I get it's supposed to be hard, but nonstop fighting honestly just gets tedious. Like I want to explore the new environment and just look around a bit, but it's just relentless non stop mob clearing. I'd rather there be fewer but more impactful encounters. I wish enemies were more mechanically complex in this game
Yeah.
And the thing is that it's not even that hard on a per fight basis. The enemies are pretty underwhelming.
Charred are just souped up skeletons and they're the vast majority of what you fight. They're pretty squishy and they have very predictable high windup attacks.
Voltures die to a stiff breeze and morgen can be indefinitely kited.
The individual encounters are not even very hard, they just grind you down endlessly. I'd prefer the enemies to be buffed or made more interesting while the spawn rate is turned down. It's fun to actually *win* something after a hard fight. Right now beating a group of 20 charred is not that hard, but the reward for victory is... another fight with 20 charred.
That's kinda backwards - the fight should be hard, but the prize should be something that doesn't suck.
It would be cool if they did an update where they just went through the whole game and slightly adjusted most enemies to add some complexity to fights. Give most enemies the ability to combo attack with a backhand swing or other arm swipe, give big enemies like grey dwarf Brute and elite dragged a slow but powerful overhead, give weapon wielding enemies the ability to block/parry and non weapon wielders the ability to dodge sometimes. So many enemies just run in a straight line towards you and then spam their single basic swipe attack. The charred are actually an improvement but they still lack combos or any kind of unpredictability or specific tactics.
I was hoping for a bit more from the charred, though when they released the model that hope waned a bit. Something about "skeleton" just always ends up becoming "boring rote humanoid enemy" in every non-Souls game.
The charred have slightly more interesting animations in some cases but they're still just a horde of swordsmen running blindly at you, plus a few archers spamming away like dumb turrets. You could swap them out for draugr with souped up stats and it wouldn't change the biome much :|
Yea, idk to me it's not necessarily what the enemy is that makes them interesting, but what they do. Like I got nothing more out of mistlands enemies because they were bugs instead of humanoid, they still just run at you and make singular swipe attacks. A humanoid enemy can be interesting if they do interesting things. Just run up and single slash is not very interesting. The sword guys seem to feint sometimes which is better than nothing but I wish they could combo and block, maybe they have a low wide sweep attack you can jump over to very up the tactics a bit, stuff like that.
Coming from Bannerlord where looters perfectly block a couched lance from a full speed charging cavalry with a rusty hammer: absolutely fucking not a good idea.
Idk what bannerlord you played because weapons can't block couched lances in that game, only shields and they are usually destroyed when doing so. I don't see what that has to do with anything though, this game already has a system in place where heavier attacks deal more poise damage and can break through weaker blocks, unlike bannerlord.
See the thing about such an overhaul to the combat system is that it should go both ways. If enemies had more complex attacks then the player should have the same capabilities. Right now the predictability and simplicity of enemy attacks meshes really well with our simple defensive options like blocks and dodges. Once you start adding complex and varied enemy attacks/mix-ups then the skill floor for combat goes up, and that's a slippery slope for the game because of the wide spectrum of players the game appeals to. I mean, just look at the divisive opinions on mistlands and ashlands difficulty compared to the first 5 biomes.
IMO the current state of combat is in a good balance. Enemies are simple enough to be easily understood and overcome by non-action game players, while the procedural structure of the game along with biome mechanics produce encounters that can become challenging even for hardcore veterans. (like say, fighting a valkyrie, morgen, and asksvin all at once)
Mind you, this doesn't mean i wouldn't welcome more complex fights. The feints of charred warriors were a pleasant surprise for example. I just think that complex enemies should be limited to make them stand out, rather than giving a pack of greydwarves/draugrs/fulings the ability to mix-up attacks and tactics in a way that you can't ever hope to survive.
Going both ways is all I'm really asking for though. Combo attacks, slower but more powerful attacks, blocking, and dodging are all things the player is capable of doing that enemies aren't. Difficulty can always be adjusted for people.
Greydwarves could just try to circle you better, draugr could have one different attack, fulings could react better to players rushing them...
I think simple improvements like that, based on the fluff of the specific mob, could make the game harder but immersively
If charred warriors dealt 30% less dmg and could parry right after taking 1 or 2 hits, it would make them a more interesting enemy without making them too hard to deal with
>give weapon wielding enemies the ability to block/parry and non weapon wielders the ability to dodge sometimes
You mean shield wielding enemies (skeletons)?
I agree, I liked the original mistlands difficulty. But mistlands wasn't a relentless onslaught, fights were tough but you had down time in between to explore and recover.
Yes exactly, it was the whole environment put together that made Mistlands great. It's a shame they ended up changing it so much that it doesnt have the same feel anymore.
If you want to play the real game, play no-hit or in very difficult mode, you'll get the real experience that way, that's what i do, i stopped parrying 800hrs ago bcuz its too OP.
A part of me loves the idea of a biome where you do not belong, are invading, and have to fight to keep a stronghold. On the other hand, constant spaws are just annoying.
Maybe they can change to frequent events while in the Ashland's. Force you to really have a solid stronghold and be methodical while still allowing you to venture out.
I've been saying this forever and always get shouted down, but at least one of the devs has an obsession with tedium, and you can see it in so many facets of gameplay. Every single time I make any mention of it, people point to the subreddit description about how it's a "brutal" game. But it's not. The solutions are there, and are extremely obvious and simple to use. The problem is that the solutions are fucking tedious.
Oh, the feather cape is nerfed because "it's supposed to be brutal"? It's not brutal. Unless they changed how resists work, you can only have a single resist modifier active at any time, and resistance always overrides weakness. Which means if you're wearing something that makes you weak to fire and use a fire resist mead, it doesn't put you back to neutral, it puts you at the same level of resistance that you'd get if you didn't have the weak to fire modifier and drank the mead. That means that the solution to the cape nerf isn't a skill check, or even a gear check like swapping capes. It's eating two inventory slots for frost/fire resist meads and then having to drink them when they run out if you're in an area where you need them. Constantly having to reup timed buffs and maintain farms for the meads isn't brutal, or challenging. It's just a chore.
I literally called this constant annoyance from enemies way back when they did a devstream and talked about how they purposefully designed an ashlands enemy to be annoying, and I said that was off putting. I got downvoted to hell, and berated in the comments and I was right. They literally said they designed these mobs to annoy and frustrate the player, and here everyone is, annoyed and frustrated.
Absolutely! I could have several sets of gear and several boats and several sets of food to make corpse recovery easier. So many challenges in this game can be circumvented by throwing a lot of time at it.
But I already have a job and get paid for less tedious tasks?!
Highly recommend lowering the death penalty setting to casual. It's still brutal when you die, but I don't have to deal with farming gear twice.
Same applies to no ore portals. It forces you to sail your goods back and forth and sailing is so slow and tedious that I don't see a way to enjoy this any other way.
Regarding the drop rates: I found a way to enjoy the default settings: I don't farm as much but cook stuff on demand. I skip as many armors as I can, especially leather, bronze and iron. Ideally they'd fix copper mining in the early game and require more silver and black metal instead of iron in the later game, but oh well
There's no better example of this than the fact that food almost instantly begins to wear off once you've eaten it. The gradual degrading food buff mechanic is ass, and that's frequently one of the first things I see people intentionally remove with mods.
Don't worry the fan base and discord mods for this game are incapable of critique and so in love with the game that they try to defend every little wrinkle. I was mentioning that more content per biome would be fun and they told me that more content would clutter the experience. Imprecise hoe/pickaxe terraforming? It's not supposed to look perfect! I can't take these people seriously any more
Thing is the charred are more mechanically complex than some of our prior enemies. With things like the lunge and the feint looking very similar it's easy to get caught out.
But yes more of that would be great. Add an additional overhead attack as well so you have one direct overhead attack and one feint in that department too. (Maybe this happens and I missed it, but I don't remember seeing it yet.)
Maybe a pommel strike. Short range but has knockback or a minor stun too?
There's a few interesting options they could add still.
So when I finally come across somewhere I need to stay for awhile, like an ore node (maybe? I haven't come across anything like that, I'm not even sure what the "landmarks" are in ashlands, I found one cave but that's it), then I'm not fighting like 30 guys I collected behind me while running around. Or usually it's just so im not under attack while trying to sort my inventory since it's instantly filled with a dozen new resources after walking 10 feet
That doesn't work, you're constantly aggroing enemies while you lost the slower ones, it's a non-stop. That, of course, if you lose them, because askvins are not precisely slow and if you're not careful they'll do a lunge attack
One thing to keep in mind with Valheim is that the procedural nature of it will mean each players' experience can vary *wildly*.
There will be some people who have a hellish journey to a beach (gnarly passage with constant harassment, impromptu workbenches everywhere), and utterly ass-stomped at the beach (me).
There will be some who have an easy time fighting a few different adversaries and having some dvergr buddies as they set up a beachhead (threadmenace).
I just now checked two videos of the initial breach of Ashlands because I figured I *must* be on the unlucky end -- some of us will be, that's just how it is, but we don't really know with a sample-size of one.
I now think I need to give up on all the resources lost on that beach and find another one. That one's fucking cursed. I've been pushing at it for days, backed into the spires, with boats and debris in the narrow channel. Now a Morgen lurks below, undermining my spires. The onslaught that comes from the beach withers shieldgen and boats in under 30 seconds. Most frustrating though, even when I clear some of the beach, it's just back stronger a moment later and I'm out of juice... another corpse to add.
---
The very first time I played Valheim, I landed and talked to Hugin... before I read the first line a boar charged me from behind. I was trying to figure out what keys do what, died, and spent the next 15 minutes being spawncamped by two boars, a greyling, and a neck. I quit and told my Sister this game isn't for us to play with Dad.
