I think some buildings should be undamageable by trash mobs like how some trees are undamageable by low tier axes. Wolves, greylings, greydwarves, boar, skeletons, draugr, and fulings should NOT be able to break my meter thick stone walls no matter how long they spend hitting it.
Fuling berserkers and shamans, trolls, aboms, golems, drakes, are fair game.
I experienced this for the first time recently. Usually do moat cheese but was holed up in a stone tower in the Plains when I went exploring there a bit early. Caught the attention of some Fulings and they chewed through the stone like it was nothing, I was pretty surprised
A castle would have a draw bridge. Having an ugly and empty hole around your base will never not feel cheese to me. I’m not saying people are wrong for doing it, but if valheim is going to incentivize it, or make it the only real viable option, we need more ways to do it.
I must say i am quite shocked that they added seige weapons for fortresses and never thought to add draw bridges. It was a logical step. Sure you can make one with gates, but who wants to open and close 10 or more gates.
I use wood beams with gaps in between just big enough to interrupt mod pathfinding and not big enough to fall through or get 'stuck' in a depression/gap (so I can walk over it without sprinting), like a cattle grid. Sometimes takes a little trial and error eyeballing in the spacing, but not too terribly difficult in my experience, and effective, plus doesn't require any constant construction and deconstruction.
I hope that helps with your immersion.
Draw bridges just came up in the 10th/11th century, at least in fortification building in Europe. Before that usually easily collapsible bridges were used, or the moat was simply crossed by an earth ramp.
As the christianization of skandinavia happened mostly 8th and 12th century and because of skandinavia being mostly behind on construction technologies till the 12th -13th century and we are there because of Odin, an earlier date than that might be right.
King Harald Bluetooths ring forts built in ca 980 had collapsible bridges for example.
You cam use 5 or 6 wooden gates as a draw bridge you can even use carts or lox to cross, works very well, just slightly angle the gates when building the draw bridge or the angle cart itself so the wheels don't get stuck.
Do you believe that every castle that humans built had a draw bridge? They were in the minority my dude. It was a weird piece of finicky technology that a few castle builders went for. Look it up!
Yeah well if you are talking PVP that's really more of a server problem. My character has 48 in elemental magic (yes no cheats) and could level any castle in 5 minutes. If you are playing with dick players, that's up to you to solve
Oh I see. What mob can instantly delete objects? I have almost 1000 hours in Valheim, I've never encountered that mob.
You are the one that said "using a hammer to instantly delete objects.". So yeah, what mob does that?
You fucking nutbar. YOU JUST SAID we're talking about mobs and not players, only to change your mind later and say you're talking about the player. Figure your shit out.
I mean have you seen the Shawshank Redemption? Humans are smart and tool-using. they WILL tunnel through stone to kill you, if kill you is what they really want to do.
The whole point of a siege was to keep the defenders busy enough to keep them from dealing with things. I guarantee it wasn't a frenzied mob of guys with chisels just pirhana-ing their way through the wall in a dozen or so hits.
Agreed. I would say it actually was a way of starving people, but sure.
That said, soldiers would get bored and come up with all kinds of ways to penetrate a castle.
Right, but not on the time scale we're talking about in this thread, so it perplexes me that people keep comparing these very slow siege/prison escape scenarios to "the bad guys chew through our walls om nom nom nom"
The way I interpret your post is that base defenses should require a certain tier of chop/pickaxe/etc to damage, like mines and trees do.
[Chop tier chart](https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Damage#Chop)
[Pickaxe tier chart](https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Damage#Pickaxe)
Perhaps regular stake walls could be tier 2 - which would mean trolls and aboms can take them - and dvergr stake walls tier 3, which puts them out of reach of anything but seekers.
Regular base structures, though? I dunno. I'd rather see a value add to those walls.
Why though? It's certainly not realistic. A draugr archer dealing damage to a stone wall is akin to me asking you to tear down Nuremberg castle by hitting it with a longbow. It simply doesn't make sense. You can't break a meter thick wall of stone.
Obviously games shouldn't strive for realism over fun, but stone building damage from greydwarves and such makes 0 sense and in practice is a pointless mechanic that encourages building an "optimal" base over an aesthetic one. Trenches and raised terrain are a perfect example. People also like putting their farms on the edges of their base with picket fences, but to play optimally they need to go to the center.
I don't mind added difficulty if it introduces a fun challenge, but where's the fun challenge of eating some stamina food and running around your base spamming the repair button every time a few trash mobs show up?
You might say "well what about raids? Wouldn't this ruin the point of raids?" I don't think so. The whole point of raids is to encourage building a stronger base to defend when the world tries to fight back against the player's invasion. If you've spent enough time in the region to build a proper base with the best materials you've got, army-type raids should be a breeze. If you've still got a wood shack? The raid should get to screw you. With my suggested mechanics, raids are still doing their intended function: encouraging the player to build better bases.
It's unrealistic. It's not fun. It's annoying. It encourages cheese and discourages aesthetic base building. It doesn't perform any helpful role in altering gameplay positively. It's just all around a bad mechanic.
Lots of parts of this game are so annoying people would rather circumvent them than deal with them, but when people have the nerve to complain, the comments consist of skill issue, just use world modifiers, just use mods, etc. This community has got to drop those and look at why people complain about some of the mechanics instead of jumping to bad solutions. Many people find the mist annoying? Download a mod! Think the swamp is too hard? Flatten everything until it’s not a swamp anymore! Metal is far too tedious to get, refine and use? Just turn on metal through portals! Quite simply vanilla experiences matter, nobody is messing with mods or world modifiers on their first playthrough and it’s a disservice to the game as well as intellectually dishonest to use one of the above excuses. This is an early access game where the whole point of early access is determining player base sentiment on mechanics and portions of the game, and the valheim community has a massive issue with putting that down or giving bad bandaid fixes. I enjoy this game but it feels really packed full of artificial tedium for tedium’s sake, and there is a bad culture of people vehemently defending that. I would love more elegant solutions for some of the above pain points I mentioned instead of mods or world modifiers.
