Valheim gets upgraded to improve performance and fix major bugs

This update breaks portal mods
Difficult to test these improvements that way

After having played some Tiny Life, the Valheim character generator feels so awkwardly clunky and unnecessarily gendered :/ I really have a hard time enjoying that part of the game (or using my character) with next to no flexibility and such a rigid system. Either you're a completely buff guy or a (comparatively slender) girl with noticeable boobs. Buff girl? Slender dude? Something inbetwixt? No luck :(

After having played some Tiny Life, the Valheim character generator feels so awkwardly clunky and unnecessarily gendered :/ I really have a hard time enjoying that part of the game (or using my character) with next to no flexibility and such a rigid system. Either you're a completely buff guy or a (comparatively slender) girl with noticeable boobs. Buff girl? Slender dude? Something inbetwixt? No luck :(

I'm sorry, but it's just sad that you are having trouble enjoying the game simply because your character isn't your ideal. Use your imagination and just enjoy the gameplay. If you're playing minecraft are you going to enjoy it less because your character is blocky instead of big muscled womanly stature? That's just stupid.

This update breaks portal mods
Difficult to test these improvements that way

That's probably why they don't officially support mods. Every game update can break support for existing mods.

After having played some Tiny Life, the Valheim character generator feels so awkwardly clunky and unnecessarily gendered :/ I really have a hard time enjoying that part of the game (or using my character) with next to no flexibility and such a rigid system. Either you're a completely buff guy or a (comparatively slender) girl with noticeable boobs. Buff girl? Slender dude? Something inbetwixt? No luck :(

I'm sorry, but it's just sad that you are having trouble enjoying the game simply because your character isn't your ideal. Use your imagination and just enjoy the gameplay. If you're playing minecraft are you going to enjoy it less because your character is blocky instead of big muscled womanly stature? That's just stupid.

Well, so it is, I find it more stupid that you're completely missing the point, your bad analogy to MC just underlines that more.

I can't play this game. It took me 3 restarts to even get a world where I could get a toe hold without being relentlessly chased by pigs I can't fight, with no wood around.

The promise of an easier mode from the devs (read it in a steam forum thread) is what kept me from refunding this. Otherwise, I'm not going to get to see much of this game. (it goes from hand to mouth, to castles in the sky but I'd never get past building a lean-to in my current game)

I'll keep checking it, but in its current state it's not for me. I wanted to like it, but jeeze... throw a geezer a bone, will you?

Looks great, even though I never like these kinds of games. Let's see how it looks after early access. :)

I am still waiting for ninja representation in valheim or it continues to sit on the shelf for me. Vanilla not modded, no concessions.

I can't play this game. It took me 3 restarts to even get a world where I could get a toe hold without being relentlessly chased by pigs I can't fight, with no wood around.

Valheim has some moments that will catch people unaware and unprepared by design. When you're new, you're going to be killed by the first troll, by the first trip into the swamp and such. Dying in that sense is a part of the game. But I find it difficult to imagine that the early game, where you're mostly dealing with deer that just run away, boars that attack once then run away and greylings that attack very slowly would pose a problem to anyone. What is the seed you've been playing, man?! Even the "hardcore" starts on tiny islands tend to have enough wood to build a raft and get out of there.

Boars were relentlessly pursuing me, absolutely relentlessly. There was no safe place to avoid them, there were no branches around. In two world generations. When I died, I'd have maybe 20 seconds before I'd start getting attacked by boars again. In the third one, the boars were nowhere to be seen, there was wood all over the place. Those greyling enemies were no problem, I can just beat them up.

I also don't like that you lose all your stuff and start over when you die. That's something they said they were considering for the easier mode.

I don't know what seed it is, it was whatever seed it used, I didn't choose anything. I don't care to play that game again until they fix it.

I find that to be common behaviour for procedurally generated "survival" games. You may not get a viable world to get the game off the ground and you may have to regenerate it. "Sir You are Being Hunted" and "We Happy Few" both did that to me.