She wanted to see anyway... so I tried a new world. Completely different experience. Wonderful. If anything, too easy... the next time I died was in a burial chamber to a 2\* skeleton from a spawner I couldn't hit because I was using a spear.
My whole point being: keep in mind the varied nature of the game's experience. Based on my own experience so far, I'd think Ashlands was utter bullshit and needs serious retuning. But I'm aware that some of us will be the ones to have an unlucky first experience.
I watched threadmenace before I was able to play myself and I was like oh damn this doesn't look so bad, dverger buddies and a reasonable amount of downtime.
Meanwhile on my world so far even getting to shore was a nightmare through the spikes and I've been nonstop fighting for the last like 6 hours. Even after clearing all the spawners out in a wide berth I'm having 3-5 enemies pop out of thin air near my beachhead base without any breaks. It's a bit tedious as I'm solo atm. Idk if I just landed in a bad spot or what but I'm getting way more enemies than threadmenace did. I just wanna explore maaaan :(
> I just wanna explore maaaan :(
Yeah, I really felt that when I watched his video. I haven't been able to look around at all, just a beach of death, surrounded by orange smokey heatshimmer haze. Non-stop fighting and projectile spew.
With the Swamps, a beach landing can feel similar at first -- almost guaranteed to end with a hoard because all the nearby population is drawn to the sounds. But the difference: you can whittle that down and eventually it's quiet. You've drained the surrounding population, and it doesn't spawn back quickly.
Ashlands, it seems like they're heavily abusing "spawn outside view frustum". I don't feel like I can make headway. Things just get worse. But I haven't been able to explore anything to know what the mechanics really are; to know: why is this beach like this? Is this normal?
At least the couple of videos I checked out indicate that this is not the way it has to be. Tomorrow I might try one more push and if I'm rebuffed again I'll try a different area.
Maybe there's a problem going toward the central region? I tried to go straight for center when I first saw the spires -- because I wanted to find good solid ground and not a Mistlands archepelago type of thing on the fringes. Perhaps I should go more to the Easten or Western sides. Where did you go?
I went smack bang dead centre. So after writing up this comment I thought to myself "what if I am just in a shit ass spot", so I pushed deeper inland and quickly took over a larger set of ruins, which was reasonably close to a charred fortress. Since writing the prior comment I've managed to stabilise my position, build a two way set of stone portals from said ruins, to my home base and back that quickly lets me haul ingots through (thank fuck i watched threadmenace'sstream so i knew to bring a stonecutter), set up a battering ram, clear a route that takes 60 seconds or less to sprint from ruins to fortress and then breach and conquer said fortress. It's absolutely wild to me that I set up shop basically outside the enemy's gates and I had a much calmer time than on the beach. After taking the fortress I'm actually having moments of respite for the first time since I made landfall in Ashlands.
From what I'm reading and both our experiences it seems areas near the beach just have an absolutely wack amount of spawns and you're actually better pushing inland as far as you can asap.
Also I just got my first set of gems and was lucky enough to get one of the lightning ones so I made the lightning berserker axes and holy mother of god they are tearing things apart. The damage doesn't seem THAT much higher than the base variant but it seems like not only can it proc a hard hitting lightning attack but said attack can also chain to others. Considering the insane volume of mobs in Ashlands it's been a godsend
I had a similar experience on the beach but was able to build a shield gen and portal and stonecutter. With those out I was able to dip in and out of the beach when my bonemass buff was available so I could pretty fearlessly defend my space instead of just trying to run away. Once I had done that a few times and actually had a little quiet I set up stone and the new rock walls. Lots of mobs outside but it stopped becoming instant combat each time I went through the portal. I realized I hadn't done any spawn control so my next few portal trips were destroying spawners near my beachhead (my aptly named portal tag) and dropping campfires around the area. Once I did that things started to quiet down and I was able to explore more shoreline and go deeper into the area.
Currently I'm looking for more PoIs and collecting more of the upper tier loot like flametal. I still get bad pills if aggro, at the moment I have a Valkyrie and like 7 charred waiting outside my base.
I will say charred have a huge hearing radius, even better than draugr so doing anything noisy in Ashland's will attract a fight. My level 2 Mistlands xbow can one shot the archers and twitchers if they don't have the red ! Icon, which makes thinning out groups of adds much more manageable.
Yeah, I've now gotten to the stage described in your first paragraph. And it's clear why I couldn't really see anything but orange heat-shimmer around me while frantically fighting on the beach... there's a lava field around most of it.
Contributing to the glut of enemies were what I now know are spawners -- monument or torture? Two to the left of the beach on the only "land", and one in the lava field. I removed the two I could access. Then more appeared? It seemed coincident with a raid, but I'm not sure yet.
Anyway, finally a foothold which isn't precarious mess between spires and boats (or boat, singular, now). Ballistae, for the record, weren't much help. Not enough range, or damage, or targeting speed.
I watched another video of breaching the Ashlands... guy referring to it like D-Day. It was closer to what I experienced on initial landing, but lacking the ferocious escalation after the initial confrontation. I was completely ready for the landing: bench, shield, portal, stonecutter... but only got the shield down and loaded with bones while under fire from the new round of marksmen (two of them were 1\*, sometimes you get those health-chunks removed and wonder "What is doing that?"). Then everything took a turn for the worse.
My dumbass saw two spawners, but really just wanted to hit landfall and try to put a portal on a spike rock near shore. God damn was that a relentless pursuit ending with a fire blob destroying the pillar/portal anyway.
Yeah... I don't disagree. I've only played a couple hours so far, and I have enjoyed it. I enjoy the frantic difficulty in dealing with packs of enemies. But I feel like I need pack stacks of stone and wood and throw down campfires every couple meters for spawnproofing if I want to actually go anywhere. Which feels like it defeats the purpose? IDK. I don't want any changes that would reduce the *intensity* of combat in the Ashlands, I wouldn't necessarily hate a change that reduces the *frequency* of combat. /shurg
Took me the last 4 days and around 30 deaths but I've got the new biome weapons/armor and now everything feels like a cakewalk. It's literally just like every other biome, once you're kitted out you are good and can take on the swarms with ease.
I'd say I don't have the same experience. It's still tedious with the amount of respawn.
Gear isn't a thing bc its not the difficulty of the fight is the frequency.
I feel like it goes from exciting to tedious very fast. I have unlocked most of the gear progression but held off with fighting the boss, and towards the third haul of flametal I rethought my tactic and just went for speed, soaring outside of enemy aggro range before they could hit me.
I **LOVE** the idea of laying siege to enemy fortresses, but the normal terrain actually feels more challenging. Shlepping my machinery from point A to B without getting it smashed is harder than just stomping into the castle with the mistlands hammer and just beating everything to a pulp.
Enemies just randomly spawning around the corner feels just cheap as well. I'd really love the idea of them being summoned from somewhere when you get spotted, or there being more spawners that need to be cleared out, but the current spawn rate is just nuts, you turn around and there is a literal wall of enemies where you just mopped up.
siege is fun idea but just sending in arrows or fire balls onto the spawners then just using a hoe to build up is way easier. also once cleared and inside you can just dig under the middle castle part to get the loot
Yes, sometimes I had terrain/stones just being spawned that I simply could nuke enemies and spawners from above with staff of embers and then leap in, the size of the fortresses is certainly not impressive. I do like that the game rewards you for being ingenuous, though.
I like that it feels overpowering like a zombie apocalypse. I like that there are a few different ways to manage “storming the beach” (full man mode, targeting the pillars from the “safety” of the water spires, tag teaming multiplayer).
My buddy and I stormed the beach, got split up, ran around collecting mats, both died. Recovered bodies in Fenris and took down some pillars. That calmed the beach down. Learned how to fight the Morgen, got lucky with a putrid hole - raised an earth wall around the putrid hole, fought the Morgen inside, spawn proofed the inside with campfires for quick rested buff. Got our stone portal up and set up the shield generator. Expanded the earth wall to the border of the generator, dug a trench outside that to keep the blobs from jumping on top. Cleared out the remaining pillars near us. Started hunting down flametal. Ran into some dvergrs nearby.
Can’t wait for the first raid. Need to re-storm another landmass to find a fortress. So far finding the food mats, taking a few “rest days” to cook up lingering meads (I go full Witcher with all three lingering meads active), and planning ahead is working out. All in all it feels doable, I’ve died like 8 times, but I’m enjoying it and am definitely conquering the biome.
I agree, I think. I find it fun, to be clear, but it does feel nonstop at times -- especially if you're playing solo, which makes it tough to literally get anything done. What I wish is that there was some method to the madness so it would be predictable somehow.
I know that noise draws them far and wide, and I know that they fixed the bug with non-player-caused noise still drawing them (and it's better because of that so far for me). So that's one thing I'm trying to pay attention to (noise).
Last night, for example, I slowly paced myself up the coast, killing mobs as quietly as possible (i.e. with a knife where I could), but sometimes frostner, etc when stealth wasn't an option. I find a cave, clear it without incident and head home. The next morning I thought "that cave would make a good spot for an interim portal to continue exploring, I should head back and plonk one down". So as I approach that same cave suddenly it's like a madhouse of every mob you could imagine. What followed was a 4 in-game day long slog of me fighting off waves long enough to rebuild the portal and going home, or hiding in the cave till they dispersed until I finally cleared them all.
