Valheim - a viking multiplayer exploration and survival game by Coffee Stain

It is a bit ironic that we are complaining about people raiding in a game based on Viking mythology. That said, logging into other people’s servers simply to destroy, loot and run away again is a total dick move that even the Vikings would have frowned upon.

I have not seen the rubber banding thing from games like Conan Exiles. I don’t think there is a range limit that I’ve read about or experienced. We don’t all travel together. Nephew’s daddy likes to go squished by new things he has no equipment to take on all the time.

Sales slowing down! Took 7 days to get another million sales.

Developers probably in a panic over sales starting to dry up. :P

As I said earlier, I play games (like Conan Exiles) where the goal is to kill and loot people and to break into their forts and pillage them. But Valheim is supposed to be a co-op PvE experience, not a PvP build/loot like Conan Exiles, so it is a surprise when it happens.

Now that I know that people can break the game in that way, I can work to limit it. Starting with the aformentioned password. Only one PM so far, so that significantly lessens the pool of possible thieves :)

Modern Viking Living!

Boy this game just eats up time.

Does Valheim have long crafting / cooking times like Conan Exiles? That made playing coop on your actively running game prohibitive.

So far the cooking takes like thirty seconds, so the only thing you need to wait for is any crops to grow or mead to ferment. Which is like a day or two in game, but if everyone can sleep you can skip the night part of it (and leave the smelter stuffed while you sleep).

The real time sink is traveling anywhere and gathering ore and specific materials.

Funny…

I’ve had plenty of multi-hour corpse recoveries at this point.

More Valheim LOLz…

I haven’t played Conan Exiles. So I’ll answer with what I know of time gated cooking crafting.

As stated above, cooking is quick but needs to be attended. You can walk off, but then you get a different non-edible product.

There are various things to grow. That happens without input after planting/building. You do not need to be in the area either for time to pass and the food to be ready, usually 1-2 game days. They need regular harvesting and replanting which is just a click. However, on either client (dedicated server or solo), time only passes when a player is logged in. So having the food on a solo server where you log on infrequently will put a serious damper on the speed of your food production. Food produced faster on the dedicated server as we had players on at all hours.

The metal crafting works on batches. You load the craft station up and it processes a batch without further interaction. Like food producers, you do not have to be in the area for them to make progress, but someone must be online.

Item crafting is all instant click to make. The hard part is farming (and perhaps carrying) the items.

Hopefully that is answer enough? If not, sorry as I’m not really sure what the Conan Exiles system was …

Last night was just a quick session to mine copper and tin nodes from the new stretch of Black Forest I found closer to my home and restock meat, berries, tails, leather, etc… Found a couple more stone towers, this time with barrels and stools outside and chests inside, along with groups of dwarves/brutes/shaman guarding them. I’m getting really good at parry, though fighting groups kills my stamina bar fast.

The night before however I had a grand adventure exploring the same stretch of Black Forest. I found a huge Burial Chamber full of skeletons and evil bone piles, and scored some pretty amazing loot clearing it out.

SEVEN cores in one room of the Burial Chamber! Plus various gems, coins and items scattered about and inside the chest. Jackpot!

Three more cores on the other side of the chamber, along with more loot and the rune that put The Elder on my map! Turns out he’s not far away from my FOB for mining.

My Burial Chamber haul. Not too shabby!

Home Sweet Henge. Time to do some smelting…

My sister and myself are fighting the good fight for little nephew. Because of our Time zone difference, weekdays are a no go for nephew and me to play together, and his daddy wants to take on the boss so we can all move on. We said no. Nephew is probably going to die during the boss fight because he’s still learning how to do things and is slow to react but he has to engage in our first boss fight.

He’s going to be so thrilled to just see it.

I’ve gotten good at run about, scream and shout, while that bar refills.

Impressive haul! My record for one Burial Chamber is 11 cores, seen one other at 10. Very rare, most are 3-4.

I have seen this conflict in my family. My son is as adult, but disabled. He can fight (well), but prefers building, and communicates on an adult level. How to balance his desire to just build, build, build with others who want to progress?

Have you considered the compromise we came up with? A group save that progresses (no need for dedicated, just designated). And then help the son set up his own save where he just builds, and it never progresses. Then you get a save where he can join in on bosses, and still have a save where experimental building is permanently safe from the stronger raids.

Since attacks on settlements increase in type for each boss killed. And it only happens when someone is there. So a lone builder can get an NPC raid from the last boss + 1 area after Swamp boss even.

I kind of wish I was younger and had parents who gamed to understand this, but I’ve heard this repeated a few time from other parents and as an aunti I am kind of seeing it now that he can kind of play the games with us.

They play minecraft on occasion. Daddy doesn’t care for it much. Mommy has been using it as a teaching and lessons learned tool. Nephew isn’t very good with sharing for example… and despite how many worlds there are he wants theirs. There is something about playing in the world the adults play in, our world, not his world, that matters.

Fortunately, I am not bored at all with where we are at, and it is my understanding that this boss opens up a lot more play, so we should be set for awhile after that. I don’t know that we will approach all bosses this way in the future, but the first one… it just feels wrong not to play with our whole group and be able to to hear his little voice on Discord while we do it. I expect death will be involved, but we’re also trying to teach him that death in these games is normal so he doesn’t have to be so concerned about it all the time.

Interesting about the raiding part. I didn’t know that.

I do know the characters move seamlessly between worlds, so I should remind them it’s okay if they want to play with him before I get off work so he doesn’t have to wait full a full work week to play. It’d be also be nice if they stop grounding him on weekends, but hey six years are what they are.

The boss drops an item you need to build a new tool to obtain the raw materials for the next tech age.

But, you can clear the boss on the advancing save and bring one of that item back to a save where he has not been killed. More than one even, as you can resummon and kill a boss without limit to get more items, and you get multiple with every kill. So with the two save method you can keep a “builder” save safe from stronger invasions while still allowing it to advance technologically. It only stops stronger invasions. Stronger mobs will still be in the harder areas of course. But your builder can then still sit and build in the “Meadows” zones with invasions nothing more than “food delivery”, as we call that level.

But at that level, going inside a structure and closing the door should be enough to survive the 2 minutes needed. When the invasion has flying monsters, or Trolls with building damaging clubs … not as fun for builders.

The game has a system, which I rather like for this or playing catch up with friends, where is you handle a raw material item from further down the tech tree that it will immediately unlock all recipes the item is used in. This makes custom management and sharing easy. However, if you want a slower, harder experience this is also a warning not to take your character to a friends higher save and pick up every new mat in their house! Self spoilers. Of course, knowing the recipe and being able to get the mat yourself are not the same.

So each of the bosses you can just summon over and over again?

Yes, just need more of the “sacrifice” items, but all are plentiful drops in the right zones.

Oh wow. I didn’t realize that. Hmm, that might keep our restless member satisfied if we can just… do it again with nephew. I might suggest that than. Thank you!

i dont see why you cant have a guy building and doing farming and just avoid the boss combat entirely. you dont need to even be there. The game is kind of designed for people to do multiple roles anyway. i think itd be really cool to just have someone build awesome bases while everyone else is off fighting honestly. part of the reason valheim is so cool.

yes every boss can be resummoned.