Valheim - a brutal exploration and survival game - now available on Early Access

[ERYFKRAD]

I really like this game, but brutal it is not. After the first wave of attackers me and my friends totally neglected defenses even though the game told us to build some. Then we were attacked by a horde of Greylings. By all rights they should have utterly demolished our base. Instead they kind of lazily hit the front of our main house a bit, then left. It took 1 minute to undo the damage of a totally undefended wave of 25 enemies (3 defenders).

That’s what the game needs right now IMO; difficulty. Everything else is p. cool

Greylings are as wheat to a scythe. I hear the Plains biome is hell.

 

[Grunker]

I really like this game, but brutal it is not. After the first wave of attackers me and my friends totally neglected defenses even though the game told us to build some. Then we were attacked by a horde of Greylings. By all rights they should have utterly demolished our base. Instead they kind of lazily hit the front of our main house a bit, then left. It took 1 minute to undo the damage of a totally undefended wave of 25 enemies (3 defenders).

That’s what the game needs right now IMO; difficulty. Everything else is p. cool

Greylings are as wheat to a scythe. I hear the Plains biome is hell.

not greylings, sorry, Greydwarves. With brutes and shamans and the whole shebang.

I realize it’s a lower level enemy but still. The game had taught us all the concepts and literally told us to build defenses, and a massive attack is completely without consequences? Felt cheap

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Yeah they're wusses too.

 

[Ranselknulf]

One of our "strong" outposts we built uses logwalls and log spikes and is a decent distance from our "main" base, but we haven't tested it against trolls yet. It seems to be surrounded by trolls a LOOOOT.

I mean, we kill trolls fairly regularly and all of us have a near complete set of sneak gear (troll hides required), but trolls hit fugging hard, so we usually just kite them with fire arrows and let them destroy trees for us (as they miss while attacking us) to save us time farming lumber.

It's perfectly possible to kill trolls solo, and often we kill multiple solo at once just because we explore everywhere. After the last update, it seems like they hit a lot harder. This last game session, I was kiting a troll around a stone building (just pregen not something we built) and it nearly destroyed it after a few hits. I bet a wooden building would crumble in a second. I'd just be wary of building too much "defense" against enemies that can essentially one shot structures.

It's better to go minimalist and transport stuff as needed.

My 2 cents anyways as somebody who hasn't "completed" the game yet.

 

[Zombra]

We might play once a week though and we don't bother reading guides, just play and figure things out.

What? You mean you don't watch instructions on Youtube how to play and then obediently follow those instructions? You just - what's this word you're using - "play"?

What will these kids think of next!

 

[Great Deceiver]

The difficulty in this game doesn't lie in monsters trying to hit your base (right now that feature is very badly implemented), but rather (at least in my experience) venturing into unknown territory at night, especially in tougher areas like the swamp, which I just got to. It's very atmospheric in this sense - venturing out of your base for a long trip requires preparation and lots can go wrong along the way. It's not uncommon to get blindsided by trolls early on, or fucked by wolves in the mountain, or mobbed by slugs in the swamp.

When you have greater control over the variables (i.e. traveling during the day near your base) - or even as you become more familiar with hostile environments, then the game isn't hard at all, and I don't think it's meant to be.

 

[someone else]

How long tlll this game is completed?

 

[vota DC]

I really like this game, but brutal it is not. After the first wave of attackers me and my friends totally neglected defenses even though the game told us to build some. Then we were attacked by a horde of Greylings. By all rights they should have utterly demolished our base. Instead they kind of lazily hit the front of our main house a bit, then left. It took 1 minute to undo the damage of a totally undefended wave of 25 enemies (3 defenders).

That’s what the game needs right now IMO; difficulty. Everything else is p. cool

Greylings are as wheat to a scythe. I hear the Plains biome is hell.

not greylings, sorry, Greydwarves. With brutes and shamans and the whole shebang.

I realize it’s a lower level enemy but still. The game had taught us all the concepts and literally told us to build defenses, and a massive attack is completely without consequences? Felt cheap

Shamans are a trouble because even if you block with shield you get poisoned. You need bow against them if your melee weapon can't kill before they launch poison.
In the swamp biome you get blobs that are reskinned kangaroos and they poison like shamans.

 

[Grunker]

I really like this game, but brutal it is not. After the first wave of attackers me and my friends totally neglected defenses even though the game told us to build some. Then we were attacked by a horde of Greylings. By all rights they should have utterly demolished our base. Instead they kind of lazily hit the front of our main house a bit, then left. It took 1 minute to undo the damage of a totally undefended wave of 25 enemies (3 defenders).

That’s what the game needs right now IMO; difficulty. Everything else is p. cool

Greylings are as wheat to a scythe. I hear the Plains biome is hell.

not greylings, sorry, Greydwarves. With brutes and shamans and the whole shebang.

I realize it’s a lower level enemy but still. The game had taught us all the concepts and literally told us to build defenses, and a massive attack is completely without consequences? Felt cheap

Shamans are a trouble because even if you block with shield you get poisoned. You need bow against them if your melee weapon can't kill before they launch poison.
In the swamp biome you get blobs that are reskinned kangaroos and they poison like shamans.