This is also an unfinished game.

Loving this game so much. This update seems to have actual impact.
Quite happy about it.

@Grogan: You don't lose everything. You just have to pick it up.
If you do it right away and die again, at least you don't lose xp
within a certain time frame.
That's where a buddy is very helpful to get your stuff back.
Enjoy! :)

Boars were relentlessly pursuing me, absolutely relentlessly. There was no safe place to avoid them, there were no branches around. In two world generations. When I died, I'd have maybe 20 seconds before I'd start getting attacked by boars again. In the third one, the boars were nowhere to be seen, there was wood all over the place. Those greyling enemies were no problem, I can just beat them up.

I also don't like that you lose all your stuff and start over when you die. That's something they said they were considering for the easier mode.

I don't know what seed it is, it was whatever seed it used, I didn't choose anything. I don't care to play that game again until they fix it.

I find that to be common behaviour for procedurally generated "survival" games. You may not get a viable world to get the game off the ground and you may have to regenerate it. "Sir You are Being Hunted" and "We Happy Few" both did that to me.

This is also an unfinished game.

Branches on the ground are mostly an emergency campfire fuel, really. Do you realize that you can punch the thin, young birches with your fists, Minecraft style? Those tend to be everywhere as birch forests are everywhere, in the first biome. A few of those trees are enough to get you an axe and then you're golden from there. It's usually more difficult to find the stone you need early on than wood. As for boars, they will eventually stop following you when you run away far enough and you do outrun them. You can also make yourself a torch, boars (and greylings) are afraid of fire. Once you kill a few boars, you can get a shield and from there you should be fine.

I get what you mean with the procedural generation, but Valheim really doesn't do anything crazy with its world generation in terms of variance. All maps are very similar to each other in my experience. It follows a basic logic where the more difficult biomes start to appear farther from the starting location. As such, you are always starting in Meadows with Black Forests being close by. As I said before, the "hardcore" difficult starts are those that start you on a tiny island, but all that does is just force you to make a raft and get to a bigger landmass. Sometimes, a starting landmass can be dominated by Black Forest and other biomes instead of Meadows, which can be more difficult too. Even in these situations however, you will be missing things like honey, never a basic resource like wood (and stone drops from Greydwarfs if you can't find it on the ground).

What I'm trying to say here I suppose is that it seems to me your perception of the game got distorted in some way for some reason. It isn't a hardcore git gud tryhard survival game with brutal starts with relentless boars that are going to eat you. You can't die from hunger, the starting biome is very chill even in the nights and the world doesn't get harder if you don't progress by defeating the boss, meaning there is no time pressure on you either. You're more than welcome to take your time if that's what you need.

You can literally punch kill the pigs right out of the first spawn. I find it hard to imagine dieing so ruthlessly that you can't even get out of the spawning area and decided to dislike the game.

Do you play games like this often, Grogan?

Forgot to quote (hope it pings on edit too)

Stuff

I couldn't punch kill the pigs, it wasn't killing them and one bite or hit with the tusks and I was dead. Sometimes two and three at once chasing me. I literally had to keep running until I gave up, and this happened to me twice. Quitting doesn't even help, because it saves every aspect of your game state then. I don't think that was supposed to happen, no, because it seemed impossible for starting out with nothing and having to scrounge.

I do have a toe hold now, I have a lean-to, a hammer, a club. But I quit there and didn't get back to it. I'd rather wait and see what they come up with now and I'll start over then. I want to explore.

How many games like this have I played? Not that many, and I don't get far unless there's some sort of easy mode where I can bypass tedium and danger. For example Subnautica.

I'm sure Valheim did it better while they were developing their databases (or folks probably wouldn't be so happy with it), but I bought that "Sir You are Being Hunted" game early, and every time I started liking the world I had, an update would come and I'd have to start over from scratch. That happened several times. When the game was "final", it got a version of Unity that was deadlocking on me, as were other games based on Unity 5, Linux and Windows (and in those days, I mean IN Windows 7). I never did overcome the yuck factor for that game again (never went back to it).

