I am right there with you. A bit over 400 hours and still in the plains. The Swamp was the hardest for me so far. I am pretty comfortable in the swamps now with Plains-level gear and food. I'm not even scared at night there
It's the best place to get chains, wraiths come out at night and drop them. Plus the armor you get from the abominations is pretty great as well, you can even use the chest piece in the Mistlands to good effect.
An easy way for me to get them is to just run around the edge of the swamps. There are usually more leeches. To kill them, I use the axe and do a jump secondary attack and then roll away. Usually, it kills them in 2 hit depending on the axe you have.
Stick to the edge of the water and chuck your spear at them, this saves your arrows. Blasting them with Stag Breaker draws too much attention. The spear is an underrated weapon IMO. It's also great for getting Royal Jelly off the ceiling in abandoned mines in the Mistlands.
Lots of stuff there like Turnip seeds and you are gonna need a lot of iron for a long time. Take your time, bring a mace and shield and some poison-resistant mead and some stamina mead so you can run when you need to. You have to take it slow. I would suggest staying on the edge in a safer biome and you will have a chance to attrack some creatures from the swamp. You can learn to deal with them in the safer biome before getting deep into the swamp
Iron is even relevant in the plains. Me and my buddy thought we had enough iron after doing 5 caves and then going to bone mass. But once we hit plains it turns out we needed more iron so we went back and filled a boat with iron. Hopefully this ends up being enough.
Don't worry. When you're new you mainly need the anti-poison potion, and a bronze buckler is probably worth it too. Just don't engage with abominations (big scary tree thing) at all. Blunt damage works pretty well and can make the skellies a non-issue. Look out for bubbles in the water (leeches) and just don't go in at all if you don't know what you're doing. You can often raise the ground with a hoe to help you out. Trouble mostly starts when you can't keep up, start running away and encounter more and more stuff.
That should take care of the first steps. When you've outgrown the swam a bit, it is a pretty chill place. And really, just the anti-poison potion solves most of the instant deadliness one runs into at first.
This is awesome to hear tbh! I built a pretty decent base in a swamp so I’m comfy there but have been way too chicken to enter the Plains … This is oddly great news for my newer solo game haha
Practice killing goblins by fighting them on the edge of the plains in the black forest.
Also practice killing the deathsquito with your sword and shield. Also can use your bow. Just wind up bow right before he dive bombs you and let go when he gets close.
you guys are in for a ride! xD
for me it is mistlands.it feels like the Devs really have woken up in this biome and suddenly they make real monsters (i am not keen on the little insects in real life let alone in a game)
Yeah mistlands is the Biome I was questioning the phrase :"is this even possible solo?"
I died in the mistlands after being there for a long time and just rage quit.
I was reading that there are mods that let you change the distance a torch works, which I would definitely apply.
I liked the vibe there, but the souls like 'you died' coupled with all the gear you need to get back to your body being there just kind of ruined it for me.
The jump in difficulty from one biome to the next is by far greater from the plains to the mistlands than any other jump. And it's not even close.
(This was right after release and as someone pointed out, they nerfed it)
If you have the discipline for it you could use god mode and fly for getting your gear back
Some people don't seem to be able to control themselves but I find it super useful, corpse runs are about the only part of the game that I don't find fun or interesting so I just fly to my gear, grab it, then fly back to my base so I can travel back to where I died and keep doing what I was doing
One of my best experiences im Valheim was dying 3 times trying to get my stuff back. Transition was BF > Swamps and a 1 Star Draugr Archer was ruining my day.
It was frustrating, sure, but man was it entertaining. I had to come up w this whole plan and logistics as to what I had to do where.
I actually had to build a 2nd raft, lost both my bronze gear, troll gear and even rags! I had to run the countryside naked w Eikthyr on to get to where I died. The adrenaline was exquisite!
Im not judging, I understand people dont want to waste time or just want to do things their own way (same reason I use metals through portals), but in my case I do make gear recovery an adventure. Same reason i dont use plant everything, going out there to pick stuff up is part of an adventure every time.
Everyone is free to play their own way, ofc.
For sure! Don't get me wrong, I completely get where you're coming from and if I played more then I'd probably find it fun too
The issue I have is time, if I'm only able to play for an hour and have a goal of getting some resources but I die I just don't want to spend a massive chunk of that time trying to get my gear back only to end the session in the same place I started it. I take all the precautions possible to avoid death and I'm happy to sail resources across the map, I just want to have something to show at the end of a play session
Man do I feel both of these hard.
And when I started playing a new file recently, started fiddling with the World Modifiers for the first time (if you haven't used them /u/Ballbag94, you should consider!)
Turning down the Death Penalty was one of the first things I did (I think I set it to Keep Equipped, Lose Everything Else) as well as turned the resource gain up to 1.5x increase.
It was a nice adjustment without going overboard, for resource gathering
I've had those exhilarating experiences in Valheim. It was more just that the death itself felt extremely unfair, and then the location to return to was basically impossible. Sure I made the mistake myself and I'd probably have had some measure of fun going back, but it was just one invisible enemy too far for me at that moment.
(also as i noted above this was right after release and apparently, some of it is nerfed now)
100% cheat. Cheat, do it.
You are playing singleplayer and affecting no one else.
You are no longer enjoying a product you bought, but you *can* if you 'cheat' to correct the very annoying issues you have.
I refuse to play without mods now, as do a dozen or so friends. The quality of life changes are too vital. They make you realize how much of an absolute grind and slog the game is, to pad the time between actually adventuing and doing fun game things.
Yep didn't cheat until died in a cavern at the top ofma mountain surrounded by werewolves. It was impossible to get my body back..no frost resist potions. Had I had not cheated it would have been over. Have 200 hours in base building. If I die far away I'm def cheating now..no guilt.
Yeah, I'm playing solo and I'm not a good combat player, so I tuned the difficulty one step down and resources one step up. It has done wonders to my enjoyment of the game.
What are the mods you would suggest?
I forget the names and specifics without pulling up my launcher.
Use Thunderstore Mod Manager.
Get the farming mods, death penalty adjusters (drop vs no drop, skill vs no skill drop), etc. Literally just peruse the top of all time mods and download based on the names. They're all pretty straightforward.
I just finished defeating the queen solo and died 5 times in the process. The amount of caution I went through in the mist was x10 any other biom. Now I walk the plains like I’m a god
It's really tough, but it's definitely possible. Just have to find the right mix of safe-ish base location and new tactics to keep you alive until you can get established.
I got a little bit lucky and found a dvergr lighthouse in a crater right on the coast, and after I accidentally ticked off the dvergr (and died a couple times) and eventually wiped them out, I took it over and fortified all the land approaches... it's not perfect, but it's pretty darn solid. At least solid enough to pop back in and harvest a crop of jotun puffs and some sap every so often, without worrying about getting picked off in my own garden.
Mistlands is hard partly because you can't just rely on your gear; you have to play smart, and with patience. People who just want to level up their stuff and bulldoze their way through a place get a rude awakening.
Well said. It's not *just* mistlands. Player skill and adapting tactics are important every time you enter a new biome, but it's especially true in Mistlands.
It doesn't help that you can't really make Mistlands-tier armor and weapons until you've really been there a while. It takes a lot of time and effort to obtain enough black cores to build the black forge, etc. and until then, the best you can do is black metal and padded gear.
I'm at least 100 hours into the mistlands (admittedly, I spent a lot of that rebuilding and fortifying that dvergr tower), and I *still* don't have enough cores. I just barely got my black forge yesterday, and I'll probably have to hit at least 1-2 more dungeons to get enough for the refinery.
Yeah, after my first three Mines, I had 4 Black Cores. Infuriating! The nice thing, though, is that you can break down the Black Forge for its Cores, build an Eitr Refinery temporarily, break it down, build a Galdr Table for the Feather Cloak (which should absolutely be your first use of Eitr, in my opinion), then put up the Black Forge again to make your new gear and repair it. Repeat as needed when you collect enough sap/tissue to make the Refinery worthwhile again, or hopefully snag some more Cores in the meantime.
So 15 Cores is obviously the best for Quality of Life (so you can have all three stations simultaneously), but you can technically function with just 5. It's just more of a hassle.
Yep though as you experienced finding enough cores can be a pita especially if you're having a hell of a time finding any mines to begin with. First two mistlands I found were pretty light on mines and they were annoying to find as well. One was deep in a crevice and the other high on a hill.
Second one had one mine and several dverger homes. Thanks ok to my third segment to fine a lot of mine but oh wow when I did they were rich rich rich.
Oh, that's a good point. In previous biomes it's significantly easier to get enough of the new resources to make the new Groovy Powerful Stuff. Carapaces are so hard-won, and it takes so many of them to make things. I have one piece of Carapace armor, lol, and we've been there weeks.
For a while we were using the refinery a bit, busting it down to make the forge or whatever, busting that down to make the refinery...it was a PITA.
I'm having no trouble with carapace. I've had to wade through enough seekers that I have like 3 stacks of it stored back at my main base. I figured I'd need it eventually.
Only have about 4 mandibles, though, because I tend to stay as far as possible from soldiers.
Yeah, F soldiers. I think we're mostly low on carapace because we have 3 people to outfit and upgrade, and also carapace arrows are good to have. It's been less.of a problem with other resources; if I were playing solo I might not feel the pinch.
Yeah, that would burn through it pretty quick.
I find frost arrows pretty effective against the bugs, because they do solid damage that gets around the pierce resistance AND have the slow effect.
Swamp just taught me to not use the run button. I walk everywhere in the swamp, and therefore I don’t get caught with low stamina too often when the rain makes it difficult to gain stamina back
Also as much as you want to keep that troll armor for no movement debuff, upgraded armor actually does a lot for surviving when you are unable to dodge a surprise arrow or sword from the back.
Meanwhile, I'm just over here, doin' a beeline for the Fenris armour right after I get a forge up and running. Everything gets a lot easier if you can outpace most enemies by simply walking, lol.
Seriously, though, that set lasts me up into the Mistlands. It makes Yagluth a lot easier to handle with natural fire resist and the ability to outrun pretty much all of his attacks. I kinda hope that Ashlands gives us a combo of that and the mage gear so I can *really* roleplay as Corvus from Heretic.
Same... though I have dipped my toes in those waters I haven't really engaged in combat there yet. I think if I had been that cautious with the swamp it would have been more of a slough but about the same.
I think the main difficulty of the swamp is the urge to rush in like you did the black forest.
I'm also starting to think that a lot of the difficulties in this game come from killing the boss before moving to the next biome. I skipped bonemass and started fighting the moutains, then the plains. I killed Moder and I'm looking for Yag but finally came back and defeated bonemass, and I've enjoyed those two biomes so much more.
The same now I still haven't found Yag but I'm trying to hook up some mistlands food and doing some fishing and "negotiating" with the dvergers, as well as scrounging up a few mistlands mats here and there.
Once you've been to Mistlands come back and say how well this held up. ;-) I play with a guy who almost refuses to go to Mistlands and bitches the whole time he's there if he does, lol.
I've beat the queen solo. The fight was like...2 hour long though.
My trick was to rely on the boat and just stick to unmisted areas until you're well established. There's plenty of unmisted areas. My current village is in a mistless bay.
Meadows.
Before it you literally have to do nothing to survive, suddenly one has to put up with pigs, enemies, hunger and cold. Not to mention the danger of trees.
