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.
yes…but…the bosses gatekeep all the significant upgrades. For instance, the first boss gatekeeps copper mining. Yes, you could still mine copper by doing a bunch of other things and having it break copper, but that’s a pretty drastic workaround. The second boss is worse because I don’t think there’s a way to get iron without the key. The third boss is similar to the first in that he limits access, but doesn’t outright prevent it - you can still find silver without the wishbone, it’s just much harder and random (i actually found it in my current seed where a segment was uncovered allowing me to harvest it before engaging the third boss). And the fourth boss absolutely gatekeeps the plains resources.
I think its a flaw in an otherwise great game, but that’s how they built it so far…
In reply to both above posts, the issue isn’t even the boss. Or really the upgrades he unlocks. Sure someone else can do the boss and your grade school age kid can be replanting your carrots and feeding the pigs.
But then you kill the third boss. The adults are all out looking for mountain zones, and the kid is still at the “safe” Meadows base. One of two invasions show up …
Mountain invasion which includes flying monsters, so even if you put a wall around your garden they will come in. Or troll invasion, with sticks. Size of invasion and hit points of mobs scales to the number of player on.
So, one builder vs a Mountain zone multiplayer sized invasion scaled to the adults out far away. Not even going to be close. Them logging out will be best at that point. But there may still be significant damage. Later invasions are designed to be fought. And yes, swamp, mountain and even plains mobs will be coming into the Meadows with the singular goal of seeing how much stuff they can wreck in 2-3 minutes.
The bigger invasions are triggered by killing the bosses. So if you never kill the bosses on a designated “builder” save, it never has them.
That is why.
You can unlock copper (and everything) on a builder save. Have access to another save that is killing bosses. If your builder is a competent adventurer, have someone bring them an antler from the first boss. No issue getting more as you can kill them over and over. Once they pick up the item the game will unlock all relevant recipes for their character. So once they pick up the antler they will know how to make the pickaxe to mine.
If they are not an adventurer and perhaps build in cheat mode: Bring them one item of each new type. So for bronze age, bring them (copper ore, copper ingot, tin ore, tin ingot, bronze ingot, fine wood and a bronze nail). Have them pick up each item. And again, all recipes unlocked for them. Repeat with iron, silver, etc… You probably for this type of builder want them to even pick up items from the starting age like coal and core wood.
So raid events are tied to a server’s current boss state. Raid strength is tied to the current number of payers logged in. And recipes available and building parts unlocked is tied to the player’s previous unlocks and not related to the current save’s boss status. And, getting unlocks only requires someone brings you materials, not that you kill the boss.
I should probably clarify that nephew isn’t much of a builder. He’s great with Minecraft and loves getting resources, but that’s like Legos and there are millions of videos out there for him to watch and learn how to do things. Valheim’s build is a little… it’s a little weird. The need to level the ground, the way the roofs pieces require you to build a certain way for it to look right at all… that weird thing they’re doing with the smoke in the house; it’s a bit much for this six year old.
He loves going out with us, but he’s afraid of dying. Now when I was 7, dying was expected because you played in arcades and NES didn’t save so the real challenge was the lives. It seems little different now, so we’re just trying to encourage him not to freak out with death… we’ll just get his stuff back. I see no evidence of any kind of corpse rot which is great for kids, parents and even those of us who might on rare occasions get an unexpected work call. Note to devs, we have lives, don’t put in corpse rot without a toggle to get it off.
The only real reason to play bosses with nephew in mind is because I get off work when he’s going to bed. It basically no M-F play or… we just keep playing, save the really fun stuff to do with him and make sure we stock up resources in the chest so he can get it and catch up.
I appreciate the tips though. We’ll see what mommy and daddy think. As long as nephew didn’t get himself grounded again, seems like the first boss is just on the horizon.
I am not sure how to save progress in this game? I start and then quit and thought it would save my progress? Then I read that we have to hit F5 and type save. Did that too and once again when I opened the game I can only start form scratch and not continue?
Ours are saving just by me, the host hitting quit. I haven’t had to do anything more than that so far…
Oh maybe this will help. Are you offline?
Thx, @Nesrie!
I had just found that same article right after writing my note. I guess I am playing Single Player. I suppose I can start a private server to maybe get around the issue.
