on, a bow, and some leather armor maybe. Then you'll want to find Eikthyr - the stone near your starting point will show you where to find him. Get ready for a fight.
Get an axe and a club, then gather flint and hunt boars and deer until you have a spear and bow. You can make leather armor at this point, but it's not particularly necessary (might be helpful if combat's feeling rough). A shield is also an option at this point. You can and should upgrade your workbench as much as possible after you get your gear. You need deer trophies to progress further, and your spear and bow will be your weapons of choice for the first boss.
make stone equipment. Make leather armor. practice some skilz. When you think you are prepared go find the sacrificial altar or a runestone pointing to the altar and follow it's instructions.
The progression loop of each biome is - explore the new biome, upgrade to the next tier of gear, improve your base, discover new recipes and items, fight the boss, the use the boss item to collect the biome resource in the next biome to continue the progression.
free repairs and receiving 100% of crafting materials back makes the game so, so much less punishing. It's very rare that gear is ever permanently lost and not recoverable. Even if you die in the ocean most of your stuff will end up in a floating grave stone.
I played it with some friends, I'm usually a guy that sticks to "my classics" so I was a bit cautious about Valheim, but I gave it a go anyways. I liked it immediately, the atmosphere is pretty damn good and the game is graphically pleasing to look at, the sounds, the wind, the sea, it's all good. I loved going around in my boat, loved you actually had to take advantage of the wind and waves.
However my experience was ruined because in my group of friends we had one of those guys, he managed the server and opened it to play by himself when we were all offline, ended up building a house, a mead hall, a dock and pretty much a forge by himself, all while we were away, completely ruined the progression. I ended up quitting afterwards, what a fucking shame.
+1 on the graphics/atmosphere. It's impressive how when you look up close, the graphics are pretty simple and low res, but just stylistically it hits the mark perfectly.
It's been a few years now since I initially played it, but my advice is to make a sick mead hall.
Seriously, you can build some really cool shit. I had this place on top of a hill near the water at the edge of the forest and meadows and there was this awesome fog that would roll in. Absolutely stellar vibes. Was 100% a hangout/podcast game. I went through hours of pods just building shit that had no real functional value other than my friends going "wow that's so cool"
Edit: Oh yeah the one thing that was weird but ultimately cool is that your max health is based on the last food you ate. So food is as much a progression as your gear. If you can make good food easily, you can do really well. I remember getting bees going being really helpful, but my memory is bad. I should go back and play more Valheim.
- Get a buckler.
- Upgrade said buckler.
- Learn to time your blocks so that you parry mobs' attacks.
- ???
- Profit.
...you'll also need high-HP food buffs for this to really work, because your ability to soak damage with your shield is proportional to your max HP. Early-game, I usually do two health-increasing foods (cooked deer meat + cooked boar meat are good, otherwise boar + neck), and then an energy-increasing food (either raspberries or honey, if I've scrounged enough bees to start an apiary). Honestly, deer meat and honey will carry you to at least the second boss.
If it's your first time wandering in there, do not take the Black Forest lightly.
That goes double for the swamp biome. Probably tenfold for the plains.
Oh! And if you're building and having trouble getting two pieces to snap together because one is too low, try sitting down. That will drop the height on your player camera, and usually helps with those finicky snap issues.
Progression is gear based. Beat a biome boss, go to new biome, gather new resources, make new gear, repeat.
If you find a plains biome and you're curious... check it out. Some fun friends in there.
Games fun.
Don't forget, progression is also food based! Food doesn't just heal, its basically the equivalent to temporarily leveling up!
Thanks. What should I be focusing on doing absolutely first in the meadows biome?
Boar hides, berries, and flint. Upgrade your workbench. Make a crude bow and start cranking out wooden arrows. Hunt deer, get more flint, and upgrade your workbench again. A flint axe is a decent weapon for the first boss, but it's slower than the wooden club. Really down to preference there. And dodge rolls. My god, the dodge rolls.
I personally find Valheim to be a frustrating game to play solo, since there is so much chore work like constant tree cutting for just one person (the workload is minimized when you have multiple people using their boss powers one after another to improve wood cutting speed).
