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

[Pika-Cthulhu]

If it cost resource to make a charm inventory item/potion that is consumed on porting then you can fine tune the balance around that, probably have to factor in ore weight otherwise you just over-encumber, shuffle through portal then vomit out/dump contents into a cart you placed on the other side.

A tip for silver mining, go and punch the first boss in the dick a few times and build a few extra antler picks to crush the dirt, it costs less stamina to swing and very low weight in inventory so you can save the iron pick durability for the silver vein, if you mine is so that there is no dirt around it when you mine the center the entire thing will just pop and you can pick up the rocks and ore. Build a crafting table and chest to dump everything into for easier management.

I did set up a base in a minibase in a swamp with several crypts to upgrade my gear (one stack of copper, tin and bronze in a karve isnt too bad, when you have iron you can upgrade to longship) and at a mountain region with lots of silver (and the boss) and I found it helped with less schlepping around, a nice comfy base is one thing but being able to upgrade in situ instead of dragging a boat filled with ore against the wind across a large body of water because you got a shitty seed is too much asspain when you can carry a few stacks of simpler metals and get shit done in a popup base AND tech up there is more efficient. Plus it leaves you with an outpost from which to explore further. After silver you can make the winds do your bidding, so the farming in plains becomes the next outpost issue that solves itself by being tied to the biome.

 

[Latelistener]

If you try and go to the plains early on, you'll just die.
Everything there would kill you in one hit. Especially with the recent changes to how blocking works.
I don't see how new characters could reliably survive in that area, this isn't exactly Dark Souls where skill alone allows you to beat any enemy.

The entire point of completing Dark Souls with SL1 is by NOT being hit. You can do similarly in Valheim. No one is saying that you should go there with your butt naked right after being born into the world, but with a decent bow you can kite almost anyone and get almost any resource you want. So getting Black Metal is certainly not an issue.

Yeah, it's pretty clear that the entire problem only exists when you play with multiple people.
Solo, you probably won't need to seek out types of areas you have drained nearby.

It means that you're wasting resources OR spending them on something that isn't necessary for completing the game. They could add a portal for such purposes, but it could only work by being useless to everyone else. It means that you also can simply install a mod.

Either way, though, the portals are optional. Nobody has to use them - if for some reason you enjoy completely eventless travelling for hours, you are entirely free to do so.

Worthabuy, which is somewhat known here on Codex has complained even about the standard portals. No one is going to ignore them if they will be added.

Now, if they introduced more things that can happen to you as you travel, made the ocean more dangerous, etc. that would probably change things somewhat.

Well certainly. One of the updates was suppose to expand the Ocean biome.

 

[Wild Slop]

If a player has enough knowledge of the Plains/ Black Metal / etc. plus the skill to pull that off then he should be rewarded with whatever gains ( in this case the better portal). Even so, the idea that a Boss could payout something needed for the better Portal is good. There could be any number of other restrictions too.

 

[typical user]

The game was fine for first 3/4 Biomes balance-wise. If they wanted to add food variety they could do so for Mountains/Plains. Also on Reddit there were posts about adjusting stamina regen. Currently if you deplete it you have wait same amount of time compared to someone stacking stam-food. I believe this is why Hearth and Home flopped. Reducing food values meant slower pace, more waiting around to have enough energy to swing your axe at those pesky dwarfs.

Regarding transporting ores, just add additional teleporter-upgrade requiring Moder tears and Artisian Table, so moving stuff between bases wouldn't be such a chore but exploration trips would still be required. Could also convice players to build additional transit-outposts. I mean server-hopping exists, don't see why teleport-ban should be a thing in endgame.

 

[Hag]

I mean server-hopping exists, don't see why teleport-ban should be a thing in endgame.

