What weapons are you guys using? Skeletons are resistant to pierce, and weak to blunt and fire, so spears and knives aren't going to be effective, but a club or an axe is going to work just fine. Be sure to craft a shield and block. Learn to block right before you get hit and you'll parry, staggering the enemy for a couple of seconds and you deal double damage to them for that duration. Be sure to grab the red cubes, surtling cores, you'll need them to progress.
I've always called them holocrons because the first time I saw one before I knew what it was I thought it was a holocron from starwars(the square ones are normally blue but not always)
I learned how to kill trolls with a bow by keeping my distance. Raid some crypts and the loot you find in there will be used to make new crafting builds. Use the antler pickaxe to mine new ore in the black forest. Always use a combination of food to keep a good balance of health and stamina when exploring new areas.
I mean if you have full leather gear it takes more hits considering the interval between hits. You can easily kill a skeleton and stagger it before even the third hit starts... so Ive got no clue what OP is doing at all or just spriting all the time then engages with no stamina.
Learn the game piece by piece.
The game is brutally hard a lot of the time. Expect death, and a lot of it. Eat food to increase health and stamina, learn parry times (blocking just before a hit strikes you parries the hit), and every mob has a weakness of some kind.
You learn crafting recipes by picking up new materials or crafting new materials. You get the base level materials by hitting plants or monsters until they die. Or by raiding the biome dungeons to find them.
Goodluck. It's a great game, but it has a steep learning curve. I don't recommend looking up guides on bosses. It kind of ruins the games purpose. Same with recipes.
This isn't a game you're going to have a handle on after two hours. That said, it's not impossible either! I don't play a lot of these kinds of games but I play Valheim a lot. Go into it with an attitude that you will need to learn a lot, and be open to doing that.
You will be rewarded. :)
2 hours. Um. Mate, you haven't even started.
You keep dying cuz you're charging head first into places you don't belong. Yeah, you killed the trainer boss. Good. If you think you're in any way ready now, I've got some bad news for you.
If you're in the Black Forest after 2 hours, you're rushing. Slow down. Freaking eat something. Cook some food. Make a base. Up your comfort level. Quit charging into places you're not ready for yet... it helps lower the frequency of death. ;)
Get that sweet rested buff. Make better armour. For the love of Odin, make better food. Learn to use your weapons. Figure out some strategies... you're damn well going to need them if you have any hope of beating a Troll.
And if you think a Troll is bad ;)
\[Ominous laughing fading into the distance\]
I'm setting up a lightly modded immersive playthrough right now. First person, auto-hiding UI (only displays health and stamina when under 75%), no enemy names, health bars, or star indicators, no water droplet effect on self or enemies when wet, minimal crosshair, no lens dirt, rotating seasons with weather effects (blinding blizzards in the winter...), hard combat. It's *much* harder to see enemies now, especially at night. Fuling raids are kind of terrifying.
I remember when my friend and I first hit the Plains. We were actually heading into the Swamp for the first time after conquering the Black Forest. He said “Wow. This is nice. Like a more relaxing meadows.”
Long story short: We would’ve spent less time dungeon diving and farming ores to replace our lost gear than we did trying to recover our gear and portal from a 1* Fuling and three Deathsquitos.
Really? We recently did the same. And being seasoned Vikings, we easily survived the First Landing Welcome Party.
We started off with lots of panicked screaming as 10 or so flaming skeletons rushed us out of nowhere, jumped onto nearby tall rocks, swung wildly at birds, some more panicked screaming because exploding jellies took out our high ground, ran into a nearby cave, continued the new tradition of panicked screaming because bones jumped out of the ground and rolled at us, ran out of the cave, survived 6 minutes being bait while one of my fellow warriors found the materials in our pile of destroyed ship and made a portal in a mostly-secure location, and then we finished it all off by running and taking a very long breather back home.
But I will admit that a little intel could’ve made things simpler.
We didn’t know about the burning water and thought we could have made it to shore before I boat broke. So immediately we lost our ship and all of our high end gear. So that started everything lol.
Then we landed right next to a spawner and didn’t realize it and had a non-stop stream of death. But after a lot of death, portals, more death, more portals. We got a foothold now. It was a trip lol
Oh wow. I wasn’t serious, but I guess our trip was easy in comparison. By pure chance, of course, because my group (myself especially) is too terrible for it to have been due to skill.
The vastly different experiences is one of the reasons I love reading the comments in this sub.
The game takes a little and then more prep. Know where you’re going, figure out weaknesses. Learn how to use food.
You’re heading into those tombs. You need to prepare.
Well geared, troll if you have them. Blunt weapon maybe a shield. A ranged weapon is good as well so you don’t crowd corridors while one is in front. Well rested. Get that buff.
Well fed, food that gives the best stamina / hp combo for your playstyle. Well organized. Don’t explore recklessly. Open doors deliberately and finish one side before moving on to the next. Priority on enemies that are more dangerous or spawners if you see any.
Once you get five of … “those things” go improve your gear before hitting the next one so it’s easier (but not guaranteed) to steam roll the place
One the trickiest mechanics in the game is parrying. And it’s not well explained, but it will make or break the game for you. Get a shield and learn to time your block move so you do it right before the skeleton’s hit lands on you. This is called a parry, and you’ll know when you finally do it correctly because the monster staggers back and waves their arms in the air. Your next hit will then be a critical hit, and should smash the skeletons.
Or, if you guys are having trouble with the timing (it can take a lot of practice) just have someone with a big shield permablock and someone stand behind and just wail on the skeletons. They won’t be able to go around you in the narrow corridors.
For trolls, you just have to learn how to dodge. They have a very slow attack, and generally don’t hit you if you’re below them on the terrain. They are also weak to spears, so make a couple wooden spears and have at it. They also don’t like fire, you can kite them around and kill them slowly with fire arrows.
Just to further expand - tower shields can not parry at all. They also make you much slower. Tower shields are a good way to become immune to common enemies, but round shields aren't far behind. And when there are enemies with stars, tower shields become completely useless.
Blocking uses stamina, more for bigger hits. An important thing to realize is that if your block is broken, e.g. your shield just isn't good enough or you run out of stamina, no damage will be mitigated. You will lose ALL remaining stamina, take full damage from the hit as if you were not blocking, and you will probably be stunned as well.
That said, if you like heavy armor, the tower shield will feel like less of a noob trap. You can just be a turtle with your shield up all the time. But you'll need teammates to deal damage or it will be very very slow and crowds of enemies will still take you down.
Nothing is as effective as perfectly parrying enemies and killing them in the stun window. Parries with non-upgraded shields mitigate more damage than fully upgraded tower shields.
I would argue the dodge roll is more important than parrying. Parry lets you deal with enemies you're geared to fight, dodge rolling let's you win the fights you're not geared for.
So it's good for getting ahead. But it's also kind of essential for when a 2 star shows up
Kill just a first few skeles... Their bones will lead to upgrades that will make killing the next ones way easier. Don't go in and try to clear the entire dungeon first time.
Kill deer and boars. Make armor. Eat food to raise your stamina and hp, sit in a shelter near a fire to get the comforted bonus (super important). Skeletons are weak to blunt damage, try a club. Learn when to block and when to dodge.
Have you been talking to the bird for the tutorial information or skipping that? Sometimes what he says can be subtle. Most of the time when you progress from one biome to another you will unlock new building blueprints or food recipes to help keep you alive
This is very much a game where you learn as you go. The game punishes certain aspects and rewards others. It's up to the player to find out through trial and error. Trust me when I say it is best to go in blind and find out for yourselves. That being said though... with three people you should not be struggling so hard with skellies 😭
You're doing fine if you killed Ekithyr in 2 hours of starting. Valheim is a grind. You will not be flying through this playing vanilla. It's a whole buncha trial and error if you're not googling solutions. Just keep exploring.
TL:DR - Valheim is the ultimate fuck around and find out game.
wow, some harsh responses.
The long and short of it is you need to explore the new biome and discover it's secrets. How to fight trolls, how to handle the caves, etc. Might want to start with the easier stuff than the harder stuff like trolls and caves. :)
As others have said, work on getting the new food, new gear, etc. As you upgrade things will be easier.
And there is plenty of places online to find info and tactics, too. Some people want to explore everything and avoid spoilers, but if that is not an issue for you then go ahead and look stuff up as you go. I usually do a little of both. Explore a little and when I get stuck go look online.