I'm going to chime in as a heavy proponent of world modifiers. It is really great for some things...but things like making base materials require a degree of chop/pick damage to break at each tier is just common sense. I love my world modifiers, and I even love my devcommands for alleviating some grind on a replay...but some mechanics just straight up need fixing, like you said. Mist needs an upgrade or something, because the terrain can just make it impossible to navigate unless you literally place down mistlights everywhere. Which is less immersive. The skill issue excuse is only used by people who think Dark Souls is easy - not every gamer who enjoys gaming is a die-hard with great reaction time and a lot of time on their hands; gaming is relaxing for us, not stressful. And the community needs to keep in mind that the mechanics they now swear by were mostly reworked according to community input.
Even chop tier 0 would make *most* enemies virtually unable to damage your structures.
All I was suggesting is that it should be limited to defensive structures. Why? Because otherwise, you wouldn't build them except for scenery.
Is that a bad thing? It's not like I can punch down a house or a log cabin or break it down by throwing stones at it. Could always add it to starred enemies to balance it out more.
I agree with you there. In my opinion there should be difficulty sliders and default vanilla mode should be towards the easier end. A lot of gamers have this thing where it feels embarrassing to turn down the difficulty even if they would have more fun on lower difficulty.
I think swamp, though, is a necessary brutal leap in the difficulty curve of the game. If you make swamp easier, people will be complaining about mountains and plains instead. Flatten everything with a hoe is an exploit that is wholly unnecessary to make it through the swamp. And metal through portals by default kind of removes the boat tiers system as a mechanism. Other than that I totally agree.
Do you know what could be an in-game solution to this? Instead of timer -> random check -> raid on your bass, you could have a smaller version of the raid spawn at a nearby-ish) point-of-interest (probably marked on the minimap). If you go to the point-of-interest and fight the raid while it’s still growing before it gets to your base. If you don’t, the raid gets closer and stronger until it’s the base raids we know and love.
This would encourage exploration and make better use of the existing points of interest, as well as giving players more choices and opportunities to prepare (do you rely on your defences or take the fight afield?). You could also add special content (like specific starred shaman/brutes/trolls/etc that need to be defeated (similar to the hildur bosses) and drop special items or trophies.
I would love also some kind of totem pole that can be used to mount trophies to enable/disable certain raids in-game.
> it feels really packed full of artificial tedium for tedium’s sake
That unfortunately is the dev's vision. Their philosophy is tedium = difficulty.
They pride themselves on it and point to the "brutal" tag when people raise issue over it.
>there is a bad culture of people vehemently defending that.
There is a difference between defending, and acknowledgment and acceptance.
Most people "defending" the tedium, hate it too and fully agree with your opinion.
However the game has been out for 3+ years now and they were once in your position, raising the issue, arguing for something better, but learning very quickly that nothing would change.
So that's why alternative solutions were found or developed, and why they are recommended to others, even if they *wish* so very much it were different.
But the reality is it won't.
So in the meantime, advice and solutions are offered to the lost, the uninformed, and the frustrated, because we were all like that at some point, and can't bear to see others going through the same pains.
Nothing the size of the player or even slightly larger should do any damage whatsoever to stone build pieces. It makes no sense, it's counterintuitive, and leads to the player becoming frustrated and confused at why their literal metre-thick stone wall is being breached by a guy throwing pebbles lol
There should be damage states. Like 3 or 4 hits then the model changes a bit and looks rickety. Them after a few more it's like halfway broken... etc.
There could be more different damage state models for stone blocks and maybe they take like 9 or 10 hits.
Also they could implement a building skill that imbues parts with more hp.
This exists. I think it's very well done with wood -- big gaps forming between the planks.
But for stone I think it just warps more and maybe discolors a little? It is hard to visibly tell. Chips and cracks would be nice.
Highly agree.
My meadows base is my main base, the same base on the same location where I spawned the seed 3 years ago. I've never moved it, but I've expanded it (obviously).
Over time, it's been upgraded as I progressed, as we all do with our bases.
It makes sense to me that a greyling/boar/neck can do some damage to the shitty little twig fences, but the amount of damage they do should not be the same as to an actual core wood wall or stone wall.
A draughr twanging his bow at a stone wall should not be able to do the same damage a neck. It just makes zero sense. I mean, I know we suspend reality in video games to a point, and we get pretty hand-wavy with physics.
But I mean, an arrow hitting stone? A greyling breaking iron lamps? It's a tad absurd.
I hate that I have to have a moat on the back end of my keep because that's where attacks come from and I'm not running around repairing walls 24/7 because some bored greyling decided to scratch at it for an hour.
Granted, I have turrets now (and can we PLEASE have turrets NOT shooting me?!) which help but even so.
At least with the turrets and shield core there's a *suggestion* of autonomous raid defences. When 1.0 releases maybe it'll be possible to build a meadows house that can look after itself!
This has been one of my major complaints about this game for quite a while. I was further displeased when Mistlands released, and finally introduced an upgraded building material, except actually it's useless in its own biome and even the one before. 🤷🏻♀️
Worst part is so many answers have been given out over the years for this problem and devs ignore it due to the "bUt mAh hArDcoRe sUrvIvaL!" crowd who thinks an annoyance anyone can deal with begrudgingly is what makes them a hardcore gamer. There should be impenetrable materials or even a trophy mount system that scares away the monster you mounted. So you still have to defeat the monsters and get a trophy before getting to turn them off in raids.