Fair point.
This no-ore in portals policy is symptomatic of this game main issue : artificial difficulty. Way too much game time is spent around resources gathering and hauling, with absurd crafting requirements. A bow requiring 10 wood and 20 iron ? This makes no fucking sense and screams lazy game design. And the longer you play the worse it gets. Maybe it is even more aggravating in multiplayer, we were a team of three and if any of us took some food for a long trip it meant another one was to spend twenty minutes real-time finding ingredients and cooking meals (and you have to stay around the kitchen so that it doesn't burn, not like you could do something fun meantime). And while I find the food mechanism ok in theory (food is not required to survive but to get boosts), in practice as soon as you venture out you need a constant input of food. Same for armor. Oh, a new biome ? It means hours spent simply farming and moving new ingredients around so that all team members have good equipment.

Put end to end you spend your time working. For each hour of exploration, fight or building you spend the double doing mindless shit. Lowering crafting requirement, allowing ore in portals and making food less critical would make the game more fun, but in the same time players would realize quicker how shallow it is right now.

 

[Zombra]

I mean, gathering and crafting is half the "fun" of games like these, not really meant for people who don't like being on an assembly line.

 

[Hag]

I mean, gathering and crafting is half the "fun" of games like these, not really meant for people who don't like being on an assembly line.

If I am to spend my time ferrying shit around and trying to find room for hundreds of irrelevant ingredients around my dozen of chests, then do give me assembly lines and conveyor belts and be gone with the hypocrisy. The arrival of an incinerator with latest update is a clear sign that the gathering system is broken and that players are expected to be crushed under trash.

 

[Zombra]

BREAKING NEWS
Early Access crafting title adds balance patches and new tools for managing player economy

 

[thesheeep]

Just had the most wonderful experience after not playing for a month or two:
Game crashed - causing a loss of ALL of my equipment, who knows how many hours worth.
Took me over half an hour just to cheat it all back!

Why the fuck would you store player equipment client-side and not on the server?! On the bright side, being client-side allowed me to cheat it all back, but if it was server-side, this wouldn't have happened to begin with.

 

[typical user]

Just had the most wonderful experience after not playing for a month or two:
Game crashed - causing a loss of ALL of my equipment, who knows how many hours worth.
Took me over half an hour just to cheat it all back!

Why the fuck would you store player equipment client-side and not on the server?! On the bright side, being client-side allowed me to cheat it all back, but if it was server-side, this wouldn't have happened to begin with.

And why the fuck would you need server-side gear authentication in a game which allows you to host your own damn server, install mods and just like you said, use dev commands to restore your gear in 30 minutes with no hassle? What you want to raise support ticket so Payeet Bhadvaar can bitch slap you with copy-pasted replies for next few weeks?

 

[Raghar]

Just had the most wonderful experience after not playing for a month or two:
Game crashed - causing a loss of ALL of my equipment, who knows how many hours worth.
Took me over half an hour just to cheat it all back!

Why the fuck would you store player equipment client-side and not on the server?! On the bright side, being client-side allowed me to cheat it all back, but if it was server-side, this wouldn't have happened to begin with.

Don't fucking use autoupdates. Finish game until the end. Then update.

 

[thesheeep]

Don't fucking use autoupdates. Finish game until the end. Then update.

Kind of doubt that it is related to updates, tbh.
Either way, the game is in beta, rare crashes ARE to be expected. Was maybe my third or fourth in 70 hours or so and I'm not complaining about the game crashing. At least client-side. Which is exactly the reason why player data shouldn't be on the client, but bound to the server.

Players losing many hours worth of progress has always been a problem plaguing the game, I just never really knew about it (not exactly something you expect or look up).
Usually, this is a non-issue as important player data is stored on the server - for obvious reasons and for all comparable games I've played so far.
As a dev myself, it really boggles my mind that they'd even implement it this way.

And why the fuck would you need server-side gear authentication in a game which allows you to host your own damn server, install mods and just like you said, use dev commands to restore your gear in 30 minutes with no hassle? What you want to raise support ticket so Payeet Bhadvaar can bitch slap you with copy-pasted replies for next few weeks?

What are you even on about?
I DO host my own damn server, but that doesn't help one bit in this instance since the server doesn't store player data (at all, it seems).
I don't want the devs or support to restore my data, either.
What I want is to rant cause I'm pissed and make people aware that the game does not store player data on servers, which is an obvious oversight for the reasons mentioned.