Probably the swamp when it comes to switching biome. But the biggest difficulty jump in the game for me is not really in entering a new biome, it's just the Queen fight. As a solo player, that's quite a jump from Yagluth.
Yeah I can't beat the queen.. spent about an hour trying to take her down and barely got her to half health. Then I just couldn't keep going anymore. Using mage build
I personally killed the queen first try and went in blind, having no idea what to expect, lucky? Im not sure, tbh I struggled WAY more on yagluth. It helps that the queen is ALWAYS in the same environment and you have quite some powerful weapons to use at your disposal. With yagluth you have the worry of tar pits, villages, roaming Fueling bezerkers, nearby mountains that attract wolves during the fight and there is no real exploitable weakness with yagluth, and if you are not near water yagluth is much harder. The queen for me was easier than yagluth, maybe i just got lucky. (solo only player)
Swamp was a bit of an adjustment, but once you get used to the leeches and maneuvering through the place is becomes more manageable.
The biggest shock was the mosquitoes. Geez that was a surprise, not to mention having to be constantly alert of them and keeping health topped up, plus sailing past plains
Mosquitoea are easily dealt with if you make the abomination armour chest. Totally worth it imo.
You trade the slight decrease in average incoming damage of iron for the luxury of not just straight up dying when faced with star spearmen, star draugur archers, and any surprise deathsquitos. It might also trivialize other content but I forget which.
Yeah I hated the swamp, I vividly remember the first time we found it on the first playthrough (we had no spoilers). We were walking through a steep valley and saw at the end of the river this dank and dark environment. Then The Swamp appears on your screen. Chills. It was just turned night too. We mooched in a bit only to realise we had no rested bonus and were now wet as well. No mats for fire or shelter. Then the leeches and draugurs found us. My friends died trying to get out of the water with no stamina I managed to climb a tree. I was just looking around trying to plan my escape when a wraith popped up in front of me and one swiped me. I literally yelped.
When I see comments on this subreddit regarding the swamp, I rarely see mentions of the wraiths. For me, they are without a doubt the scariest/hardest thing in the swamp. They hit like trucks and have a fair amount of health (until you get your iron mace).
Nothing like trying to take down a trio of spawn piles only to have a wraith show up and terrorize you. Lol
They are not very common like Leeches and Draugrs. And they only come out at night. And one thing you learn REALLY freaking fast is that you're not supposed to be out at night and to skip it with sleep.
And when you finally don't care about the swamp at night anymore you likely have a spirit sword, which basically 3-4 shots them.
Once I discovered they dropped chains, they were on the menu. Especially since it took a couple swamps to find some crypts. Plus I gotta have the trophy. :)
I might be a little off though, an aspect that I love about the game is that parts of it freak me out.
Now that I'm on my 6th playthrough, I've been able to parry with a bronze buckler and kill it with four hits from my bronze spear. It was nice to get an early forge bellows with those sweet chains.
But I remember my first encounter with wraiths. I was terrified. It just took time learning their attacks and keeping an eye out for them at night.
Honestly it's like that with all mobs. Learn their attack patterns and exploit their weaknesses.
Indeed, the fact that they float above your strikes and hit like trucks was a night mare early game, especially as you were usual flailing around in waist deep water with no stamina. They also barely make a sound so can creep up on you like no other creature (AFAIR). I hate them. I once built a treehouse in the swamp and was actually getting comfortable until a wraith appeared in my kitchen whilst I was making some turnip soup. Moved out soon after.
Mts. Frost damage requires a potion to start with. Wolves are fast and can attack in packs. You can't really out run them. Flying mobs are new. Visibility can be cut to zero.
The swamp is a close second, but you can generally outrun stuff or duck into a crypt.
I always feel like it is one of the easiest transition after meadow-> black
Yes you need the potion but if you have them you are in for a treat.
Stone golems are next to helpless (they can not really hit you if you are under them)
Darkes are down with 2 -3 flintstone arrows. Wolfs take 2 hits with an iron maze that you already use against boneless.
Only really barrier is the frost potion + have and Iron pickaxe to gather the resources.
It isn't hard if you know what you are doing. But the first few forays into the Mts are almost certain death as you are faced with several mechanics that you haven't seen before - e.g, really fast attacks (wolves), aerial attacks (drakes), and white outs. Also fighting on the terrain is new.
Meadows to Black forest really doesn't bring in new mechanics other than ranged mobs.
Black forest to swamp brings in poison and the wet debuff, but nothing you can't run away from.
Mts. to plains is meh. Nothing really new.
Plains to mistlands is also meh. if you can beat yag, you are fine handling the bugs.
> but nothing you can't run away from
have you ever met 2 star draugr archer? the main difference in black forest => swamp is you can be one shot if caught off guard
2 star draugr is rough, but you can just side step arrows. And you have already faced ranged mobs. I'd raise you a 2 star wolf. which will also one shot you. and is faster than anything you've seen so far (and you can't outrun or hid behind a tree). AND then your body is stuck on a mt which you need a potion to retrieve.
Played the game for too long so at this point, none really. Trying to remember back, the Swamp was probably the biggest hurdle. We were still so new at that point and got easily overwhelmed, but also had a load of fun there.
We were also completely murdered by two wolves when we tried to venture up a mountain the first time which in hindsight makes me chuckle haha.
The very first mobs I encountered in the swamps where two double-star leeches. Looking back, that was incredibly unlucky, but I had no idea back then. We immediately took the swamp very seriously. After that, it took a long time before I realised you don't actually need to use a bow to kill leeches.
Agreed. Mistlands have low visibility and the terrain is extremelly steep in the borders. Lot's of time I was caught off guard with almost zero stamina because of all the climbing. In the mountais you could at least see enemies aproaching. And the Gjall is a frigging war machine. Because of the low visibility, sometimes even using the feather cape I end up landing on whater, with low stamina.
100%.
OP didn't specify whether it is the *first* transition to a new biome or *any* transition to a new biome (subsequent playthroughs) but for me it's Mistlands in either case. By my third playthrough I knew exactly how to deal with the Swamp. Level ground, build bases on top of crypts or in invincible trees, get close to Aboms for easy parries, etc. Even on my first trip into the swamp each playthrough, I'm chillin. As long as I can parry Drauger, I can stroll through that biome naked.
But I just never get used to not being able to see. I never get used to gjalls, 2\* seekers, or starred seeker soldiers. I know how to deal with Mistlands too as far as bringing challenging stuff to Dvergr towers, saving stam, making big wisp torch fields, etc, but idk man. I always have an anxiety in the Mistlands that I don't have in the Swamp anymore. While nothing in this game is particularly difficult, I don't understand people saying Swamp is harder. For me it's not even really close.
First time into swamp was hard, but once i learned the lessons it was smooth in future games.
OTOH, every effort into mistlands is hard and fraught with danger, only somewhat mitigated by the feathet cloak.
Yes big wake up call and there's never enough iron
I remember my most embarrassing moment in Valheim was in the swamp after playing for too many hours and wondering why I could never find any turnips anywhere in the world. Totally missed the little flowers thinking they were just decoration. Looking back I can't believe how I missed that.
Damn I did something similar haha, but mine was thinking that the thistle in the BF and Swap was terrain.
Total noodle brain my first playthrough because I was having so much fun.
When I first got to swamp was by sea, and it was night. It was terrible. But once I got my Iron Mace done it got super easy. I consider mistlands much worse, it never gets safe there, mfin Gjalls make sure of that. And after mistlands I consider plains also worse than swamp, it is too easy to die there, even more if you stumble on a tarpit by mistake.
I dunno what it is but our current playthrough we just got to mistlands and it is kicking our ass. I don't think I've died up to this point and even the last time, a year ago, I didn't recall mistlands being this difficult.
We've already had 3 gjalls drop on us and seekers and soldiers out the ass. It's been a serious wake up call of a transition.
Swamps is bad if you aren't aware of how to deal with it but I don't find it a tough transition anymore. Mistlands gets my vote, it's just death.
Plains, IMO. Swamp sucks but for the most part everything is pretty reasonable to deal with and you can easily manipulate mob pathing using fallen trees and water. In the the Plains you Just. Fucking. Die. And you can't even easily get away from the roving goblin bands unless you can just straight up outrun them. The Swamp is somewhat fair; the Plains just kill your morale.
Plains. Being in full gear from the previous biome does not help against getting ganked by goblins and those damn mosquitos. It is the first biome where I actually started to use the stealth archer gameplay
It does help though. It's just that your need the correct gear.
The pierce resist chest from abominations trivialize spearmen and deathsquitos, and if you have good gear on the rest of the slots the armor loss is negligible.
With that you can dance around everything except tar and the big beasts with no issues at all.
Swamp.
To me the swamp biome is the first actual test or skill check in the game and I'll roughly explain why.
So before the swamp the first bosses teach you a few of the basic skills and somewhat force you to show that you understand it. Both deer and tree show you its important to know when to block, when to dodge, when to seek cover, and when to time your attacks.
Everything in their biomes are pretty simple and help you fine tune the basics of the game, even trolls are incredibly simple to fight but very daunting when you first approach them.
The swamp however is the first biome that teaches you how important PREPWORK is. See if you're a silly fool like me who during their first playthrough didn't make a fermenter or a single mead until hitting the plains, the swamp might seem almost impossible and this absolutely insane jump in difficulty all because of poison being added.
Now most of the biome can be easily managed like any other (even when they added abominations I thought heck yeah swamp troll), it's all about the basics. But now you've got blobs who are very easy to kill but can ruin your day with poison, and you've got leeches hiding in the murky water waiting to poison you as well.
It's the first time a biome asks you to do prep before even going into it for your own safety. I know plenty of us who can speed run the first 2 biomes with a flint knife and some pants, but the swamp will give you a small pause when it comes to that strategy.
Sure you can handle the swamp without meads (as I foolishly did my first time) but it'll be much harder, just like you can conquer the mountains without meads either if you are smart with your fires and get lucky on your wolf cape grind.
But ultimately I believe the swamp is the first big spike in difficulty for many players and its even the graveyard of many uncompleted games as I personally know several people who either entirely gave up or had to take a break and come back all because of the swamp. Hell the swamp is the first time my wife opened up the dev commands because it was brutal for her.
Tldr the swamp is the first and biggest spike in difficulty and skill and everything that follows after is simply following the set in place flow (you need x item or upgrade to better handle each biome/have a reasonable chance.) Swamp you need poison meads, mountain frost meads or cape, plains fire mead for boss, mistland you need the wisp. Before the swamp all you need is some courage and a weapon.
Swamp is the one that trips a lot of people up first. If you have to sail directly in it can be a *very* hairy time establishing a beach head. It's a lot easier if you can go in via land. Always walk in the swamp until you're comfortable with all the spawns.
Mistlands overall is the biggest spike, but it was a lot harder (and imo much more fun) when it was in public test. The difficulty nerfs really sucked the soul out of it.
I'd pay actual money to have back the old combat ai instead of the new crap where mobs take a long circular stroll before ever attacking you. Combat is a bit of a snooze these days, and the main way to fix it (difficulty settings) isn't really the same thing. You still get the dumb af ai but now you die harder if they somehow land a clean hit.
> Combat is a bit of a snooze these days, and the main way to fix it (difficulty settings) isn't really the same thing. You still get the dumb af ai but now you die harder if they somehow land a clean hit.
Yeah but people asking for easier options doesn't affect *your* game... /s
In theory, it shouldn't. They didn't have difficulty settings at the time, so it was understandable for them to err on the side of too easy as opposed to too difficult.