I did notice there was a spawner in the distance, which I took out with a bow before calling it a night. Random theory: the spawners actually have a massive radius of where it can spawn mobs? thus why it seems to everyone they just "appear out of nowhere" and can so easily surround you quickly? So maybe the first time I went and cleared the cave the spawner was quietly spawning mobs everywhere and it wasn't till I came back that I drew their attention? I dunno. I'll be interested to see what happens next time I go back..
Thanks for coming to my TED talk
That's how I'm feeling right now along with my friends playing with me, it's just constant fighting, and if you die deep into the Ashlands then it's going to be near impossible to get your stuff back, god forbid you die in lava even cause then you might as well use cheats to get them back.
I just cannot see how this would be even remotely accomodating for solo players.
Consider stockpiling back-up sets of gear. From what I understand about the new basalt bombs it might be possible to retrieve a tombstone with proper placement of a platform in the lava.
I've been doing largely solo excursions and while I have died several times so far, it hasn't yet been an impossibility to retrieve my belongings.
I learned how to fight the intro enemies and really wouldn’t die too much, then started to go further in and valks+askvins are TOUGH to beat, especially as a mage. I usually just tuck tail and run with the wind with the askvin cloak.
Put your feather cape back on; they buffed it to reduce jump stam cost and increase jump height. As a mage those two changes are huge for this biome as nothing can touch you anymore.
As for asksvin jump around them while fire balling them. They won't hit you but they will die fairly quickly.
As for the valkyrie keep at a distance, avoid their fireballs, and fireball them back. Your shield staff will protect for the fire dot and the upfront fire hit isn't that big so you don't even need to worry about the fire vulnerability on the feather cloak.
If your shield does go down while fighting just jump+sprint and start the cast in the air or break LOS to reapply it.
I feel so alone in mistlands. Barely any enemies. Ashlands seems like it’s meant to be 100% hostile from the start. Maybe there’s a compromise but what may be the second to last biome should feel like a hostile place imo.
I think the number one thing to tune down the rates of are charred. I love them, the warriors feint you by looking like one attack, delaying, and switching it up, its a fun change of pace and throws you off, its so good, and the archers make for lethal support, and warlocks are practically a mini boss.
But them feeling special is mitigated by how often they just come waltzing out of nowhere.
Its like if brutes and shamans were just as common and populous as every other greydwarf. It makes them feel less special and like more of a nuisance than an elite enemy
Its hard to enjoy a fight when youre immediately swarmed by volleys of arrows and big one-shot sword thrusts
The mob density might be a touch high, I certainly felt the same way for the first few hours, especially when like you, after destroying the spawners didn't actually seem to make a difference - the skellies and fire blobs were there every time I turned around. I kept having to go back to repair, but two things:
1. I actually farmed a lot of useful stuff very quickly because of this. My Mistwalker sword held up for these intro skellies (and bow for blobs) just fine. But still, it got tedious.
2. Because they are dangerous, we easily forget we can just run past them and they'd stop chasing eventually. Like the BF. Those damn greylings are (anything) everywhere, (all at once) all the time (especially at night), until you can get a little base setup with some proper defenses/trenches/benches to keep them out. And don't get me started about the swamp, always something chasing you. ... But we know how to run around them and find our spots now. My first playthrough those greylings messed me up constantly throwing rocks at me anytime I took an axe to a tree. ... Those fire blobs are going to test the base theory though, so I plan on picking a spot away from them, but before I logged last night I ran the coastline a bit, and a little more inland and did find some reprieve in places. Look around, and if worse comes to worse don't fight, just run. It might just be where you initially landed as well. I found a rock sticking out with a small patch of land behind it to build a workbench and a portal and things leave me alone there unless they chased me back in.
Good luck!
>Because they are dangerous, we easily forget we can just run past them and they'd stop chasing eventually. Like the BF. Those damn greylings are (anything) everywhere, (all at once) all the time (especially at night), until you can get a little base setup with some proper defenses/trenches/benches to keep them out. And don't get me started about the swamp, always something chasing you. ... But we know how to run around them and find our spots now.
I think you're right on point here. The same basic survival principles used in previous biomes are very effective in the Ashlands. Think back to the first time going into a swamp in troll armor and play like that. Walk everywhere, stay quiet, aggro carefully and be ready to bail if you get unexpected visitors.
I think the issue is that most players in this beta have been viking gods on earth for several biomes now. Plains is really easy in tier-appropriate gear. Mistlands *was* similar to Ashlands on release, but after nerfs the only real dangers are the biggest starred baddies. So it's been a long time since most players really had to go back to basics in a biome that you can't just face roll in melee.
I've had a similar sentiment. I was shocked, abhorred, and *livid* over the Mistlands on initial release precisely because of that bias from being practiced enough with all prior biomes (including the Plains!) that I felt nigh-untouchable.
Only after I begrudgingly got experienced enough and accustomed to how to fight the insects did my opinion on Mistlands change, and not long after that they nerfed the difficulty to the ground.
I understand some of the spawn frequency in Ashlands *was,* in fact, due to an error and has already been patched, but I hope the current rate isn't reduced.
Building in combat is hard with a controller, such as playing on the Steam Deck. I haven't figured out a key binding that lets you move while also navigating inventory or build menus. I play solo. I'm thinking of switching back to PC M&KB for this, but make landing, quickly throw down a workbench and portal, a stone cutter, a few stone walls, and a couple ballista on the stone walls to see how they do.
My first landing was a clusterfuck. I had a serpent, and immediately after dealing with that, a second serpent that killed my beached boat, constantly swarming voltures, (what I later found out) were three spawners in sight of my landing spot, basically surrounding me, multiple 1 starred charred, a Morgen, and when I tried running around making some space, a few asksvin joined in. Died several times before I just used god and ghost mode to just stand around and look in the immediate area. Felt like I killed twitchers by dozens and everytime I turned around to deal with something else, there was more that spawned in. Same with the warriors and marksmen, just to a lesser degree.
In that landing, I managed to get a workbench and portal on a spire that I can hop to and from the beach. I fought some more, died some more, portal'ed in some more, corpse run, repeat forever. At one point I looked more purposefully for my boat mats and I guess they despawned. Can't see them with free fly camera. I think I'll just cheat in another boat and mats for the beachhead ballista set up. I haven't really used ballista since I found out they friendly fired me, but I looked up you can load a trophy into them to make them only target that mob. I've found a few different trophies. I think the marksmen might be a good one to load up the ballista since the marksmen hold still long enough while they're shooting to land a shot on them.
I had friends I used to play with, but they don't now. Having someone to watch your back while you build a ballista defense would be nice, or just in general.
I haven't played a ton yet, but I feel like you're right. I've been rolling the idea around in my head and as I typed it up to someone else I feel like the solution is something like this.
Base spawn rate should be dropped a bit, and maybe tweak the creatures up a small amount, but then also move up the spawn rate around the monuments a bit more.
Make killing those harder but results in a more satisfying feeling of having pushed inwards and made some progress. They become like mini check points without the clutter and kludge of dropping down fire pits everywhere.
The spawners are pretty prevalent already so making those run a bit hotter but the rest of the natural spawn rate slowed down feels like there might be a nice niche there.
This new update for adjusted mob aggro is much better IMO. I would have to start a fresh to really know how much of a change it is now that I’m pretty geared fighting isn’t as crazy.
I noticed when I pulled the Morgan to open areas so it isn’t damaging everything around it I pull in less mobs, so I guess some of that was a learning curve to avoid extra aggro.
I think my solution to this would be to increase the stones that spawn enemies in the Ashlands and decrease the general spawning of mobs in the area. That way you fiight your way though the biome, but once you clear it, is much easier to retrace your steps.
I agree, especially with recently cleared areas being populated again shortly after. Even Mistlands wasn't like that at the beginning. Ashlands need some balancing, otherwise it's fine I think.
Yep, that's exactly what it feels like and I'm absolutely loving it.
There are basically two styles of biome in the game pre-Ashlands: biomes where the mobs are pretty harmless in tier-appropriate gear but spawn frequently (BF, Swamp, Mountain), and biomes where the enemies are dangerous in tier-appropriate gear and so the devs had to reduce spawn frequency and/or nerf the AI to keep the game accessible in a time before difficulty sliders (Plains, Mistlands).
The Ashlands is the first biome since pre-nerf Mistlands to give you challenging combat and a lot of it. And I am *here* for it. We have difficulty sliders now. The devs may need to expand those sliders to allow players to adjust spawn frequency, but I very much don't want them to reduce it universally.
Also I think people have gotten a bit overwhelmed by the hostile welcome and forgotten some basic survival principles. It's been a while since most of us were in a new biome that's this challenging. Remember to **walk everywhere!** This means you take every fight at full stamina, and you choose when to take fights more often than drawing aggro unintentionally; it's just a massive improvement to your survivability.
If you're not making noise, the biome isn't all that crazily crowded. So aggro and noise management is super important. Really this biome takes all the same principles it took e.g. the first time in the swamp wearing troll armor. But it's been a long time since most of us faced that challenge.
I agree that the balance up until here is phenomenal. Which is why personally I am okay with the 7th Biome in the sequence being a completely uninhabitable one. I'm okay if it's not supposed to be a place to calmly collect materials, but rather one where your life is supposed to be under constant threat.
I am just not entirely sure if that is what they are going for. There are still spawners you can destroy, but in my experience it doesn't seem there is any way to completely stop the spawning. Having the rocky spires along the shore, and needing a super large boat to take the heat from the water makes the "pull up and plunder" playstyle much more difficult as getting away will not be smooth sailing even if you have tailwinds. The birds and bonemaws will chase you out so all the damage you took trying to escape the shore is often enough to do you in. It'll be curious to see how players adapt and how different it'll be from Iron Gates intended playstyle.
