Valheim (Part 2)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

Ready to continue this quest?

Setting Up Camp

This thing is huge! Well, I can take it down like any other
forest tree: Axes and fire. Boom.

When we left off, we were ready to face the Elder, a creature made of wood said to be the King of Greydwarves. Eikthyr was weak all around; starting with the second boss, you learn to try various strategies and stick to what works best. (Or use the wikis if you can’t figure it out.) In this case, melee with an axe is viable, but dangerous. Fire arrows are the way to go if you play safe. I did it that way every time, but I recall my first battle against this thing took forever. Then again, at the time I still hadn’t set up a portal for quick travel from camp to the altar, so every time I died... which was a lot... I had to do the whole trek back, retrieve my body and equipment, and then resume the fight – with my enemy having regained health. Oh yeah, when you’re learning Valheim, it’s brutal.

Remember how I said that I made a new character while
playing on the world where I've beaten the Mistlands?
Yeah, all these chests are from the other game.

Which is why it’s so important to set up a living space. Your base, preferably near the water (as you will need to sail to reach future Forsaken), needs a lot of space and amenities. Your bed, of course, but some place to keep all your treasure chests. You’ll gather so much crap, you’ll spend nearly as much time sorting it all out as you’ll spend out on the field. And since almost everything has a use, Vikings become hoarders, reticent to throw anything away.

(mention somewhere that workbenches can also prevent spawns)

Those rings? Yep, all portals.
There's 10 more you're not seeing here.

No need for coal, I have lots already.
Can always do with more copper and tin, though.

You’ll need a space for your portals, since this adventure will bring you all over the procedurally-generated map, and you’ll have to make a lot of ‘em. A recommended strategy is to always keep one just labeled “portal”, carry the materials to create another wherever you are, and create more at points of interest. You’ll need a space for metal refinery – that means an area for charcoal kilns, in which you put wood to make coal, and smelters (and later, blast furnaces) to refine your ores. The more the better. And of course, an area with all your crafting stuff – workbench, forge, cauldron, fermenter, etc. You can build yourself a house, and if you’re good at it, you can create homes that are literal works of art. Take a stroll down the ValheimBuilds subreddit and you’ll see just what marvels avid builders have come up with.

...I favored practicality over design. I won’t make it look good; I’ll make it just big enough to have everything I need.

My first and second homes. No third yet.

In the Black Forest, you’ll find carrot seeds and you’ll need to set up a garden for that, too. A big one, preferably, as you'll also plant turnips and onions there. Finally, add a nice, long barrier all around your property, to save it from the occasional raids.

Where was I? Oh, right. When the Elder is beaten, it drops two things. First its trophy, which when set to the sacrificial stone, unlocks a skill that only makes cutting wood faster (I never use it), and second is the Swamp Key, for the third biome.

Exploring

I'm tempted to see what the maps for other Pokémon names
would be now. 

But first, a sideline. I’m doing a lot of those. Arguably, the death of the Elder opens the gates to the rest of the world; with copper equipment and the Black Forest conquered, the Tenth Realm can now be your playground. Play safely, but explore. The advantage of procedurally-generated worlds is that you can never truly know what awaits ahead. ...well, Valheim map generators exist online if you want to play with spoilers. You can only generate random seeds that are, allegedly, playable to the end, though difficulty can vary wildly, depending on whether the randomness deities choose to play nice! You can ignore map generators if you want the proper experience. You can also create seeds out of basic words. My second solo playthrough was made by inputting a word into the generator. And because I’m an unrepentant gamer, the word I chose was... Bulbasaur. Roast me!

The result wasn’t the easiest seed ever, but it did allow for an easy path towards the first five bosses of the game. Eikthyr and the Elder on the first continent, the next three two islands away at most. I was also lucky because the Traders are relatively close by. ...Oh right!

I have seen Dwarves before. In caves, not out in the
woods selling stuff to passersby.