Except they were not, because a throng of them showed up at our undefended base, left a few dents in a few places, ran around in circles for 5 minutes, then left

 

[Zombra]

Except they were not, because a throng of them showed up at our undefended base, left a few dents in a few places, ran around in circles for 5 minutes, then left

Undefended? Were you not there? Do you know all this from security footage?

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Shamans are easy to melee if you use your dodge (block + direction + space) when they start a breath attack you can slice/hack/bludgeon them, you can bait things into swinging and simply back away so they whiff or lessen the blow then close in and engage. Havent engaged slimes in melee yet, not fancying my chances, leeches either, most other things ill try to slice into ribbons but a 2 star draugir with a bow murderraped me when trying to close so trusty bow + fire arrows shut him up.

Portals make exploration rather speedy, you can drop one at base or a secondary camp and carry the reagents to drop another in the field, drop a workshop then the portal and nip back when needed then when you want to go back to exploring just dart back and remove the two buildings and go about your merry way.

 

[Grunker]

Except they were not, because a throng of them showed up at our undefended base, left a few dents in a few places, ran around in circles for 5 minutes, then left

Undefended? Were you not there? Do you know all this from security footage?

undefended as in no walls or anything. We were three people there but that wasn’t near enough to fight all the attackers, so a ton of them could do whatever they wanted. They chose to run around in circles

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i have no idea how people can enjoy this. i spent longer trying to have walls and roofs lock onto each other than playing the actual game.

 

[thesheeep]

i have no idea how people can enjoy this. i spent longer trying to have walls and roofs lock onto each other than playing the actual game.

You gotta remove the glue between your fingers so you won't have to hit the keyboard with your hand as a single brick.

Honestly, when you look at the stuff people have built in this game and the guides, it's really not that hard.
It is extremely flexible, though, which does come with a bit of an entry barrier.

I also generally prefer games that give you ready blueprints instead of actually having to place every single tile - but maybe that's something that will still come (or added by mods).

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

users autism is no excuse for a shitty interface.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Yes it is.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

You have like 12 different degrees of rotation. You could sperg out over the lack of proper control, or adapt and overcome.

 

[thesheeep]

users autism is no excuse for a shitty interface.

Dude, objectively speaking, if (almost) everyone except you is getting along with the interface just fine - how likely is it that the interface is shitty vs you are shitty at using it?

 

[Tigranes]

My friends played this a lot recently so I jumped in to take a quick look. You can definitely build big, fairly complicated things, and it's fun to actually have to chop wood, construct scaffolding, rickety staircases, fall and die while building, etc., and eventually complete a gigantic bridge towering high over the water.

This game would become legendary with things like heavy rain flooding the shores or tornados ripping through structures.

There's zero excuse whatsoever for not having some kind of isometric/topdown/zoomed out Build Camera, though. You can make it work, but it's not good.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

i have no idea how people can enjoy this. i spent longer trying to have walls and roofs lock onto each other than playing the actual game.

they have friends

 

[steel legion]

is this game even worth getting if you're gonna play it alone?

 

[Mortmal]

is this game even worth getting if you're gonna play it alone?

It's ok, doing things better than ark, in overral less frustrating , less annoyances . For exemple, even if building is a pain, you can just disassemble and replace parts. There's stuff it's doing a lot better , the world physics, the trees , the smoke in the buildings and so on. I am at iron stage now and its quite a chore finding enough crypts to mine iron and ferry it back, a slog if the wind is not behind you. Could be the random map seed fuck up my game too, like most people i play without whatching youtube walkthrough first, consider rivers as your highways, once you unlock bronze nails the ship is decent enough to move around, a good map with many rivers and many ressources especially those fucking swamp crypts are obviously a game changer.
Would be a lot better in a team that's for sure, solo 30 hours in , did 2 bosses only , i am starting to have enough of it already.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I had my first big boat ride last night - ferrying ore off the swamp in the swamps off the West coast of the continent all the way to our base in the East coast. It was atmospheric and fun, but I really can't see myself doing this shit multiple times just to get some ore.

Considering downloading a mod that allows ore through TPs. I know it would be cheating, but it's damn tempting.

 

[Mortmal]

I had my first big boat ride last night - ferrying ore off the swamp in the swamps off the West coast of the continent all the way to our base in the East coast. It was atmospheric and fun, but I really can't see myself doing this shit multiple times just to get some ore.

Considering downloading a mod that allows ore through TPs. I know it would be cheating, but it's damn tempting.

You can also world hop , but yes its cheating i suppose. I am afraid we seen all the content the game has to offer already, remove those trips, there's nothing else .You better not lose that time wasting equipment, you encounter things that can one shoot you if not fully fed , the corpse recovery can end up being the most hellish in any game . Making little shacks everywhere as save point is mandatory.

 

[JarlFrank]

users autism is no excuse for a shitty interface.

You have to play with an autistic friend who does all the building for you.

In my team game with two friends, 90% of the building has been done by one guy. Peak autistic programmer who always exaggerates with his shit.

Also, we found out the massive lag spike in our base is not caused by having too many assets, but by doing too much terraforming. Digging down into the ground to place buildings there, digging a moat around the wall, etc. The engine has issues loading areas when there has been too much terrain manipulation going on because it first loads the original height map and then calculates the changes made by the player each time it loads an area that has been dug up.

Protip: don't terraform too much with your pickaxe.