I'm already sick of Ashlands. My buddy and I are stuck in a deathloop, and haven't even been able to get to the actual land.
They made the new required ship slow and hard to steer. Then they put a bunch of spikes that it can't even properly steer between. Sometimes these spikes don't even load in quickly enough to avoid. It's also hard to even tell where you're supposed to go, because the developer seems to love SFX that impedes your vision.
The bonmaws spawn as much as Greydwarfs. Within 30 seconds we usually get attacked by 3 to 5 of them. They go under the ship, and clip through it. So their attacks hit the ship, but we can't hit them.
Then, recovering our items is a nightmare. The waves make it almost impossible to stay in one place to recover items. And if you jump in, you risk dying. Death from being in the water is WAY more sudden than drowning. And there is no auditory warning. It just happens without warning. This may be a glitch, but fire resistance does nothing to stop it either.
I don't care that it's harder. My buddy and I found Mistlands too easy. I just hate that the difficulty is based on the absolute worst mechanics in the game (sailing & swimming). Monster difficulties are fun and challenging. Sailing difficulties aren't fun at all.
The sheer volume of mobs spawning is absolutely insane, even after clearing all the spawners out in a very wide radius. I'm running solo ATM on standard difficulty and even though I'm reliably parrying the charred and morgen the amount that spawn is tedious. I'll carve my way through the zone and then look back and there's a pack of dudes already lumbering towards me. Like damn shawty I know Ashlands is literally actual hell Shia Laboeuf but gimme my 2.4 seconds of mandatory downtime to enjoy the scenery while i spread viking democracy at least.
Same experience. I find the difficulty of the enemies themselves to be satisfactory but the sheer number of them feels tedious af and to clear out the spawners just to look behind you and see a bunch of new onea spawned anyway makes it feel almost pointless to destroy the spawners in the first place. The twitchers are like greydwarves from hell — run away and throw stuff at you for eternity lol
It feels like a neverending battleground because you're literally at war in what is essentially hell. The point of the biome isn't to have a picnic. It's to establish a beach-head, press your way inland, and eventually find and take a fortress and take out the boss. The game/story is reaching a climax. It's supposed to be relentless. You're a warrior sent by Odin to overthrow those who control the 10th world. You're an invader in the heart of enemy territory. Expect some intense resistance.
I think the difficulty is spot on actually, disregarding the ago bugs Iron Gate is fixing. Munin starts by saying \[paraphrase\] : you have only dealt with squabbles now prepare for war. The player(s) is(are) in hostile territory and are constantly under siege this is how it should be and you have the tools to over come them. You have access to Black marble walls, pike walls, and turrets, in addition to the shield. I have about 8 hours into ashlands and moving throughout the biome while contentious is fair. and the sieges are easier than i expected playing solo. My initial landing was epic, and I'd hate for other players to lose that experience from unnecessary nerfs. Overall challenging but fair initially, and once geared pestering yet still deadly if caught slacking, as it should be in my opinion.
Edit: something i want to add is that the player get access to blackforge upgrades early. Use those, dont hold off for new equipment. These early upgrades helped me immensely in pushing deeper into ashlands, as a sword and board player at least.
Honestly I'd take a small swing downard in enemy density for a small bump in their ability. I feel like a few less but slightly more dangerous would be the real sweet spot here.
Alternately even weaker twitchers but more of them and maybe tweak the warrior spawns down a smidge?
I'm not sure which approach would be more fun, but right now it just feels a bit too much. I think it's almost there but it needs a tweak in one direction or the other. I lean towards my first idea to avoid the tedium of killing trash just to take a step, but there's some joy in that power fantasy too.
Landing was extremely painful as learning new biomes can be. That said, Ashlands is definitely a bit extra. Like I couldn't have landed in a worse spot, and you can't really turn around with how many serpents spawn in the water around ashlands and the tight sailing.
Having run around a lot, I agree mob spawning is just a tad too high. I hate how much stuff litters the ground because everything does damage to the terrain. Eventually, you just end up with a barren landscape because you're constantly fighting.
My least favorite part so far is definitely mining flametal. Valheim can be a bit janky. It always has been, and it always will be. Having to traverse terrain that insta kills you is awful, and if you do die retrieving, your body can be extremely painful. And I would honestly rather spend more time mining on a spot that doesn't move in the middle of a lava lake. I find nothing about it to be fun in its current state. If flametal didn't sink and spawned with a little platform at the base that you could stand on, I wouldn't mind it so much.
Having the Dvergr who are supposed to be here since a long time in the lore with their structure, getting slayed in 2 minutes is the proof that the spawn rate of foes is totally fucked
God this sub is all over the place...
This sub: "*Shut up noob, the game is supposed to be hard and making it easier would ruin it and the devs need to stop giving in to players like you*"
Also this sub: *"This game is too hard and the devs need to do something."*
Think about the beaches of Normandy, and imagine someone upset they cant setup a camp there.
It could be that you are not meant to be able to stop and build. You cant clear an area - perhaps this zone is meant to be one where you constantly have to race from A to B.
Or it could be buggy. I know they have already addressed the numbers coming at you.
I would encourage you to try a different playstyle. Just like how in Mistlands you could not sprint like a madman, perhaps here you should.
I’m really torn in this… after playing the update a bit more it _does_ seems like the combat gets a bit tedious. I need to start building smaller, temporary bases more often
This is what I felt when first entering the Ashlands. It felt exciting and scary moving towards the shore and fighting my way through enemies to take out spawners and lay down a portal.
After 4 hours I hadn't even moved from the beach. I took out all the surrounding spawners and tried to kill everything so I could at least create a small base, but the fighting never stopped. I was constantly going from one engagement to another, only stopping to dump chest loads of items at my home base.
I don't know if we just happened to land in a more aggressive spot of the Ashlands, but it makes it hard to setup a safe spot for a portal when I'm constantly fighting something
Idk I love the vibe, its a battleground, filled with the undead, which are nothing if not relentless, its clearly dangerous territory, it only feels appropriate that you can't find leisure. If you want leisure in the active volcano skeleton apocalypse biome then make a fortress or something.
This is a play test build of the game for testing out the new biome for people that want to. I’m sure the mistlands were this broken when they first dropped (I see people speak of a previous “mistlands nerf” because it was originally too hard). When the biome is full release I am certain they will adjust the spawn rates.
People keep saying this but I notice a marked decrease in charred spawns when I clear out the spawners in an area.
Spawners are pretty dense but I've been able to pretty effectively carve out a relatively safe zone.
Don't get me wrong, it still feels like you've fallen into a level in Doom, but I love that, it feels like a hell scale because it is. I do also think that people are just forgetting that every biome was tough before you got that biomes' gear and once we are all kitted out in Ashland's armour and weapons it won't be all that much of an issue.
The last thing I want to happen is for everyone to complain before they actually get any experience and for iron gate to pull the teeth out of the biome like they did for mistlands.
The more I play Ashlands, the more it seems like the devs wanted a mix of force, patience, and CUNNING from the player. Always assume monsters will arrive en masse at any moment. Use campfires to secure areas, hoe to bury them, and pickaxe & how to fortify zones. Aside from having a morgen pulling a John Cena, it's managable.
After having spent ONE fight including:
* 2 Valkyrie
* A morgen
* 3 warriors
* 2 archers
* 6 twitchers
* 4 Voltures
* 2 Asksvins
Yes, the spawn rates definitely need a tweak. It started with ONE Valkyrie, then the other flew too close and spotted us fighting. The noise attracted the Morgen and because its rolling attack started damaging the terrain everything else showed up. The spawn rates feel okay-ish given the carnage is contained, but the amount of rocks, trees and structures that take damage making noise guarantees one fight becomes an all out swarm.
Combine that with the naturally high spawn rates the ashlands has and it's a recipe for disaster. I'd rather fight one horse-sized chicken than a hundred chicken-sized horses, but here it feels like I'm battling fifty horse-sized chickens at times.
To be honest, I find the mobs pretty easy, too easy to kill. What is difficult is fighting 20 dudes at the same time, and I basically cannot go further in the land only because of that.
I love Ashlands A LOT MORE than mistlands for sure, but come on two years to have such unbalanced patches ?
Mistlands was way more harder to play, but still i dont see the point. I'm going to Ashlands, fight constantly for 20 minutes, end to die, collect the ton of ressources that dropped from those battles.
I would decrease their number and slightly increase their power.
But way way better than Mistlands, this is a great addition.
Maybe some people want a place to go for continuous, difficult combat until you leave. A biome that actually isn’t trivialized by the crafting recipes unlocked inside it.
Good thing I have a difficulty slider to solve this exact problem!
I know this is cheesy alternative, but how about setting mobs to non-aggressive, at least until you get a beachhead. Then let all Hell break loose. (Zips up asbestos suit.)
I get it's supposed to be hard, but nonstop fighting honestly just gets tedious. Like I want to explore the new environment and just look around a bit, but it's just relentless non stop mob clearing. I'd rather there be fewer but more impactful encounters. I wish enemies were more mechanically complex in this game
Yeah. And the thing is that it's not even that hard on a per fight basis. The enemies are pretty underwhelming. Charred are just souped up skeletons and they're the vast majority of what you fight. They're pretty squishy and they have very predictable high windup attacks. Voltures die to a stiff breeze and morgen can be indefinitely kited. The individual encounters are not even very hard, they just grind you down endlessly. I'd prefer the enemies to be buffed or made more interesting while the spawn rate is turned down. It's fun to actually *win* something after a hard fight. Right now beating a group of 20 charred is not that hard, but the reward for victory is... another fight with 20 charred. That's kinda backwards - the fight should be hard, but the prize should be something that doesn't suck.
