Valheim (Part 5)

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

Guess we’re ending this today.

Mines and Magic

Damn, these places are so creepy.

Finding the boss is more complicated in the Mistlands than anywhere else. Look for Vegvisirs deep within Infested Mines packed with ticks and seekers. In there, you can also find black cores and Sealbreaker fragments. You need black cores for the latest crafting tables, and nine fragments to build a Sealbreaker, the key that opens the door to the Queen.

We are literally mining the brains out of a dead giant and
combining this to Yggdrasil sap to make our magic.

You’ll also want to look for Jotun skeletons laying around, made of marble that cannot be mined except with black metal pickaxes or better. These dead giants still have squishy brains, which you mine for soft tissue. Then, build an eitr refinery and turn both sap (obtained from extractors on Yggdrasil roots) and soft tissue into refined eitr, necessary for every Mistlands-level worktable and piece of equipment.

It's not flying, it's falling with style.

Including the feather cape. See, navigating the Mistlands is bullshit. I talked in Part 4 about the rough terrain. I’d go a step above and say that the sixth biome is “make it or break it”, in that visiting it is so difficult and annoying that this is the point where many players either soldier on or give up. It’s a difficulty spike beyond anything seen before. While playing to write this part, my viking died at least once by falling to his death because I couldn’t see how low the ground was. It was fun getting back to that gravestone. The powerful enemies aren’t helping. It take more work to get to a point where you’re comfortable in the Mistlands, since the good items are all locked behind the refined eitr, itself tough to obtain in the first place.

Everything changes when you finally a) craft a feather cape, which lets you flutter down, negating fall damage, and b) learn to use magic, even if limited by what you can cast with your wand.

I almost never used ooze bombs before. Now, they're one of
my favorite weapons within dungeons. Thanks, mines!

But even then, clearing the Mistlands is an arduous process, because black cores and Sealbreaker fragments can be rare as fuck and you’ll be forced to visit a lot of infested mines to get everything you need. And those aren’t exactly easy dungeons, either, with loads of Seekers, Soldiers and Ticks in cramped spaces. I had to visit four of them to get enough fragments and cores, and all of them left my Viking beat within an inch of his life. With combat on fucking Very Easy.

Fighting The Queen

It was a relief to finally be able to craft the Sealbreaker and head towards the Queen. Her Citadel was located near the Ashlands. The solution? Get Moder power, sail for two in-game days, park near those Mistlands, set up portal, go home, sleep, get Bonemass power, upgrade every piece of equipment to the best stuff, get the best foods (which means I took a long detour to raise chickens and grow onions!), then finally step in.

I had already killed her, so I summoned her again to
capture the fight. This time, I had time to set up some
Wisp torches around so I could see the room.
The first time you fight her, you won't have time to do that.

On the plus side, you don’t need to sacrifice anything to bring out the Queen the first time. She’s already out. Hell, she’s implied to have killed the original sixth Forsaken and taken its place, hence why the Dvergr went through so much trouble to keep the place shut. She’s huge, her attacks have massive knockback, she uses poison, and she happily summons her babies, the Seekers, and their babies, the seeker broods. There’s patches of eggs all over the place. The citadel is multiple floors with staircases, thankfully no death pits, but it’s filled with the Mist, unlike the infested mines we braved to get here. You can’t see shit, and this monstrosity goes all over the place.

Christ, this thing is terrifying.

Even with combat on Very Easy, she was Hellish to fight. One death was caused by poison. One was by being outnumbered. It was impossible to snipe her with arrows, I could barely see her in the mist. There was no point is climbing the stairs, ‘cause then I couldn’t see her at all! This left magic, which means sacrificing stamina and health for Eitr, which I still wasn’t used to due to the very late implementation, or go all melee and slash till she dies. Which is what I did. I cheesed the battle. I left the Citadel from time to time to recharge stamina and HP. Also, the entrance led to a hallway which the Queen couldn’t strike into, so I would hide there when in trouble – the seekers could still get there, but they were less dangerous. Much of the fight was me sneaking slashes, hiding, killing enemies, hiding, slashing some more. I wondered why I picked up so many health and stamina potions in the mines; well, they ended up being very useful in this fight. In all fairness, that's due to combat being on Very Easy; had difficulty been higher, I probably would have begun using those potions a lot earlier. Still, it was the first time I really felt the need for them.

Almost there... just a bit more...

Eventually, she bit it. Damn, was I happy. Like a page had turned. Grabbed the trophy, set it on the final stone. She also dropped what was at the time a placeholder item now revealed to be a Majestic Carapace; with it, you build an upgrade for the Artisan's Table, allowing you to make ceramic plates, which you then use to make a boat that can reach the Ashlands. If I want to challenge the Queen again, I can sacrifice three seeker soldier trophies at the altar on the topmost floor of the citadel. Hm, what to do now.