And if you think spending half an hour of your time on something that is neither fun nor useful when you want to relax and have some leisure time is not a problem, you must have unlimited amounts of time available or a very high tolerance for wasting time.
Me, not so much. I usually just quit playing a game entirely if some dumb shit fully out of my hands makes me lose hours of progress - got more enjoyable things to do in my spare time.
Yeah, I'm not known for my patience.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I fucking crave a decent sailing exploration+survival game with random worlds, sailing into the unknown, discovering and looting shit. This kind of scratches that itch but needs way more work, this is very likely a "modders will fix it" game unless the devs get a clue (very likely the popularity of the game will ruin it later on).

I would pay several 100$ for a really good game that allows me to sail the whole world.

All it needs is the whole world like in a flight simulator (required data is basically free nowadays) and a ship that I can actually walk around in, with a stove, food, cupboards and other things.

I don't dare to dream about a game where you can go underwater too, but that could be so good.

We just need someone to make this game, which apparently no one will do. The last game that attempted a global simulation in a naval game were Silent Hunter 3 and its two ill-fated successors.

 

[Wild Slop]

What are you even on about?
I DO host my own damn server, but that doesn't help one bit in this instance since the server doesn't store player data (at all, it seems).
...
Yeah, I'm not known for my patience.

I proactively made backups just for that reason. In the title screen there is even a shortcut to the game's save location, I go back one in the directory to backup the entire Irongate save folder.

I haven't had any crashes that took out my data but have rolled things back a few times for various reasons.

 

[typical user]

What are you even on about?
I DO host my own damn server, but that doesn't help one bit in this instance since the server doesn't store player data (at all, it seems).
I don't want the devs or support to restore my data, either.
What I want is to rant cause I'm pissed and make people aware that the game does not store player data on servers, which is an obvious oversight for the reasons mentioned.

And if you think spending half an hour of your time on something that is neither fun nor useful when you want to relax and have some leisure time is not a problem, you must have unlimited amounts of time available or a very high tolerance for wasting time.
Me, not so much. I usually just quit playing a game entirely if some dumb shit fully out of my hands makes me lose hours of progress - got more enjoyable things to do in my spare time.
Yeah, I'm not known for my patience.

That won't be an option I think. How can you implement that if by design you can hop between servers with your character? I can only recommend storing your gear in personal chests or an offline/local server (which is the same as backing up saves). By the way how did it take you 30 minutes to restore items (and/or skills)?

you must have unlimited amounts of time available or a very high tolerance for wasting time.

We are in a thread about a game which requires you to swim for 2 hours to retrieve your gear if you died and forgot to place a teleport.

What I want is to rant cause I'm pissed and make people aware that the game does not store player data on servers, which is an obvious oversight for the reasons mentioned.

Again, people are aware, that's how it was designed. So I figured you wanted some sort of master server and rollbacks. I don't see any other option without reworking entire character saves/server structs. Also what if your world gets bricked with new update? Then it will be OK to use dev commands to migrate stuff into new one?

 

[thesheeep]

How can you implement that if by design you can hop between servers with your character?

Which is a pretty useless feature to begin with, isn't it? What's the point of entering a new server with a fully fleshed out character that is done already? New game+, but easier instead of harder?
If for some reason anyone actually wants such a feature (the number of similar games without that feature kinda speaks against that...), just offer both and let the player decide upon joining a server if they want their local or remote character.
It's not like saving character data would have to be changed or reinvented, you only need to changed where it is saved to/loaded from. Honestly, it would be a rather small adjustment from a coding perspective.

By the way how did it take you 30 minutes to restore items (and/or skills)?

Had to look up all the item IDs (couldn't find a comprehensive list that had all the items), how the commands work, get back to a workbench, check which are needed & spawn all the resources needed for improving... If I had to do it again, I could probably do it in half the time now.
I truly hope I won't have to... but we're close to finishing the game, so it's at least unlikely.