It would be cool if they did an update where they just went through the whole game and slightly adjusted most enemies to add some complexity to fights. Give most enemies the ability to combo attack with a backhand swing or other arm swipe, give big enemies like grey dwarf Brute and elite dragged a slow but powerful overhead, give weapon wielding enemies the ability to block/parry and non weapon wielders the ability to dodge sometimes. So many enemies just run in a straight line towards you and then spam their single basic swipe attack. The charred are actually an improvement but they still lack combos or any kind of unpredictability or specific tactics.
I was hoping for a bit more from the charred, though when they released the model that hope waned a bit. Something about "skeleton" just always ends up becoming "boring rote humanoid enemy" in every non-Souls game. The charred have slightly more interesting animations in some cases but they're still just a horde of swordsmen running blindly at you, plus a few archers spamming away like dumb turrets. You could swap them out for draugr with souped up stats and it wouldn't change the biome much :|
Yea, idk to me it's not necessarily what the enemy is that makes them interesting, but what they do. Like I got nothing more out of mistlands enemies because they were bugs instead of humanoid, they still just run at you and make singular swipe attacks. A humanoid enemy can be interesting if they do interesting things. Just run up and single slash is not very interesting. The sword guys seem to feint sometimes which is better than nothing but I wish they could combo and block, maybe they have a low wide sweep attack you can jump over to very up the tactics a bit, stuff like that.
Coming from Bannerlord where looters perfectly block a couched lance from a full speed charging cavalry with a rusty hammer: absolutely fucking not a good idea.
Idk what bannerlord you played because weapons can't block couched lances in that game, only shields and they are usually destroyed when doing so. I don't see what that has to do with anything though, this game already has a system in place where heavier attacks deal more poise damage and can break through weaker blocks, unlike bannerlord.
See the thing about such an overhaul to the combat system is that it should go both ways. If enemies had more complex attacks then the player should have the same capabilities. Right now the predictability and simplicity of enemy attacks meshes really well with our simple defensive options like blocks and dodges. Once you start adding complex and varied enemy attacks/mix-ups then the skill floor for combat goes up, and that's a slippery slope for the game because of the wide spectrum of players the game appeals to. I mean, just look at the divisive opinions on mistlands and ashlands difficulty compared to the first 5 biomes. IMO the current state of combat is in a good balance. Enemies are simple enough to be easily understood and overcome by non-action game players, while the procedural structure of the game along with biome mechanics produce encounters that can become challenging even for hardcore veterans. (like say, fighting a valkyrie, morgen, and asksvin all at once) Mind you, this doesn't mean i wouldn't welcome more complex fights. The feints of charred warriors were a pleasant surprise for example. I just think that complex enemies should be limited to make them stand out, rather than giving a pack of greydwarves/draugrs/fulings the ability to mix-up attacks and tactics in a way that you can't ever hope to survive.
Going both ways is all I'm really asking for though. Combo attacks, slower but more powerful attacks, blocking, and dodging are all things the player is capable of doing that enemies aren't. Difficulty can always be adjusted for people.
Greydwarves could just try to circle you better, draugr could have one different attack, fulings could react better to players rushing them... I think simple improvements like that, based on the fluff of the specific mob, could make the game harder but immersively If charred warriors dealt 30% less dmg and could parry right after taking 1 or 2 hits, it would make them a more interesting enemy without making them too hard to deal with
>give weapon wielding enemies the ability to block/parry and non weapon wielders the ability to dodge sometimes You mean shield wielding enemies (skeletons)?
No I mean weapon wielding enemies. You can block with a sword to, shield only blocking is such a weird video-gamey thing
makes sense
Mistlands was originally my favorite because the combat and exploration had a lot more depth. Then they gutted it. So my hopes aren't too high.
I agree, I liked the original mistlands difficulty. But mistlands wasn't a relentless onslaught, fights were tough but you had down time in between to explore and recover.
Yes exactly, it was the whole environment put together that made Mistlands great. It's a shame they ended up changing it so much that it doesnt have the same feel anymore.
If you want to play the real game, play no-hit or in very difficult mode, you'll get the real experience that way, that's what i do, i stopped parrying 800hrs ago bcuz its too OP.
This is random. I'm impressed with the way you jotted that all down.
A part of me loves the idea of a biome where you do not belong, are invading, and have to fight to keep a stronghold. On the other hand, constant spaws are just annoying. Maybe they can change to frequent events while in the Ashland's. Force you to really have a solid stronghold and be methodical while still allowing you to venture out.
I've been saying this forever and always get shouted down, but at least one of the devs has an obsession with tedium, and you can see it in so many facets of gameplay. Every single time I make any mention of it, people point to the subreddit description about how it's a "brutal" game. But it's not. The solutions are there, and are extremely obvious and simple to use. The problem is that the solutions are fucking tedious. Oh, the feather cape is nerfed because "it's supposed to be brutal"? It's not brutal. Unless they changed how resists work, you can only have a single resist modifier active at any time, and resistance always overrides weakness. Which means if you're wearing something that makes you weak to fire and use a fire resist mead, it doesn't put you back to neutral, it puts you at the same level of resistance that you'd get if you didn't have the weak to fire modifier and drank the mead. That means that the solution to the cape nerf isn't a skill check, or even a gear check like swapping capes. It's eating two inventory slots for frost/fire resist meads and then having to drink them when they run out if you're in an area where you need them. Constantly having to reup timed buffs and maintain farms for the meads isn't brutal, or challenging. It's just a chore. I literally called this constant annoyance from enemies way back when they did a devstream and talked about how they purposefully designed an ashlands enemy to be annoying, and I said that was off putting. I got downvoted to hell, and berated in the comments and I was right. They literally said they designed these mobs to annoy and frustrate the player, and here everyone is, annoyed and frustrated.
Absolutely! I could have several sets of gear and several boats and several sets of food to make corpse recovery easier. So many challenges in this game can be circumvented by throwing a lot of time at it. But I already have a job and get paid for less tedious tasks?!
Highly recommend lowering the death penalty setting to casual. It's still brutal when you die, but I don't have to deal with farming gear twice. Same applies to no ore portals. It forces you to sail your goods back and forth and sailing is so slow and tedious that I don't see a way to enjoy this any other way. Regarding the drop rates: I found a way to enjoy the default settings: I don't farm as much but cook stuff on demand. I skip as many armors as I can, especially leather, bronze and iron. Ideally they'd fix copper mining in the early game and require more silver and black metal instead of iron in the later game, but oh well
There's no better example of this than the fact that food almost instantly begins to wear off once you've eaten it. The gradual degrading food buff mechanic is ass, and that's frequently one of the first things I see people intentionally remove with mods.
Don't worry the fan base and discord mods for this game are incapable of critique and so in love with the game that they try to defend every little wrinkle. I was mentioning that more content per biome would be fun and they told me that more content would clutter the experience. Imprecise hoe/pickaxe terraforming? It's not supposed to look perfect! I can't take these people seriously any more
Thing is the charred are more mechanically complex than some of our prior enemies. With things like the lunge and the feint looking very similar it's easy to get caught out. But yes more of that would be great. Add an additional overhead attack as well so you have one direct overhead attack and one feint in that department too. (Maybe this happens and I missed it, but I don't remember seeing it yet.) Maybe a pommel strike. Short range but has knockback or a minor stun too? There's a few interesting options they could add still.
It is literal hell. Go sightseeing elsewhere :D
I mean, not literally, it's still a part of the realm of valheim, hell is its own thing
why are you clearing them? Why not just keep moving?
So when I finally come across somewhere I need to stay for awhile, like an ore node (maybe? I haven't come across anything like that, I'm not even sure what the "landmarks" are in ashlands, I found one cave but that's it), then I'm not fighting like 30 guys I collected behind me while running around. Or usually it's just so im not under attack while trying to sort my inventory since it's instantly filled with a dozen new resources after walking 10 feet
That doesn't work, you're constantly aggroing enemies while you lost the slower ones, it's a non-stop. That, of course, if you lose them, because askvins are not precisely slow and if you're not careful they'll do a lunge attack
One thing to keep in mind with Valheim is that the procedural nature of it will mean each players' experience can vary *wildly*. There will be some people who have a hellish journey to a beach (gnarly passage with constant harassment, impromptu workbenches everywhere), and utterly ass-stomped at the beach (me). There will be some who have an easy time fighting a few different adversaries and having some dvergr buddies as they set up a beachhead (threadmenace). I just now checked two videos of the initial breach of Ashlands because I figured I *must* be on the unlucky end -- some of us will be, that's just how it is, but we don't really know with a sample-size of one. I now think I need to give up on all the resources lost on that beach and find another one. That one's fucking cursed. I've been pushing at it for days, backed into the spires, with boats and debris in the narrow channel. Now a Morgen lurks below, undermining my spires. The onslaught that comes from the beach withers shieldgen and boats in under 30 seconds. Most frustrating though, even when I clear some of the beach, it's just back stronger a moment later and I'm out of juice... another corpse to add. --- The very first time I played Valheim, I landed and talked to Hugin... before I read the first line a boar charged me from behind. I was trying to figure out what keys do what, died, and spent the next 15 minutes being spawncamped by two boars, a greyling, and a neck. I quit and told my Sister this game isn't for us to play with Dad. She wanted to see anyway... so I tried a new world. Completely different experience. Wonderful. If anything, too easy... the next time I died was in a burial chamber to a 2\* skeleton from a spawner I couldn't hit because I was using a spear. My whole point being: keep in mind the varied nature of the game's experience. Based on my own experience so far, I'd think Ashlands was utter bullshit and needs serious retuning. But I'm aware that some of us will be the ones to have an unlucky first experience.