On to the next lands? Ha! Nope, I've had enough.

Customize your experience

Since the addition of Hildir’s Quests, the game now includes World Modifier options. As a result, it can accommodate every type of player. I began playing before those options were available, so my first playthrough was vanilla – regular raid rate, normal difficulty, normal drop rates. This is also how the multiplayer server played, as its owner wanted the true experience throughout. (That game hasn’t had a session in a few months, and we still haven’t even found the Queen. We did toast Yagluth good though!)

The Modifier tab comes with presets, depending on whether you want an easy experience, a hardcore one, anything in-between, or something more casual or immersive. You can use the sliders to determine:

LOTS of options indeed.

-Combat difficulty, from very easy to very hard;

-The penalty on death, from keeping your equipped gear and losing a little bit of skills, to dropping everything else you had on you and losing a lot of skill progress, to losing everything except what you had equipped, all the way to hardcore, where death means you lose absolutely everything, equipment, inventory and skill levels;

-The rate of resources, meaning that you can opt for 1X drops like usual, up to 3X the normal amount, or down to half (meaning that if something drops the same item twice or more, you only get half adjusted to the upper digit, so 3 and 4 become 2, 5 and 6 becomes 3, etc.);

-The frequency at which raids can attack, from removing them entirely to making them much more frequent;

-And the ability of portals, as you can change it so you can freely teleport with ores and ingots in your inventory (which is normally impossible), or be nuts and play without being able to use any portals whatsoever.

It also comes with extra options: “No build cost”, meaning that once you learn a recipe, you can craft it whenever you want, never needing to gather its materials ever again; “player-based raids”, for servers where players compete against each other and are at different levels of progress, allowing players to encounter only raids at their level of progress (so someone who's at beating Yagluth will encounter fulings, someone at Bonemass will encounter draugr); “passive enemies”, where enemies won’t attack unless provoked first; and “no map”, which removes all map options; and the new "Fire hazard" option which allows fire to spread around forests outside of the Ashlands.

I just stopped for a moment in the Plains with my ship,
and it's already full! Yeah, imagine if I had to sail
all the way back home with a ship full of ores.

My second solo playthrough, and the one I’ve gotten farthest on? Well, don’t blame me, but I’m playing on easy mode. Very easy combat difficulty, penalty on death set to “casual”, three times the resource rates, fewer raids, the ability to teleport everything with me and 3X the drops. Why? Well, it’s already a pain in the ass to travel back and forth with ores and ingots, and I remember hating having to use literal real-life hours to just trek back and forth so I could craft something. Sorry, I only have two, three hours at most to devote to this per night, I am not wasting them. Same reason why I choose 3X drops; even with that option toggled on, it still takes a while to get the materials I need for anything. The tradeoff is that I have entirely too much of some easy-to-find items, like monster meat.

And whereas other communities would double down on “git gud” and other elitist gaming skill crap like that, the Valheim community has embraced those options and does not look down on those using them to have an easier or harder time. Testimonies of parents playing with their kids, of folks who turn up the resource rate whenever necessary. Or, on the opposite side, people trying (and frequently failing) the most hardcore modes. It’s all about how YOU want to play, and that’s how things should be.

What Comes Next

Can somebody turn on the AC? I'm melting here!

The Queen is meant to be the final Forsaken to kill, yet the game is still being updated by Iron Gate, with the unfinished biomes getting updates. The most recent addition is the Ashlands, displayed in red on the map. It’s the bottom crust of the world, so going that far down there is very much a conscious choice. Expect a lot of fire. Hell, the waters are so hot that regular boats can't sail there! For now, judging by the divided reaction of fans on the official Reddit... there’s still work to be done. All the challenge we’ve come to expect, but some balancing issues. I keep myself aware of some information on the new biome, but I don’t dare travel to it just yet. I heard there were decent ideas (like the weather being so hot that anything made of wood quickly turns to coal), but I also heard of major issues regarding enemy density and respawns.

In fact, to be honest, with the Queen dead and the grueling Mistlands conquered, I feel myself sated. Six Forsaken, that was the contract. If this shithead is moving the goalposts... I know you’re here Odin, you big fucking nerd. Where’s my goddamn Valhalla? If I must tear your singular eye out to get it, I WILL.

To be honest, I don’t rule out eventually doing a Part 6 to talk about the Ashlands, once I decide to explore them – but that’s not gonna be anytime soon.

So... Mountains surrounded by freezing waters, for which
your cape can't help. That's gonna be fun...

On the opposite edge, at the very top, there’s the Deep North. We can expect that to become a proper biome all its own eventually, probably like the Mountains on steroids. There are also talks to turn the Ocean into a proper biome – if you ask me, it’s already annoying enough as it is, with the wind that keeps blowing in your face and the surprise attacks from Serpents during storms and at night.