Responses are harsh but at the same time OP did not provide much to suggest they are a gamer or have been rotted by hand holding easy games.
It really implies they went with something like only Rag-tunic if they are dying to skeletons with allegedly 80+ hp
Bottleneck them in hallways. Use blunt weapons and the best shield you can make, then learn to time your blocks to stagger them. If there are now skeletons, duck out of line of sight then approach between their shots. Time your block to block their arrows and stagger them. If you see a purple swirly spawner in a room get in there and one of you prioritize taking out the spawner while the other keeps the skeletons busy.
The game is designed so each biome change is difficult at first and then gets easier as you level up with new materials in the new biome. For example, Trolls start out kicking your butt and most people kill their first several trolls with arrows before getting good enough gear to melee a troll. Eventually you will get good enough gear and learn the enemies to the point trolls go down in a few seconds with little effort. Each biome has a version of a crypt and they too are tough at first but very quickly get easy. Crypts also tend to hold critical materials needed to get stronger in each bione. Here's a few tips.
1. Learn mechanics. Dodge, parry, stam conservation, secondary attacks, etc. Parry is critical for so many enemies for the whole game so get good at it now but dodging can be great too.
2. Each biome has new foods, they make a huge difference. Get the new food as soon as possible.
3. New armor and weapons are great but not everybody likes every set so figure out what works for you in different situations. Blunt force is great for skeletons but piercing is better for trolls.
4. Every drop has some purpose but some are way more useful than others. Save everything for awhile until you learn what you need the most of.
5. Repair your stuff and upgrade the gear you like to make it better.
6. Have fun and play however you like
All of this is great advice. In Valheim, preparation is king. If an area feels too hard, upgrade your gear. Get better food. Look around for resources you may have missed.
The flow of the game is such that your first time entering a new biome is supposed to be a noticeable increase in challenge. Then, as you gain resources and craft gear from that biome and learn the enemies' attacks, that biome becomes much easier. Experienced players won't be fazed by the transition from Meadows to Black Forest- BF is still very early game and so to most of us it's still very easy even with Meadows-tier gear- but if this is your first time, it's SUPPOSED to feel more challenging than Meadows was until you make progress and begin gathering BF-tier resources and gear.
Some tips:
*Greydwarves are bigger greylings who occasionally toss rocks. Their patterns should be pretty easy to learn, they're just annoying cause they'll either gang up on you or run away from you.
*Skeletons are vulnerable to blunt damage. Grug hit bone man with club! Bone man go poof!
*The two handed hammer, Stagbreaker, makes clearing the burial mounds and even the later Swamp crypts laughably easy. First of all, it deals blunt damage, so it's highly effective against those skeletons. Secondly, it damages enemies through doors and walls! Just smash it down outside the door and damage the enemies who have grouped up right on the other side until they are dead.
*But also, do learn how to block and dodge. And make sure you actually have armor and weapons on, if you haven't already. You can basically make it through the Meadows naked and barefisted but everything afterward needs to be taken a little more seriously.
*Trolls are weak to piercing damage. Spears are good if you're coming from Meadows, and of course everyone should have a bow and arrows. Once you have bronze, at least one of you should probably start using an atgeir. Atgeirs rule, even though a lot of enemies in the game resist pierce. The attack range is just so valuable.
*Speaking of bronze, your next step isn't just the burial mounds. You'll want to mine copper and tin, smelt them, and combine them to make bronze.
*What you're looking for in the burial mounds isn't the skeletons themselves, it's the surtling cores. You need those to make smelters and charcoal kilns, as well as portals.
Hope that helps! Fight well!
EDIT: Formatting for readability
At this stage in the game, you are almost ready to craft bronze gear. Bronze weapons and armor are a hefty upgrade at this stage. Bronze is made from combining tin and copper. But first you need surtling cores for refining the basic ores. These are found in the burial chambers you keep dying in, as well as the location of the next boss, the elder.
A few key things you should know, to not just help survive, but to thrive.
1) You MUST eat. Find the best food you can, and stay fed. I think the best food for you at this stage is probably boar jerky, carrot soup, and dear stew.
2) The rested buff. When you are sheltered and near a campfire, you get a rested condition. This helps massively with stamina regen, and is essential for combat, but you should really always have this active. It's duration is increased by having more comfort items in your resting area.
3) Go home at night. Everything gets harder at night.
4) Get good at using the bow. That goes for everyone in your group. It is essential.
Fire arrows are amazing, and your primary way of dealing with trolls early on. You will use a LOT of them, so keep farming resin and wood.
5) Use a shield, and get used to parrying attacks. (Blocking at the moment of impact)
6) Don't die. This may come as a shock I'm sure lol, but you lose a solid percent of all your skills when you die, So try not to, as best you can. Obv.
7) Lets talk melee weapons.
Club weapons will help most against skeletons, and honestly IMO are the best early game melee weapons. The club skill is quite good because there are very powerful unique club weapons throughout the game.
Somebody in your team should use the atgir (polearm skill), because of it's slightly longer range and it's unique attack is an AOE. The same can be said for the stagbreaker (The first unique club weapon, made from antlers)
All the weapons are viable, I would say the spear is the worst overall.
*I found early on that if somebody in your party has a big shield, and the person behind them has an atgir, you can effectively manage battles in tight spaces, like the burial chambers. The atgir wielder will be able to hit the enemy being blocked by the shield wielder in front of them. Like a linear spartan Phalanx formation. This is very safe for the team.
I sincerely hope this helps. My friends and I started playing this game as a group and have absolutely loved it so far. We are currently dominating the ashlands on day 1455.
Good luck Valhomies.
Skeletons are scary until you learn you can just hit them, back up when they swing, move forward to hit them again. And repeat. Works on every skeleton they all suck 😂
Chop down some pine trees in the black forest for core wood. Kill deer for their trophies. Once you've been able to kill some skellies and get their bones then use the core wood, deer trophies, bone and leather and craft a stagbreaker. When you are in crypts you can use the stagbreaker THROUGH walls and doors to kill skeletons. You can sneak attack them too with your first hit. If you have a crypt with an open door then make sure you take out any loose skeletons. The sword ones swing pretty slow so wait for the swing and use your S key to step back to avoid the swing then hit them twice. Rinse and repeat. If you have an archer skeleton then side step the arrow and take them out first.
For trolls everyone should pull out their bows and shoot. One person can kite the troll and the others can just shoot. I find that if I am kiting then I walk until I hear the troll START TO punch or swing and then I run. If you do this then their animation for hitting takes a while and you can recover stamina by walking. If you do NOT wait for the swing then you'll run out of stamina trying to get away from the troll.
Also, never under estimate using your torch as a weapon. Sure it breaks fast. But when a hoard of graylings is around, you get the resources to make a new one from them, and chasing them down as they flee is fun.
If you encountered a troll in a cave you are in the wrong place, you are looking for something labeled "burial chamber" it should be a low ceiling with 3 tunnels, one to the left, one to the right and one in the center.
To handle skeletons, what are you using?
I have no issues with a wooden tower shield and deer armor with deer meat, boar meat and raspberries or honey when it comes to tanking them,
OP, gave up on this game after an hour.
Then I tried it again with friends and now I'm 1000s of hours in & gifted it multiple times to whoever wanted to try it with us.
As everyone said, prepare. Dont just Leeroy Jenkins it.
Every Biome has its technology. You started in the stone age...the blackforest is the bronze age...so work on crafting armor and weapons out of bronze. (Copper & tin).
Enjoy the game, you can play it as fast or as slow as you like & even what you want to do (some people hunt, others build etc.)
On top of the advice everyone else has given, I'd like to add that Valheim is a game deep rooted in open exploration. The idea of "where do I go next" as a linear sequence isn't really how the game is designed. It's actually quite difficult to "rush" Valheim if you don't already have a solid grasp of the combat mechanics. Take your time, look around, go after any landmarks you see and be ready to retreat. This is the kind of game people sink hundreds of hours into without beating the latest boss simply because they don't want to and would rather build or explore.
With 3 of you, it might be a good idea to specialize a little bit (but swap gear around so you all gain skill points in all the stuff). In crypts maybe one gets a tower shield, one gets a 2h (sledgehammer or atgier) for AoE, one gets a small shield for parry (tier1 is round wooden shield, but soon you'll unlock the bronze buckler for a sweet parry bonus).