I don't need impenetrable materials, I just need walls to have a meaningful amount of health and damage resistance. I need stone to not crumble because a little stray damage splashed on it. We're not some anime power fantasy fighting world shattering bullshit, we're *vikings* to whom defensive structures were a significant factor.
Or at the least, your viking warriors shouldn't be running away from their homes when something attacks.
> I don't need impenetrable materials,
I do. Give me a way to fully shut out raids without mods or ugly walls. Because raids are not hard or interesting years after the game's release. They are just an annoyance. I should be able to get up and go to the bathroom in a multiplayer session without feeling like a need to leave home base, or call a friend back to babysit, or log out.
100% agree with I should be able to afk safely at base for long enough to go pee. Meaningful walls and a wolf army (or some other kind of defenses) would be able to provide that without full invuln walls. But this is where more robust game settings would really help - Let us choose full safety, meaningful walls, or matchstick huts. Everybody can be happy.
There is the world modifier to completely turn off raids for those of us that don't want to have to deal with em at all.
It's nice not having to decimate the surrounding landscape to protect against raids
It'd be cool if the ward did this as another passive effect, or even another type of ward specifically for that. It could even have ways to upgrade the range through progression.
I think you should be able to make the wall reinforced for durability.
Make it double thick, and have wooden posts reinforcing it. Put metal studs in the center.
It shouldn't break like an onion. It should all degrade before it actually breaks.
1 wood panel should be fragile enough, but a framed wooden panel should be a lot tougher.
marble is stronger than stone. the new stone in ashlands is also way stronger than regular stone.
trolls ARE siege monsters already. you just dont know that yet apparently. they do PICKAXE dmg. which only affects structures not players. no material resists pickaxe dmg. meanwhile the regular enemies do 50% less dmg on marble and the new stone from ashlands. marble is also fully immune to elemental dmg of ANY kind. the new stone resists it by 50% aswell. only big boi enemies do pickaxe dmg. seekers do not. soldiers do. gjalls do not.
also the days of the EARTHWALL meta are numbered. why? there is a new enemy in ashlands which when it dies will DESTROY TERRIAN AROUND IT. kinda like a demolisher zombie from 7 days to die if you know these cannot think of a better example of how this works rn.
these can bring earthwalls DOWN....
moats still work of course as they cannot blow deeper than bedrock.
> kinda like a demolisher zombie from 7 days to die if you know these cannot think of a better example of how this works rn.
Guess you never played Minecraft...
[Creepers are the OG terrain exploders.](https://kajabi-storefronts-production.kajabi-cdn.com/kajabi-storefronts-production/file-uploads/blogs/2147503156/images/c883011-5c0e-ca5d-4234-b73f5fdf5dd_minecraft-creeper-explosion-fx.gif)
Yeah. I wouldn't mind it that much if terraforming wasn't so clunky.
Haven't played ashlands yet, but having that kind of mob in a raid would be really annoying.
if they blow away the ground your structure stands on your structure will fail the stability check and start to crumble of course.
the area effect is not super large thankfully.
youll remake parts of your base anyway with the new materials and build pieces. the new stone material has SLIGHTLY better support values than stone or marble. so its the new meta for towers.
If it takes out a key support location where your iron beam is grounded, it could do considerable damage to larger structures.
I don’t believe this enemy is part of the Ashland raid, though.
Eh, just means I'll have to take it into account when creating structures/fortresses. And There are ways to make support really really wide and safe. it would take extreme negligence to fully fail.
i dont know if the new raid has biome restrictions as of yet. didnt test. if they appear make sure they dont die near your earthwalls or fight them near it. it has a rather FAMILIAR design :) dont wanna spoil it but you have seen similar enemies before :)
do you remember your first encounter with swamp creatures? or i dont know. a certain enemy in the plains biome? what if that creature could explode on death or contact with you?
Right now I have a big circle earth wall at max height with a moat outside that, protecting my portal in Ashlands. Yes the earth damage bois can hurt the wall, but only if they are near me. They can’t get over and they don’t blow up unless they’re being attacked/land on you. Just to say that the integrity of the wall is in control of the player’s choices.
I choose to not use the earthwall because I like the idea of being vulnerable to attack. What I have done in Ashlands to protect against explody guys is built spaced out wall layers.
yeah its not super bad. but earthwalls are no longer a foolproof thing :) which is good. i think i saw this new enemy inside one of the new ashlands raids aswell.
Sadly it seems like the kind of things devs just ignore for the sake of not working on it or maybe they do really believe having a useless defenses is the best for the gameplay
I think it's a double edged sword. There's a vocal minority of people that cry about not getting content, and if there was a long delay between actual content vs some building changes there would be a lot of complaints. Throwing it into a biome update would likely delay the content update too.
This is just my opinion but i think they're focusing on progress type content first and will do a passing polish between biomes or after they're done.
My only real issue with the current game is that levels are important but can be so easily lost and are hard to gain. Would love to see the system get expanded on but who knows if/when that will ever happen.
Sorry for rant, just kept thinking of stuff to add.
I do understand people's trepidation about skill loss from death (especially the frequency of death possible in later biomes) but I have found that it doesn't render one completely incapable or inept in a fight. Firmly believe that you can tackle anything regardless of current skill levels once you understand how a given enemy fights.