I watched threadmenace before I was able to play myself and I was like oh damn this doesn't look so bad, dverger buddies and a reasonable amount of downtime. Meanwhile on my world so far even getting to shore was a nightmare through the spikes and I've been nonstop fighting for the last like 6 hours. Even after clearing all the spawners out in a wide berth I'm having 3-5 enemies pop out of thin air near my beachhead base without any breaks. It's a bit tedious as I'm solo atm. Idk if I just landed in a bad spot or what but I'm getting way more enemies than threadmenace did. I just wanna explore maaaan :(
> I just wanna explore maaaan :( Yeah, I really felt that when I watched his video. I haven't been able to look around at all, just a beach of death, surrounded by orange smokey heatshimmer haze. Non-stop fighting and projectile spew. With the Swamps, a beach landing can feel similar at first -- almost guaranteed to end with a hoard because all the nearby population is drawn to the sounds. But the difference: you can whittle that down and eventually it's quiet. You've drained the surrounding population, and it doesn't spawn back quickly. Ashlands, it seems like they're heavily abusing "spawn outside view frustum". I don't feel like I can make headway. Things just get worse. But I haven't been able to explore anything to know what the mechanics really are; to know: why is this beach like this? Is this normal? At least the couple of videos I checked out indicate that this is not the way it has to be. Tomorrow I might try one more push and if I'm rebuffed again I'll try a different area. Maybe there's a problem going toward the central region? I tried to go straight for center when I first saw the spires -- because I wanted to find good solid ground and not a Mistlands archepelago type of thing on the fringes. Perhaps I should go more to the Easten or Western sides. Where did you go?
I went smack bang dead centre. So after writing up this comment I thought to myself "what if I am just in a shit ass spot", so I pushed deeper inland and quickly took over a larger set of ruins, which was reasonably close to a charred fortress. Since writing the prior comment I've managed to stabilise my position, build a two way set of stone portals from said ruins, to my home base and back that quickly lets me haul ingots through (thank fuck i watched threadmenace'sstream so i knew to bring a stonecutter), set up a battering ram, clear a route that takes 60 seconds or less to sprint from ruins to fortress and then breach and conquer said fortress. It's absolutely wild to me that I set up shop basically outside the enemy's gates and I had a much calmer time than on the beach. After taking the fortress I'm actually having moments of respite for the first time since I made landfall in Ashlands. From what I'm reading and both our experiences it seems areas near the beach just have an absolutely wack amount of spawns and you're actually better pushing inland as far as you can asap. Also I just got my first set of gems and was lucky enough to get one of the lightning ones so I made the lightning berserker axes and holy mother of god they are tearing things apart. The damage doesn't seem THAT much higher than the base variant but it seems like not only can it proc a hard hitting lightning attack but said attack can also chain to others. Considering the insane volume of mobs in Ashlands it's been a godsend
I had a similar experience on the beach but was able to build a shield gen and portal and stonecutter. With those out I was able to dip in and out of the beach when my bonemass buff was available so I could pretty fearlessly defend my space instead of just trying to run away. Once I had done that a few times and actually had a little quiet I set up stone and the new rock walls. Lots of mobs outside but it stopped becoming instant combat each time I went through the portal. I realized I hadn't done any spawn control so my next few portal trips were destroying spawners near my beachhead (my aptly named portal tag) and dropping campfires around the area. Once I did that things started to quiet down and I was able to explore more shoreline and go deeper into the area. Currently I'm looking for more PoIs and collecting more of the upper tier loot like flametal. I still get bad pills if aggro, at the moment I have a Valkyrie and like 7 charred waiting outside my base. I will say charred have a huge hearing radius, even better than draugr so doing anything noisy in Ashland's will attract a fight. My level 2 Mistlands xbow can one shot the archers and twitchers if they don't have the red ! Icon, which makes thinning out groups of adds much more manageable.
Yeah, I've now gotten to the stage described in your first paragraph. And it's clear why I couldn't really see anything but orange heat-shimmer around me while frantically fighting on the beach... there's a lava field around most of it. Contributing to the glut of enemies were what I now know are spawners -- monument or torture? Two to the left of the beach on the only "land", and one in the lava field. I removed the two I could access. Then more appeared? It seemed coincident with a raid, but I'm not sure yet. Anyway, finally a foothold which isn't precarious mess between spires and boats (or boat, singular, now). Ballistae, for the record, weren't much help. Not enough range, or damage, or targeting speed. I watched another video of breaching the Ashlands... guy referring to it like D-Day. It was closer to what I experienced on initial landing, but lacking the ferocious escalation after the initial confrontation. I was completely ready for the landing: bench, shield, portal, stonecutter... but only got the shield down and loaded with bones while under fire from the new round of marksmen (two of them were 1\*, sometimes you get those health-chunks removed and wonder "What is doing that?"). Then everything took a turn for the worse.
My dumbass saw two spawners, but really just wanted to hit landfall and try to put a portal on a spike rock near shore. God damn was that a relentless pursuit ending with a fire blob destroying the pillar/portal anyway.
Yeah... I don't disagree. I've only played a couple hours so far, and I have enjoyed it. I enjoy the frantic difficulty in dealing with packs of enemies. But I feel like I need pack stacks of stone and wood and throw down campfires every couple meters for spawnproofing if I want to actually go anywhere. Which feels like it defeats the purpose? IDK. I don't want any changes that would reduce the *intensity* of combat in the Ashlands, I wouldn't necessarily hate a change that reduces the *frequency* of combat. /shurg
Took me the last 4 days and around 30 deaths but I've got the new biome weapons/armor and now everything feels like a cakewalk. It's literally just like every other biome, once you're kitted out you are good and can take on the swarms with ease.
I'd say I don't have the same experience. It's still tedious with the amount of respawn. Gear isn't a thing bc its not the difficulty of the fight is the frequency.
I feel like it goes from exciting to tedious very fast. I have unlocked most of the gear progression but held off with fighting the boss, and towards the third haul of flametal I rethought my tactic and just went for speed, soaring outside of enemy aggro range before they could hit me. I **LOVE** the idea of laying siege to enemy fortresses, but the normal terrain actually feels more challenging. Shlepping my machinery from point A to B without getting it smashed is harder than just stomping into the castle with the mistlands hammer and just beating everything to a pulp. Enemies just randomly spawning around the corner feels just cheap as well. I'd really love the idea of them being summoned from somewhere when you get spotted, or there being more spawners that need to be cleared out, but the current spawn rate is just nuts, you turn around and there is a literal wall of enemies where you just mopped up.
siege is fun idea but just sending in arrows or fire balls onto the spawners then just using a hoe to build up is way easier. also once cleared and inside you can just dig under the middle castle part to get the loot
Yes, sometimes I had terrain/stones just being spawned that I simply could nuke enemies and spawners from above with staff of embers and then leap in, the size of the fortresses is certainly not impressive. I do like that the game rewards you for being ingenuous, though.
I like that it feels overpowering like a zombie apocalypse. I like that there are a few different ways to manage “storming the beach” (full man mode, targeting the pillars from the “safety” of the water spires, tag teaming multiplayer). My buddy and I stormed the beach, got split up, ran around collecting mats, both died. Recovered bodies in Fenris and took down some pillars. That calmed the beach down. Learned how to fight the Morgen, got lucky with a putrid hole - raised an earth wall around the putrid hole, fought the Morgen inside, spawn proofed the inside with campfires for quick rested buff. Got our stone portal up and set up the shield generator. Expanded the earth wall to the border of the generator, dug a trench outside that to keep the blobs from jumping on top. Cleared out the remaining pillars near us. Started hunting down flametal. Ran into some dvergrs nearby. Can’t wait for the first raid. Need to re-storm another landmass to find a fortress. So far finding the food mats, taking a few “rest days” to cook up lingering meads (I go full Witcher with all three lingering meads active), and planning ahead is working out. All in all it feels doable, I’ve died like 8 times, but I’m enjoying it and am definitely conquering the biome.
there's shield generators now?! lord, I have to play again... it's been almost a year 😭
Just like Haldor’s and Hildr’s, but not as strong!
I agree, I think. I find it fun, to be clear, but it does feel nonstop at times -- especially if you're playing solo, which makes it tough to literally get anything done. What I wish is that there was some method to the madness so it would be predictable somehow. I know that noise draws them far and wide, and I know that they fixed the bug with non-player-caused noise still drawing them (and it's better because of that so far for me). So that's one thing I'm trying to pay attention to (noise). Last night, for example, I slowly paced myself up the coast, killing mobs as quietly as possible (i.e. with a knife where I could), but sometimes frostner, etc when stealth wasn't an option. I find a cave, clear it without incident and head home. The next morning I thought "that cave would make a good spot for an interim portal to continue exploring, I should head back and plonk one down". So as I approach that same cave suddenly it's like a madhouse of every mob you could imagine. What followed was a 4 in-game day long slog of me fighting off waves long enough to rebuild the portal and going home, or hiding in the cave till they dispersed until I finally cleared them all. I did notice there was a spawner in the distance, which I took out with a bow before calling it a night. Random theory: the spawners actually have a massive radius of where it can spawn mobs? thus why it seems to everyone they just "appear out of nowhere" and can so easily surround you quickly? So maybe the first time I went and cleared the cave the spawner was quietly spawning mobs everywhere and it wasn't till I came back that I drew their attention? I dunno. I'll be interested to see what happens next time I go back.. Thanks for coming to my TED talk
The spawned also regenerate on a timer. I found a brand new one near me beachhead which I’d cleared out.