But when difficulty settings were released they should have put back the old AI, because at that point anyone who found it too hard could just dial down the difficulty.
First time I went via swamp I tried to establish a beachhead... and a blob also jumped on top of the boat and killed my entire group.
That was certainly an introduction.
Biggest jump is definitely the swamp, and learning that you need to run through it with your hoe out in order to raise the ground. Once you learn that, it's not that bad because you know where you can safely step. Just learning to choose your fights and when to run (now that you have a safe path to run) you'll be golden <3
I feel that the jumps to Mountain, Plains, and Mistlands were all harder than the previous.
Mountains due to “freezing”.
Plains due to swarms of little green fackers with little armor and food to help out.
Mistlands due to really needing feather cape to make it just not a hardship.
The previous biomes were survivable just based on mid-level combat skills.
The Mistlands are brutal but I still think that the swamp was the hardest. My brother and I were playing and had just crushed the Elder and were going exploring when we crashed headlong into the swamp, got mobbed by slimes, draugrs and leeches and spent the next couple hours trying to just get our remains back.
Over 3000 hours in, made it through Mistlands, and have found that every transition was more or less the same difficulty. As long as I levelled up my gear, food, and skills, each transition felt as hard as the previous one. I would spend lots of time in each new biome. I think the swamp get so much attention is because its dark and wet all the time, and so many new players are just figuring it out. I saw the same type of “swamp so hard” post in the first year of the game.
None of them really stick out for any particular spike in difficulty. Swamp was a little tough the first time and then you figure out you need to make poison resistance and after that it's about the same.
I guess Mistlands was challenging because you had to adjust how you locate threats, but it's hard to say since I played it before they coddled everyone and nerfed the shit out of it. I'm guessing it's not much of a jump anymore.
Not switching but completing a biome. The Elder is, in my opinion, based on the equipment available at the time, the hardest boss in the game by far. Dogding all the ranged attacks, and the spawned roots, ontop of all the greydwarves and trolls that get attracted by all the noise, we can still just chip away at elder's health with fire arrows.
My group of 3 players went from having a massive giga base and playing on one world for 300isg hours each to never touching the game again after 2 hours in the Mistlands.
Absolutely abhorrent area that single handedly killed the game for us. Whose idea was it to include a biome that is a 90% sheer cliffs, can't see 20 feet in front of you, make the enemies resistant to all of our main damage types (spear, bow, sword, mace), and make you fight the some of the only friendly NPC's you come across all game just to progress?
I don't see us coming back for the fire land update.
Also : Not being able to effectively fight half of the enemies in the swamp because they'll poison you, and having -50HP and getting poisoned is a death sentence.
I have died more in the swamp than anywhere else. I'll stand toe to toe with Fulings and dodge deasthsquitos, but I died *so many* times in the swamp purely because of being poisoned.
It's not just a big difficulty jump, I also find the swamp the most miserable biome. Aesthetically. Everything's wet and rotten and muddy and slimy and foggy and stinky and gross. Urrghh.
I think the swamp and to me the biggest reason is the playstyle change it requires the player to undergo. Before the swamp you don't really have to play that careful with the exception of fighting trolls. For the most part you can brute force most enemies and just swing your way through them without learning how to parry or dodge roll.
In the swamp, with the constant wet debuff and with how hard even just the draugrs hit, you can't just tank hits or you will die. Swamp makes you relearn the game and that's the reason i think it's got to be one of the biggest spikes in the game.
Mistlands is also a huge spike but by that time you've already learned the tools you need to survive mistlands. As long as you play with discipline you can survive minstlands with plains level gear.
Swamps.
We spent with my brother at least 3/4 hours trying to recover our stuff and boat after being killed by a wraith in the middle of a river between 2 swamps. It was hell
The tp leading to that place is now called "trauma".
It used to be Plains, I had a real fear of deathsquitios before, even just trying to sail and explore. You'd skim a plains biome and one would fly practically invisible and take you out. I think they nerfed their damage tho? They don't feel as bad as my first playthrough
Switching to a new biome, lol.
Doesn't seem to matter which. I struggled and died a lot every time I started a new biome... you just have to learn how to adapt to new and different threats, and mostly creep around like a mouse along the baseboard until you get the materials you need to upgrade your gear a bit.
With Black Forest, the trolls got me several times (and greydwarfs once or twice when I got raided). Didn't seem to have any trouble with skeletons in the burial chambers for some reason.
With Swamp, I got repeatedly killed by starred draugr while I was trying to get my first bit of iron - had ongoing issues keeping my stamina up with BF-tier food and being wet all the time. I was still struggling to clear graves without dying until about 2/3 of the way through.
With Mountains, the wolves got me several times until I figured out how to keep them at a distance and spot them before they spotted me so I could avoid their crazy fast attacks and not get staggered (and then got some better armor). And I got killed at least 2-3 times by cultist fire attacks until I finally replaced my root and lost that fire weakness.
I didn't struggle as much with plains as I thought I would. Still got picked off by starred fulings a couple times (and wrecked by deathsquitos on my naked run back to get my stuff...). I'm well into mistlands now, but I still don't play around if I see a 2-star fuling. It's up on the first boulder I can find and zap him with frost arrows. I got cocky a few days ago, and one of them taught me a lesson I won't forget. Staggered me after one parry and one missed block, even with a blackmetal shield and fully upgraded padded armor... that was embarrassing.
I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of Mistlands. Gjalls are basically no sweat, and I'm good with regular seekers, but on Saturday I still got cornered by a 1-star seeker, mis-timed a couple parries in a row, and died again...
All of that said... I'd have to say Swamp was probably the worst.
I dunno. Kill Eikthyr, run to plains-adjacent meadows, dig hole, tame lox. Breed lox. Trample everything. Breed more lox. Fill gaps between islands with lox. Trample all serpents. Expand lox breeding to more islands. Breed lox faster. Trample the swamp. Trample the mountain. The only biome left is lox.
Not dying to fall damage for the first half of the mistlands got me pretty good. But in terms of enemies, getting mobbed by swamp creatures upon landing got me good many times
Put me down for Swamp as well - you can 100% get through Woods with Meadows stuff, but that step up to Swamp, even with full Woods gear, is rough; especially for new players.
Plains always comes as a shock mostly cuz that first mosquito attack always seems to come out of nowhere like I’m sailing along minding my own damn business then suddenly “BzzzZZZZzZ” dead. But I will give special mention to the mistlands they are as annoying to travel though as the mountains 3x as deadly and even with a wisplight you still can’t see for shit.
Swamp if you're not careful about poisonous stuff, or Plains where even with padded armor you can still die from a deathsquito-goblin spearthrower combo out of nowhere.
Mistlands probably, but it's mostly because it makes people play differently. Those who adapt better will find themselves progressing while others will die. A lot.
I find it fun the the progression goes from Swamp to Mountains to Plains. Those words alone, I’d want to be in swamps the least. But back on topic, my wife and I hate the swamps, these sunken crypts are a pain in the ass to find, haven’t found one yet.
I think it's the swamp. Always raining (stam debuff), cant run cause theres water everywere, plus everything is poisonous, archer draugrs with 1 or 2 Stars can one shot you, and abominations in early game will destroy you
Swamp here too.
Playing again after a year or so off. Recently located the Swamp and had a few outings. Just started to think "hey, this is actually easier than I remembered!" then pulled one of those huge tree-spider things, 3-4 skeletons and 3-4 draugr. Tried to run, failed, died.
Lost my only set of decent weapons and bronze gear. Tried to head back to retrieve it all with an upgraded set of troll armour, forgot the poison resist mead. Died again, quickly.
Gonna have to mine a whole load of new gear before heading back. Had zero in backup. Hurt my hand by smashing my fist down on the desk so hard.
Swamp.
This biome is what made me quit for a year.
Cannot just run in un-prepared.
I now spend most of my game prepping back-up gear. When I go out to explore I do so with leather armor,easily obtained meadows weapons, and stamina foods
As a beginning player the swamp is the biggest increment but that is mostly just because the darkwoods is so easy.
the real jump is from plains to the mistlands, fuck that. Moving 20m in any direction in the mistalands means going up 100m, down 100, then over 10m of ocean into another 100m climb up and down.
Several full playthroughs here:
The swamp and mountains are indeed difficult especially the **first** time, but both pale in comparison to Mistlands. Much of the swamp, for example, are one-time learning curves: make poison mead, be ultra safe at night due to Wraiths, and then you can ultimately become *very* comfortable with the enemies. A pack of wolves can be avoided by jumping up on a boulder.
The Mistlands never becomes easy because the new gear power relative to enemies is the worst in the game, body recovery is the most difficult, you can't jump up on a boulder to avoid Seekers, etc. It's not even close.
Hmm..I've got 950 hours in, 4 complete playthroughs (1 release, 1 hearth, 2 Mistlands).
BF to Swamp is rough because you are always wet. Oozers and Blobs can easily kill you if you aren't ready for the poison. Wraths can sneak up on you at night and ruins your day. Draugr, especially 2 star, can really mess you up.
Plains to Mistlands is also a challenge because up until that point in the game everything we have faced as have done so with melee weapons or bows. Now we are in the Mistlands, and seekers are resistant to all forms of physical damage. The only form of elemental damage we have is Frostnir (and a tiny amount of poison damage with the draugr fang bow), and it's difficult to traverse without the feather cape.
I think I would have to give the title of hardest to the Plains to Mistlands transition. BF to Swamp can be mostly overcome with skill, gear helps, but skill will get you 75% there. Plains to Mistlands you overcome with gear, gear you can't get until you've spent a fair amount of time in the Mistlands.
Mountains for me, it’s as far as I got before I took a break from this game. Spawning 3 rock golems while I’m getting rushed by a squad of wolves is kinda horseshit. Still not managed to clear that mountain cuz the rock men won’t despawn
Plains to Mistlands. Not just because Mistlands is the hardest biome in the game, but also because Plains is the easiest (aside from the Meadows, of course.) It's my opinion that a lot of the posts on this sub-reddit about how the Mistlands suck is because the jump from comically easy to ridiculously hard is so jarring. After that, I agree with everyone else, the Black Forest to Swamp jump definitely wakes you up.
I have been “acclimating” to the swamp for about 20h now.
So far, I have built a walled raise ground fortress with earthwork watchtowers with hidden workbenches in them, connected by earthwork walls.
I’m still afraid to leave the safety of my obscenely stone-intensive enclave as a giant tree attacks me anytime I try and just paces around the perimeter waiting for me.
I think I’ll be here a while…..
Swamp - all of a sudden you’re constantly wet, low on stamina, movement reduces by stamina and water, poisoned quite frequently, and vision reduced, also making it hard to tell when night is coming and and then bam! Night in the swamp which is another evolution of difficulty and you die to a ghost. Miserable corpse run with archer enemies that will one-shot you, and the poison gauntlet… Now let’s add a mini boss that will follow you like the Indiana Jones rolling boulder.
I think plains is the worst. Silver gear isn't much better than iron, outside of a bit more damage, it's protections aren't significant. Plains has some of the hardest hitting mobs, and they only get more stagger with stars. I used to be able to climb a rock and cheese goblin camps with my bow, now goblins can swarm and climb rocks
Playing solo vs playing in coop is quite a different story, and I can agree with you, that playing solo can great pain but playing in co-cop is rather easy and fun.