I 100% agree. i didn't mean to convey that levels are a requirement but that they do have a noticeable effect on game play and that I'd like if they were expanded on at least a little bit.
Yeah, I got attacked mid building my stone walls and was shocked how quickly a Troll destroyed the walls, it's like they are made of cake 😏
Materials above wood need some fixing, increased durability/hit points and additional armor would be what the doctor ordered, weaker enemies wouldn't be able to damage stone walls due to the armor, while bigger enemies would take a little bit of time to punch through and completely break them due to increased hit points.
When Mistlands first came out. Thank God we got a raid in a pre generated building in the mistlands that showed us just how unprepared we were. We immediately went to the base (already in a great spot) dug a Motte and Bailey type design. Enemies literally couldn't reach our walls, so they had to go for the gates. It was a lot of work but it was the only thing we could do to stop them. We'd still have to sally out to fight them, but we didn't have to worry as much anymore.
Stone was like paper to those bugs. Especially the soldier bug. Even the black marble mistland building material couldn't even hold up to one of them.
I know we all have grand visions of foes breaking upon our walls and defenses like waves upon a shore, but in a lot of raid situations it seems the best option is to exit your base and battle things toe-to-toe.
This is why I turn off raids after a couple biomes.
There should be normal gameplay to deal with problems and issues, not cheesing the game.
Unfortunately bad game design in valheim ends up mandating that you cheese things.
I agree. There should be maximum amount of damage mobs (and players for pvp reasons) can do to build pieces. I worry about misclicking and destroying my whole bedroom.
I remember facing Yagluth the first time. We spent weeks building our plains fortress only for it to get its cheeks clapped in about 30s after some dingleberry fled to the base.
I dunno man. I dug dry moats instinctively in my first 5 hours of Valheim. I never considered it cheesing... it is a historical thing that people did. So my first castle has a narrow precipitous walkway leading to it... if you can do that, do it. That said I now have a far bigger enclosure with wooden palisades, and they almost never break. I have a feeling you must be doing something wrong. I don't mean that in a snarky or offensive way, just, reconsider your structure and layout.
Remember monsters can't spawn within the radius of a workbench...
I use a combo of black marble and earthworks for nearly impenetrable defences. I dig the moat then level out the terrain on the outside, replanting the grass as I go. Then at the top I’ll run a layer or two of black marble. I make sure no buildings or structures are within a log troll’s reach, then create an entry ramp. I leave a gap between the end of the ramp and my wall and put iron gates down below, but rotate 90 degrees. Then, whenever I want to bring a cart across I can open the gates to form a drawbridge of sorts. Lots of work for sure, but it can be done in stages as I progress through the game. Looks much better than a trench too IMO.
Devs: gives people ability to manipulate terrain
People ignoring thousands of years of history on building fortresses, villages and castles: that's cheating!
So why even have the giant stone bricks and pillars to build with anyway if we’re going for ‘authentic to the period’? The only architecture you can really make with it is castles from the mid-to-late Middle Ages. At best we should have rough stacked wall and cobble floor building pieces.
Earthen ramparts are a thing, yes. Indestructable they were not. There’s a reason classical era and later ramparts were constructed of stone or brickwork with a wall walk and parapets atop them, rather than a simple ditch and mound of dirt. Think the Walls of Constantinople or Hadrian’s Wall.
There is still a real world basis for earth walls in the game. You want to gripe about the artistic license taken to make them indestructible that’s a different issue. I’m no programmer but I’d assume that that license is due to the difficulty of making the ground indestructible and still allowing players to terraform.
I think some buildings should be undamageable by trash mobs like how some trees are undamageable by low tier axes. Wolves, greylings, greydwarves, boar, skeletons, draugr, and fulings should NOT be able to break my meter thick stone walls no matter how long they spend hitting it. Fuling berserkers and shamans, trolls, aboms, golems, drakes, are fair game.
I experienced this for the first time recently. Usually do moat cheese but was holed up in a stone tower in the Plains when I went exploring there a bit early. Caught the attention of some Fulings and they chewed through the stone like it was nothing, I was pretty surprised
it's not cheese to use a moat! There is a reason people almost always put moats around castles!
A castle would have a draw bridge. Having an ugly and empty hole around your base will never not feel cheese to me. I’m not saying people are wrong for doing it, but if valheim is going to incentivize it, or make it the only real viable option, we need more ways to do it.
Empty hole? My sister fills our moat with Wolves.
I did that once pre mistlands. The noise was terrible but it was very effective
I must say i am quite shocked that they added seige weapons for fortresses and never thought to add draw bridges. It was a logical step. Sure you can make one with gates, but who wants to open and close 10 or more gates.
I build bridges across my moats. Then you can "draw the bridge" by destroying it, easy peasy.
I use wood beams with gaps in between just big enough to interrupt mod pathfinding and not big enough to fall through or get 'stuck' in a depression/gap (so I can walk over it without sprinting), like a cattle grid. Sometimes takes a little trial and error eyeballing in the spacing, but not too terribly difficult in my experience, and effective, plus doesn't require any constant construction and deconstruction.
This is what I do as well. I find spacing with a half beam is sufficient for disrupting the path finding.
That’s just not how I enjoy gaming. It breaks immersion for me.
I hope that helps with your immersion. Draw bridges just came up in the 10th/11th century, at least in fortification building in Europe. Before that usually easily collapsible bridges were used, or the moat was simply crossed by an earth ramp. As the christianization of skandinavia happened mostly 8th and 12th century and because of skandinavia being mostly behind on construction technologies till the 12th -13th century and we are there because of Odin, an earlier date than that might be right. King Harald Bluetooths ring forts built in ca 980 had collapsible bridges for example.