That's why I'd rather wait.

I wouldn't know how "crazy" the world generation is in Valheim, because I've only seen a very small portion of the area I'm in, which was pretty similar each time. What I'm talking about is world generation not having the things you need, before the enemies come. Redo the world, and next roll of the dice you'll find a pistol and some ammo or whatever (whatever you need to get a toe hold)

I really didn't know about picking up the stuff though (I was led to believe it was like permadeath). That's better. No Man's Sky actually had a similar metric.


Last edited by Grogan on 13 June 2023 at 5:04 pm UTC

<cut>
I do have a toe hold now, I have a lean-to, a hammer, a club. But I quit there and didn't get back to it. I'd rather wait and see what they come up with now and I'll start over then. I want to explore.

How many games like this have I played? Not that many, and I don't get far unless there's some sort of easy mode where I can bypass tedium and danger. For example Subnautica.
<cut>

Sorry, it seems like you didn't even bother to try, not really. When you spawn next to central "altar" with standing stones, there are always branches on the altar itself, all around the standing stones. You can make a club in 5 minutes. Most of times starting point is near sea as well, on the shore there's always stones. That makes axe easy. 10 minutes and you have basic shelter done. Biggest mistake you can do is spawn and just start running around like crazy, that will get enemies attracted to you and you'll be dead soon (as you'll panic and you'll keep running and keep attracting even more enemies).

Spawn. Walk slowly around the starting point, about 10 meter radius. Get club. Expand radius for another 10 meters, find stones, get axe. Expand radius another 10 meters, make a hut. Easy.

Sure, needs some basic knowledge. But crow gives you all the tips to start. Even more in recent updates (early 2023). Don't run. Don't panic. Follow crow, stay close to start, and learn the ropes.

Anyway, millions of people liked this game so... Yeah ;)

Oh and btw, I got it first week. I still play same world with main character. Never lost anything, my base, my items, my skills, all keep getting carried onward with all the patches. So you can try it again with these tips, and continue anytime, even if there were 10 patches in the meantime. Cheers!


Last edited by LuxZg on 13 June 2023 at 5:32 pm UTC

Grogan, I'm going to have to agree with LuxZg here. It seems like you've judged the game without bothering to learn or ask from others. Punching basic trees bare-handed results in a little wood, enough wood to make an axe with some stone. You've already learned that death isn't "permadeath," you just have some skill loss and have to recover your old items from the tombstone that drops where you died.

Players can feel fairly certain that, especially with this update, they can play for over a hundred hours without losing their world save due to compatibility issues or running out of content.

You complain about its unfinished state, yet it is clearly listed as an Early Access game, with all the warnings and disclaimers they include.

I've played the game for over a thousand hours, and it's the best $20 I've ever spent.

The game may not be for you, and it's fine if you want to hang out and build in the Meadows and not even progress further, as long as you're having fun. I just think it's unfortunate that your comments could possibly deter other readers from playing if they think they might like it.

Anyway, millions of people liked this game so... Yeah ;)

Does that make you feel smug? I might counter that with millions of people don't value their time. Millions of people like stupid music that's so bad it makes me angry. Millions of people think Donald Trump should be ruling the world with an iron fist.

There's no safety in numbers, that kind of stance never convinces me of anything.


Last edited by Grogan on 14 June 2023 at 1:06 am UTC

You complain about its unfinished state, yet it is clearly listed as an Early Access game, with all the warnings and disclaimers they include.

I'm not "complaining" about it, I said that for additional reasoning why I'm going to wait, and possibly why things like those pigs might happen.

P.S. I've bought many early access games, there's no promise that they will ever be finished, really. I might have even liked earlier iterations of them better.