The game is still in Early Access – and it’s already massively popular even in that state. I do hope it eventually leaves that state and becomes a full-fledged product. There may have to be a few more additions to the entirety of Valheim before it feels “complete”. Then again, I don’t know how much Iron Gate considers is left to do – but between the very active player base, the regular updates and the studio’s desire to keep working till the game is as good as they want it to be, then I can imagine the “final release” will happen, and probably sooner than later.

Final thoughts

Memorable biomes, memorable encounters. The best may be
the stories you invent for yourself as you explore this tenth
realm, hence why I shared many of my Valheim
experiences during this 5-part series.

Writing flowed so well that I had to do a double take when I realized this article would have five parts. It surprised me, because I hadn’t had such an easy time writing such a long review in a while. Or maybe ever. It helped that I designed this series as both a review and a guide to help new players. It also helped a lot that I had three different playthroughs to base myself on. The greatness of Valheim is that it offers an entirely unique experience on each run, to each player, due to its procedural generation of maps. And with three experiences as basis, I could cover a good chunk of what there is to see.

Its best update may be the world modifiers, which allow for exactly the kind of survival game you want about Vikings in purgatory, an acknowledgement that every way to play is accepted and encouraged. (I joke about Hardcore Mode, but if that’s what you’re into, go for it.) Honestly, many of my points here could be amended with “This can be corrected to your liking with world modifiers”, so bear in mind that I’m trying to stick to points that matter no matter the modifiers.

Not to mention, it IS a huge world, so you're bound to
discover some cool places, all procedurally generated.

Valheim is one of those games that doesn’t look like much when you first approach it, but the further in you go the more you find about its depth. Between the variety in enemies, the options when building, and a lot of extra activities you can undertake (such as fishing, taming, or a few side-quests), there’s a lot more here than just the main goal. Which, itself, will take you a long time to finish. Not every activity feels necessary or thought up with the same depth as others (with fishing and animal taming being the biggest examples of things you can easily play without and still be perfectly fine), but they're still around for whoever wants to try them.

Aside from trolls, abominations and seekers, I would say
you also never forget the first time you encounter a
Deathsquito. 'Cause it probably killed you.

Admittedly, a large part of this game is learning it the hard way through trial and error. Usually by dying a lot. I sure know a fair bit about that. It’s normal for survival games to be brutal, or to start simple then get increasingly more brutal, and in that department, Valheim is no slouch. New biomes gain additional requirements, crafting requires more tables, materials get increasingly bothersome to find, enemies get nastier. Not unlike other survival games, the latter half depends entirely on whether you have the patience to go through everything that’s asked of you, once the difficulty has scaled up considerably. The swamps will be the first roadblock. If you can get through them, it might be the Mistlands that prove to be too much. And of course, your adventure depends on how lucky you are during world creation. Then there's every other source of annoyance that I've mentioned - you may have noticed that though I enjoy this game quite a bit, I've found plenty to be 

Speaking from my experience playing both solo and multiplayer, I can safely say that both ways are fun. Braving the wilds on your own can be equally rewarding and frustrating. And there’s sweet chaos to be had when a group rains blows on a Forsaken or works towards a common goal.

It's always a part of the game, but you don't quite realize how
important it is to recognize enemies by their sounds until
after you've died a few times from not recognizing
what's coming. Sound design really is great here.

Valheim is fantastic in terms of ambiance; the feel of each biome is just perfect. The looks, which includes the lighting; you can immediately tell a difference in how places feel based on how well-lit they are. As an example, the Swamps are always scary places because it's always dark there, even in the middle of the day. Then there's the music, which does a lot of the footwork. A point comes where you might no longer notice the music, until it changes, and you realize that something’s going on. It can emphasize peace just as much as it can signal danger. Not just the music, but the sounds - you quickly learn to recognize the surrounding enemies based on the sounds you hear. Hell, even the slightly lower-polygon look of the game helps give it a charm of its own.

Again: Yeah, choosing the ability to teleport stuff that can't
be teleported in the vanilla game is a godsend. Getting items
can already be a massive grind, imagine also having to sail
some of these items back every time as well!

Now, also speaking from personal experience, when the game becomes a grind, doesn’t matter just how you’ve adjusted your settings for the best experience – it gets tedious regardless. Even at triple the resources gathered, some things still take a long while to find and collect. Think of the trouble of carrying so much ore back home (especially if you play so that you can’t take ores and ingots through portals!), meaning multiple trips home and/or to the boat. To say nothing of the Mistlands, with the sixth (and no longer final) biome being where many give up due to the game’s issues coming together tenfold. And I would have given up too, had I not chosen to soldier on in order to deliver this article.

However, if survival games are indeed your jam, you’ll get your fill from Valheim, which offers plenty of ways to play, plenty of challenge, and lots of secrets if you feel like looking for them. All in all, a game that’s worth checking out. Valheim is available on Steam for 19.99$ USD.

...Bulbasaur.