Haldor is a Dverg (dwarf) trader you can accidentally stumble upon while exploring the Black Forest. He and his sister Hildir appear at a certain distance from the spawn point. He will trade your jewelry for gold coins, and sell you some items you cannot find anywhere else, none of which are mandatory for progression; but some can help a lot. His most important item is the Megingjord, which when equipped adds 150 to the maximum weight a player can carry. Going from 300 to 450 is a godsend, with the heavy weight of most metals. Also important are the Ymir flesh and thunder stone, both necessary for some crafts. Then there’s a few hats with limited purposes and a fishing rod.

There are different fish around each biome, but you'll need
upgraded bait for all of those.

In my opinion, fishing is a very undercooked mechanic. You can use it to catch fish using bait, turn that fish into edible food, and upgrade your bait to get better fish; but you can also easily play the entire game without ever owning a rod or fishing, and not be the least bit penalized for it. It’s a bonus, but the returns don’t feel worth the effort put into it. For completionists, there's an entire side-quest that involves catching one of every species of fish - 12 total. You can craft a hat out of this.

Hildir, on the other hand, only sells cosmetic equipment – however, finding her in the meadows will unlock side-quests where you’ll brave three different types of dungeons and return to her with special treasure chests. The reward? More cosmetics... and new random raids, making your life harder. Enjoy!

Currently standing in meadows, with swamps on one side,
and plains on another side.
I love whenever this game gives us sights like this.

Since worlds are created by the pseudorandom number generator, you can see anything next to anything else. Meadows leading directly into a swamp, or to the plains? Sure. One of the most vivid memories I have of my first playthrough involved having to cross a massive area of plains to get to the mountain where Moder resided. I had just left the swamp, so I was a whole armor class beneath the recommended equipment to go through the desert. It was fun! (painful smile, /s) God forbid if your sailing forces you to encounter the Mistlands, and all their deadly surprises, long before you’re ready to! Happened to me while I was headed for Moder. Surprise Seeker during the trip, 0/10, do not recommend.

The Ocean

That fog over there? Yep, that's the Mistlands.

Speaking of sailing, all it takes is a boat. You can craft a raft as early as the Meadows, with the Karve available once you’ve got copper nails, and the Longboat requiring swamp items. The advantages are boat health, speed, and inventory space; lots in a longboat, none in a raft. The second advantage is how well it can survive a long trip at sea. If your boat is destroyed in the middle of the ocean, there is no way for you to survive. Thankfully, your gravestone floats, so you can sail back to it and grab your stuff.

Okay, that character name (Noobnomore) is ironic considering
what just happened (sniped by a Deathsquito), but that
gravestone will be easy to get back to.

Oh, right – death in this game. Unless you’re a masochist playing hardcore, when you die, you’ll respawn at your last bed. Death in Valheim involves loss of inventory, as well as a loss of levels in the many skills you can train, forcing you to retrain those skills. With World Modifiers, you can choose how punishing death is, from:

• Keeping on anything that was equipped to your body, but having to retrieve everything else, left on your gravestone, and only losing a bit of your skills (easiest);
• Respawning at camp without any items in your inventory, but it can all be retrieved, and losing more levels in your skills (normal);
• All the way to losing absolutely everything on you when you died, meaning you cannot ever get those items back, and must re-craft them, no take-backsies. Oh, and all of your skill levels are back to 0 (hardcore – why would you inflict this on yourself).

Grabbing your old inventory isn't always simple, seeing
as you will likely not have enough room to get everything.

Taking everything back from your gravestone grants a temporary “Corpse Run” effect where, for 50 seconds, your stamina usage is greatly reduced, you gain resistances to several forms of damage, and your weight carry is increased by 150. You got your stuff, time to run.

As for skills: The higher level a skill is, the more you’ll feel an improvement on how well you use it. Some examples: The higher your level is with a bow, the more damage your arrows will do. Even your basic jump height increases the more you jump. The more you go out to swim, the longer it’ll take for you to lose stamina in the water, etc.

Pictured here: A Leviathan sinking after we mined
its abyssal barnacles.

The Ocean is the emptiest biome. It has its own enemy, the Serpent, waiting at night or in storms to attack your ship; and because this game is cruel, if you kill one, its drops (other than meat) sink into the ocean before you can grab them. There are living islands known as leviathans; you can mine chitin out of the abyssal barnacles on their backs. Players have gotten clever with the Abyssal Harpoon you make out of chitin, but I didn’t see much of a use for it.