Two of you now have stated the obvious, that I didn't try hard enough. Yes I did, I got where I am in the game by trying again until I did. I wasn't born yesterday, I can recognize a bugged game state in a procedural game, so I start over instead of wasting any more time on that. Moreover, I am excusing those encounters as early access "features".

As stated, I stopped there, waiting for something that will make my game easier and less tedious. I want to enjoy it, not get that "yuck factor" and not play it again like those others. That was really my main point.

Nice Vulkan game, huge effort, I just hope there's going to be something for me in there.


Last edited by Grogan on 14 June 2023 at 2:04 am UTC

also in the starting altar are 2 mushrooms and a berry bush.

GET THE FOOD!

There should be enough rocks and twigs to make an axe.
Make that first.

Us the ax on the small saplings to get enough wood to make a club.


Oh, on the flight in, look about and see where the coast is, relative to the altar.
You want to be fairly close to it. (for boats!)

Pigs take just a couple hits with empty fists to kill. (unlike boars in 7 days to die!)

oh, don't try and fight when on steep hills, that is a known issue. (hitbox problems)
(at least until you get to the magic stage, then blast away with fireballs. hee-hee)

edit: if yer using a controller, try keyboard/mouse.


Last edited by CanadianBlueBeer on 14 June 2023 at 6:17 am UTC

Two of you now have stated the obvious, that I didn't try hard enough. Yes I did, I got where I am in the game by trying again until I did. I wasn't born yesterday, I can recognize a bugged game state in a procedural game, so I start over instead of wasting any more time on that. Moreover, I am excusing those encounters as early access "features".

As stated, I stopped there, waiting for something that will make my game easier and less tedious. I want to enjoy it, not get that "yuck factor" and not play it again like those others. That was really my main point.

Nice Vulkan game, huge effort, I just hope there's going to be something for me in there.

We want you to enjoy the game as well, but I wonder really what are your expectations? Valheim is already a very casual survival game. I can tell you from my experience that a 7 year old girl can play it and enjoy herself with no frustration involved. It's in fact one of the major reasons why this game blew up as it did back in coronavirus days. It removed a lot of the grinding and tediousness that's usually associated with this genre. The early access was and still is in a very playable state with very minimal bugs, including no wacky procedural generation issues. All that in a nice, endearing and atmospheric package that runs on potato PCs yet looks incredible at times. It was the perfect game for a wide population that's stuck at home.

And here comes you, who obviously did not enjoy the game, and it's your full right to do so, but then your reasoning sounds really weird to the rest of us. You're complaining that one of the easiest survival games out there is too difficult and you need an easy mode. You're complaining that boars are too difficult to defeat, but consider this:

• Boars do not kill you in a single hit despite your claim. Your starting health is 25 and they do 10 damage, so you survive two of their attacks. They actually do a little bit less, because you start with very crappy pants that still provide some armor. Furthermore, the starting area will have basic food like raspberries and mushrooms that give you more health, making you survive even more hits.
• Boars are really easy to defeat because of their single attack pattern they have. They charge at you and attempt to hit you, then they turn around and run away from you, turn around and charge back at you again. The charge is therefore always heavily telegraphed and you see it coming. It's easy to dodge roll and even side step. Even if the boar hits you, it runs away from you afterwards, meaning it's very easy for you to also run away from it, if you don't want to deal with it.
• Boars have really pathetic health of 10. They die in one club hit (12 damage) or two fist punches (5 damage each).
• Even after all this, if you still struggle with them or you run into a group of them at a bad time (they always spawn in large groups around a specific runestone, for example), you have the option of using a torch. They won't attack you at all if you have it out.

Come on man, how bad do you have to be to struggle with this? You are one button press away from lighting up a torch (that you start with by the way) and completely invalidating this threat. What is your easy mode? To have a damaging aura around you and boars just dying spontanteously in your presence? Because at this point, the only real way of making this even easier is just playing in Creative mode with no enemies at all.


Last edited by LungDrago on 14 June 2023 at 8:58 am UTC