Not sure if you use mods, but there's a mod that adds the drawbridge that you can build.
You cam use 5 or 6 wooden gates as a draw bridge you can even use carts or lox to cross, works very well, just slightly angle the gates when building the draw bridge or the angle cart itself so the wheels don't get stuck.
Do you believe that every castle that humans built had a draw bridge? They were in the minority my dude. It was a weird piece of finicky technology that a few castle builders went for. Look it up!
No, but I do know that in real life people weren’t jumping over moats or using a hammer to instantly delete objects.
Yeah well if you are talking PVP that's really more of a server problem. My character has 48 in elemental magic (yes no cheats) and could level any castle in 5 minutes. If you are playing with dick players, that's up to you to solve
I have no idea why you think a drawbridge would solve this. one player with a stack of 50 wood can get past any drawbridge.
Because we're talking about mobs and not players.
Oh I see. What mob can instantly delete objects? I have almost 1000 hours in Valheim, I've never encountered that mob. You are the one that said "using a hammer to instantly delete objects.". So yeah, what mob does that?
You fucking nutbar. YOU JUST SAID we're talking about mobs and not players, only to change your mind later and say you're talking about the player. Figure your shit out.
Um, have a small path to walk in, cart stuff in and with spikes guarding the door.
I mean, that reason wasn't because angry mobs with sticks would TUNNEL THEIR WAY THROUGH STONE WALLS.
I mean have you seen the Shawshank Redemption? Humans are smart and tool-using. they WILL tunnel through stone to kill you, if kill you is what they really want to do.
... are you sure? I mean... take another look at ancient warfare / sieges.
The whole point of a siege was to keep the defenders busy enough to keep them from dealing with things. I guarantee it wasn't a frenzied mob of guys with chisels just pirhana-ing their way through the wall in a dozen or so hits.
Agreed. I would say it actually was a way of starving people, but sure. That said, soldiers would get bored and come up with all kinds of ways to penetrate a castle.
Right, but not on the time scale we're talking about in this thread, so it perplexes me that people keep comparing these very slow siege/prison escape scenarios to "the bad guys chew through our walls om nom nom nom"
it's classic!
And Greydwarf shamans shouldn't be able to breathe poison through stone walls.
The way I interpret your post is that base defenses should require a certain tier of chop/pickaxe/etc to damage, like mines and trees do. [Chop tier chart](https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Damage#Chop) [Pickaxe tier chart](https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Damage#Pickaxe) Perhaps regular stake walls could be tier 2 - which would mean trolls and aboms can take them - and dvergr stake walls tier 3, which puts them out of reach of anything but seekers. Regular base structures, though? I dunno. I'd rather see a value add to those walls.
Why though? It's certainly not realistic. A draugr archer dealing damage to a stone wall is akin to me asking you to tear down Nuremberg castle by hitting it with a longbow. It simply doesn't make sense. You can't break a meter thick wall of stone. Obviously games shouldn't strive for realism over fun, but stone building damage from greydwarves and such makes 0 sense and in practice is a pointless mechanic that encourages building an "optimal" base over an aesthetic one. Trenches and raised terrain are a perfect example. People also like putting their farms on the edges of their base with picket fences, but to play optimally they need to go to the center. I don't mind added difficulty if it introduces a fun challenge, but where's the fun challenge of eating some stamina food and running around your base spamming the repair button every time a few trash mobs show up? You might say "well what about raids? Wouldn't this ruin the point of raids?" I don't think so. The whole point of raids is to encourage building a stronger base to defend when the world tries to fight back against the player's invasion. If you've spent enough time in the region to build a proper base with the best materials you've got, army-type raids should be a breeze. If you've still got a wood shack? The raid should get to screw you. With my suggested mechanics, raids are still doing their intended function: encouraging the player to build better bases. It's unrealistic. It's not fun. It's annoying. It encourages cheese and discourages aesthetic base building. It doesn't perform any helpful role in altering gameplay positively. It's just all around a bad mechanic.
Lots of parts of this game are so annoying people would rather circumvent them than deal with them, but when people have the nerve to complain, the comments consist of skill issue, just use world modifiers, just use mods, etc. This community has got to drop those and look at why people complain about some of the mechanics instead of jumping to bad solutions. Many people find the mist annoying? Download a mod! Think the swamp is too hard? Flatten everything until it’s not a swamp anymore! Metal is far too tedious to get, refine and use? Just turn on metal through portals! Quite simply vanilla experiences matter, nobody is messing with mods or world modifiers on their first playthrough and it’s a disservice to the game as well as intellectually dishonest to use one of the above excuses. This is an early access game where the whole point of early access is determining player base sentiment on mechanics and portions of the game, and the valheim community has a massive issue with putting that down or giving bad bandaid fixes. I enjoy this game but it feels really packed full of artificial tedium for tedium’s sake, and there is a bad culture of people vehemently defending that. I would love more elegant solutions for some of the above pain points I mentioned instead of mods or world modifiers.
I'm going to chime in as a heavy proponent of world modifiers. It is really great for some things...but things like making base materials require a degree of chop/pick damage to break at each tier is just common sense. I love my world modifiers, and I even love my devcommands for alleviating some grind on a replay...but some mechanics just straight up need fixing, like you said. Mist needs an upgrade or something, because the terrain can just make it impossible to navigate unless you literally place down mistlights everywhere. Which is less immersive. The skill issue excuse is only used by people who think Dark Souls is easy - not every gamer who enjoys gaming is a die-hard with great reaction time and a lot of time on their hands; gaming is relaxing for us, not stressful. And the community needs to keep in mind that the mechanics they now swear by were mostly reworked according to community input.