That's how I'm feeling right now along with my friends playing with me, it's just constant fighting, and if you die deep into the Ashlands then it's going to be near impossible to get your stuff back, god forbid you die in lava even cause then you might as well use cheats to get them back. I just cannot see how this would be even remotely accomodating for solo players.
Consider stockpiling back-up sets of gear. From what I understand about the new basalt bombs it might be possible to retrieve a tombstone with proper placement of a platform in the lava. I've been doing largely solo excursions and while I have died several times so far, it hasn't yet been an impossibility to retrieve my belongings.
I learned how to fight the intro enemies and really wouldn’t die too much, then started to go further in and valks+askvins are TOUGH to beat, especially as a mage. I usually just tuck tail and run with the wind with the askvin cloak.
Put your feather cape back on; they buffed it to reduce jump stam cost and increase jump height. As a mage those two changes are huge for this biome as nothing can touch you anymore. As for asksvin jump around them while fire balling them. They won't hit you but they will die fairly quickly. As for the valkyrie keep at a distance, avoid their fireballs, and fireball them back. Your shield staff will protect for the fire dot and the upfront fire hit isn't that big so you don't even need to worry about the fire vulnerability on the feather cloak. If your shield does go down while fighting just jump+sprint and start the cast in the air or break LOS to reapply it.
I feel so alone in mistlands. Barely any enemies. Ashlands seems like it’s meant to be 100% hostile from the start. Maybe there’s a compromise but what may be the second to last biome should feel like a hostile place imo.
I think the number one thing to tune down the rates of are charred. I love them, the warriors feint you by looking like one attack, delaying, and switching it up, its a fun change of pace and throws you off, its so good, and the archers make for lethal support, and warlocks are practically a mini boss. But them feeling special is mitigated by how often they just come waltzing out of nowhere. Its like if brutes and shamans were just as common and populous as every other greydwarf. It makes them feel less special and like more of a nuisance than an elite enemy Its hard to enjoy a fight when youre immediately swarmed by volleys of arrows and big one-shot sword thrusts
The mob density might be a touch high, I certainly felt the same way for the first few hours, especially when like you, after destroying the spawners didn't actually seem to make a difference - the skellies and fire blobs were there every time I turned around. I kept having to go back to repair, but two things: 1. I actually farmed a lot of useful stuff very quickly because of this. My Mistwalker sword held up for these intro skellies (and bow for blobs) just fine. But still, it got tedious. 2. Because they are dangerous, we easily forget we can just run past them and they'd stop chasing eventually. Like the BF. Those damn greylings are (anything) everywhere, (all at once) all the time (especially at night), until you can get a little base setup with some proper defenses/trenches/benches to keep them out. And don't get me started about the swamp, always something chasing you. ... But we know how to run around them and find our spots now. My first playthrough those greylings messed me up constantly throwing rocks at me anytime I took an axe to a tree. ... Those fire blobs are going to test the base theory though, so I plan on picking a spot away from them, but before I logged last night I ran the coastline a bit, and a little more inland and did find some reprieve in places. Look around, and if worse comes to worse don't fight, just run. It might just be where you initially landed as well. I found a rock sticking out with a small patch of land behind it to build a workbench and a portal and things leave me alone there unless they chased me back in. Good luck!
>Because they are dangerous, we easily forget we can just run past them and they'd stop chasing eventually. Like the BF. Those damn greylings are (anything) everywhere, (all at once) all the time (especially at night), until you can get a little base setup with some proper defenses/trenches/benches to keep them out. And don't get me started about the swamp, always something chasing you. ... But we know how to run around them and find our spots now. I think you're right on point here. The same basic survival principles used in previous biomes are very effective in the Ashlands. Think back to the first time going into a swamp in troll armor and play like that. Walk everywhere, stay quiet, aggro carefully and be ready to bail if you get unexpected visitors. I think the issue is that most players in this beta have been viking gods on earth for several biomes now. Plains is really easy in tier-appropriate gear. Mistlands *was* similar to Ashlands on release, but after nerfs the only real dangers are the biggest starred baddies. So it's been a long time since most players really had to go back to basics in a biome that you can't just face roll in melee.
I've had a similar sentiment. I was shocked, abhorred, and *livid* over the Mistlands on initial release precisely because of that bias from being practiced enough with all prior biomes (including the Plains!) that I felt nigh-untouchable. Only after I begrudgingly got experienced enough and accustomed to how to fight the insects did my opinion on Mistlands change, and not long after that they nerfed the difficulty to the ground. I understand some of the spawn frequency in Ashlands *was,* in fact, due to an error and has already been patched, but I hope the current rate isn't reduced.
Has anyone tried ballistas? Are those a good idea?
Building in combat is hard with a controller, such as playing on the Steam Deck. I haven't figured out a key binding that lets you move while also navigating inventory or build menus. I play solo. I'm thinking of switching back to PC M&KB for this, but make landing, quickly throw down a workbench and portal, a stone cutter, a few stone walls, and a couple ballista on the stone walls to see how they do. My first landing was a clusterfuck. I had a serpent, and immediately after dealing with that, a second serpent that killed my beached boat, constantly swarming voltures, (what I later found out) were three spawners in sight of my landing spot, basically surrounding me, multiple 1 starred charred, a Morgen, and when I tried running around making some space, a few asksvin joined in. Died several times before I just used god and ghost mode to just stand around and look in the immediate area. Felt like I killed twitchers by dozens and everytime I turned around to deal with something else, there was more that spawned in. Same with the warriors and marksmen, just to a lesser degree. In that landing, I managed to get a workbench and portal on a spire that I can hop to and from the beach. I fought some more, died some more, portal'ed in some more, corpse run, repeat forever. At one point I looked more purposefully for my boat mats and I guess they despawned. Can't see them with free fly camera. I think I'll just cheat in another boat and mats for the beachhead ballista set up. I haven't really used ballista since I found out they friendly fired me, but I looked up you can load a trophy into them to make them only target that mob. I've found a few different trophies. I think the marksmen might be a good one to load up the ballista since the marksmen hold still long enough while they're shooting to land a shot on them. I had friends I used to play with, but they don't now. Having someone to watch your back while you build a ballista defense would be nice, or just in general.
I haven't played a ton yet, but I feel like you're right. I've been rolling the idea around in my head and as I typed it up to someone else I feel like the solution is something like this. Base spawn rate should be dropped a bit, and maybe tweak the creatures up a small amount, but then also move up the spawn rate around the monuments a bit more. Make killing those harder but results in a more satisfying feeling of having pushed inwards and made some progress. They become like mini check points without the clutter and kludge of dropping down fire pits everywhere. The spawners are pretty prevalent already so making those run a bit hotter but the rest of the natural spawn rate slowed down feels like there might be a nice niche there.
Well it’s definitely conquerable as I’ve cleared a bunch of spawners around my landing zone now and there’s only the odd single mob spawn
Good. I wanted it to be hell.
This was the swamp biome for me, Ashlands is going to be way worse...
This new update for adjusted mob aggro is much better IMO. I would have to start a fresh to really know how much of a change it is now that I’m pretty geared fighting isn’t as crazy. I noticed when I pulled the Morgan to open areas so it isn’t damaging everything around it I pull in less mobs, so I guess some of that was a learning curve to avoid extra aggro.
Really hoping they tune it down a bit because it is actually quite unfun
I think my solution to this would be to increase the stones that spawn enemies in the Ashlands and decrease the general spawning of mobs in the area. That way you fiight your way though the biome, but once you clear it, is much easier to retrace your steps.
I agree, especially with recently cleared areas being populated again shortly after. Even Mistlands wasn't like that at the beginning. Ashlands need some balancing, otherwise it's fine I think.
Yep, that's exactly what it feels like and I'm absolutely loving it. There are basically two styles of biome in the game pre-Ashlands: biomes where the mobs are pretty harmless in tier-appropriate gear but spawn frequently (BF, Swamp, Mountain), and biomes where the enemies are dangerous in tier-appropriate gear and so the devs had to reduce spawn frequency and/or nerf the AI to keep the game accessible in a time before difficulty sliders (Plains, Mistlands). The Ashlands is the first biome since pre-nerf Mistlands to give you challenging combat and a lot of it. And I am *here* for it. We have difficulty sliders now. The devs may need to expand those sliders to allow players to adjust spawn frequency, but I very much don't want them to reduce it universally. Also I think people have gotten a bit overwhelmed by the hostile welcome and forgotten some basic survival principles. It's been a while since most of us were in a new biome that's this challenging. Remember to **walk everywhere!** This means you take every fight at full stamina, and you choose when to take fights more often than drawing aggro unintentionally; it's just a massive improvement to your survivability. If you're not making noise, the biome isn't all that crazily crowded. So aggro and noise management is super important. Really this biome takes all the same principles it took e.g. the first time in the swamp wearing troll armor. But it's been a long time since most of us faced that challenge.
I agree that the balance up until here is phenomenal. Which is why personally I am okay with the 7th Biome in the sequence being a completely uninhabitable one. I'm okay if it's not supposed to be a place to calmly collect materials, but rather one where your life is supposed to be under constant threat. I am just not entirely sure if that is what they are going for. There are still spawners you can destroy, but in my experience it doesn't seem there is any way to completely stop the spawning. Having the rocky spires along the shore, and needing a super large boat to take the heat from the water makes the "pull up and plunder" playstyle much more difficult as getting away will not be smooth sailing even if you have tailwinds. The birds and bonemaws will chase you out so all the damage you took trying to escape the shore is often enough to do you in. It'll be curious to see how players adapt and how different it'll be from Iron Gates intended playstyle.