We are in a thread about a game which requires you to swim for 2 hours to retrive your gear if you died and forgot to place a teleport.

That's player fault, though. It's a known limitation. Don't go that far without portals.
That it is possible to lose all my stuff if my game crashes was definitely not a known limitation to me, especially since the game crashed for me before but my stuff wasn't lost - which also quite convinced me that character data is probably stored on the server at least as a backup.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I guess the old save the game keeps was too far gone for you?

 

[Catacombs]

A friend bought me this to try. I played it for the first time tonight, and it's making my PC sing... loudly. I'm chalking it to being an early access game and not being optimized yet. Is this normal?

 

[Ranselknulf]

What's your gpu?

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

What's your gpu?

Probably Nvidia. They are notorious for coil whine.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

I had to reapply thermal gel and pads on my old GPU due to Valheim earlier this year. Not too much of a bother other than finding the correct size of pads (maxi? slim? ultraslim? does it need wings?) but worth the effort, im grateful that it gave me enough of a headsup instead of just torching my rig.

 

[Catacombs]

What's your gpu?

3080Ti with AMD Ryzen 7 3700x

 

[Ranselknulf]

That's a better gpu than I have.

I played Valheim a while when it first came out and never had an issue.

The game is still on my radar to play more which is why I watch this thread.

Anyhow, the cause could be a variety of things. One thing I've seen happen before, especially games in "early release" is the developers update the code and things aren't quite optimized as much as they should be leading to issues. This could be one of the problems.

Other people have already mentioned it could be something with your gpu as well. Ur probably gonna have to research it more to figure out which of the issues it could be, or wait for a super Valheim enthusiast to come to this thread and fully answer ur question.

Besides the gpu noise, how are you enjoying Valheim in its current state?

 

[Catacombs]

Anyhow, the cause could be a variety of things. One thing I've seen happen before, especially games in "early release" is the developers update the code and things aren't quite optimized as much as they should be leading to issues. This could be one of the problems.

Agreed. I read around last night, and people agree that, in its state, it's quite resource heavy because of the draw distance and such.

Other people have already mentioned it could be something with your gpu as well. Ur probably gonna have to research it more to figure out which of the issues it could be, or wait for a super Valheim enthusiast to come to this thread and fully answer ur question.

I'm not in a rush to play it again and would wait for someone with more experience to chime in. I can run a lot of games on my PC no problem, but the noise and power consumption for Valheim raised some interesting flags.

Besides the gpu noise, how are you enjoying Valheim in its current state?

I played it for the first time last night, so I can't compare the current state to previous ones. I also only played for an hour. In that time, the game ran smoothly. Though, I noticed the character details were a bit fuzzy; not sure if that's just part of the game's aesthetic, as I set my graphic settings to medium-high. The game was fun, and I'm sure it's even more enjoyable with others.

 

[toroid]

A friend bought me this to try. I played it for the first time tonight, and it's making my PC sing... loudly. I'm chalking it to being an early access game and not being optimized yet. Is this normal?

I also have a 3080Ti, and recently got Valheim on sale, so I installed and tested it as soon as I saw your post.
Is your noise constant and unchanging or does it fluctuate with framerate or what's currently being rendered?
Does the pitch change or is the noise intermittent?
Is it more of a sine wave or a buzz?
What power supply do you use? And which 3080Ti is this?
Have you tried capping your framerate?
Do you run the game in fullscreen mode?
Does benchmarking / stress testing software such as UserBenchMark or 3DMark cause the noise as well?

I have an Aorus 3080Ti Xtreme powered by a Seasonic PX-850 and I cannot detect any noise coming from the card or anywhere else in the case unless I stick my head in there and even then it's very quiet and I'm not sure which component is causing it. The system is excessively water-cooled so the ambient noise is very low.
Performance: All settings maxed out. Vsync off. 2560 x 1440. Staying around 110 frames per second. 55° C after 1.5 hours. In the nvidia control panel 'Manage 3d Settings' page the only changes I made was to set 'Max Framerate' to 144 and set 'Texture Filtering - Quality' to 'High Performance'.