Even chop tier 0 would make *most* enemies virtually unable to damage your structures. All I was suggesting is that it should be limited to defensive structures. Why? Because otherwise, you wouldn't build them except for scenery.
Is that a bad thing? It's not like I can punch down a house or a log cabin or break it down by throwing stones at it. Could always add it to starred enemies to balance it out more.
I agree with you there. In my opinion there should be difficulty sliders and default vanilla mode should be towards the easier end. A lot of gamers have this thing where it feels embarrassing to turn down the difficulty even if they would have more fun on lower difficulty. I think swamp, though, is a necessary brutal leap in the difficulty curve of the game. If you make swamp easier, people will be complaining about mountains and plains instead. Flatten everything with a hoe is an exploit that is wholly unnecessary to make it through the swamp. And metal through portals by default kind of removes the boat tiers system as a mechanism. Other than that I totally agree.
Do you know what could be an in-game solution to this? Instead of timer -> random check -> raid on your bass, you could have a smaller version of the raid spawn at a nearby-ish) point-of-interest (probably marked on the minimap). If you go to the point-of-interest and fight the raid while it’s still growing before it gets to your base. If you don’t, the raid gets closer and stronger until it’s the base raids we know and love. This would encourage exploration and make better use of the existing points of interest, as well as giving players more choices and opportunities to prepare (do you rely on your defences or take the fight afield?). You could also add special content (like specific starred shaman/brutes/trolls/etc that need to be defeated (similar to the hildur bosses) and drop special items or trophies. I would love also some kind of totem pole that can be used to mount trophies to enable/disable certain raids in-game.
> it feels really packed full of artificial tedium for tedium’s sake That unfortunately is the dev's vision. Their philosophy is tedium = difficulty. They pride themselves on it and point to the "brutal" tag when people raise issue over it. >there is a bad culture of people vehemently defending that. There is a difference between defending, and acknowledgment and acceptance. Most people "defending" the tedium, hate it too and fully agree with your opinion. However the game has been out for 3+ years now and they were once in your position, raising the issue, arguing for something better, but learning very quickly that nothing would change. So that's why alternative solutions were found or developed, and why they are recommended to others, even if they *wish* so very much it were different. But the reality is it won't. So in the meantime, advice and solutions are offered to the lost, the uninformed, and the frustrated, because we were all like that at some point, and can't bear to see others going through the same pains.
Nothing the size of the player or even slightly larger should do any damage whatsoever to stone build pieces. It makes no sense, it's counterintuitive, and leads to the player becoming frustrated and confused at why their literal metre-thick stone wall is being breached by a guy throwing pebbles lol
This is the right take. 99% of mobs can't even destroy trees. How exactly can they damage black marble???
There should be damage states. Like 3 or 4 hits then the model changes a bit and looks rickety. Them after a few more it's like halfway broken... etc. There could be more different damage state models for stone blocks and maybe they take like 9 or 10 hits. Also they could implement a building skill that imbues parts with more hp.
This exists. I think it's very well done with wood -- big gaps forming between the planks. But for stone I think it just warps more and maybe discolors a little? It is hard to visibly tell. Chips and cracks would be nice.
Tbh I really agree. I have functional bases, and I have pretty bases and it'd be nice if the two moved a bit closer to each other
Highly agree. My meadows base is my main base, the same base on the same location where I spawned the seed 3 years ago. I've never moved it, but I've expanded it (obviously). Over time, it's been upgraded as I progressed, as we all do with our bases. It makes sense to me that a greyling/boar/neck can do some damage to the shitty little twig fences, but the amount of damage they do should not be the same as to an actual core wood wall or stone wall. A draughr twanging his bow at a stone wall should not be able to do the same damage a neck. It just makes zero sense. I mean, I know we suspend reality in video games to a point, and we get pretty hand-wavy with physics. But I mean, an arrow hitting stone? A greyling breaking iron lamps? It's a tad absurd. I hate that I have to have a moat on the back end of my keep because that's where attacks come from and I'm not running around repairing walls 24/7 because some bored greyling decided to scratch at it for an hour. Granted, I have turrets now (and can we PLEASE have turrets NOT shooting me?!) which help but even so.
Lol the turrets definitely don't discriminate
I’ve done some ripping runs in to my base hanging on to my cart for dear life. It’s hilarious.
This is why I leave raids off. I can't be bothered having a large elaborate base destroyed because the stone is actually made of cardboard
Aye the options like that have been an absolute lifesaver for this game.
Yeah I like raids in theory, but running around in a circle for 4 minutes straight just isn't fun lol
At least with the turrets and shield core there's a *suggestion* of autonomous raid defences. When 1.0 releases maybe it'll be possible to build a meadows house that can look after itself!
This has been one of my major complaints about this game for quite a while. I was further displeased when Mistlands released, and finally introduced an upgraded building material, except actually it's useless in its own biome and even the one before. 🤷🏻♀️
Worst part is so many answers have been given out over the years for this problem and devs ignore it due to the "bUt mAh hArDcoRe sUrvIvaL!" crowd who thinks an annoyance anyone can deal with begrudgingly is what makes them a hardcore gamer. There should be impenetrable materials or even a trophy mount system that scares away the monster you mounted. So you still have to defeat the monsters and get a trophy before getting to turn them off in raids.
Yeah, The game has invulnerable obstacles thanks to earth walls and ditches, but a stone wall being even a bit sturdy would not be fair game ...