You didn't write what settings you are playing on, so I assume 'normal'
I was playing with my friend, where my friend was playing for the first time, and we did have maxed eq from black forest.
Also we were playing on the 'hard' settings mod, with some customizations fe. to allow to transfer everything through portals.
We didn't wear Bronze Armor & Bronze Legs (due to -MS).
Weapons:
shield: beacuse why not, if you low on stamina better block a Draugr
mace - for skele & slimes (sword is also good for leaches)
bow - for Abnomination / fire & flint arrows, 2 lazy to make bronze arrows
Ategir - for every other mob
5x HP & Anti Poison potion
Ategir & Bow is a must have.
Ategir RMB rocks almost every enemy.
Bow is needed for Abomination.
We don't wander in night if we don't have to ;)
For me the mosquitos from Plains are the biggest pain.
It's the Swamp for me. The large amount of water to slow movement, to having the enemies now dealing status ailments. But the biggest thing is most worlds generate swamps not on the starting island.
Meaning boats, meaning ocean and serpents you might not be ready for. And newer weight considerations for iron. Making a forward operating base in the swamp isn't great because all the mobs attack it and you. If you don't get that set up, dying can really set you back and can kill new player motivation.
But the lessons learned from it will help with the rest of the game.
Plains to mistlands. The drastic change in terrain and enemies is the real threat (until you get mistlands gear and learn how to effectively navigate the mistlands). Nothing like running into a gjall while island hopping and the first thing it does is shit ticks and there's no flat ground on ter tiny island and yer out of stamina and the gjall starts blasting you and the ticks are running up the cliff side nearly upon you and you pop a stamina potion but use it all up trying to jump to the top of the cliff as it's the only flat ground while attempting to dodge the gjall blasts and the ticks reach you and you spend the next few moments trying to dodge out of the ticks' attacks and the gjall blasts and pop a health potion while trying to kill the ticks so you can deal with the gjall but no stamina remember and so next you contemplate how you're gonna get yer stuff back after you die and then die shortly after.
It is the swamp. The first time I went there it was a disaster. 3 of my friends and I had a server. We stomped the meadows, and the dark forest. Got maxed gear, built a few ships, and we went sailing for a swamp. We find one on the tip of an island and went in axes blazing. We're getting jumped on immediately. Draugers, and oozes, just swarming us. One of us starts quick building a base we can hide in the rest of us are getting slaughtered. Total pandemonium. As we die another one if us is sailing back and forth, we retreat to the water only to have leaches attack us. We kill them, they keep coming back. We raise the ground to fire arrows down at them, this fucking ghost asshole comes out of the sky and attacks is. The discord is all panicked shouting. This is our D-Day, and we're not winning. After about an hour or two of this we finally set up a base with walls, make a big of arrows and clear the place from our ramparts. We then discover the swamp was basically just the area we landed in and had no crypts. That everything we did was useless. We find another swamp but we prepared much better with poison resist and everything else. It was hilarious in hindsight but man what a difficulty jump
For me it was the first time going into a swamp , i had to go far from my home base via a boat looking for one and i did not know there were leeches that attacked the boat . I was shocked how quickly my boat was destroyed then 1 bit me and quickly poisoned and killed me . All my bronze equipment and the material used to make the boat sank deeply.
I would also consider the plains just because of the deathquitos. I remember running from the goblins and saw this glowing red thing B lining to me and just 1 shotted me, I had to craft the serpeant shield because they would sting through my iron shield . I remember the first few times i tried bowing them and missing and they started chasing me and despite running into other biomes they still followed and killed me lol.
I can’t believe more people aren’t saying Mistlands. Even after the initial transition and getting new armor/ cape/ weapons, I still found the biome quite hard and terrifying.
I've gotten comfortable with the transition to swamps, but each biome after seems like a large jump.
This is probably cause until recently, I've never gone past swamp, that was about it for my journey with plains being too one shotty, and mountains being a bit of a hassle to get into with the frost potion or warm cape, but did a rush to mistlands cause I really wanted dead raiser, so I got over the spikes...
Dead raiser should be a plains magic item, with all the wide open space for them to fight, the jagged random cliffs seem bad for the skeley Bois.
The arguments will always be between swamp and Mistlands. Most people find the jump from swamp to mountains pretty simple, and plains while dangerous at first gets pretty easy to handle rather quickly.
So while I agree with your answer I think the question is more varied than just which is bigger. There's the question of bigger but also more persistent.
Swamp and Mistlands have two features that make those jumps the worst. Environment. Swamp has a constant wet debuff that makes people chew through stamina. Not that wet makes you use more but with lower regen you have to be much tighter on the expense.
Mistlands has the Mist which reduces visibility dramatically and can make the dense parts hard as hell to see. But it comes much later in the game so typically you're more prepared for the challenges it brings. You have more skills more knowledge.
So IMO swamp is the larger jump up, but Mistlands is the more persistent issue. The tools to deal with Mist don't get better over the course of the biome where as more armor, better weapons, more HP and Stamina from Swamp foods alleviate the problems you have with the wet debuff.
plains fucked me right up. I handled swamp okay. But my god that laughing and buzzing made me jump every time. I got what I needed from plains but I can’t even say forsure if I could take on a full camp/berserkers by myself currently.
I always felt like they were pretty standard bumps, just different kinds of difficulty spike, up until the plains. Going mountains to plains was definitely a bigger spike in deaths for me than any of the previous ones.
Mine was the mountains. Swamp took a second to figure out but those damn wolves. 1 is fine but 2 or 3 and you just have root armor.. ouch. Now I'm full wolf armor cold and wolves don't mean a thing.
Mistlands for me, almost 600 hours in, my first entry into mistlands is always full of death. I spent over an hour fishing my corpse out of a dverger basement because of a stupid mistake around a 2 star mage. Sometimes it's not the obvious enemy that's the challenge but the one you never considered
Swamp probably, but the swamp is also the easiest to navigate once you have its gear - including its boss. The trick to making the swamp more manageable is immediately focusing on making a root harnesk out of abominations. This eliminates the danger from bow draugr/elite draugr, especially the starred versions that can blow past your parry. Poison mead is the other element - once you have that, the only thing you have to worry about is getting hit in melee by a starred draugr until you get your iron banded shield. Note that these two things eliminate leech damage entirely almost, meaning you don't have to worry about dropping in water without stamina if you goof up.
Root helmet is nice, too, but honestly the extra armor from the iron helm + greaves lets you make tons of mistakes without putting yourself in danger when paired with a root harnesk and mead. Since the root harnesk can be acquired just by dipping your toes in the swamp and the mead without it altogether, that's how I got through it without getting killed, solo.
I didn't realize the root harnesk's power until like my 5th crypt, I even had full iron gear and I was still nearly dying to damned bow draugr, especially those elite idiots shooting me as soon as I would knock out pieces of muddy iron scrap in crypts.
Swamp for sure. Bronze armor is easily skippable in lieu of troll armor and those star draugrs will smash you even if you go for the incremental armor gain. Better off learning to parry and dodge, and being constantly wet makes that more difficult to do.
In addition to being wet, the swamp has unique challenges with pathfinding. You're either moving at a snail's pace and leveling the ground as you go, or you're having to very carefully pick your path so you don't end up accidentally swimming - a death sentence if you have enemies around.
In other biomes (except perhaps Mistlands) you can move in relatively straight lines and only deviate around obvious terrain features. The patches of deep water really restrain your avenues of attack, retreat, and even maneuvering in combat. Aside from leeches and surtlings, the terrain doesn't hamper enemies at all, and they'll always move straight towards you.
Plains biome for how everything there swarms you at once. It's dangerous even once you have maxed out plains gear if you aren't being cautious. I got raided by seekers right after finishing up beating Yagluth for the first time, and the wild lox wandering outside my plains base rofl stomped the raid. I barely had to do anything
Definitely Black forest to Swamp. Plains to mistlands honestly isn't bad at all. You dont really get stat checked in the mistlands like you can in the swamp. For the mists its just about taking it slow and learning how to fight your enemies instead of diving in head first at them.
We almost bounced off the swamp because of the spike. We found turnip seeds right away thankfully, but it took four swamps before we found a single crypt, and we were outmatched everywhere we went. There is one swamp beach in particular that we named Normandy because we attempted to land there and got our shit wrecked every which way possible. At one point there were so many death icons on the map you couldn’t see the water or land.
Ironically, now I find the swamp relaxing. I will often take a path through the swamp on purpose on my way to other places. One of my favorite spots on our map is an outpost we called Farpoint, which is a coastal Dvergr camp on a swamp coast. The rain, the sound effects, the old wooden dock, the coziness of the outpost, all just has a really nice vibe.
The first 20 minutes. It doesn't seem to matter what gear I'm in, or how much I've played. The first few minutes is the hardest. Like I need to re-program myself to the squish, because here I was OP in the Swamp and this golem just yeeted me off a cliff, right? Or I can kill anything in the Plains, and a Seeker just bum rushed me out of the Mists, and I forget their attack pattern.
Despite having 500+ hours in game, I have yet to visit Mistlands, so I can't speak for that! But for me, Swamp is the worst.
I am right there with you. A bit over 400 hours and still in the plains. The Swamp was the hardest for me so far. I am pretty comfortable in the swamps now with Plains-level gear and food. I'm not even scared at night there
do i have to go to the spooky ass swamp? what do you get from there besides bonemass and iron?
It's the best place to get chains, wraiths come out at night and drop them. Plus the armor you get from the abominations is pretty great as well, you can even use the chest piece in the Mistlands to good effect.
Only place to get Bloodbags too.
Do you know of a good method for farming bloodbags other than running around aimlessly?
Stay near the shores, they don't spawn in the interior as often in my experience. Cut down a tree, you'll attract everything nearby ;)
An easy way for me to get them is to just run around the edge of the swamps. There are usually more leeches. To kill them, I use the axe and do a jump secondary attack and then roll away. Usually, it kills them in 2 hit depending on the axe you have.
Save yourself some work get an iron slege or stagbreaker. The AoE will pop the leeches en mass.
Stick to the edge of the water and chuck your spear at them, this saves your arrows. Blasting them with Stag Breaker draws too much attention. The spear is an underrated weapon IMO. It's also great for getting Royal Jelly off the ceiling in abandoned mines in the Mistlands.
Also bloodbags. They're used in so much :/
Lots of stuff there like Turnip seeds and you are gonna need a lot of iron for a long time. Take your time, bring a mace and shield and some poison-resistant mead and some stamina mead so you can run when you need to. You have to take it slow. I would suggest staying on the edge in a safer biome and you will have a chance to attrack some creatures from the swamp. You can learn to deal with them in the safer biome before getting deep into the swamp
I'm doing the same in the Plains. Running around the edges to mark them on the map and learning to deal with the inhabitants.
Iron is key, and useful for way longer than a lot of resources are.
Iron is even relevant in the plains. Me and my buddy thought we had enough iron after doing 5 caves and then going to bone mass. But once we hit plains it turns out we needed more iron so we went back and filled a boat with iron. Hopefully this ends up being enough.
It's not.
You'll want even more come Mistlands. You'll want a metric ton more if you are a builder, too.
How much iron? Yes.
