My Forward Operations Base on the border of the Swamp is complete. It contains a kiln and smelter to process the iron and a fully upgraded workbench and forge to create/repair items on-site. A dock and karve allow for shipping ingots back to my home base, while a portal around back makes it easy to pop home and brew more potions, transfer non-metal resources, etc… It’s not obvious from the picture, but I dug out a moat to create an island which includes the large rock surface I’m standing on, which is an excellent fishing spot and place to toss garbage items into the ocean. The moat is deep enough that any creature approaching from any side has to swim at least part of the way, and even then they can’t scale sides of the moat unless they swim all the way around to the ocean side, making them easy pickings with a bow. The long covered bridge across the moat and wetlands has two doors to block access and murder holes for shooting from cover. The whole thing should be pretty defensible from anything short of a concentrated attack by multiple trolls.
I’m well stocked with sausages, carrot stew, meats, poison resist potions and health/stamina regen potions. Time to get busy exploring the swamp and mining some iron.
Sh#tter! Ran into my first deathsquitoes…well they ran into me…in the Meadows. Is that meant to happen?
Just next to 2 Draugr villages & I’m a LONG way from home/karve/portal. And there is a huge bunch of particularly aggro boars & necks lining the route for some reason.
I must have played this for 50 hours without realising I had a cauldron & fermenter craftable…duh. Might have made some battles a bit easier.
Aggressive critters like deathsquitoes will chase deer or other things across the borders. They will chase you if they notice you as well.
I always try to be extra cautious when I know I am near the boundary of a dangerous area, which if you are exploring for the first time, can be difficult to know.
Re getting gear back: If you do not have a set of old weapons/armor, it should be pretty quick to put together something that can handle boar and necks. Just make sure to be extra cautious and stealthy as you get closer to where your gear is laying.
I died a number of times when I lost my stuff in a particularly hard to access area. Frequently because I was impatient and thought I could just run past the enemies I normally ignored when I was fully equipped.
Yes maybe that’s what happened. The aggression in this Meadows is ramped up; also my first Draugr villages in Meadows. I kited a whole bunch in the first vill who obligingly took me on one at a time. Thought I’d got them all so went inside to loot the structures…YOU DIED!
I was seriously worried about how I was going to retrieve my gear from inside a hut but again obligingly the nearby Draugr basically looked the other way. The game seems very forgiving in this regard.
In my coastal exploration I found a little island formation that’s part meadow, part forest, part plains. Since there’s just some nubs of land spawns like deer and boar happen in a tiny area near the plains bit where deathsquitos spawn. Free meat everywhere. I threw up a portal on it and named it “Meat Island”.
Absolutely makes life easier. I’m thinking about building a second fermenter just to improve production speed as now that I’m exploring the Swamp biome I am running with stacks of sausages, carrot soup, healing mead and poison resist mead (a must in the swamp where damn near everything seems to poison you). Stamina and healing mead made all the difference in my fight with The Elder as well. Don’t leave home without 'em!
I hope that Hearth and Home update will include moving either food/mead or armor to a separate inventory system. I hate that with a full set of armor equipped (including Megingjord and cloak), three course meal stacks and proper mead loadout (at least healing and poison/frost) plus arrows you are down to 12 free inventory slots even before you leave home, less if you want to carry any useful items like the circlet or some wood for quick building.
Too late! But tbh I cheesed him/her/it by excavating around the altar area so it couldn’t get off and just had to dodge the vines while I arrowed it to death.
Over the weekend I finally quit procrastinating and killed The Elder. Died once early on trying to figure out the best tactics that didn’t involve cheesing him with holes in the ground or other similar stuff. A few stamina and healing meads and around 250 fire arrows later and he fell. I actually ran out of fire arrows and was using flint arrows at the end, and I nearly ran out of those (had 7 left) and was preparing to try to charge in with my axe for the last few HP if need be. Glad I didn’t have to try that.
I then moved to my Swamp base pictured above and began exploring. Found a fire spout, which I made into a core/coal farm, not far from my home. A little past that I found my first Sunken Crypt. I must be really lucky, as it is enormous. I have already mined enough iron scraps from it to craft scale armor chest and legs, an iron sword and an iron pick, and I’m not even halfway done clearing all of the piles inside yet. I may craft the banded shield next, as some draugr hit hard enough that my bronze buckler doesn’t absorb all of the damage. I hate giving up that 2x block modifier for 1.5x though, as with the iron sword I do crazy damage after every block. Still, every HP counts in the swamp (damn poison!) so better to need an extra swing and remain at full HP than to live dangerously I guess.