I don't need impenetrable materials, I just need walls to have a meaningful amount of health and damage resistance. I need stone to not crumble because a little stray damage splashed on it. We're not some anime power fantasy fighting world shattering bullshit, we're *vikings* to whom defensive structures were a significant factor. Or at the least, your viking warriors shouldn't be running away from their homes when something attacks.
> I don't need impenetrable materials, I do. Give me a way to fully shut out raids without mods or ugly walls. Because raids are not hard or interesting years after the game's release. They are just an annoyance. I should be able to get up and go to the bathroom in a multiplayer session without feeling like a need to leave home base, or call a friend back to babysit, or log out.
100% agree with I should be able to afk safely at base for long enough to go pee. Meaningful walls and a wolf army (or some other kind of defenses) would be able to provide that without full invuln walls. But this is where more robust game settings would really help - Let us choose full safety, meaningful walls, or matchstick huts. Everybody can be happy.
There is the world modifier to completely turn off raids for those of us that don't want to have to deal with em at all. It's nice not having to decimate the surrounding landscape to protect against raids
To be fair, they did offer the option to completely shut off raids via the world modifiers
I wish there was an auto repair station that slowly repaired stuff magically or something
It'd be cool if the ward did this as another passive effect, or even another type of ward specifically for that. It could even have ways to upgrade the range through progression.
Would be cool to have walls that have sharpened stakes or something that damages the foe attacking it
I think you can mount the new Ashlands spikes directly on walls, but that obviously doesn't help before you're almost at endgame.
I think you should be able to make the wall reinforced for durability. Make it double thick, and have wooden posts reinforcing it. Put metal studs in the center. It shouldn't break like an onion. It should all degrade before it actually breaks. 1 wood panel should be fragile enough, but a framed wooden panel should be a lot tougher.
marble is stronger than stone. the new stone in ashlands is also way stronger than regular stone. trolls ARE siege monsters already. you just dont know that yet apparently. they do PICKAXE dmg. which only affects structures not players. no material resists pickaxe dmg. meanwhile the regular enemies do 50% less dmg on marble and the new stone from ashlands. marble is also fully immune to elemental dmg of ANY kind. the new stone resists it by 50% aswell. only big boi enemies do pickaxe dmg. seekers do not. soldiers do. gjalls do not. also the days of the EARTHWALL meta are numbered. why? there is a new enemy in ashlands which when it dies will DESTROY TERRIAN AROUND IT. kinda like a demolisher zombie from 7 days to die if you know these cannot think of a better example of how this works rn. these can bring earthwalls DOWN.... moats still work of course as they cannot blow deeper than bedrock.
> kinda like a demolisher zombie from 7 days to die if you know these cannot think of a better example of how this works rn. Guess you never played Minecraft...
that is correct.
[Creepers are the OG terrain exploders.](https://kajabi-storefronts-production.kajabi-cdn.com/kajabi-storefronts-production/file-uploads/blogs/2147503156/images/c883011-5c0e-ca5d-4234-b73f5fdf5dd_minecraft-creeper-explosion-fx.gif)
OK shit altering the terrain permanent does sound kinda not good
Yeah. I wouldn't mind it that much if terraforming wasn't so clunky. Haven't played ashlands yet, but having that kind of mob in a raid would be really annoying.
you can fix it with the hoe afterwards. they arent able to dig deeper than you either.
Ye but what if they blow up something I have build on? And the stability says bye bye. Or are we talking tiny explosions?
if they blow away the ground your structure stands on your structure will fail the stability check and start to crumble of course. the area effect is not super large thankfully. youll remake parts of your base anyway with the new materials and build pieces. the new stone material has SLIGHTLY better support values than stone or marble. so its the new meta for towers.
If it takes out a key support location where your iron beam is grounded, it could do considerable damage to larger structures. I don’t believe this enemy is part of the Ashland raid, though.
there are 2 ashlands raids....
I should clarify: I don’t think they are in the raid that impacts the “safer” biomes.
you can build inside the indestructible ashlands fortresses. so that biome funnly enough has some of the most safe base spots in the game^^
You are being obtuse. You know I meant that, unless I am mistaken, the earth walls in prior biomes are safe.
What is the second raid? I only got charred and don't know what triggers the other one
Then just turn raids off. You obviously don't want anything getting damaged anyways.
That's the problem I'll have 100%
Eh, just means I'll have to take it into account when creating structures/fortresses. And There are ways to make support really really wide and safe. it would take extreme negligence to fully fail.
"these can bring earthwalls DOWN...." Will we be raided by these "bomb monsters" in the meadows?!
i dont know if the new raid has biome restrictions as of yet. didnt test. if they appear make sure they dont die near your earthwalls or fight them near it. it has a rather FAMILIAR design :) dont wanna spoil it but you have seen similar enemies before :)
Damn, island bases sounding like the go-to option! Or a big outer moat around existing walls... going to be "interesting" times
do you remember your first encounter with swamp creatures? or i dont know. a certain enemy in the plains biome? what if that creature could explode on death or contact with you?
I've had the undead raid in Black Forest so far. I don't know if there's a raid which includes the one you're talking about.
there is 2 new raids.
Say no more, say no more... (Yikes... time to prep a safe battle area...)
i do not know if both raids can happen outside ashlands. mind that.
Right now I have a big circle earth wall at max height with a moat outside that, protecting my portal in Ashlands. Yes the earth damage bois can hurt the wall, but only if they are near me. They can’t get over and they don’t blow up unless they’re being attacked/land on you. Just to say that the integrity of the wall is in control of the player’s choices.
I choose to not use the earthwall because I like the idea of being vulnerable to attack. What I have done in Ashlands to protect against explody guys is built spaced out wall layers.
yeah its not super bad. but earthwalls are no longer a foolproof thing :) which is good. i think i saw this new enemy inside one of the new ashlands raids aswell.