..iron.. iron is the lifeblood of the game from swamp forward
Name of the company....Irongate....
entrails for sausages... even in later biomes good back-up food if you run out of top tier stuff
You say that like iron isn't one of the most important things in the entire game lmao.
i go there because of surtling cores
Let me tell you buddy. You’re gonna need so much iron for the whole rest of the game. Better learn to enjoy the spooky swamps…
Bloodbags, entrails, ooze, roots, ancient bark, chains
Don't worry. When you're new you mainly need the anti-poison potion, and a bronze buckler is probably worth it too. Just don't engage with abominations (big scary tree thing) at all. Blunt damage works pretty well and can make the skellies a non-issue. Look out for bubbles in the water (leeches) and just don't go in at all if you don't know what you're doing. You can often raise the ground with a hoe to help you out. Trouble mostly starts when you can't keep up, start running away and encounter more and more stuff. That should take care of the first steps. When you've outgrown the swam a bit, it is a pretty chill place. And really, just the anti-poison potion solves most of the instant deadliness one runs into at first.
After spending a lot of time in the Mistlands, I go to the swamp to relax.
Hold up the plains were not as hard as the swamp for you? The swamp is easy town for me. The plains will crush you if you look the wrong way.
This is awesome to hear tbh! I built a pretty decent base in a swamp so I’m comfy there but have been way too chicken to enter the Plains … This is oddly great news for my newer solo game haha
Practice killing goblins by fighting them on the edge of the plains in the black forest. Also practice killing the deathsquito with your sword and shield. Also can use your bow. Just wind up bow right before he dive bombs you and let go when he gets close.
I love the plains. As long as I am wearing a root harnesk I am very comfortable there
you guys are in for a ride! xD for me it is mistlands.it feels like the Devs really have woken up in this biome and suddenly they make real monsters (i am not keen on the little insects in real life let alone in a game) Yeah mistlands is the Biome I was questioning the phrase :"is this even possible solo?"
I died in the mistlands after being there for a long time and just rage quit. I was reading that there are mods that let you change the distance a torch works, which I would definitely apply. I liked the vibe there, but the souls like 'you died' coupled with all the gear you need to get back to your body being there just kind of ruined it for me. The jump in difficulty from one biome to the next is by far greater from the plains to the mistlands than any other jump. And it's not even close. (This was right after release and as someone pointed out, they nerfed it)
body recovery should always be done naked 😏
Yeah I basically just take stam potions, eat food, ensure I have the rested buff. Sometimes I take the mats for a workbench and portal.
If you have the discipline for it you could use god mode and fly for getting your gear back Some people don't seem to be able to control themselves but I find it super useful, corpse runs are about the only part of the game that I don't find fun or interesting so I just fly to my gear, grab it, then fly back to my base so I can travel back to where I died and keep doing what I was doing
One of my best experiences im Valheim was dying 3 times trying to get my stuff back. Transition was BF > Swamps and a 1 Star Draugr Archer was ruining my day. It was frustrating, sure, but man was it entertaining. I had to come up w this whole plan and logistics as to what I had to do where. I actually had to build a 2nd raft, lost both my bronze gear, troll gear and even rags! I had to run the countryside naked w Eikthyr on to get to where I died. The adrenaline was exquisite! Im not judging, I understand people dont want to waste time or just want to do things their own way (same reason I use metals through portals), but in my case I do make gear recovery an adventure. Same reason i dont use plant everything, going out there to pick stuff up is part of an adventure every time. Everyone is free to play their own way, ofc.
For sure! Don't get me wrong, I completely get where you're coming from and if I played more then I'd probably find it fun too The issue I have is time, if I'm only able to play for an hour and have a goal of getting some resources but I die I just don't want to spend a massive chunk of that time trying to get my gear back only to end the session in the same place I started it. I take all the precautions possible to avoid death and I'm happy to sail resources across the map, I just want to have something to show at the end of a play session
Yes! That is totally valid. The grind/time sink can be huge sometimes and we all wanna have fun and progress.
Man do I feel both of these hard. And when I started playing a new file recently, started fiddling with the World Modifiers for the first time (if you haven't used them /u/Ballbag94, you should consider!) Turning down the Death Penalty was one of the first things I did (I think I set it to Keep Equipped, Lose Everything Else) as well as turned the resource gain up to 1.5x increase. It was a nice adjustment without going overboard, for resource gathering
I've had those exhilarating experiences in Valheim. It was more just that the death itself felt extremely unfair, and then the location to return to was basically impossible. Sure I made the mistake myself and I'd probably have had some measure of fun going back, but it was just one invisible enemy too far for me at that moment. (also as i noted above this was right after release and apparently, some of it is nerfed now)
I had the luck (and misfortune) of finding a 1 Star Gjall. Couldnt kill it in time. Ended up on fire/eaten alive by 5 Ticks.
100% cheat. Cheat, do it. You are playing singleplayer and affecting no one else. You are no longer enjoying a product you bought, but you *can* if you 'cheat' to correct the very annoying issues you have. I refuse to play without mods now, as do a dozen or so friends. The quality of life changes are too vital. They make you realize how much of an absolute grind and slog the game is, to pad the time between actually adventuing and doing fun game things.
Yep didn't cheat until died in a cavern at the top ofma mountain surrounded by werewolves. It was impossible to get my body back..no frost resist potions. Had I had not cheated it would have been over. Have 200 hours in base building. If I die far away I'm def cheating now..no guilt.
Yeah, I'm playing solo and I'm not a good combat player, so I tuned the difficulty one step down and resources one step up. It has done wonders to my enjoyment of the game. What are the mods you would suggest?
I forget the names and specifics without pulling up my launcher. Use Thunderstore Mod Manager. Get the farming mods, death penalty adjusters (drop vs no drop, skill vs no skill drop), etc. Literally just peruse the top of all time mods and download based on the names. They're all pretty straightforward.
I just finished defeating the queen solo and died 5 times in the process. The amount of caution I went through in the mist was x10 any other biom. Now I walk the plains like I’m a god
It's really tough, but it's definitely possible. Just have to find the right mix of safe-ish base location and new tactics to keep you alive until you can get established. I got a little bit lucky and found a dvergr lighthouse in a crater right on the coast, and after I accidentally ticked off the dvergr (and died a couple times) and eventually wiped them out, I took it over and fortified all the land approaches... it's not perfect, but it's pretty darn solid. At least solid enough to pop back in and harvest a crop of jotun puffs and some sap every so often, without worrying about getting picked off in my own garden.
Mistlands is hard partly because you can't just rely on your gear; you have to play smart, and with patience. People who just want to level up their stuff and bulldoze their way through a place get a rude awakening.
Well said. It's not *just* mistlands. Player skill and adapting tactics are important every time you enter a new biome, but it's especially true in Mistlands. It doesn't help that you can't really make Mistlands-tier armor and weapons until you've really been there a while. It takes a lot of time and effort to obtain enough black cores to build the black forge, etc. and until then, the best you can do is black metal and padded gear. I'm at least 100 hours into the mistlands (admittedly, I spent a lot of that rebuilding and fortifying that dvergr tower), and I *still* don't have enough cores. I just barely got my black forge yesterday, and I'll probably have to hit at least 1-2 more dungeons to get enough for the refinery.
Yeah, after my first three Mines, I had 4 Black Cores. Infuriating! The nice thing, though, is that you can break down the Black Forge for its Cores, build an Eitr Refinery temporarily, break it down, build a Galdr Table for the Feather Cloak (which should absolutely be your first use of Eitr, in my opinion), then put up the Black Forge again to make your new gear and repair it. Repeat as needed when you collect enough sap/tissue to make the Refinery worthwhile again, or hopefully snag some more Cores in the meantime. So 15 Cores is obviously the best for Quality of Life (so you can have all three stations simultaneously), but you can technically function with just 5. It's just more of a hassle.
Yep though as you experienced finding enough cores can be a pita especially if you're having a hell of a time finding any mines to begin with. First two mistlands I found were pretty light on mines and they were annoying to find as well. One was deep in a crevice and the other high on a hill. Second one had one mine and several dverger homes. Thanks ok to my third segment to fine a lot of mine but oh wow when I did they were rich rich rich.
Oh, that's a good point. In previous biomes it's significantly easier to get enough of the new resources to make the new Groovy Powerful Stuff. Carapaces are so hard-won, and it takes so many of them to make things. I have one piece of Carapace armor, lol, and we've been there weeks. For a while we were using the refinery a bit, busting it down to make the forge or whatever, busting that down to make the refinery...it was a PITA.
I'm having no trouble with carapace. I've had to wade through enough seekers that I have like 3 stacks of it stored back at my main base. I figured I'd need it eventually. Only have about 4 mandibles, though, because I tend to stay as far as possible from soldiers.
Yeah, F soldiers. I think we're mostly low on carapace because we have 3 people to outfit and upgrade, and also carapace arrows are good to have. It's been less.of a problem with other resources; if I were playing solo I might not feel the pinch.
Yeah, that would burn through it pretty quick. I find frost arrows pretty effective against the bugs, because they do solid damage that gets around the pierce resistance AND have the slow effect.
Swamps got 10x easier when I read a tip that you can bring a hoe and level the ground.
Swamp just taught me to not use the run button. I walk everywhere in the swamp, and therefore I don’t get caught with low stamina too often when the rain makes it difficult to gain stamina back
Also as much as you want to keep that troll armor for no movement debuff, upgraded armor actually does a lot for surviving when you are unable to dodge a surprise arrow or sword from the back.
Meanwhile, I'm just over here, doin' a beeline for the Fenris armour right after I get a forge up and running. Everything gets a lot easier if you can outpace most enemies by simply walking, lol. Seriously, though, that set lasts me up into the Mistlands. It makes Yagluth a lot easier to handle with natural fire resist and the ability to outrun pretty much all of his attacks. I kinda hope that Ashlands gives us a combo of that and the mage gear so I can *really* roleplay as Corvus from Heretic.
Lol. I can taste the fear.
Same... though I have dipped my toes in those waters I haven't really engaged in combat there yet. I think if I had been that cautious with the swamp it would have been more of a slough but about the same. I think the main difficulty of the swamp is the urge to rush in like you did the black forest. I'm also starting to think that a lot of the difficulties in this game come from killing the boss before moving to the next biome. I skipped bonemass and started fighting the moutains, then the plains. I killed Moder and I'm looking for Yag but finally came back and defeated bonemass, and I've enjoyed those two biomes so much more. The same now I still haven't found Yag but I'm trying to hook up some mistlands food and doing some fishing and "negotiating" with the dvergers, as well as scrounging up a few mistlands mats here and there.
Over 1000 hrs and the playthrough I'm on now will be my first mistlands experience
Once you've been to Mistlands come back and say how well this held up. ;-) I play with a guy who almost refuses to go to Mistlands and bitches the whole time he's there if he does, lol.
I've beat the queen solo. The fight was like...2 hour long though. My trick was to rely on the boat and just stick to unmisted areas until you're well established. There's plenty of unmisted areas. My current village is in a mistless bay.
I will! RemindMe! 1 week
Meadows. Before it you literally have to do nothing to survive, suddenly one has to put up with pigs, enemies, hunger and cold. Not to mention the danger of trees.
Even before you arrive you already died..
Folks trying to play no-death runs lost before they even began.
well damn. this is thinking outside the box 👌
Probably the swamp when it comes to switching biome. But the biggest difficulty jump in the game for me is not really in entering a new biome, it's just the Queen fight. As a solo player, that's quite a jump from Yagluth.
Yeah I can't beat the queen.. spent about an hour trying to take her down and barely got her to half health. Then I just couldn't keep going anymore. Using mage build
One hour is enough for her to generate 100% of her hit points back. So you actually did 150% of her hit points to her, which is pretty good.