I finally finished clearing out the first Sunken Crypt near my swamp base. I pulled enough scrap iron from that one crypt to upgrade my forge to level 4 (Forge Tools), craft iron scale armor and legs, then upgrade both to tier 2, iron sword (2), banded shield (3), iron pickaxe (2), and an iron axe, with several ingots left over. I also pulled up lots of withered bones and found the stone to reveal the location of Bonemass (looks like I’ll need to sail there).
I explored the surrounding area a bit and discovered another sunken crypt just steps away from the first one. This one looks to be smaller though. My surtling farm has been supplying a steady stream of cores and coal, and so far none of the swamp creatures seem to be too terribly deadly so long as I remember to have my poison resist active and watch my food levels. Crafting the upgraded iron armor early has helped a lot with this.
I also encountered my first Wraith. I was fighting some leeches and something huge appeared behind my shoulder, looming there and making a weird noise. Turned around to find the wraith, who was dead three iron sword strokes later. I now have 3 chains…need one more to craft the bellows for my forge.
Things were going great, as mentioned in the above post, but then I got bored and decided to do a recon trip around the edges of the swamp to map the borders and discover any additional crypts and landmarks. That went fairly well until I attempted to cross back through the center of the swamp territory. I ran across a stone circle that I thought had a single draugr spawner and a couple of draugr, so I trotted up, started bashing the draugr and suddenly heard “Arrrrggg…arrrggg” followed immediately by “Clack! Clack!” and then Thwack!Thwack!Thwack!..and I’m staring at my own gravestone. Turns out the stone circle contained TWO draugr spawners AND two skeleton spawners and they all popped out archers as soon as I set foot in the circle.
No worries I figured, I have a full set of bronze armor as my backup, plus bronze sword and shield and plenty of food and poison resist potions in my go chest by the door at my swamp base. How hard can this recovery be? Turns out that stone circle was only one of FIVE stone circles arranged around the center of the swamp, each one with multiple spawners and all within close enough range of one another that attempting to flee from one would draw adds from the next one over. I discovered all this, much to my dismay, over my next three deaths. I used up all my iron reserves crafting armor and a sword when it became obvious that bronze equipment wasn’t going to cut it on this recovery mission. Died and lost that too, then put together a set of fresh bronze and old trollhide, and died again. Finally I was down to freshly crafted trollhide armor (I was out of metal, and the sneak bonus helped me get in close to the circles before becoming archery practice for skeles and draugr) when I was able to recover most of my original items from my original gravestone (using the corpse run buff from a different gravestone nearby). Then I began the slow process of reaping my vengeance. I worked my way, circle by circle, using the Eikthyr power, stamina and healing meads, and my original upgraded iron armor and sword/shield to charge in, lay waste to the spawners, and clean up stragglers after. The center circle, where I had apparently wandered into the first death, had a two star draugr archer with a unique patterned kilt-looking thing. He was like a mini-boss, he did damage even through my block from my upgraded banded shield, and he took multiple hits from my upgraded iron sword to take down.
In the end I lost a good 90+ minutes of game time to the recovery, and who knows how many skill levels that will take time to earn back. I know at least two of my deaths were not on the “No Skill Drain” timer. It was worth it though, as now that swamp is fully mapped, the stone circles stand silent, all guardians eradicated, and I uncovered a total of 8 crypts, of which I am still only halfway through the 3rd one. I’ve got a couple more upgrades to do, then I am going to stash a lot of iron for later. You can see on the map below the site of my last death (#4 I think) which is pretty much the area where the 5 stone circles were grouped together. For a game that supposedly generates areas proceduraly, that sure felt like a hand-crafted boss-level experience in the middle of a random swamp.
I played a bit more solo last night, and took down The Elder in that game too. I died once when I got lifted up in some roots, flayed by vines, and then dropped to my death.
Lesson learned, we came back and whittled the beast down. Excited to build a boat and try to find some swamps in this game too.
As much as I enjoy the current level of exploration and discovery in the game, I think there could be so much more done with this aspect. I hope they lean into it as they build more content.
So friends how is this solo? I seeing screenshots of it and it looks GORGEOUS but if it’s a game where you can’t enjoy it unless others are involved, I’m far less interested in it. Thank you.
Its like Conan - if you can enjoy yourself and find your own goals in a vast world, the game is really, really great. If you need a series of set goals, less so.
I’ve only reached the second biome myself, but sofar its imminently soloable with no issues - go for it!