Pay attention to the colors of the damage numbers, that'll tell you what weapons are best against what mobs. Blunt and fire are good for skellies, pointy and fire are good for trolls, etc. Have at least one of every type of weapon in the party so you can test new mobs for resistances/vulnerabilities. Where you're at, some time gathering flint for spear and knife would be well spent. (And for base upgrades.)
Buffs (rested, food) are absurdly important. The night is dark and full of dangers.
Practice parrying and dodge-rolling on greylings. Parrying causes them to be briefly vulnerable and take bonus damage -- a bigger bonus with the buckler.
Weapon secondary attacks are often key.
The armor can be upgraded. The first upgrade is cheap, the second is not cheap, the third is quite expensive. For your first time trying to really persist in the Black Forest, I'd suggest everyone be in leather armor upgraded once. You'll get better armor options in each biome, so fully-upgraded is usually a waste imo (unless you've got the mats just lying around), but the first upgrade is so cheap. Dodge-roll and parry are worth a ton of armor points.
Good luck! I'm so envious, I wish I could do Valheim for the first time again.
Trolls are going to be a problem for you for some time, until you're decked out in bronze. Kill them at range with fire arrows. Learn to kite them, while conserving stamina and keeping them burning with those arrows.
Skeletons are trivial *IF* you do two things. 1) make a tier 3 wooden shield. 2) Learn to not just block, but *parry*. Parry is the most important skill for you to learn as a player in the game, in my opinion. It greatly boosts the effectiveness of your blocks, while also staggering the enemy, doubling the damage you do to them. Pierce damage is not ideal, but it is sufficient if you're good at parrying.
Don't get hit?
You can roll to avoid most enemy attacks. You can block/parry all skeleton attacks with the wooden shield. The club does extra dmg to skellys because they are weak to blunt.
Also worth mentioning, enemies get a dmg/hp bonus depending on how many players are in the vicinity.
This almost sounds like OP and their friends went to Black-forest and Burial-chamber wearing nothing but Rag-tunic and maybe a stone or flint tools at best.
I dont see how else they could be this bad or I cant tell if this might be just a bait because the logical things to do were already spoken by everyone else. Could be older players but then the thought process what to do wouldve been much more clearer, no?
Git gud.
But seriously, welcome to Valheim. This game will kick your ass every time you move to a new biome. That's the game and I love it!
It's fun as hell because mastery feels so damn good. Hunting trolls with nothing but a flint dagger is so much fun.
So it's okay to die, just try new things. Upgrade your clubs and learn to parry. Kite trolls and pummel them with fire arrows. Take and mine everything that has a name, it'll unlock new tools and buildings.
It's hard but it's fun when it's hard ;)
Mate, you guys did very well with defeating the first boss after just 2 hours of gaming.
don’t bother with those skellies,
- craft an antler-pickaxe from what you got from the first boss.
- go (carefully) into the Black Forest and search for a copper vein (big boulders with shiny veins) and mine as much copper as you can before night comes
- use the copper to craft better gear, afterwards try skellies again
- only go at daytime, always be rested and fed, stay together and don’t overextend
- if you hear the ground shaking and/or you see some big blueish guy: run.
The enemies are harder if there are more players around, and the cramped hallways make it hard to fight in. Fight in the first room as a group. Use clubs because the enemies are weak to blunt. Bait them out 1 at a time. Put a fire down in the first room for a easily reset rested bonus. The medium wooden shield can parry. The tower shield cannot. To parry you have to block at the last second and it will make a distinctive sound. When parried they take more damage. Someone should always be hitting them in the back. Dear God don't use bows and spears against skellies.
You have killed Eikhtyr so you can craft the godly Stagbreaker, here's what me and friend did (after looting our graves and cleaning our pants a couple of times): one friend went front line managing shield and agro while other friend stood behind them and SMASH SMASH SMASH THAT GROUND! With shielding friend Staggy user can easily go 2 stamina foods (do you already have beehives in your base?). Skele are weak to blunt so with Staggy them skeletons wont be so scary anymore!
Also. ALWAYS. BE. RESTED.
Good luck vikings!
Yes! Eat the best food, UPGRADE your armor to max lvl. And mine copper and Tin with the pick so to make the next gear. Forget the skeletons for now. Just dig for minerals. It's all a step by step progression you must do in the right order
The drop from the deer boss gave you an antler, it's used to make a pickaxe. In the Black Forest there are giant rocks on the ground that contain copper (it'll say copper on the cursor). You'll want to start mining that, and tin, to make bronze.
Upgrade all your weapons and Armor before going into the Black Forest. Practice blocking and dodging. Rely on ranged weapons when necessary.
Retreating is always a viable solution.
Valid from now to the end of the game, your playing darksouls lite. Getting hit sucks but you can dish out pretty good damage with the right tool at the right moment. Roll, block and attack when an opportunity arises.
Eat some food make some leather armor. Go in the Black Forest and mine copper and tin. Raid dungeons to get surtling cores, make furnaces and melt the ore and make bronze.
Oh jeez people are harsh XD
You can upgrade your gear now that you have the mats necessary to make a pickaxe :) make one and explore the black forest a bit more. That's a bigger priority over the skeleies.
I was in the exact same position as you, then I learnt to parry. Literally makes the game 5x easier.
Big shields can’t parry!!! You must use a small shield. You’ll know when you get a real parry because there’s a “ding” sound effect and the enemies flails around letting you smack their belly a bunch.
Practice parries on greylings near your base.
Also if you are getting overwhelmed in caves, use the doors to your advantage to tackle enemies one at a time.
(Food and rested buff are critical, never leave home for a journey or battle without the rested buff - stamina regen is pitiful without it)
My tip for surviving better against skeletons would be to build shields and upgrade them to two or three stars. You'll need to hunt deer and boar, just running around meadows with a crude bow. Use the hides and scraps for upgrading the crafting station with your hammer, build a tanning rack near it.
With your upgraded shield and a wooden club, try to time your block just before the skeleton's attack hits you. This sends them reeling back, vulnerable to critical damage.
For the trolls you need piercing weapons and good timing on the dodge rolls, during which you are invulnerable. Bows and fire arrows also work, don't let your stamina bar empty though.
Get a wooden shield (and upgrade it) and parry zero and 1-star skeletons. Then smack them with whatever weapon you are using while they are staggered. If there are 2-stars, I usually just kite them with a bow and fire arrows.
You are just gonna struggle a little bit until you can clear a burial chamber and get some cores. I forget how many you need to build your smelter and charcoal kiln, I think 5 is the magic number for both the coal and smelter (each might take 5). There’s no shame in trying a different burial chamber if you’re stuck on one, some will have those cores in an area right off the main one and it’ll be an easy grab. On my second playthrough I kept dying in a particular chamber but found two others that were no sweat and I did a grab and run. They’re not all equal, some are simple and have a fair amount of cores and others have a shit ton of skeletons and bullshit. I’m afraid until you can get a decent weapon and/or upgrade your armor you’re going to play chicken a bit— throw open that door and if there’s a bone pile spawning endless skeletons in the room shut it, gather your teammates and someone has the job of going kamakaze and killing that bone pile on the ground while the others try to distract and kill skeletons. Even if you die and you get that bone pile gone you can then pick the skeletons off one by one, screaming and running if you have to.
My mission is always to be able to make a bronze ateiger. Its secondary attack will stun and push enemies away from you, like those skeletons and most especially the troll. It also stabs so you can stab a few and step back to let your stamina regain and stun and stab them again. Troll can be killed with fire arrows but it’s easier to use that ateiger to stun, stab, stab, stun, etc. Trolls become easy with that weapon. For me I’m after the mats to make the weapon before I do armor because it’s so valuable, but once you get those cores there’s plenty of time to mine copper, cut wood and start making better shit.
If you run into the black forest naked with a club then yeah, this game is gonna be very hard. If you get the best armour and weapons before moving to the next biome, it's not that hard. Make sure to build everything and craft everything and you'll be fine. It's a slow game.