Oh, and sailing means dealing with the wind, which may blow in the direction you’re going; but it can be fickle and blow the opposite way, too. When I played on a streamer’s multiplayer server, that streamer admitted to hating sailing, so they’d try to avoid it as much as possible. It doesn’t help that the only Forsaken power that aids sailing is owned by Moder, so you’re quite a way in by the time you get it.

The swamp – “Bonemass”

Hope you're not afraid of the dark. The swamps always
look like this, no matter the time of day.

Oh God, finally. You found a swamp? Welcome to Hell. The swamp is the first difficulty spike in Valheim, and is a biome which very few people enjoy from the start. You can eventually be comfortable in it, but it’ll take a while. The area is covered in swampy water, and when your Viking is wet, their health and stamina regenerates more slowly. There are leeches in the water, and we’re not talking the tiny things from the real world – more like, 5ft fucking snakes! The Draugr are the main monster type here, and you can find these zombie swordsmen and archers roaming, with Elites met in some circumstances.

OH FUCK THAT

The mega monster here is the Abomination. Like trolls, you never forget the first time you meet one, especially if it wasn’t already roaming the land, its heavy footsteps audible before graphics allow you to see it in the distance, and you instead see it pull itself out of the ground for a surprise attack. They’re dangerous, but since they’re three-legged wood creatures, fire arrows and axes work well. You can also lure one to a fire geyser, a rare type of swamp area that spawns the fire spirit Surtlings, and let it kill itself with fire.

There are skeletons here as well, and some areas include spawners of skeletons and Draugr. At night, the ghostly Wraiths spawn, and those will strike when you least expect them. Finally, Blobs and Oozers inflict poison to your character and are therefore extra dangerous.

The green mist always means poison. Be careful!

The swamp is the point where you learn to use potions, which must be crafted into cauldrons and then put into a fermenter. There are potions for increased health and stamina gain/regeneration, but the ones you’re more likely to make are the poison and frost resistance ones. Once you’re two biomes ahead, the swamp’s poison becomes laughable, but on your first trip, it can spell death real fast.

Your main source of food? Hopefully you’re not eating as I reveal the recipe: Sausages made of thistle and boar meat, wrapped into entrails, an item always dropped by Draugr – which are zombie Vikings. Yikes.

So much muddy scrap to break apart... You can tell the
cleaning lady hasn't done her job lately.

But I’m skipping a step. How can we find Bonemass if we want to kick its ass? Well, its Vegvisirs are in the swamp’s sunken crypts. Those are locked by gates you can open with the Swamp Key obtained from the Elder. In them: Lots of enemies to kill. Lots of Withered Bones; you sacrifice ten of those at Bonemass’s altar. Most importantly, lots of “muddy scrap piles” blocking doorways and dead ends, which you can mine with a pickaxe to receive bones and leather, but also scrap iron, the new metal, and through which you can build the next level of armor and weaponry. Iron is the most useful metal in the entire game, necessary for crafts into the final biomes. Jokes and memes abound on the Valheim subreddit about “having enough iron”, accompanied by a screenshot showing an inventory of thousands and thousands of ingots; nope, not enough.

I threw the skeletons out, then remade the place.
Where I live, we call that a "Reno-viction".

I need to provide examples from my playthrough. The first time I checked a swamp with crypts (as small swamps may not have any), the area was overseen by a peninsula of Black Forest with a clifftop tower inhabited by skeletons. After ridding it of its tenants, I stole it and gentrified; I built a secondary base there that would let me transform scrap into ingots, then into equipment right there. This was before the update where you could opt to teleport ores and ingots, and it was simpler (and way fucking quicker) than trekking across the island, back to the boat, then through another island to get home with my loot. I went from terrified of the swamp (my first actual experience of it was on the multiplayer server) to semi-confident in it. However, that was NOT the swamp containing Bonemass, and it took another trip to find that one.

Second playthrough? The swamp containing Bonemass also had something like 25 goddamned crypts, so I won’t worry about running out of iron anytime soon, right? ...Nope, not enough.

Closing Part 2 and still no Bonemass? I’ll get there in Part 3, I guess...