Poll of the Day > Anyone else wasting away their lives in Valheim?

(+) Yeah! (+)

My friend and I were both eyeballing Valheim and my friend bought two copies of the game for us. I threw together a server PC solely to run a dedicated server for the two of us and we've been playing religiously since. I've got like 300 hours in the game now. This is the thing I've been working on as of late. Mainly while my friend is not playing. Castle Drakebane. Other than like part of the fence and their room decorations I built every thing in the castle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyc8NyX9fgg&t

Anyone else playing?

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Nope. I got bored of it pretty quickly.

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I played it for a week or so and then lost interest. I only killed the first boss. Playing alone is actually pretty tedious and not fun after a while.

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I finished it in the first 2 or 3 wekks of realease with some friends, I really liked it but am waiting on bigger content drops.

Im sure I will if it eventually comes to consoles

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That's a pretty badass castle.

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These days I'm mostly just in Midgard.

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survival? giant time sinks. kind of glad that I stopped playing ark.
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Not anymore. Put a little over 100 hours, but stop playing once I killed the final current boss.

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Krazy_Kirby posted...

survival? giant time sinks. kind of glad that I stopped playing ark.

This is sort of my problem. Even when games start to interest me with robust building systems and an opportunity to be creative, they tend to focus on combat and survival mechanics way more than I care to deal with, so I lose interest.

Minecraft only really managed to pull me in because it has Peaceful difficulty in Survival mode - it's a nice compromise between constantly having to eat and fight monsters versus everything feeling too easy and meaningless when building in Creative mode. I like being able to work on cool builds without having to worry about a Creeper blowing it the fuck up or monsters constantly attacking me and distracting me from what I'm doing. And don't get me started on multiplayer (other players are the worst monsters of all).

I have tons of respect for players who can still manage to build massive projects in games like that, though. It's impressive talent - and one of the few cases where I actually accept the premise that video games can be a unique medium for art (as opposed to just being interactive movies).
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trodi_911 posted...

That's a pretty badass castle.

Thank you!

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

This is sort of my problem. Even when games start to interest me with robust building systems and an opportunity to be creative, they tend to focus on combat and survival mechanics way more than I care to deal with, so I lose interest.

Not to push Valheim or anything, but one of the reasons it blew up is because it refactors these elements in subtle ways. The setting is that you're the spirit of a deceased viking warrior making a trial of worth in the afterllife, so you don't technically need to eat. Eating has a lot of benefits, and you won't get very far if you don't do it, but you can spend hours (real time) just pootering around the base building and tree punching without ever being bothered by a vitals meter.

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Kungfu Kenobi posted...

Not to push Valheim or anything, but one of the reasons it blew up is because it refactors these elements in subtle ways. The setting is that you're the spirit of a deceased viking warrior making a trial of worth in the afterllife, so you don't technically need to eat. Eating has a lot of benefits, and you won't get very far if you don't do it, but you can spend hours (real time) just pootering around the base building and tree punching without ever being bothered by a vitals meter.

This si one of the biggest reasons why I liked it too, eating increases your max health and stamina but you'll never die from lack of it, which I hate in survival games, eating irl is pain enough.

No, I played Outward for a while with my brother and decided I definitely don't have enough free time to play Valheim.

Kungfu Kenobi posted...

Not to push Valheim or anything...

I'm aware, I've watched other people play.

From what I've seen/heard, it still gets a bit grindy at later points in the game, the focus is still pretty clearly on the combats more than the building, and the aesthetics of the sort of things you can build don't really appeal to me a ton.
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Kungfu Kenobi posted...

Not to push Valheim or anything, but one of the reasons it blew up is because it refactors these elements in subtle ways. The setting is that you're the spirit of a deceased viking warrior making a trial of worth in the afterllife, so you don't technically need to eat. Eating has a lot of benefits, and you won't get very far if you don't do it, but you can spend hours (real time) just pootering around the base building and tree punching without ever being bothered by a vitals meter.

Until you drop three feet off your roof and die and lose any of your skill progress.

The stamina/health stuffed is often touted as being an improvement over other games but I see it as being worse. Not only is it tied to your health, and the 'non eating' version of your health may as well be granting you an instant death at the slightest provocation, but it also means your stamina is reduced as well. So again, if you have to do anything that isn't within the immediate boundaries of your base you have to eat constantly. And not only do you have to eat constantly, but you have to eat increasingly more annoying meals that require a number of obnoxious ingredients to gather. You can subsist off a honey farm for a while, but it very quickly becomes inadequate. The whole game becomes a grind fest very quickly.

There's a lot of promise to the game and the crafting system is fairly well put together (for the most part) but it's not quite the game everyone seems to have made it out to be.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

From what I've seen/heard, it still gets a bit grindy at later points in the game, the focus is still pretty clearly on the combats more than the building, and the aesthetics of the sort of things you can build don't really appeal to me a ton.

I wouldn't even say its focused on the combat. It's focused on the grind. Your fighting ability is determined mostly by your equipment by far. There are some points where you can get around upgrading your gear - but it's not really a skill based system. It's about having the right shit.

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Gear helps but actually I found the biggest advancement to my combat prowess and survivability was mastering block/parry timing. There are enemies that can tear you up easily if you don't have a good block/parry or dodge/kiting game going on no matter what your armor is.

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valheim feels like a shittier ark and on purpose

though it does have a big advantage over ark in that it doesnt take up a whole fuckin terabyte

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The grind got unbearable for me halfway through the iron age (after defeating the swamp boss) but I have a BLAST of a week playing it.

Friends kept going and called me back in to beat the final boss which was fun.

Love the building aesthetics and the smoke physics choking everyone in their shitty little house for the first time. Finally building a nice stone fortress was a good feeling and for the most part the grind was rewarding, until it wasn't.

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i was actually kinda impressed by structural stability being a mechanic at first before i realized it was just a simple check of "how many pieces away is the floor" and it doesn't actually use structural mechanics

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Sequiro posted...

Gear helps but actually I found the biggest advancement to my combat prowess and survivability was mastering block/parry timing. There are enemies that can tear you up easily if you don't have a good block/parry or dodge/kiting game going on no matter what your armor is.

That's the only other part that matters. And even then it only matters until...I think the iron shield? After that, provided you parry, you can't be harmed. Before that, even with parrying, you'll take damage from a number of mobs. But your attack damage and...defense damage is 100% dependent on your gear with a small modifier based on your skill level (that takes entirely too long to train and goes down frequently).

That doesn't even discuss the potions/gear you need for the specific areas you venture into. Poison resist, ice resist, whatever. It's all about gear.

agesboy posted...

i was actually kinda impressed by structural stability being a mechanic at first before i realized it was just a simple check of "how many pieces away is the floor" and it doesn't actually use structural mechanics

I was too. I kept wondering why my architecturally structurally sound projects weren't working until I realized you pretty much just have to have a buncha straight poles everywhere. Then you just start cramming that shit randomly into walls and presto, problem solved.

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