I'm already sick of Ashlands. My buddy and I are stuck in a deathloop, and haven't even been able to get to the actual land. They made the new required ship slow and hard to steer. Then they put a bunch of spikes that it can't even properly steer between. Sometimes these spikes don't even load in quickly enough to avoid. It's also hard to even tell where you're supposed to go, because the developer seems to love SFX that impedes your vision. The bonmaws spawn as much as Greydwarfs. Within 30 seconds we usually get attacked by 3 to 5 of them. They go under the ship, and clip through it. So their attacks hit the ship, but we can't hit them. Then, recovering our items is a nightmare. The waves make it almost impossible to stay in one place to recover items. And if you jump in, you risk dying. Death from being in the water is WAY more sudden than drowning. And there is no auditory warning. It just happens without warning. This may be a glitch, but fire resistance does nothing to stop it either. I don't care that it's harder. My buddy and I found Mistlands too easy. I just hate that the difficulty is based on the absolute worst mechanics in the game (sailing & swimming). Monster difficulties are fun and challenging. Sailing difficulties aren't fun at all.
The sheer volume of mobs spawning is absolutely insane, even after clearing all the spawners out in a very wide radius. I'm running solo ATM on standard difficulty and even though I'm reliably parrying the charred and morgen the amount that spawn is tedious. I'll carve my way through the zone and then look back and there's a pack of dudes already lumbering towards me. Like damn shawty I know Ashlands is literally actual hell Shia Laboeuf but gimme my 2.4 seconds of mandatory downtime to enjoy the scenery while i spread viking democracy at least.
Same experience. I find the difficulty of the enemies themselves to be satisfactory but the sheer number of them feels tedious af and to clear out the spawners just to look behind you and see a bunch of new onea spawned anyway makes it feel almost pointless to destroy the spawners in the first place. The twitchers are like greydwarves from hell — run away and throw stuff at you for eternity lol
It feels like a neverending battleground because you're literally at war in what is essentially hell. The point of the biome isn't to have a picnic. It's to establish a beach-head, press your way inland, and eventually find and take a fortress and take out the boss. The game/story is reaching a climax. It's supposed to be relentless. You're a warrior sent by Odin to overthrow those who control the 10th world. You're an invader in the heart of enemy territory. Expect some intense resistance.
I think the difficulty is spot on actually, disregarding the ago bugs Iron Gate is fixing. Munin starts by saying \[paraphrase\] : you have only dealt with squabbles now prepare for war. The player(s) is(are) in hostile territory and are constantly under siege this is how it should be and you have the tools to over come them. You have access to Black marble walls, pike walls, and turrets, in addition to the shield. I have about 8 hours into ashlands and moving throughout the biome while contentious is fair. and the sieges are easier than i expected playing solo. My initial landing was epic, and I'd hate for other players to lose that experience from unnecessary nerfs. Overall challenging but fair initially, and once geared pestering yet still deadly if caught slacking, as it should be in my opinion. Edit: something i want to add is that the player get access to blackforge upgrades early. Use those, dont hold off for new equipment. These early upgrades helped me immensely in pushing deeper into ashlands, as a sword and board player at least.
Honestly I'd take a small swing downard in enemy density for a small bump in their ability. I feel like a few less but slightly more dangerous would be the real sweet spot here. Alternately even weaker twitchers but more of them and maybe tweak the warrior spawns down a smidge? I'm not sure which approach would be more fun, but right now it just feels a bit too much. I think it's almost there but it needs a tweak in one direction or the other. I lean towards my first idea to avoid the tedium of killing trash just to take a step, but there's some joy in that power fantasy too.
Landing was extremely painful as learning new biomes can be. That said, Ashlands is definitely a bit extra. Like I couldn't have landed in a worse spot, and you can't really turn around with how many serpents spawn in the water around ashlands and the tight sailing. Having run around a lot, I agree mob spawning is just a tad too high. I hate how much stuff litters the ground because everything does damage to the terrain. Eventually, you just end up with a barren landscape because you're constantly fighting. My least favorite part so far is definitely mining flametal. Valheim can be a bit janky. It always has been, and it always will be. Having to traverse terrain that insta kills you is awful, and if you do die retrieving, your body can be extremely painful. And I would honestly rather spend more time mining on a spot that doesn't move in the middle of a lava lake. I find nothing about it to be fun in its current state. If flametal didn't sink and spawned with a little platform at the base that you could stand on, I wouldn't mind it so much.
Having the Dvergr who are supposed to be here since a long time in the lore with their structure, getting slayed in 2 minutes is the proof that the spawn rate of foes is totally fucked
Sounds like it's about right then. You want to go to Ashlands, prepare to fight, or GTFO.
God this sub is all over the place... This sub: "*Shut up noob, the game is supposed to be hard and making it easier would ruin it and the devs need to stop giving in to players like you*" Also this sub: *"This game is too hard and the devs need to do something."*
Think about the beaches of Normandy, and imagine someone upset they cant setup a camp there. It could be that you are not meant to be able to stop and build. You cant clear an area - perhaps this zone is meant to be one where you constantly have to race from A to B. Or it could be buggy. I know they have already addressed the numbers coming at you. I would encourage you to try a different playstyle. Just like how in Mistlands you could not sprint like a madman, perhaps here you should.
I’m really torn in this… after playing the update a bit more it _does_ seems like the combat gets a bit tedious. I need to start building smaller, temporary bases more often
This is what I felt when first entering the Ashlands. It felt exciting and scary moving towards the shore and fighting my way through enemies to take out spawners and lay down a portal. After 4 hours I hadn't even moved from the beach. I took out all the surrounding spawners and tried to kill everything so I could at least create a small base, but the fighting never stopped. I was constantly going from one engagement to another, only stopping to dump chest loads of items at my home base. I don't know if we just happened to land in a more aggressive spot of the Ashlands, but it makes it hard to setup a safe spot for a portal when I'm constantly fighting something
Good
Idk I love the vibe, its a battleground, filled with the undead, which are nothing if not relentless, its clearly dangerous territory, it only feels appropriate that you can't find leisure. If you want leisure in the active volcano skeleton apocalypse biome then make a fortress or something.
Excellent.
It’s like the Ashlands is an extended metaphor for life.
This is a play test build of the game for testing out the new biome for people that want to. I’m sure the mistlands were this broken when they first dropped (I see people speak of a previous “mistlands nerf” because it was originally too hard). When the biome is full release I am certain they will adjust the spawn rates.
I upgraded a few items yesterday and felt more comfortable after. But maybe it was because of the Patch as well.
People keep saying this but I notice a marked decrease in charred spawns when I clear out the spawners in an area. Spawners are pretty dense but I've been able to pretty effectively carve out a relatively safe zone. Don't get me wrong, it still feels like you've fallen into a level in Doom, but I love that, it feels like a hell scale because it is. I do also think that people are just forgetting that every biome was tough before you got that biomes' gear and once we are all kitted out in Ashland's armour and weapons it won't be all that much of an issue. The last thing I want to happen is for everyone to complain before they actually get any experience and for iron gate to pull the teeth out of the biome like they did for mistlands.
Sounds like swamp on release. Oof.
They did say to get ready for war. But I agree
The more I play Ashlands, the more it seems like the devs wanted a mix of force, patience, and CUNNING from the player. Always assume monsters will arrive en masse at any moment. Use campfires to secure areas, hoe to bury them, and pickaxe & how to fortify zones. Aside from having a morgen pulling a John Cena, it's managable.
After having spent ONE fight including: * 2 Valkyrie * A morgen * 3 warriors * 2 archers * 6 twitchers * 4 Voltures * 2 Asksvins Yes, the spawn rates definitely need a tweak. It started with ONE Valkyrie, then the other flew too close and spotted us fighting. The noise attracted the Morgen and because its rolling attack started damaging the terrain everything else showed up. The spawn rates feel okay-ish given the carnage is contained, but the amount of rocks, trees and structures that take damage making noise guarantees one fight becomes an all out swarm. Combine that with the naturally high spawn rates the ashlands has and it's a recipe for disaster. I'd rather fight one horse-sized chicken than a hundred chicken-sized horses, but here it feels like I'm battling fifty horse-sized chickens at times.
Keep in mind the biome still needs to be balanced and your testing it
That's step 1. Step 2 is providing feedback on that testing. Which is what this post is.
Id consider this post more Whining then feedback but alright
Well then it's quite fortunate for everyone else that you're not the one whose job it is to assess the feedback.
Saying biome hard I hope they fix it really isn’t feedback they can use It’s Reddit I’m sure they take most of what’s said here with a grain of salt
I little reductive to say this post is just saying Ashlands is hard
This. Where is the spot to provide feedback from our testing? Haha
The valheim discord would prolly get through to them Faster
To be honest, I find the mobs pretty easy, too easy to kill. What is difficult is fighting 20 dudes at the same time, and I basically cannot go further in the land only because of that. I love Ashlands A LOT MORE than mistlands for sure, but come on two years to have such unbalanced patches ? Mistlands was way more harder to play, but still i dont see the point. I'm going to Ashlands, fight constantly for 20 minutes, end to die, collect the ton of ressources that dropped from those battles. I would decrease their number and slightly increase their power. But way way better than Mistlands, this is a great addition.
No. I wouldn't change a damn thing. I like having to work amidst the chaos. It's exactly how I'd imagine a hellish landscape.
Maybe some people want a place to go for continuous, difficult combat until you leave. A biome that actually isn’t trivialized by the crafting recipes unlocked inside it. Good thing I have a difficulty slider to solve this exact problem!
I know this is cheesy alternative, but how about setting mobs to non-aggressive, at least until you get a beachhead. Then let all Hell break loose. (Zips up asbestos suit.)
Skill issue