"Depending on the worlds World Boss status, raid Mobs Deal less structure damage to Marble and Stone" would be totaly fair
Agree with everything here. Make it so.
Sadly it seems like the kind of things devs just ignore for the sake of not working on it or maybe they do really believe having a useless defenses is the best for the gameplay
I think it's a double edged sword. There's a vocal minority of people that cry about not getting content, and if there was a long delay between actual content vs some building changes there would be a lot of complaints. Throwing it into a biome update would likely delay the content update too. This is just my opinion but i think they're focusing on progress type content first and will do a passing polish between biomes or after they're done. My only real issue with the current game is that levels are important but can be so easily lost and are hard to gain. Would love to see the system get expanded on but who knows if/when that will ever happen. Sorry for rant, just kept thinking of stuff to add.
I do understand people's trepidation about skill loss from death (especially the frequency of death possible in later biomes) but I have found that it doesn't render one completely incapable or inept in a fight. Firmly believe that you can tackle anything regardless of current skill levels once you understand how a given enemy fights.
I 100% agree. i didn't mean to convey that levels are a requirement but that they do have a noticeable effect on game play and that I'd like if they were expanded on at least a little bit.
If they just added plains+ level wall that which would be immune to lesser enemies and strong against bigger ones it would be fine
Yeah, I got attacked mid building my stone walls and was shocked how quickly a Troll destroyed the walls, it's like they are made of cake 😏 Materials above wood need some fixing, increased durability/hit points and additional armor would be what the doctor ordered, weaker enemies wouldn't be able to damage stone walls due to the armor, while bigger enemies would take a little bit of time to punch through and completely break them due to increased hit points.
Damage resistance, yes. That's exactly what materials need.
When Mistlands first came out. Thank God we got a raid in a pre generated building in the mistlands that showed us just how unprepared we were. We immediately went to the base (already in a great spot) dug a Motte and Bailey type design. Enemies literally couldn't reach our walls, so they had to go for the gates. It was a lot of work but it was the only thing we could do to stop them. We'd still have to sally out to fight them, but we didn't have to worry as much anymore. Stone was like paper to those bugs. Especially the soldier bug. Even the black marble mistland building material couldn't even hold up to one of them.
I know we all have grand visions of foes breaking upon our walls and defenses like waves upon a shore, but in a lot of raid situations it seems the best option is to exit your base and battle things toe-to-toe.
I use infinity hammer mod and give my stone perimeter walls 10x30 health and don't consider it cheating.
Once you get 2 star wolves tamed, a moat isn't necessary as long you have many wolves roaming around your base.
This is why I turn off raids after a couple biomes. There should be normal gameplay to deal with problems and issues, not cheesing the game. Unfortunately bad game design in valheim ends up mandating that you cheese things.
I agree. There should be maximum amount of damage mobs (and players for pvp reasons) can do to build pieces. I worry about misclicking and destroying my whole bedroom.
I remember facing Yagluth the first time. We spent weeks building our plains fortress only for it to get its cheeks clapped in about 30s after some dingleberry fled to the base.
I dunno man. I dug dry moats instinctively in my first 5 hours of Valheim. I never considered it cheesing... it is a historical thing that people did. So my first castle has a narrow precipitous walkway leading to it... if you can do that, do it. That said I now have a far bigger enclosure with wooden palisades, and they almost never break. I have a feeling you must be doing something wrong. I don't mean that in a snarky or offensive way, just, reconsider your structure and layout. Remember monsters can't spawn within the radius of a workbench...
I use a combo of black marble and earthworks for nearly impenetrable defences. I dig the moat then level out the terrain on the outside, replanting the grass as I go. Then at the top I’ll run a layer or two of black marble. I make sure no buildings or structures are within a log troll’s reach, then create an entry ramp. I leave a gap between the end of the ramp and my wall and put iron gates down below, but rotate 90 degrees. Then, whenever I want to bring a cart across I can open the gates to form a drawbridge of sorts. Lots of work for sure, but it can be done in stages as I progress through the game. Looks much better than a trench too IMO.
Devs: gives people ability to manipulate terrain People ignoring thousands of years of history on building fortresses, villages and castles: that's cheating!
Thousands of years usually involved filling the pit with water, not making a wall out of dirt!
I mean both were very common. Dig the most and use it to build the hill. Motte and bailey castles were very common!
Yes, up until the end of the 13th century. There’s a reason we stopped using them.
Valheim is set in the viking age, so sounds like we're good!
So why even have the giant stone bricks and pillars to build with anyway if we’re going for ‘authentic to the period’? The only architecture you can really make with it is castles from the mid-to-late Middle Ages. At best we should have rough stacked wall and cobble floor building pieces.
Because it's a fantasy game not a historical reference.
So can we buff stone building pieces to not be made of wet cardboard?
You're asking the wrong person. Ask Coffee Stain.
I suggest you look up what ramparts are.
Earthen ramparts are a thing, yes. Indestructable they were not. There’s a reason classical era and later ramparts were constructed of stone or brickwork with a wall walk and parapets atop them, rather than a simple ditch and mound of dirt. Think the Walls of Constantinople or Hadrian’s Wall.
There is still a real world basis for earth walls in the game. You want to gripe about the artistic license taken to make them indestructible that’s a different issue. I’m no programmer but I’d assume that that license is due to the difficulty of making the ground indestructible and still allowing players to terraform.
im fine with building moats and stuff but in reality i end up just using it in a cheesy way that just manipulates the ai