My advice relates to the pickaxes. The first pickaxe in the game you acquire, the antler pickaxe, is repairable at a standard workbench. Every other pickaxe must be repaired at a forge. So if you are setting up a mining operation at a giant ore vein some distance from your house (you'll be doing this starting in the second biome), it might be a good idea to use an antler pickaxe for this instead of a metal one, since you can easily set up a workbench next to your operation and repair your pickaxe without having to travel home. Even though it's slower at mining, the fact that you can repair it in seconds and keep working saves a lot of time in the long run.
Other tips: Rotate your chests sideways and use half foundations as dividers, you can cram them in four to a wall. Different weapons are effective at different points in the game because the enemies that are vulnerable to X type may be more or less common in a different biome. If you find a surtling geyser in the swamp, you can mine out the ground under it to expose it to water, then it's a free coal/core generator. Have a specific spot in your home where the comfort level is high (basically just put lots of decor close to that specific place) so that you can sit there for a few seconds and get the Rested buff for a long period of time; come back to this spot as soon as the Rested buff expires because it is not worth even attempting to do anything if you aren't Rested. Don't break berry bushes, mark them on the map and come back for more berries later. If you find an old randomly generated building, you can put down a workbench near it and then tear the whole things down with your hammer middle click easily. And if you are building fortification for your base, it's hard to beat a moat.
Protip; Boss powers are AOE buffs that effect all players in range!
Good for building if you're into that. The building physics push you to do stuff for practicality, too. You NEED a chimney in your house or smoke will kill you. Structures without a roof overhead will degrade in the rain. The game made me want to build a porch. Nothing else has ever made me want to build a porch in my life.
it's been a while, but a lot of advice in here is like later game stuff. your first goal, imo, is to get a shelter going so you can be dry and "Rested" and sleep through the night. being rested is clutch for doing shit, as your stamina recovers very quickly when rested. monsters near you can prevent you from sleeping, so your fortification needs to be somewhat legit. you can build a treehouse by building like a stairway up into some trees. having an elevated and well lit base can be helpful early game when you are running around, so you can see/find your base easily on the way back when it's getting dark.
after some number of days, you will see messages about "the forest is moving" which means lots of mobs will try to jack your base for a while. i focused a lot on trying to make my base tough, easily defensible. i liked having little towers i could get up in and shoot over walls at monsters. leaving work benches in proximity to walls makes them easily repairable. you may want to find a coastal/peninsula to make it easier to defend your base. the best way to make a great base is essentially locked behind the first boss, who awards you with the antler pickaxe. you can use this to dig a moat / trench around your base. make sure there is a way for smoke to clear out of your house, lol, you can hurt yourself, but if exposed to rain or wind your fire won't stay lit.
don't die a bunch in a row quickly, as it fucks up your stats.
i was more into base building than exploring and advancing. definitely use your map/make marks for things like berry bushes. make bee hives for honey. with a cluster of hives it's easy to stockpile honey. some foods are for stamina (sweets) some are for health (meats). a mix is good for exploring/fighting, sweets are good for gathering/running/building.
i like to build and organize shit, so valheim was very appealing to me. my friend is more of a fighter/deep explorer who likes to be almost dying all the time, so we made a good pair. he would run around and gather weird shit, i would have the base set up so he could give pursuing enemies the slip, recharge, repair, and be figuring out next tier gear/requirements for him to keep an eye out for. and i would have it all set up for defending against big raids by monsters.
the hoe is an awesome tool. getting good at leveling ground areas and/or raising earthen walls (requires stone) is absolutely crucial for building a very slick base.
This is good starting advice. The only things I’d lightly quibble with are:
Raised tree houses are tight but it’s hard to have a fire close enough to provide warmth (required for sleeping). Better once you can use portals imo, and can just dip back home to your on-the-ground home.
And, you get like 10 minutes or something after each death where additional deaths won’t lower your stats any further. So if you’re gonna die a bunch, do it in real quick succession, try not to die like 15 minutes apart repeatedly
yeah, you're right about both. it's legit been over a year since I played and misremembered some of the mechanics.
I've played enough to beat like 2 bosses with a friend. It's very good, very fun. But also very jank. And it doesn't really do anything unique compared to every other survival-crafting game you've ever played.