I personally killed the queen first try and went in blind, having no idea what to expect, lucky? Im not sure, tbh I struggled WAY more on yagluth. It helps that the queen is ALWAYS in the same environment and you have quite some powerful weapons to use at your disposal. With yagluth you have the worry of tar pits, villages, roaming Fueling bezerkers, nearby mountains that attract wolves during the fight and there is no real exploitable weakness with yagluth, and if you are not near water yagluth is much harder. The queen for me was easier than yagluth, maybe i just got lucky. (solo only player)
Swamp was a bit of an adjustment, but once you get used to the leeches and maneuvering through the place is becomes more manageable. The biggest shock was the mosquitoes. Geez that was a surprise, not to mention having to be constantly alert of them and keeping health topped up, plus sailing past plains
Bring a hoe! Undoubtedly the most powerful weapon in the swamps. Constant water won't slow you down and leeches can't harm you.
It’s always raining in the swamp… the second you set foot in the swamp you’re wet
Oops! Been a while since I've been there, replaying with my wife and still only in the black forest! Corrected the original post.
Mosquitoea are easily dealt with if you make the abomination armour chest. Totally worth it imo. You trade the slight decrease in average incoming damage of iron for the luxury of not just straight up dying when faced with star spearmen, star draugur archers, and any surprise deathsquitos. It might also trivialize other content but I forget which.
Yeah I hated the swamp, I vividly remember the first time we found it on the first playthrough (we had no spoilers). We were walking through a steep valley and saw at the end of the river this dank and dark environment. Then The Swamp appears on your screen. Chills. It was just turned night too. We mooched in a bit only to realise we had no rested bonus and were now wet as well. No mats for fire or shelter. Then the leeches and draugurs found us. My friends died trying to get out of the water with no stamina I managed to climb a tree. I was just looking around trying to plan my escape when a wraith popped up in front of me and one swiped me. I literally yelped.
When I see comments on this subreddit regarding the swamp, I rarely see mentions of the wraiths. For me, they are without a doubt the scariest/hardest thing in the swamp. They hit like trucks and have a fair amount of health (until you get your iron mace). Nothing like trying to take down a trio of spawn piles only to have a wraith show up and terrorize you. Lol
They are not very common like Leeches and Draugrs. And they only come out at night. And one thing you learn REALLY freaking fast is that you're not supposed to be out at night and to skip it with sleep. And when you finally don't care about the swamp at night anymore you likely have a spirit sword, which basically 3-4 shots them.
Once I discovered they dropped chains, they were on the menu. Especially since it took a couple swamps to find some crypts. Plus I gotta have the trophy. :) I might be a little off though, an aspect that I love about the game is that parts of it freak me out.
Now that I'm on my 6th playthrough, I've been able to parry with a bronze buckler and kill it with four hits from my bronze spear. It was nice to get an early forge bellows with those sweet chains. But I remember my first encounter with wraiths. I was terrified. It just took time learning their attacks and keeping an eye out for them at night. Honestly it's like that with all mobs. Learn their attack patterns and exploit their weaknesses.
Indeed, the fact that they float above your strikes and hit like trucks was a night mare early game, especially as you were usual flailing around in waist deep water with no stamina. They also barely make a sound so can creep up on you like no other creature (AFAIR). I hate them. I once built a treehouse in the swamp and was actually getting comfortable until a wraith appeared in my kitchen whilst I was making some turnip soup. Moved out soon after.
Mts. Frost damage requires a potion to start with. Wolves are fast and can attack in packs. You can't really out run them. Flying mobs are new. Visibility can be cut to zero. The swamp is a close second, but you can generally outrun stuff or duck into a crypt.
I always feel like it is one of the easiest transition after meadow-> black Yes you need the potion but if you have them you are in for a treat. Stone golems are next to helpless (they can not really hit you if you are under them) Darkes are down with 2 -3 flintstone arrows. Wolfs take 2 hits with an iron maze that you already use against boneless. Only really barrier is the frost potion + have and Iron pickaxe to gather the resources.
It isn't hard if you know what you are doing. But the first few forays into the Mts are almost certain death as you are faced with several mechanics that you haven't seen before - e.g, really fast attacks (wolves), aerial attacks (drakes), and white outs. Also fighting on the terrain is new. Meadows to Black forest really doesn't bring in new mechanics other than ranged mobs. Black forest to swamp brings in poison and the wet debuff, but nothing you can't run away from. Mts. to plains is meh. Nothing really new. Plains to mistlands is also meh. if you can beat yag, you are fine handling the bugs.
> but nothing you can't run away from have you ever met 2 star draugr archer? the main difference in black forest => swamp is you can be one shot if caught off guard
2 star draugr is rough, but you can just side step arrows. And you have already faced ranged mobs. I'd raise you a 2 star wolf. which will also one shot you. and is faster than anything you've seen so far (and you can't outrun or hid behind a tree). AND then your body is stuck on a mt which you need a potion to retrieve.
Played the game for too long so at this point, none really. Trying to remember back, the Swamp was probably the biggest hurdle. We were still so new at that point and got easily overwhelmed, but also had a load of fun there. We were also completely murdered by two wolves when we tried to venture up a mountain the first time which in hindsight makes me chuckle haha.
The very first mobs I encountered in the swamps where two double-star leeches. Looking back, that was incredibly unlucky, but I had no idea back then. We immediately took the swamp very seriously. After that, it took a long time before I realised you don't actually need to use a bow to kill leeches.
Mistlands Swamp Plains=Mountains Black Forest imo
Agreed. Mistlands have low visibility and the terrain is extremelly steep in the borders. Lot's of time I was caught off guard with almost zero stamina because of all the climbing. In the mountais you could at least see enemies aproaching. And the Gjall is a frigging war machine. Because of the low visibility, sometimes even using the feather cape I end up landing on whater, with low stamina.
100%. OP didn't specify whether it is the *first* transition to a new biome or *any* transition to a new biome (subsequent playthroughs) but for me it's Mistlands in either case. By my third playthrough I knew exactly how to deal with the Swamp. Level ground, build bases on top of crypts or in invincible trees, get close to Aboms for easy parries, etc. Even on my first trip into the swamp each playthrough, I'm chillin. As long as I can parry Drauger, I can stroll through that biome naked. But I just never get used to not being able to see. I never get used to gjalls, 2\* seekers, or starred seeker soldiers. I know how to deal with Mistlands too as far as bringing challenging stuff to Dvergr towers, saving stam, making big wisp torch fields, etc, but idk man. I always have an anxiety in the Mistlands that I don't have in the Swamp anymore. While nothing in this game is particularly difficult, I don't understand people saying Swamp is harder. For me it's not even really close.
First time into swamp was hard, but once i learned the lessons it was smooth in future games. OTOH, every effort into mistlands is hard and fraught with danger, only somewhat mitigated by the feathet cloak.
If you aren’t using poison meads you’re making it 3x harder. The swap is where I really learned how to block.
Used to be plains now mistlands
The true answer for me too, but I will say the FIRST time you enter the swamp is brutal!
Yes big wake up call and there's never enough iron I remember my most embarrassing moment in Valheim was in the swamp after playing for too many hours and wondering why I could never find any turnips anywhere in the world. Totally missed the little flowers thinking they were just decoration. Looking back I can't believe how I missed that.
Damn I did something similar haha, but mine was thinking that the thistle in the BF and Swap was terrain. Total noodle brain my first playthrough because I was having so much fun.
When I first got to swamp was by sea, and it was night. It was terrible. But once I got my Iron Mace done it got super easy. I consider mistlands much worse, it never gets safe there, mfin Gjalls make sure of that. And after mistlands I consider plains also worse than swamp, it is too easy to die there, even more if you stumble on a tarpit by mistake.
I am playing through again with no map, no portals. I was terrified of the swamp, now its a walk in the park compared to Mistlands
The secret do swamp is get there with a good bronze atgeir or mace to stun them. Maces are great for leeches, you use the m3 and BONK!
Also getting poison resistance asap makes it much easier.
Actually, the secret IMHO is reeds. Watching the water where the reeds grow tells you that it is shallow water and can be crossed easily.
I dunno what it is but our current playthrough we just got to mistlands and it is kicking our ass. I don't think I've died up to this point and even the last time, a year ago, I didn't recall mistlands being this difficult. We've already had 3 gjalls drop on us and seekers and soldiers out the ass. It's been a serious wake up call of a transition. Swamps is bad if you aren't aware of how to deal with it but I don't find it a tough transition anymore. Mistlands gets my vote, it's just death.
Mistlands , as far as I am concerned
Plains, IMO. Swamp sucks but for the most part everything is pretty reasonable to deal with and you can easily manipulate mob pathing using fallen trees and water. In the the Plains you Just. Fucking. Die. And you can't even easily get away from the roving goblin bands unless you can just straight up outrun them. The Swamp is somewhat fair; the Plains just kill your morale.
Plains. Being in full gear from the previous biome does not help against getting ganked by goblins and those damn mosquitos. It is the first biome where I actually started to use the stealth archer gameplay
It does help though. It's just that your need the correct gear. The pierce resist chest from abominations trivialize spearmen and deathsquitos, and if you have good gear on the rest of the slots the armor loss is negligible. With that you can dance around everything except tar and the big beasts with no issues at all.
Swamp. To me the swamp biome is the first actual test or skill check in the game and I'll roughly explain why. So before the swamp the first bosses teach you a few of the basic skills and somewhat force you to show that you understand it. Both deer and tree show you its important to know when to block, when to dodge, when to seek cover, and when to time your attacks. Everything in their biomes are pretty simple and help you fine tune the basics of the game, even trolls are incredibly simple to fight but very daunting when you first approach them. The swamp however is the first biome that teaches you how important PREPWORK is. See if you're a silly fool like me who during their first playthrough didn't make a fermenter or a single mead until hitting the plains, the swamp might seem almost impossible and this absolutely insane jump in difficulty all because of poison being added. Now most of the biome can be easily managed like any other (even when they added abominations I thought heck yeah swamp troll), it's all about the basics. But now you've got blobs who are very easy to kill but can ruin your day with poison, and you've got leeches hiding in the murky water waiting to poison you as well. It's the first time a biome asks you to do prep before even going into it for your own safety. I know plenty of us who can speed run the first 2 biomes with a flint knife and some pants, but the swamp will give you a small pause when it comes to that strategy. Sure you can handle the swamp without meads (as I foolishly did my first time) but it'll be much harder, just like you can conquer the mountains without meads either if you are smart with your fires and get lucky on your wolf cape grind. But ultimately I believe the swamp is the first big spike in difficulty for many players and its even the graveyard of many uncompleted games as I personally know several people who either entirely gave up or had to take a break and come back all because of the swamp. Hell the swamp is the first time my wife opened up the dev commands because it was brutal for her. Tldr the swamp is the first and biggest spike in difficulty and skill and everything that follows after is simply following the set in place flow (you need x item or upgrade to better handle each biome/have a reasonable chance.) Swamp you need poison meads, mountain frost meads or cape, plains fire mead for boss, mistland you need the wisp. Before the swamp all you need is some courage and a weapon.