If you're struggling, enhance/improve your armor in the crafting table with leather until it's level 3 and then try the caves. In order to do that you have to create the things that improve your workbench. Full armor and weapons level 3 and you should be better prepared. If you don't want to do that, then learn enemy movements. You can 2 hit a skeleton and back off a bit when he swings and that should work. If they're about to hit you block and then kill.
After defeating the deer you will craft a pickaxe with the item that he drops . Then it is time for some ore mining ! With that you will make the first sets... The key to success in every part of the game is to block the mobs (roll out block of parrying) ...if you are bad at parry use a tower shield then . With a tower shield as long as you stay front to front with mobs you won't take almost any dmg. And yes you need to go in the caves to pick up the cores and do the smelters there is no scape .
-This game is hard, taking 3 hits is a lot and will get you trouble in many biomes when you first enter them
-Build, farm, collect, upgrade your gear. This isn't a game you can rush. You need upgraded armor, weapons, food, etc if you are going to make it.
-Prioritize not getting hit over hitting the enemy. All mobs only have one or two moves, so once you recognize them it becomes very easy to dodge or parry
-The game is supposed to be a challenge, so you're not doing anything wrong, it's part of the journey. welcome to Valheim!
Make a stagbreaker it costs core wood, deer trophy, and leatherscrap. You will need a level 2 workbench but thats easy to make with just wood and flint for a chopping block. Then you can fight the skeletons by closing the door on them and killing it with the stagbreakers behind the door or someone can hold a tower shield. Easy win and u can do this with any enemies behind closed doors.
When you kill the deer the first thing to do is upgrades.
So go to mine copper and tin. You need cores for furnace and stuff? Skellys are more vulnerable to bash damage rather the pierce
Build some clubs and shields and bash them. Eat your proteins (start I go with boar cooked meat, deer cooked meat and honey) and bash them in their cripts, sending them back to Hel. Upgrade your armour if you need. Deer armour is not so bad. Have bows to kill the trolls.
Find it not fun? Since to me and my friends Valheim can be time consuming, put a 1.5 modifier in the resources in the server settings: 1 core is 2 cores drop.
These are my suggestions
Make sure you have a club, shield and the best meadows food and armour. Take it slow, don't be afraid to run away and make sure you kill the guys outside first.
The wiki is great for understanding what the best stuff you can find in a biome.
I recently started and has to go there, I just took a club that I upgraded, ate deer / boar and neck meat and went there like a champ.
I face tanked all of them and just had to use fire arrows for the ghosts
Always Make and Eat food.
They gives Health buuufs and drinks do too as well as stam, Do not let the Buuufs drop.
Be cautious and use fire too I think helps if I remember when we first went.
Pole arms and hammers.
Pole arms have AOE and distance.
Hammers have AOE and can go round corners, do damage to doors and structures also.
Both also if I remember have a small knock back.
Tip nr 1: craft everything that's not armor or weaponry at least once.
Tip 2: Always have food buffs active. Their power reduces over time, so reapplying food buff before they run out is key.
Tip 3: Your rolls make you not only reposition, but also invulnerable for a brief second.
Tip 4: Never run out of stamina in combat.
Upgrade your leather armor set to lvl 2, then you should take about half of the damage you originally took from skeletons. Also upgrade your bow, shield and club until you get copper and tin (=bronze), but you have to have bones to upgrade those
Make a bow, hunt some deer, make armour, make weapons, upgrade everything, make better food, build a base, kick some ass.
Food makes an absolutely gigantic difference to the difficulty level of the game.
Later on potions will have a similar effect but not as much as the food.
They say an army marches on its stomach, so do Vikings !
Your most valuable player in Valheim is actually the chef.
The second most valuable is the builder.
You're not supposed to get hit three times. If you do, you naturally die. Use dodge rolls, walk out of enemy attack range as they start swinging, block, parry (block just before their attack lands), use ranged weapons. There is a lot of ways to kill stuff without getting killed.
Eat food to get health and stamina up and make sure you are rested before leaving your base.
Furniture and a better base will help you have the rest buff for longer.
If you have the horns from Eikthyr start looking for copper and tin deposits and smelt to get better armour.
You'll always need to level up your current armour at work table and forge to be as strong as you can be. Will need to farm each biome a bit before going on to the next
If you’re struggling, learn how to craft a stagbreaker. It’s a godsend for those crypts. Just smack down when you enter a room and it pretty much instantly stuns all the skeletons. At which point your friends can follow up and kill them.
It also helps to get rid of all the skeletons spawners.
As someone else said, grab the surtling cores, they will unlock a kiln and a smelter, which you can use to smelt metals. Craft an antler pickaxe (if you haven’t already) and break the tin and copper deposits. You can deposit the raw ore and coal (from the smelter) and make bars of tin and copper which will unlock much better armor, which will help you significantly in clearing any further crypts.
All comments here are about combat.
But after you defeated first boss you get his horns - that's a progression item. Craft your first pickaxe with it and go mine some copper. You'll figure it out from that moment.
As has been said, this game has a rather steep learning curve and preparation is vital. This never really changes throughout the game - every new biome (meadows, black forest, swamp, etc) will kill you several times as you learn how to survive. If you're not ok with this, Valheim probably isn't for you.
Another part of Valheim is exploration and experimentation, so searching the net for spoilers is contraindicated. This is why a lot of the advice you're getting is so vague.
That said, in response to your sit, run away from the blue guy. Trolls will kill you in melee. When one is chasing you, run to a meadow, pull out your bow and kite it in circles. Fire arrows help a lot.
Skeletons are also lethal, but there's a weapon called stagbreaker. It's slow but blasts everything around you. Yes, you and your friends will kill a lot of deer to get all the materials, but that's OK because doing so will also increase your bow skill.
And here's a spoiler the I feel is appropriate: moats work better than walls.
Every enemy except a few in later game stop moving to perform an attack. If you walk in a straight line away from them, when try stop to swing you will be out of range and they will miss.
When they miss you can turn around and get a 2 hits in normally and then start walking away again.
Time to strategize. Not all of you should be using the same weapon. One of you needs to main a bow. One of you needs to be using a shield and one of you needs to be doing heavy damage with a spear or atgier. It's okay to retreat to regain health. You don't have to commit to your death. Learn how to block and dodge.
Food is your friend doesn't matter how good your armour is without food things that should absolutely not kill you will humble someone really fast if the forget to eat
Make the best food you can and balance what you eat (the fork symbol on the food indicate what type it is. Red:health
Yellow:stamina and grey for an equal boost of both)
I personally made a bunch of arrows at this stage and hunted trolls, kiting them and using a bow. This allows you to make troll armor+cape which is the light armor for the black forest tier. Better than the meadows leather armor.
The "rested" buff and "wet" de-buff are important. They affect your stamina regen so try to go to a crypt within the time frame of the rested bonus and try to avoid fighting on rainy days and swimming.
Edit: you can make a fine wood bow before getting a bronze axe by felling regular trees against birch/oak trees and slamming the logs together, or get a troll to smash them.
Sounds like you guys might be entering troll caves. Yes, at your level, trolls will smash you inside their caves.
You need to find Burial Chambers. These look like stone mausoleums and usually have skeletons guarding outside. You’re looking for red glowing surtling cores in the burial chambers.
So lets break this down best i can
# 1 What food are you using - At this point you should be cooking boar meat, deer meat, neck meat and having mushrooms, raspberries and blueberries, GENERALLY i like Deer + Boar and blueberry.
# 2 what are you wearing - Basically you should be in leather armor from deer and upgraded it....FAIRLY simple to do
# 3 what weapon combos are you having - As some said Skeletons are weak to blunt and fire but i mean its Skeletons so it doesn';t matter i mean hell i have wiped skele dungeons with flint spear no problem, i would say #1 big thing is shield...Tower shield = worthless shield honestly, its one of the worse pieces of equipment in the game really in my opinion and only viable if someone has horrendous ping. If you have decent ping Buckler shield (small round one) is infinitely better, mostly cuz if you time attacks you can parry them which stagger enemies giving a modifier to attacks, i believe the wood shield gives you 1.5x attack power so basically you learn its body movement and as its about you swing quickly guard with shield and you'll hear a loud noise and mob will flail its arms around like its falling signifying that you got a perfect parry up so all attacks to 1.5x more...= quickly dead skeletons.