I like the food and building mechanics but they aren't exactly geoundbreaking
yes and no. If you're competent at Dark Souls you'll pretty much slaughter anything as long as you have the right tier of equipment. Parrying has a large parry window and once you have the right shield allows you to reliably deal with large monsters. You can also dodge roll with a large i-frame window.
Each biome tends to have swarm monsters and a big goon squad monster of some kind. there are also elite versions of each monster that hit much harder and have more HP, but drop more resources. A lot of the time you get killed when something unexpected happens, like getting swarmed and running out of stamina, or when you don't notice and elite monster in a big mob of enemies. The fully upgraded gear from a tier is almost as good as the un-upgraded gear from the next tier, so if you take the time to upgrade your gear you should be able to advance in tiers without getting pwned. As you go through teh game you'll encounter enemies that are very dangerous in different ways and need to be adapted to, but you'll also find equipment and recipes to do that.
Be sure not to over-extend yourself. Your food increases your HP and Stamina but the max stamina and HP starts to decay when your food gets to the half-way point on it's timer. Topping off your food whenever it gets to the half-way point is resource expensive but keeps your HP and Stamina caps as high as possible which will keep you alive.
Preserving your skills by dying as rarely as possible will gradually make you very powerful compared to someone who dies a lot and loses skills, or a new player with undeveloped skills. In my recent playthrough I was considerably better at archery, running, jumping, resource gathering, and damage output bc I played cautiously and died very rarely while other players who leeroooooy jennnnkins'd their way through the game suffered from stat decay.
I'm a big proponent of pooping out little forts and holdfasts wherever I go. You can track my progress across the map by following the string of tiny 2x2 forts with a door, a covered fire, a tier 1 workbench, and some spikes outside. Being able to retreat to a defensible space to eat or heal or whatever can be a life saver, especially once you hit some of the later biomes that can be extremely hostile when you first go in. Having a little fort can also give you a defensible bridgehead if you get killed and need to go back to recover your gear so you don't pop in to the area naked and immediately get ganked by monsters.
Over all it's much less punishing and miserable than a lot of survival games - You don't die if you run out of food. Unless something unusual happens you can always recover your gear. Buildings refund 100% of their cost when broken whether you disassemble them or they're destroyed by monsters. It's as much an adventure game as a survival crafting game and you'll spend a ton of time exploring and poking around in old ruins and whatnot.
I think it is. It's not original but it strikes a pretty good balance of progression and difficulty.
If you run into an area that utterly destroys you, it means you're either not meant to be there yet, or you've missed something in the material/equipment progression chain.
90% of anything is a massive pile of shit, being part of the 10% isn't generally considered unique.
All the weapons except spears are really strong. Like knives deffo have the highest damage output if you use them with stealth, but axes, swords, and maces all work well. Spears are weird because somehow a long stick with a sharp end has teh shortest reach of any weapon in the game. They can be thrown, which can be handy sometimes, but they're mostly just not very good.
It's good. It should have more building pieces options tho, but fixable with mods.
Don't worry about all those fancy biomes and bosses, just hang tight near spawn and work really hard making a really nice house and producing tons of carrot stew.
From someone who has hundreds of hours into it, the single biggest advice I can give you is be prepared in every scenario. A lot of the early game is pretty easy but the difficulty will spike hard when you go into the Swamp. Things start hitting hard, and you need to make sure you are well fed with the best food possible. Also make use of the "rested" bonus as much as possible (gained by being sheltered and near a fire for a short time).
Nighttime is generally riskier in every biome. You wont have to worry about anything in Meadows. Black Forest you might get mobbed by grey dwarves. Generally though you are going to have a cold debuff at night, so you might as well sleep the night way (you can actually sleep even before the sun goes down as long as it is late enough in the day).
Run away from trolls unless you are sure you can kite them with arrows or parry their strikes (very risky in early game).
The general progression is (Meadows -> Black Forest -> Swamp -> Mountain -> Plains -> Mistlands). Each biome increases in difficulty. Do not enter anything above the first two unless you are ready. The enemies in each scale to the tech you are assumed to have, so don't learn the hard way that wolves will 1 or 2 shot you if you go playing on the mountain.
Don't take unnecessary risks like venturing off too far without a backup plan if you get killed. Make the meads (which are potions) you need for each biome.
Also play with friends if at all possible. It just is way more fun, and makes the tedious parts feel more like just hanging out.