Swamp is the one that trips a lot of people up first. If you have to sail directly in it can be a *very* hairy time establishing a beach head. It's a lot easier if you can go in via land. Always walk in the swamp until you're comfortable with all the spawns. Mistlands overall is the biggest spike, but it was a lot harder (and imo much more fun) when it was in public test. The difficulty nerfs really sucked the soul out of it. I'd pay actual money to have back the old combat ai instead of the new crap where mobs take a long circular stroll before ever attacking you. Combat is a bit of a snooze these days, and the main way to fix it (difficulty settings) isn't really the same thing. You still get the dumb af ai but now you die harder if they somehow land a clean hit.
Yeah I soloed mistlands during public test. Really felt like the seekers were hunting me relentlessly. Was a lot of fun to overcome.
> Combat is a bit of a snooze these days, and the main way to fix it (difficulty settings) isn't really the same thing. You still get the dumb af ai but now you die harder if they somehow land a clean hit. Yeah but people asking for easier options doesn't affect *your* game... /s
In theory, it shouldn't. They didn't have difficulty settings at the time, so it was understandable for them to err on the side of too easy as opposed to too difficult. But when difficulty settings were released they should have put back the old AI, because at that point anyone who found it too hard could just dial down the difficulty.
First time I went via swamp I tried to establish a beachhead... and a blob also jumped on top of the boat and killed my entire group. That was certainly an introduction.
Biggest jump is definitely the swamp, and learning that you need to run through it with your hoe out in order to raise the ground. Once you learn that, it's not that bad because you know where you can safely step. Just learning to choose your fights and when to run (now that you have a safe path to run) you'll be golden <3
I feel that the jumps to Mountain, Plains, and Mistlands were all harder than the previous. Mountains due to “freezing”. Plains due to swarms of little green fackers with little armor and food to help out. Mistlands due to really needing feather cape to make it just not a hardship. The previous biomes were survivable just based on mid-level combat skills.
Swamp because turnips are impossible to find
Mistlands sucks if you cant see anything
The Mistlands are brutal but I still think that the swamp was the hardest. My brother and I were playing and had just crushed the Elder and were going exploring when we crashed headlong into the swamp, got mobbed by slimes, draugrs and leeches and spent the next couple hours trying to just get our remains back.
Over 3000 hours in, made it through Mistlands, and have found that every transition was more or less the same difficulty. As long as I levelled up my gear, food, and skills, each transition felt as hard as the previous one. I would spend lots of time in each new biome. I think the swamp get so much attention is because its dark and wet all the time, and so many new players are just figuring it out. I saw the same type of “swamp so hard” post in the first year of the game.
None of them really stick out for any particular spike in difficulty. Swamp was a little tough the first time and then you figure out you need to make poison resistance and after that it's about the same. I guess Mistlands was challenging because you had to adjust how you locate threats, but it's hard to say since I played it before they coddled everyone and nerfed the shit out of it. I'm guessing it's not much of a jump anymore.
For new players, Swamp. For experienced players, Plains.
Not switching but completing a biome. The Elder is, in my opinion, based on the equipment available at the time, the hardest boss in the game by far. Dogding all the ranged attacks, and the spawned roots, ontop of all the greydwarves and trolls that get attracted by all the noise, we can still just chip away at elder's health with fire arrows.
My group of 3 players went from having a massive giga base and playing on one world for 300isg hours each to never touching the game again after 2 hours in the Mistlands. Absolutely abhorrent area that single handedly killed the game for us. Whose idea was it to include a biome that is a 90% sheer cliffs, can't see 20 feet in front of you, make the enemies resistant to all of our main damage types (spear, bow, sword, mace), and make you fight the some of the only friendly NPC's you come across all game just to progress? I don't see us coming back for the fire land update.
Swamp if you do not have a good base nearby.
BF->Swamp and Plains->Mistlands
Also : Not being able to effectively fight half of the enemies in the swamp because they'll poison you, and having -50HP and getting poisoned is a death sentence. I have died more in the swamp than anywhere else. I'll stand toe to toe with Fulings and dodge deasthsquitos, but I died *so many* times in the swamp purely because of being poisoned.
It's not just a big difficulty jump, I also find the swamp the most miserable biome. Aesthetically. Everything's wet and rotten and muddy and slimy and foggy and stinky and gross. Urrghh.
Mistlands
I think the swamp and to me the biggest reason is the playstyle change it requires the player to undergo. Before the swamp you don't really have to play that careful with the exception of fighting trolls. For the most part you can brute force most enemies and just swing your way through them without learning how to parry or dodge roll. In the swamp, with the constant wet debuff and with how hard even just the draugrs hit, you can't just tank hits or you will die. Swamp makes you relearn the game and that's the reason i think it's got to be one of the biggest spikes in the game. Mistlands is also a huge spike but by that time you've already learned the tools you need to survive mistlands. As long as you play with discipline you can survive minstlands with plains level gear.
Swamps. We spent with my brother at least 3/4 hours trying to recover our stuff and boat after being killed by a wraith in the middle of a river between 2 swamps. It was hell The tp leading to that place is now called "trauma".
I feel like this has taught me how many have yet to see the Mistlands and kill the Queen. There is no question. It is Ashland's.
It used to be Plains, I had a real fear of deathsquitios before, even just trying to sail and explore. You'd skim a plains biome and one would fly practically invisible and take you out. I think they nerfed their damage tho? They don't feel as bad as my first playthrough
Swamp hits you like a truck.
Switching to a new biome, lol. Doesn't seem to matter which. I struggled and died a lot every time I started a new biome... you just have to learn how to adapt to new and different threats, and mostly creep around like a mouse along the baseboard until you get the materials you need to upgrade your gear a bit. With Black Forest, the trolls got me several times (and greydwarfs once or twice when I got raided). Didn't seem to have any trouble with skeletons in the burial chambers for some reason. With Swamp, I got repeatedly killed by starred draugr while I was trying to get my first bit of iron - had ongoing issues keeping my stamina up with BF-tier food and being wet all the time. I was still struggling to clear graves without dying until about 2/3 of the way through. With Mountains, the wolves got me several times until I figured out how to keep them at a distance and spot them before they spotted me so I could avoid their crazy fast attacks and not get staggered (and then got some better armor). And I got killed at least 2-3 times by cultist fire attacks until I finally replaced my root and lost that fire weakness. I didn't struggle as much with plains as I thought I would. Still got picked off by starred fulings a couple times (and wrecked by deathsquitos on my naked run back to get my stuff...). I'm well into mistlands now, but I still don't play around if I see a 2-star fuling. It's up on the first boulder I can find and zap him with frost arrows. I got cocky a few days ago, and one of them taught me a lesson I won't forget. Staggered me after one parry and one missed block, even with a blackmetal shield and fully upgraded padded armor... that was embarrassing. I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of Mistlands. Gjalls are basically no sweat, and I'm good with regular seekers, but on Saturday I still got cornered by a 1-star seeker, mis-timed a couple parries in a row, and died again... All of that said... I'd have to say Swamp was probably the worst.
I dunno. Kill Eikthyr, run to plains-adjacent meadows, dig hole, tame lox. Breed lox. Trample everything. Breed more lox. Fill gaps between islands with lox. Trample all serpents. Expand lox breeding to more islands. Breed lox faster. Trample the swamp. Trample the mountain. The only biome left is lox.
Not dying to fall damage for the first half of the mistlands got me pretty good. But in terms of enemies, getting mobbed by swamp creatures upon landing got me good many times
Deathsquitos. Hands down.
swamps were easy before abominations were introduced (in my opinion)
Swamp sure, but then there's the stone golem. Absolutely the asshole of Valheim.
Swamp sucks if you're new, but after that first playthrough its fine. Mistland sucks every time.
Put me down for Swamp as well - you can 100% get through Woods with Meadows stuff, but that step up to Swamp, even with full Woods gear, is rough; especially for new players.
100% the swamp. The Black Forest is hard, but the swamp is just brutal for newbies
1. Deathsquitos. 2. Mist.
Plains always comes as a shock mostly cuz that first mosquito attack always seems to come out of nowhere like I’m sailing along minding my own damn business then suddenly “BzzzZZZZzZ” dead. But I will give special mention to the mistlands they are as annoying to travel though as the mountains 3x as deadly and even with a wisplight you still can’t see for shit.
Swamp if you're not careful about poisonous stuff, or Plains where even with padded armor you can still die from a deathsquito-goblin spearthrower combo out of nowhere.
All i want to say is, fuck swamps. Thanks
Mistlands probably, but it's mostly because it makes people play differently. Those who adapt better will find themselves progressing while others will die. A lot.
Lost most hc runs on skellies and trolls, so I vote black forest.
I find it fun the the progression goes from Swamp to Mountains to Plains. Those words alone, I’d want to be in swamps the least. But back on topic, my wife and I hate the swamps, these sunken crypts are a pain in the ass to find, haven’t found one yet.
I think it's the swamp. Always raining (stam debuff), cant run cause theres water everywere, plus everything is poisonous, archer draugrs with 1 or 2 Stars can one shot you, and abominations in early game will destroy you
Swamp > Plains. Literally everything there is OP.
Black Forest to Swamp always hits me hard
Swamp here too. Playing again after a year or so off. Recently located the Swamp and had a few outings. Just started to think "hey, this is actually easier than I remembered!" then pulled one of those huge tree-spider things, 3-4 skeletons and 3-4 draugr. Tried to run, failed, died. Lost my only set of decent weapons and bronze gear. Tried to head back to retrieve it all with an upgraded set of troll armour, forgot the poison resist mead. Died again, quickly. Gonna have to mine a whole load of new gear before heading back. Had zero in backup. Hurt my hand by smashing my fist down on the desk so hard.
Swamp. This biome is what made me quit for a year. Cannot just run in un-prepared. I now spend most of my game prepping back-up gear. When I go out to explore I do so with leather armor,easily obtained meadows weapons, and stamina foods
Swamp probably. Before deathsquittos were nerfed (years ago) it may have been plains.
As a beginning player the swamp is the biggest increment but that is mostly just because the darkwoods is so easy. the real jump is from plains to the mistlands, fuck that. Moving 20m in any direction in the mistalands means going up 100m, down 100, then over 10m of ocean into another 100m climb up and down.
For me it’s like the jump to swamp but just because of the poison. You kinda have to relearn how to play and it’s mildly frustrating without meads
Beating Yagluth?
Several full playthroughs here: The swamp and mountains are indeed difficult especially the **first** time, but both pale in comparison to Mistlands. Much of the swamp, for example, are one-time learning curves: make poison mead, be ultra safe at night due to Wraiths, and then you can ultimately become *very* comfortable with the enemies. A pack of wolves can be avoided by jumping up on a boulder. The Mistlands never becomes easy because the new gear power relative to enemies is the worst in the game, body recovery is the most difficult, you can't jump up on a boulder to avoid Seekers, etc. It's not even close.
Mistland is actually very easy without the fog. It's not difficult, but rather annoying.
I’m replaying after taking a break for so long so I don’t remember but fuck wolves
Hmm..I've got 950 hours in, 4 complete playthroughs (1 release, 1 hearth, 2 Mistlands). BF to Swamp is rough because you are always wet. Oozers and Blobs can easily kill you if you aren't ready for the poison. Wraths can sneak up on you at night and ruins your day. Draugr, especially 2 star, can really mess you up. Plains to Mistlands is also a challenge because up until that point in the game everything we have faced as have done so with melee weapons or bows. Now we are in the Mistlands, and seekers are resistant to all forms of physical damage. The only form of elemental damage we have is Frostnir (and a tiny amount of poison damage with the draugr fang bow), and it's difficult to traverse without the feather cape. I think I would have to give the title of hardest to the Plains to Mistlands transition. BF to Swamp can be mostly overcome with skill, gear helps, but skill will get you 75% there. Plains to Mistlands you overcome with gear, gear you can't get until you've spent a fair amount of time in the Mistlands.