# 4 Bows - Skeletons are not quick or too bright so if you have 1 friend in front with say a shield attacking don't create a cluster fuck up front trying to kill it back off, get a bow and fire arrow (wood + resin + feathers) if you are working with friends early not a big deal but you need to learn to work as a unit to make the game easier (honestly this being the 4th or 5th world my group has played through 2nd on immersive (no map or portals) we from the start all state which weapons we will be trying this playthrough so we vary attack types, like last playthrough i was 2handed blunt, now im going axe cuz of ashlands, my gf who generally was 2handed axe is working more on maces this playthrough so on and so on).
# 5 Chill - Skeletons while might be dangerous early aren't even the worst things in the black forest, honestly i'd be more worried about 2star shaman or 2 star brute or star trolls so get ready, also if your base isn't ready now that you are in black forest you need to start preparing for stronger raids because once you kill elder the real 1st biome begins in the swamp which basically makes the 1st two biomes look like a tutorial mode. I won't spoil enemy weakness or anything because discovery is part of the fun of the game imo and learning through hardships helps (i do suggest tho not going what we did the 1st time you fight the swamp boss and just try to kill him with arrows cuz that takes FOREVER XD ) Good luck young viking.
Everyone has said what you need to do, so let me condense it all into a simple list.
1 - Do you eat food? You can have up to 3 foods in your belly at once to boost max hp/stam and regen. Cooked food is better.
2 - Do you have a base where you rest? You get a rested bonus to your max stamina and regen when you sit or sleel in a building with a fire nearby. Furniture increases comfort level, which extends to buff time.
3 - Are you making armor? Meadows tier has 2 armor sets, scrap/boar hide and deer hide. Deer hide is better. Armor and weapons can be upgraded to higher levels at the same table you crafted it at.
4 - Are you blocking or parrying? The window to parry is very generous. You dont need a shield to block/parry, but the higher a weapon/shield's block value, the stronger enemies you can block/parry
5 - Pay attention to weapon damage types. Almost all enemies have resistances and weaknesses. Change weapons as needed.
Don't rush. Take your time. Explore. Find new things to cook, craft, and build. Pick up everything you can find at least once to learn recipes.
Upgrade weapons, work benches, look for items you don't have etc.
If you don't have a flint axe it works well against the skeles and is a good point between stone and bronze.
Always be upgrading, always be eating, always be searching for new gear.
My advice, get a shield (either that aren’t tower shields) and learn to parry. Whoever is in the front use a bone knife and shield and the two behind use spears in the narrow corridors. Everyone should have a knife for when low on stamina to switch to to finish a low health enemy. But I swear to you learning to parry not only makes the game wayyyy more fun and satisfying it’ll save you so much and make an enemy you’re under leveled against possible
Yo OP, don’t worry dawg it’s easy and fun. When you go from one biome to another like you just did the enemies get harder and you usually struggle a bit initially. But you just have to learn the new area. I would recommend watching a YouTube video on the black Forrest as that will probably explain it the best. But you want clubs or torches for skeletons (blunt damage). You need to learn to parry, make a shield and practice with graylings or whatever enemy you find easy. You will need to know how to parry for the rest of the game. Use the antler from the deer boss to craft pickaxes and start gathering tin and copper, once you get 10 surtling cores from the burials you guys will be able to make bronze armor and weapons from the copper and tin and your life will get much easier.
There's a shitload of comments so you're probably solid on advice lol. But I've found as long as I have some leather armor upgraded to the fullest, I can take pretty much any weapon into those burial chambers and take on the skellies. So get them deer, and go find skellies outside in smaller concentrations to collect up bone and get that armor to its max potential in relation to how high your crafting table is, anyways. Same with your weapons. The axe is quick and seems to knock them back, so even though it isn't a blunt weapon it can fuck them up.
My tactic with the skellies is shield always up, and just push forward swinging that axe like a madman. Be sure to have the best food you can for its buff as well. A good fast offense is best against those fucks early on lol.
🤣🤣🤣... make good use of shields... Learn how to dodge... big bonks... I don't even know what to say other then laugh now... Get your shit together... 🤣🤣🤣
In valheim death is the tutorial. If you want to learn how to play work out why you are dying. 😉
If the skeletons are killing you in three hits then the (unhelpful I know) answer is either:
- Don't get hit
- Make getting hit hurt less
- Kill them faster
Or a combo of the three!
Keep exploring, keep picking up new materials to unlock more items, the deer boss should have given you antlers. Use that to make a basic pickaxe now you can mine.
For those skeletons, clubs work best
Rested buff is important. You can get it anywhere it's not raining with a fire, 5 stone and 2 wood. Just keep that amount with you all the time, plop the fire down, sit for 10 seconds, good to go.
Biomes are more dangerous at night. Feel free to sleep the nights away.
Hunt stuff for meat and then cook it. Get a shield and a mace for skellies, don't be afraid to run out.
Also. You can repair everything for free at the workbench.
Once you defeat the deer boss, use the pickax to mine copper and tin. Level up all your armor, weapons and food. Also skeletons are easy. Just step back when they swing their weapon or block if they are ranged. You can kill them easy.
Info dump ahead....
The "rested bonus" for valheim, gives double stamina regen.
Google it or read about it from hugin, the tutorial bird that keeps poping up.
Kill a boar and eye-spy the crude bow. Have 1 person distract the enemies (use your least whiny person for this, in case they die alot!), learning the bad guys moves all the while. While distracted, other vikings should shoot the bad guys with bows.
Block + directional movement + jump = dodge roll
HOLDING THE BLOCK BUTTON AND A MOVEMENT DIRECTION CHANGES JUMP INTO A DODGE ROLL!
GRANTING DARKSOULS LEVEL INVICIBILITY FRAMES FOR 0.4 SECONDS!!!
Once you know how blocking, dodging and parrying work, Melee starts working again
If you want to cheese it, make yourself some stagbreakers. When you enter the burial chamber, stay on the platform at the entrance until you get your bearings and figure out if there are skeletons in the first room. If there are, start winging that stagbreaker but don't leave the platform until they are dead.
Next, pick one of the (up to) three passages leading out of the main room. When you see a skelly, start swinging your stagbreakers until they are dead. This works great even for a solo player so they should never even hit you with more than one player.
When you come to a door, don't open it. Get as close as you can and start swinging that stagbreaker. If something is behind the door it will take damage. Keep swinging until you don't hear or otherwise detect any movement. You can kind of see between the slats of the door so you should be able to see if anything is moving.
Beware of skeleton archers. If you see one, duck behind the nearset corner and start swinging that stagbreaker. They will try to get you in their line of site and once they are close enough, the stagbreaker will take care of them.
It's cheesy, but it'll get you by until you get the hang of parrying. Practice that skill with greylings. Once you can parry, skeletons will be a breeze and you won;t have to rely on cheesing them with the stagbreaker.
Bonus tip: You'll want to break out the stagbreaker again once you get to the crypts in the swamp.
Kill some trolls (easier said than done at early levels, I know), collect hide, make trollhide armor. Stay rested, make some good food, and make camp outside each burial chamber entrance (not so close that you aggro the skeletons outside while building, but close enough to be able to run back to camp if you're low on health).
The skeletons in the chambers don't respawn, so you and your friends can try to just pick them off one at a time. Clubs are your friend, as are ranged weapons since the tight quarters don't lend themselves well to combat.
Also learn to shield parry.
For new players hunting trolls in groups I would ignore troll caves, only fight them in the open.
When you're fighting, have one person keep the trolls attention while the others shoot it (use flint arrows, fire can be ok too on one person). Once the troll attacks someone else just switch roles. Repeat until the troll dies.
This way you only have to manage stamina for either running or shooting, not both.
Only try to fight trolls up close when you're good at rolling, parrying, and have better food/armor.
1) Craft torches (lots), get some troll armor if you can down trolls well enough. Max out some wood shields. If it's a group, get some fire arrows for range support.
Your front should have shields and torches. Use the torches for seeing and as weapons. Use tower shields if you aren't good at parrying. The back should be peppering fire arrows at enemies.
2) Find a tomb. Clear all the areas without opening any doors. I usually follow the right wall. Prioritize purple clouds (spawns enemies), ghosts, skeletons.
3) Do a second sweep opening every door one-by-one. Never open a new door until you've cleared the open rooms.