I thought the only difference between single-player and MP on single-player is I invited people to my game. I guess I didn’t realize the periodic saving was also MP centric, so I learned something too! I just thought’s how the game was… saves for me.
Looks like their fix for single player is not reliable but there is a mod that can help. I will look in workshop etc to see if there is anything.
The game is addicting but not fun when you quit and come back and all your rocks and stuff are gone! : )
I cant imagine if you played for hours and all for nothing.
I can think of not a single game I would appreciate losing my time on like that. The survival games are probably some of the worse way because of the way you start every one of them just hitting stuff with your fist… which of course seems pretty silly but hey it’s the mechanic someone chose ones.
Here is a list of mods (looks like there is no Steam Workshop at this point in time).
I do not see anything in my quick read that helps with the save issue on offline in my quick read.
Having more slots mod looks like something I will eventually be interested in.
The equipment and quickslot not taking up inventory… I can’t believe how ingrained my psyche in needing that. Not sure I want to take the risk of losing those items go get it though. I hope they quality of life that real fast.
yeah but you can just summon the boss 3 times and make him a deer pickaxe and then he can go mining lol. we had one guy doing most of the forging and we’d help gather the other materials and stuff. I think it’d only take like 15 minutes to make like 6 deer pickaxes. the same applies for other things going forward too.
i don’t think the invasions are a big deal at all. they’re pretty rare, and yeah the troll one can suck but as far as i can tell, if you just leave the area they wont destroy anything until you get back. we’ve done that a few times. I guess the work around where you have a second save is fine, I just think its unnecessary and valheim is relatively forgiving for stuff like that. its unforgiving when you die in a hard to reach place hahaha
In the loose group of Valheim players I know we have one kid that watches, sometimes. And two adult builders, both which have or plan on pausing the boss progression on their main save. One builds in cheat mode only, one doesn’t. Another freaks out at the mere sight of a troll, and if the game had a “creative mode” they’d stay in it. Another fourth was a builder only, but now decided to do the zone progression. So @Nesrie, I wasn’t really referring to your nephew.
It isn’t an issue for them as so many other of us have saves that progress that they could either come over and kill bosses with us, or ask to handle items on our saves to unlock whatever they wanted. The situation evolved dynamically, but it works well for a loosely connected group.
The game has enough options it really does support a “set your own difficulty”. And yep, it does a great job of supporting multiple play styles. We also have "%&#=$$! this building %$@&#! where is the stuff to kill person. :) If we could only get him to die in less … interesting … places. He’s the one that uses console cheats for corpse runs when solo. >.>
I have about 150 hours into the game, with a bunch of different characters and worlds, and I’ve never run into this. I even drag my characters around between multiple worlds and I’ve never had a problem with it saving when I quit. It makes me curious what could possibly be different in your setup or system that causes this. This seems like it might almost be some protection software not allowing the game to write to disc? It must be something to do with the OS.
Simple idea, but have you tried running the game as administrator?
Apparently it is a well known bug on offline games. One of the files that the game saves to becomes read only. One of the fixes is to go and change the file back from read only but unfortunately it can happen again at any time (according to the article).
I am going to do exactly what you suggested and try to run my own server.
I am not exactly sure what settings I have to select so I will play around with them. I tried it once creating a password but when I died due to the tree falling on my head - everything was gone when I came back (Ok this was normal as stuff gets left at body location).
I am going to create a new world too because I think the world files can become corrupted as well (which seems to be another problem that has popped up in my searches).
Edit:
Running as a server setup on my own computer seems to have solved the problem
Well that’s cute. Watching in game or just sort of sitting near a parent and watching?
I’m not sure they are in the other family group that plays. They keep interaction to the one instance the parents share. But the parents sometimes come to our saves after child bedtime. They are pre-school age I think, so can’t be doing too much?
Pre-School is pretty little. I mean a year ago, my nephew wouldn’t be able to read those stones. Now I hear him read it very slowly, but he is reading it which is adorable.
We have to keep reminding him the Trolls are not bosses, they just squish us if we don’t react fast enough. He gets really excited when we kite it to near the base, but man his excitement can get ear-piercing. At least it was a happy sound!