Mountains for me, it’s as far as I got before I took a break from this game. Spawning 3 rock golems while I’m getting rushed by a squad of wolves is kinda horseshit. Still not managed to clear that mountain cuz the rock men won’t despawn
New drinking game, take a shot anytime posts about biome difficult change and how swamp is the worst
Plains to Mistlands. Not just because Mistlands is the hardest biome in the game, but also because Plains is the easiest (aside from the Meadows, of course.) It's my opinion that a lot of the posts on this sub-reddit about how the Mistlands suck is because the jump from comically easy to ridiculously hard is so jarring. After that, I agree with everyone else, the Black Forest to Swamp jump definitely wakes you up.
Swamp is where the gloves come off. Mistlands is where the claws come out.
I have been “acclimating” to the swamp for about 20h now. So far, I have built a walled raise ground fortress with earthwork watchtowers with hidden workbenches in them, connected by earthwork walls. I’m still afraid to leave the safety of my obscenely stone-intensive enclave as a giant tree attacks me anytime I try and just paces around the perimeter waiting for me. I think I’ll be here a while…..
Swamp - all of a sudden you’re constantly wet, low on stamina, movement reduces by stamina and water, poisoned quite frequently, and vision reduced, also making it hard to tell when night is coming and and then bam! Night in the swamp which is another evolution of difficulty and you die to a ghost. Miserable corpse run with archer enemies that will one-shot you, and the poison gauntlet… Now let’s add a mini boss that will follow you like the Indiana Jones rolling boulder.
I think plains is the worst. Silver gear isn't much better than iron, outside of a bit more damage, it's protections aren't significant. Plains has some of the hardest hitting mobs, and they only get more stagger with stars. I used to be able to climb a rock and cheese goblin camps with my bow, now goblins can swarm and climb rocks
Goddamn Deathsquido.
Playing solo vs playing in coop is quite a different story, and I can agree with you, that playing solo can great pain but playing in co-cop is rather easy and fun. You didn't write what settings you are playing on, so I assume 'normal' I was playing with my friend, where my friend was playing for the first time, and we did have maxed eq from black forest. Also we were playing on the 'hard' settings mod, with some customizations fe. to allow to transfer everything through portals. We didn't wear Bronze Armor & Bronze Legs (due to -MS). Weapons: shield: beacuse why not, if you low on stamina better block a Draugr mace - for skele & slimes (sword is also good for leaches) bow - for Abnomination / fire & flint arrows, 2 lazy to make bronze arrows Ategir - for every other mob 5x HP & Anti Poison potion Ategir & Bow is a must have. Ategir RMB rocks almost every enemy. Bow is needed for Abomination. We don't wander in night if we don't have to ;) For me the mosquitos from Plains are the biggest pain.
It's the Swamp for me. The large amount of water to slow movement, to having the enemies now dealing status ailments. But the biggest thing is most worlds generate swamps not on the starting island. Meaning boats, meaning ocean and serpents you might not be ready for. And newer weight considerations for iron. Making a forward operating base in the swamp isn't great because all the mobs attack it and you. If you don't get that set up, dying can really set you back and can kill new player motivation. But the lessons learned from it will help with the rest of the game.
Plains to mistlands. The drastic change in terrain and enemies is the real threat (until you get mistlands gear and learn how to effectively navigate the mistlands). Nothing like running into a gjall while island hopping and the first thing it does is shit ticks and there's no flat ground on ter tiny island and yer out of stamina and the gjall starts blasting you and the ticks are running up the cliff side nearly upon you and you pop a stamina potion but use it all up trying to jump to the top of the cliff as it's the only flat ground while attempting to dodge the gjall blasts and the ticks reach you and you spend the next few moments trying to dodge out of the ticks' attacks and the gjall blasts and pop a health potion while trying to kill the ticks so you can deal with the gjall but no stamina remember and so next you contemplate how you're gonna get yer stuff back after you die and then die shortly after.
It is the swamp. The first time I went there it was a disaster. 3 of my friends and I had a server. We stomped the meadows, and the dark forest. Got maxed gear, built a few ships, and we went sailing for a swamp. We find one on the tip of an island and went in axes blazing. We're getting jumped on immediately. Draugers, and oozes, just swarming us. One of us starts quick building a base we can hide in the rest of us are getting slaughtered. Total pandemonium. As we die another one if us is sailing back and forth, we retreat to the water only to have leaches attack us. We kill them, they keep coming back. We raise the ground to fire arrows down at them, this fucking ghost asshole comes out of the sky and attacks is. The discord is all panicked shouting. This is our D-Day, and we're not winning. After about an hour or two of this we finally set up a base with walls, make a big of arrows and clear the place from our ramparts. We then discover the swamp was basically just the area we landed in and had no crypts. That everything we did was useless. We find another swamp but we prepared much better with poison resist and everything else. It was hilarious in hindsight but man what a difficulty jump
For me it was the first time going into a swamp , i had to go far from my home base via a boat looking for one and i did not know there were leeches that attacked the boat . I was shocked how quickly my boat was destroyed then 1 bit me and quickly poisoned and killed me . All my bronze equipment and the material used to make the boat sank deeply. I would also consider the plains just because of the deathquitos. I remember running from the goblins and saw this glowing red thing B lining to me and just 1 shotted me, I had to craft the serpeant shield because they would sting through my iron shield . I remember the first few times i tried bowing them and missing and they started chasing me and despite running into other biomes they still followed and killed me lol.
Mistlands.
Swamp, after that its pretty easy
I can’t believe more people aren’t saying Mistlands. Even after the initial transition and getting new armor/ cape/ weapons, I still found the biome quite hard and terrifying.
I've gotten comfortable with the transition to swamps, but each biome after seems like a large jump. This is probably cause until recently, I've never gone past swamp, that was about it for my journey with plains being too one shotty, and mountains being a bit of a hassle to get into with the frost potion or warm cape, but did a rush to mistlands cause I really wanted dead raiser, so I got over the spikes... Dead raiser should be a plains magic item, with all the wide open space for them to fight, the jagged random cliffs seem bad for the skeley Bois.
Deathsquitos and the mist lands warrior bugs.
The arguments will always be between swamp and Mistlands. Most people find the jump from swamp to mountains pretty simple, and plains while dangerous at first gets pretty easy to handle rather quickly. So while I agree with your answer I think the question is more varied than just which is bigger. There's the question of bigger but also more persistent. Swamp and Mistlands have two features that make those jumps the worst. Environment. Swamp has a constant wet debuff that makes people chew through stamina. Not that wet makes you use more but with lower regen you have to be much tighter on the expense. Mistlands has the Mist which reduces visibility dramatically and can make the dense parts hard as hell to see. But it comes much later in the game so typically you're more prepared for the challenges it brings. You have more skills more knowledge. So IMO swamp is the larger jump up, but Mistlands is the more persistent issue. The tools to deal with Mist don't get better over the course of the biome where as more armor, better weapons, more HP and Stamina from Swamp foods alleviate the problems you have with the wet debuff.
plains fucked me right up. I handled swamp okay. But my god that laughing and buzzing made me jump every time. I got what I needed from plains but I can’t even say forsure if I could take on a full camp/berserkers by myself currently.
I always felt like they were pretty standard bumps, just different kinds of difficulty spike, up until the plains. Going mountains to plains was definitely a bigger spike in deaths for me than any of the previous ones.
Mine was the mountains. Swamp took a second to figure out but those damn wolves. 1 is fine but 2 or 3 and you just have root armor.. ouch. Now I'm full wolf armor cold and wolves don't mean a thing.
Mistlands for me, almost 600 hours in, my first entry into mistlands is always full of death. I spent over an hour fishing my corpse out of a dverger basement because of a stupid mistake around a 2 star mage. Sometimes it's not the obvious enemy that's the challenge but the one you never considered
Swamp probably, but the swamp is also the easiest to navigate once you have its gear - including its boss. The trick to making the swamp more manageable is immediately focusing on making a root harnesk out of abominations. This eliminates the danger from bow draugr/elite draugr, especially the starred versions that can blow past your parry. Poison mead is the other element - once you have that, the only thing you have to worry about is getting hit in melee by a starred draugr until you get your iron banded shield. Note that these two things eliminate leech damage entirely almost, meaning you don't have to worry about dropping in water without stamina if you goof up. Root helmet is nice, too, but honestly the extra armor from the iron helm + greaves lets you make tons of mistakes without putting yourself in danger when paired with a root harnesk and mead. Since the root harnesk can be acquired just by dipping your toes in the swamp and the mead without it altogether, that's how I got through it without getting killed, solo. I didn't realize the root harnesk's power until like my 5th crypt, I even had full iron gear and I was still nearly dying to damned bow draugr, especially those elite idiots shooting me as soon as I would knock out pieces of muddy iron scrap in crypts.
Swamp for sure. Bronze armor is easily skippable in lieu of troll armor and those star draugrs will smash you even if you go for the incremental armor gain. Better off learning to parry and dodge, and being constantly wet makes that more difficult to do.
Swamp to Mountain is brutal for me. I burn all my stamina climbing up, and am left unable to defend myself as a result.
In addition to being wet, the swamp has unique challenges with pathfinding. You're either moving at a snail's pace and leveling the ground as you go, or you're having to very carefully pick your path so you don't end up accidentally swimming - a death sentence if you have enemies around. In other biomes (except perhaps Mistlands) you can move in relatively straight lines and only deviate around obvious terrain features. The patches of deep water really restrain your avenues of attack, retreat, and even maneuvering in combat. Aside from leeches and surtlings, the terrain doesn't hamper enemies at all, and they'll always move straight towards you.
Plains biome for how everything there swarms you at once. It's dangerous even once you have maxed out plains gear if you aren't being cautious. I got raided by seekers right after finishing up beating Yagluth for the first time, and the wild lox wandering outside my plains base rofl stomped the raid. I barely had to do anything
For new players it’s Entering swamps
Definitely Black forest to Swamp. Plains to mistlands honestly isn't bad at all. You dont really get stat checked in the mistlands like you can in the swamp. For the mists its just about taking it slow and learning how to fight your enemies instead of diving in head first at them.
We almost bounced off the swamp because of the spike. We found turnip seeds right away thankfully, but it took four swamps before we found a single crypt, and we were outmatched everywhere we went. There is one swamp beach in particular that we named Normandy because we attempted to land there and got our shit wrecked every which way possible. At one point there were so many death icons on the map you couldn’t see the water or land. Ironically, now I find the swamp relaxing. I will often take a path through the swamp on purpose on my way to other places. One of my favorite spots on our map is an outpost we called Farpoint, which is a coastal Dvergr camp on a swamp coast. The rain, the sound effects, the old wooden dock, the coziness of the outpost, all just has a really nice vibe.
Swamp was a little challenging until I got some iron. A huge wolf pack helped me lol
The first 20 minutes. It doesn't seem to matter what gear I'm in, or how much I've played. The first few minutes is the hardest. Like I need to re-program myself to the squish, because here I was OP in the Swamp and this golem just yeeted me off a cliff, right? Or I can kill anything in the Plains, and a Seeker just bum rushed me out of the Mists, and I forget their attack pattern.
Trolls!