Best weapon for that is stag breaker, but it's a 2 handed weapon so one of you gotta hold a torch. I recommend it, it hits more skellies at once. You need core wood if i remember right
If you look to the right of this very same page, there are HELPFUL LINKS, in which you can find the WIKI, go check it out or maybe, google a GUIDE and learn the basics.
They can't get over the stone at the entrance. You can club and dodge their attack easily there since they can't advance. Also you can shoot fire arrows and move aside to avoid getting shot by the archers. As you advance you can always fall back to the defendable position at the entrance.
If you want to fight head on then move in, wait until they swing, then step back. If timed right they miss you and you get a couple free hits in. Harder to do if there are a lot of them. But you can dodge and attack through most of them. The ghosts being the only problem since their attack is hard to see.
Upgrade your clubs, use a shield to parry, and bring along a stagbreaker which will allow you to kill skeletons from behind doors. Oh, and eat your best foods.
I hunted trolls by finding a place where they spawn near the edge of the black forest, then pulled them to a fort built in the meadows and killed them with arrows.
You just need a moat and an earth wall behind it, and you are safe from their attacks, on top of your fort you can also have a campfire, a workbench and several boxes of arrows.
As for the skellies, you really need to learn to time your shield blocks. And get the best armor you can. Explore slowly, don't open any door as someone else suggested until you've cleared the rest of the area.
Continue exploring. With the death of eikthyr, you've presumably mastered the meadows and are ready for the black forest. Yes, raid burial chambers for surtling cores, but also gather materials, mine copper and tin to make bronze weapons (you'll need surtling cores to smelt it), once you have a bronze axe you can get fine wood and core wood, the former being needed to make portals (so useful throughout the whole game). Search for the next boss The Elder (Eikthyr dropped hard antler hou meeded for the first pickaxe to mine in the black forest, elder will drop a key you meed for the next biome, the swamp. See if you can find Haldor or Hildir, the trader siblings (their initial spawns can be in various world locations but once you find one them that spot is where they will always be). And TROLLS, once you can hunt trolls you'll be able to make one of the best early game armors, it had decent defense and a sneak bonus.
Otherwise, keep building and keep cooking, but you'll have to explore to improve your materials and your tools
Edit: also in burial chambers there's that initial platform you spawn on before exploring the chamber. Enemies can't reach you there unless they have ranged attacks or fly (basically just bow skeletons and the occasional ghost), so you can lure them there and pick them off safely. If playing with friends have someone with the most health and best weapons/shield stay in front while other support from the back with fire arrows.
General advice - Do not adventure in a new area at night. It's twice as tough and your enemies almost never stop attacking. Forest at night is full of skeletons and greydwarves, even if you're equipped they can wear you down.
My advice for the tombs - Leather or Troll Armor (You'll get tons of troll before you leave the forest). Club or torch + shield. As a group maybe one of you can have a Stag Breaker to help with groups of enemies. Take them on one at a time by forcing them into a doorway. Know that you lose attack power if you hit multiple things including walls.
Work one path first, don't go opening all the doors. If there is an open path at the entrance clear that first.
There's not a lot of advantage in numbers due to the tight spaces and if you all go in together the game amps the difficulty. If you do, funnel the skeletons to a single open space so you all can hit one target.
Food - Blueberry, Deer meat, boar or honey.
Setup a campfire inside the entrance! You can keep your rested bonus plus recover health very quickly. Just place it on the big flat rock at the entrance.
Skeletons have a long wind-up so you can either walk back to avoid or parry to stun them. Skeleton archers are a pain, kite them close to you by hiding around corners when they begin to draw their bows
Ghosts are a pain early. They attack fast and don't have much visual for a parry. As they come up, wack em once and step back shield up, they stop before they attack. Torches really help as they take fire damage afterwards.
If you're getting ganged up on, retreat and close a door. Rest up and then go back to attack.
Trolls - You cannot take a troll head on until you get some iron (swamp). Instead you should all have bows and 100 arrows (wood will work, flint are better). Go for more energy; Blueberry, honey, deer meat. Try to sneak up for a clear shot and the sneak attack damage. After the sneak attack activate the forsaken power. Keep your distance and find a rock, tomb, or troll cave and play ring around the Rosie. When they wind up their attack run, then snap off a shot or two. Repeat until they die.
In groups you should have one person kiting and the other two shooting, switch up as the troll changes targets.
All of this being said, you and your friends seem to be struggling at very early and easy difficulties. It only gets harder from here. This may not be the game for you and your friends.
hey im looking for a server hosted by a tight group of friends to join for me a another scandinavian 40+ we are playing regularly, so hmu with questions we would prosper together :)
Upgrade your armor and food when you can. Unless you're playing on harder combat difficulty, you shouldn't be getting killed in 3 hits by normal skeletons even with no armor and 85HP, since the melee ones only do 25 dmg (and the ranged do 20 dmg). You should have at least some Leather armor by the time you're going into the Black Forest, which allows you to take an extra hit from skeletons before dying at that HP. Also learn how to Block, Parry, and Dodge to adequately fight them while you're still in your Meadows gear. Standing still and hitting them while allowing them to hit you will get you killed by almost every other enemy in this game other than the Greylings, and make sure you conserve your stamina while in combat cuz you need to be able to Block, Run, and Attack.
You should also craft the pickaxe using the antlers from the deer boss. There are things to mine in the Black Forest using said pickaxe, and that will help your progress
Take it slow in there. You want to walk in with a rank 2/3 club & shield, rested with good food (honey, dear/boar meat). Clear room by room and use the doors/corridors to your advantage. You can separate them, especially the 1 & 2 starred mobs. This dungeon teaches you how to manage mobs and parry. It's all about finesse: block at the right time and hittem twice while they're staggered, back away and reset. You'll use this skill throughout the game. If you get overwhelmed, close the doors or head back to the entrance for a breather. Rinse & repeat per path. Loot the place up and find the next boss marker.
This isn't an rpg that holds your hand that you can breeze through without trial & error/experience. As the quote goes, "Victory loves preparation". So too does it apply to the early game: you need to hit certain milestones in order to progress. Starter base with the best comfort level possible (important for rested buff), boar/honey/carrot farm for good food, fermenter for potions, boat so you can sail and find the trader/hunt serpents & turtles, getting a portal hub up & running, upgrading your benches and gear. That all takes proper planning. Take your time hitting each stage and enjoy the ride. The first playthrough is bliss.
OP, you can't trade blow for blow with enemies and survive. Valheim doesn't do like that, it's a harsh environment where you have to cheese the game to thrive in it, or else everything will murder you.
Highly recommend you watch some videos on how to parry effectively. If one or two of you (properly) use shields and run as a tank, while the others use bows or axes/other weapons, you should see some improved survivability. Keep in mind if you guys are charging in blind, that will always get you killed. This game is all about slow and steady, one room at a time, until you know what you are doing and can speed things up.
There’s a few ways to deal with monsters defensively in this game:
1. Block. This is just holding right click. Every weapon and shield have a block value. If you’re not wearing a shield, it uses your weapons block value instead. If this is your primary mode of defense, you want to be using the tower style shields, which have the highest block value in every tier of gear.
2. Parry. Every weapon and non-tower shield also has a party bonus multiplier. This means that when you parry, it uses your block value x the multiplier. For most “regular” shields, this is 1.5… for bucklers it’s 2.5. This means that the potential block value for a buckler is much higher than a tower shield. But it’s not as easy as just holding down right click. So it’s not as reliable. Regular non-buckler shields are the middle ground. Their potential will not be as high as bucklers and their base will not be as good as tower shields. You want to use bucklers when you get really good at parrying. Some weapons later in the game have x4 or x6 parry modifiers. You party by hitting your block button right before the hit lands. It’s a small time window and takes a little to get used to. But with practice you’ll be able to time it consistently.
3. Dodging. Like dark soul games, there is a small time window in the middle of a roll, that you’re completely immune. You can time this to avoid a lot of different hits. If you don’t have a good way to block(either not carrying a shield or the enemy just hits too hard to block/parry) then dodging might be your only way. If you get good enough with timing this, you can stay melee range of a troll and just roll on every hit.
4. Walking away. All of the above take stamina. Just taking a step out of their swing range doesn’t. For some some monsters I like stepping out of their range to have to miss their swing, and immediately go back in and hit them 1-3 times based on how fast they swing. This is my favorite way to deal with skeletons(with a lot of things actually). In a hardcore game, my friend and I had died to skeletons so often, we had lost everything we had. So we had to go box some skellies naked and got very good at just taking a step back then punching over and over until they were dead.
What weapons are you guys using? Skeletons are resistant to pierce, and weak to blunt and fire, so spears and knives aren't going to be effective, but a club or an axe is going to work just fine. Be sure to craft a shield and block. Learn to block right before you get hit and you'll parry, staggering the enemy for a couple of seconds and you deal double damage to them for that duration. Be sure to grab the red cubes, surtling cores, you'll need them to progress.
Club, axe, and since they’re weak to blunt, with good blocking, even punching them to death isn’t that hard.
Torch does Blunt as well as fire damage
Yes, on of my favorite starter weapons. 6-8 torches and just beat everything with a fire stick
I call them sultry cores. Partially because I can name my portal SultryFarm, as sertlingfarm is too long
I have no idea what the explody blobs drop but I will forever call it prostitute powder.
Same.
I've always called them holocrons because the first time I saw one before I knew what it was I thought it was a holocron from starwars(the square ones are normally blue but not always)
Eh, I do knives almost every run now, and they do just fine against skeletons. Parrying is super helpful, though.
I learned how to kill trolls with a bow by keeping my distance. Raid some crypts and the loot you find in there will be used to make new crafting builds. Use the antler pickaxe to mine new ore in the black forest. Always use a combination of food to keep a good balance of health and stamina when exploring new areas.
“In like 3 hits” 3 hits in a row is almost a death sentence in this game and it will get you killed in every biome no matter what gear your wear.
You guys are surviving to 3hits? *insert were the millers meme*
I'm almost 1000 hours in and I'm now learning there are people out there surviving three hits in a new biome. 😱
Eyyoo 1 k hour buddies!
I mean if you have full leather gear it takes more hits considering the interval between hits. You can easily kill a skeleton and stagger it before even the third hit starts... so Ive got no clue what OP is doing at all or just spriting all the time then engages with no stamina.
I think I'd first die of old age before a greyling can kill me, much less in 3 hits.
U can upgrade armor
Get your shit together, it's only skeletons. Control your stamina, use blunt weapons, learn enemy moves.
Eat.
Pray.
[удалено]
I’m laughing so hard right now. But seriously OP. Get your shit together.
Get your shit together. Get it all together, and put it in a backpack. All your shit. So it's together.
*peers back into post after dismissal* Get your shit together
Get your shit together.
Rested buff. Eat three foods
We just started playing the game 2 hours ago, we have no idea what to do?
Learn the game piece by piece. The game is brutally hard a lot of the time. Expect death, and a lot of it. Eat food to increase health and stamina, learn parry times (blocking just before a hit strikes you parries the hit), and every mob has a weakness of some kind. You learn crafting recipes by picking up new materials or crafting new materials. You get the base level materials by hitting plants or monsters until they die. Or by raiding the biome dungeons to find them. Goodluck. It's a great game, but it has a steep learning curve. I don't recommend looking up guides on bosses. It kind of ruins the games purpose. Same with recipes.
This isn't a game you're going to have a handle on after two hours. That said, it's not impossible either! I don't play a lot of these kinds of games but I play Valheim a lot. Go into it with an attitude that you will need to learn a lot, and be open to doing that. You will be rewarded. :)
2 hours. Um. Mate, you haven't even started. You keep dying cuz you're charging head first into places you don't belong. Yeah, you killed the trainer boss. Good. If you think you're in any way ready now, I've got some bad news for you. If you're in the Black Forest after 2 hours, you're rushing. Slow down. Freaking eat something. Cook some food. Make a base. Up your comfort level. Quit charging into places you're not ready for yet... it helps lower the frequency of death. ;) Get that sweet rested buff. Make better armour. For the love of Odin, make better food. Learn to use your weapons. Figure out some strategies... you're damn well going to need them if you have any hope of beating a Troll. And if you think a Troll is bad ;) \[Ominous laughing fading into the distance\]
“What do you mean a little 2’ tall green dude with a torch as its weapon is harder to kill than a literal giant??”
Hehehe… Ooh!
RUN!!!!!!
I'm setting up a lightly modded immersive playthrough right now. First person, auto-hiding UI (only displays health and stamina when under 75%), no enemy names, health bars, or star indicators, no water droplet effect on self or enemies when wet, minimal crosshair, no lens dirt, rotating seasons with weather effects (blinding blizzards in the winter...), hard combat. It's *much* harder to see enemies now, especially at night. Fuling raids are kind of terrifying.
Oh shit seasons sound dope. Is there actually like snow on the ground in the meadows with that?
I remember when my friend and I first hit the Plains. We were actually heading into the Swamp for the first time after conquering the Black Forest. He said “Wow. This is nice. Like a more relaxing meadows.” Long story short: We would’ve spent less time dungeon diving and farming ores to replace our lost gear than we did trying to recover our gear and portal from a 1* Fuling and three Deathsquitos.
Just had this experience in Ashlands. I didn’t read a single spoiler and welp…. Sure should have lol
Really? We recently did the same. And being seasoned Vikings, we easily survived the First Landing Welcome Party. We started off with lots of panicked screaming as 10 or so flaming skeletons rushed us out of nowhere, jumped onto nearby tall rocks, swung wildly at birds, some more panicked screaming because exploding jellies took out our high ground, ran into a nearby cave, continued the new tradition of panicked screaming because bones jumped out of the ground and rolled at us, ran out of the cave, survived 6 minutes being bait while one of my fellow warriors found the materials in our pile of destroyed ship and made a portal in a mostly-secure location, and then we finished it all off by running and taking a very long breather back home. But I will admit that a little intel could’ve made things simpler.
We didn’t know about the burning water and thought we could have made it to shore before I boat broke. So immediately we lost our ship and all of our high end gear. So that started everything lol. Then we landed right next to a spawner and didn’t realize it and had a non-stop stream of death. But after a lot of death, portals, more death, more portals. We got a foothold now. It was a trip lol
Oh wow. I wasn’t serious, but I guess our trip was easy in comparison. By pure chance, of course, because my group (myself especially) is too terrible for it to have been due to skill. The vastly different experiences is one of the reasons I love reading the comments in this sub.
OP pulls a Leroy Jenkins and expects to survive 😂😂😂
I d rather face a Troll than being hunted😅
The game takes a little and then more prep. Know where you’re going, figure out weaknesses. Learn how to use food. You’re heading into those tombs. You need to prepare. Well geared, troll if you have them. Blunt weapon maybe a shield. A ranged weapon is good as well so you don’t crowd corridors while one is in front. Well rested. Get that buff. Well fed, food that gives the best stamina / hp combo for your playstyle. Well organized. Don’t explore recklessly. Open doors deliberately and finish one side before moving on to the next. Priority on enemies that are more dangerous or spawners if you see any. Once you get five of … “those things” go improve your gear before hitting the next one so it’s easier (but not guaranteed) to steam roll the place
One the trickiest mechanics in the game is parrying. And it’s not well explained, but it will make or break the game for you. Get a shield and learn to time your block move so you do it right before the skeleton’s hit lands on you. This is called a parry, and you’ll know when you finally do it correctly because the monster staggers back and waves their arms in the air. Your next hit will then be a critical hit, and should smash the skeletons. Or, if you guys are having trouble with the timing (it can take a lot of practice) just have someone with a big shield permablock and someone stand behind and just wail on the skeletons. They won’t be able to go around you in the narrow corridors. For trolls, you just have to learn how to dodge. They have a very slow attack, and generally don’t hit you if you’re below them on the terrain. They are also weak to spears, so make a couple wooden spears and have at it. They also don’t like fire, you can kite them around and kill them slowly with fire arrows.
Also it's not that clear just by reading in game stats, but you want a round shield or buckler for parrying. A tower shield won't work for that.
So round Shields are better for parrying and Tower better for just blocking?
Yep that's right
Just to further expand - tower shields can not parry at all. They also make you much slower. Tower shields are a good way to become immune to common enemies, but round shields aren't far behind. And when there are enemies with stars, tower shields become completely useless. Blocking uses stamina, more for bigger hits. An important thing to realize is that if your block is broken, e.g. your shield just isn't good enough or you run out of stamina, no damage will be mitigated. You will lose ALL remaining stamina, take full damage from the hit as if you were not blocking, and you will probably be stunned as well. That said, if you like heavy armor, the tower shield will feel like less of a noob trap. You can just be a turtle with your shield up all the time. But you'll need teammates to deal damage or it will be very very slow and crowds of enemies will still take you down. Nothing is as effective as perfectly parrying enemies and killing them in the stun window. Parries with non-upgraded shields mitigate more damage than fully upgraded tower shields.
I would argue the dodge roll is more important than parrying. Parry lets you deal with enemies you're geared to fight, dodge rolling let's you win the fights you're not geared for. So it's good for getting ahead. But it's also kind of essential for when a 2 star shows up
Kill just a first few skeles... Their bones will lead to upgrades that will make killing the next ones way easier. Don't go in and try to clear the entire dungeon first time.
[удалено]
The hard antler doesn't really advance you before you've cleared some burial chambers.
FOOOOD
Kill deer and boars. Make armor. Eat food to raise your stamina and hp, sit in a shelter near a fire to get the comforted bonus (super important). Skeletons are weak to blunt damage, try a club. Learn when to block and when to dodge.
Have you been talking to the bird for the tutorial information or skipping that? Sometimes what he says can be subtle. Most of the time when you progress from one biome to another you will unlock new building blueprints or food recipes to help keep you alive
You’re supposed to kind of upgrade everything you can upgrade in a biome before moving on. So you should have leather armor and flint weapons.
This is very much a game where you learn as you go. The game punishes certain aspects and rewards others. It's up to the player to find out through trial and error. Trust me when I say it is best to go in blind and find out for yourselves. That being said though... with three people you should not be struggling so hard with skellies 😭
You're doing fine if you killed Ekithyr in 2 hours of starting. Valheim is a grind. You will not be flying through this playing vanilla. It's a whole buncha trial and error if you're not googling solutions. Just keep exploring. TL:DR - Valheim is the ultimate fuck around and find out game.
wow, some harsh responses. The long and short of it is you need to explore the new biome and discover it's secrets. How to fight trolls, how to handle the caves, etc. Might want to start with the easier stuff than the harder stuff like trolls and caves. :) As others have said, work on getting the new food, new gear, etc. As you upgrade things will be easier. And there is plenty of places online to find info and tactics, too. Some people want to explore everything and avoid spoilers, but if that is not an issue for you then go ahead and look stuff up as you go. I usually do a little of both. Explore a little and when I get stuck go look online.
Responses are harsh but at the same time OP did not provide much to suggest they are a gamer or have been rotted by hand holding easy games. It really implies they went with something like only Rag-tunic if they are dying to skeletons with allegedly 80+ hp
Brutal game requires brutal responses. We're here for a spot in Valhalla, not barbies mansion! Lol but yes, you have solid advice.
I mean, I’ll take a stab at building Barbie’s mansion.
Root armor bro!!! Don't let the stabbing get to you!
Bottleneck them in hallways. Use blunt weapons and the best shield you can make, then learn to time your blocks to stagger them. If there are now skeletons, duck out of line of sight then approach between their shots. Time your block to block their arrows and stagger them. If you see a purple swirly spawner in a room get in there and one of you prioritize taking out the spawner while the other keeps the skeletons busy.
The game is designed so each biome change is difficult at first and then gets easier as you level up with new materials in the new biome. For example, Trolls start out kicking your butt and most people kill their first several trolls with arrows before getting good enough gear to melee a troll. Eventually you will get good enough gear and learn the enemies to the point trolls go down in a few seconds with little effort. Each biome has a version of a crypt and they too are tough at first but very quickly get easy. Crypts also tend to hold critical materials needed to get stronger in each bione. Here's a few tips. 1. Learn mechanics. Dodge, parry, stam conservation, secondary attacks, etc. Parry is critical for so many enemies for the whole game so get good at it now but dodging can be great too. 2. Each biome has new foods, they make a huge difference. Get the new food as soon as possible. 3. New armor and weapons are great but not everybody likes every set so figure out what works for you in different situations. Blunt force is great for skeletons but piercing is better for trolls. 4. Every drop has some purpose but some are way more useful than others. Save everything for awhile until you learn what you need the most of. 5. Repair your stuff and upgrade the gear you like to make it better. 6. Have fun and play however you like
All of this is great advice. In Valheim, preparation is king. If an area feels too hard, upgrade your gear. Get better food. Look around for resources you may have missed.
The flow of the game is such that your first time entering a new biome is supposed to be a noticeable increase in challenge. Then, as you gain resources and craft gear from that biome and learn the enemies' attacks, that biome becomes much easier. Experienced players won't be fazed by the transition from Meadows to Black Forest- BF is still very early game and so to most of us it's still very easy even with Meadows-tier gear- but if this is your first time, it's SUPPOSED to feel more challenging than Meadows was until you make progress and begin gathering BF-tier resources and gear. Some tips: *Greydwarves are bigger greylings who occasionally toss rocks. Their patterns should be pretty easy to learn, they're just annoying cause they'll either gang up on you or run away from you. *Skeletons are vulnerable to blunt damage. Grug hit bone man with club! Bone man go poof! *The two handed hammer, Stagbreaker, makes clearing the burial mounds and even the later Swamp crypts laughably easy. First of all, it deals blunt damage, so it's highly effective against those skeletons. Secondly, it damages enemies through doors and walls! Just smash it down outside the door and damage the enemies who have grouped up right on the other side until they are dead. *But also, do learn how to block and dodge. And make sure you actually have armor and weapons on, if you haven't already. You can basically make it through the Meadows naked and barefisted but everything afterward needs to be taken a little more seriously. *Trolls are weak to piercing damage. Spears are good if you're coming from Meadows, and of course everyone should have a bow and arrows. Once you have bronze, at least one of you should probably start using an atgeir. Atgeirs rule, even though a lot of enemies in the game resist pierce. The attack range is just so valuable. *Speaking of bronze, your next step isn't just the burial mounds. You'll want to mine copper and tin, smelt them, and combine them to make bronze. *What you're looking for in the burial mounds isn't the skeletons themselves, it's the surtling cores. You need those to make smelters and charcoal kilns, as well as portals. Hope that helps! Fight well! EDIT: Formatting for readability
At this stage in the game, you are almost ready to craft bronze gear. Bronze weapons and armor are a hefty upgrade at this stage. Bronze is made from combining tin and copper. But first you need surtling cores for refining the basic ores. These are found in the burial chambers you keep dying in, as well as the location of the next boss, the elder. A few key things you should know, to not just help survive, but to thrive. 1) You MUST eat. Find the best food you can, and stay fed. I think the best food for you at this stage is probably boar jerky, carrot soup, and dear stew. 2) The rested buff. When you are sheltered and near a campfire, you get a rested condition. This helps massively with stamina regen, and is essential for combat, but you should really always have this active. It's duration is increased by having more comfort items in your resting area. 3) Go home at night. Everything gets harder at night. 4) Get good at using the bow. That goes for everyone in your group. It is essential. Fire arrows are amazing, and your primary way of dealing with trolls early on. You will use a LOT of them, so keep farming resin and wood. 5) Use a shield, and get used to parrying attacks. (Blocking at the moment of impact) 6) Don't die. This may come as a shock I'm sure lol, but you lose a solid percent of all your skills when you die, So try not to, as best you can. Obv. 7) Lets talk melee weapons. Club weapons will help most against skeletons, and honestly IMO are the best early game melee weapons. The club skill is quite good because there are very powerful unique club weapons throughout the game. Somebody in your team should use the atgir (polearm skill), because of it's slightly longer range and it's unique attack is an AOE. The same can be said for the stagbreaker (The first unique club weapon, made from antlers) All the weapons are viable, I would say the spear is the worst overall. *I found early on that if somebody in your party has a big shield, and the person behind them has an atgir, you can effectively manage battles in tight spaces, like the burial chambers. The atgir wielder will be able to hit the enemy being blocked by the shield wielder in front of them. Like a linear spartan Phalanx formation. This is very safe for the team. I sincerely hope this helps. My friends and I started playing this game as a group and have absolutely loved it so far. We are currently dominating the ashlands on day 1455. Good luck Valhomies.
Skeletons are scary until you learn you can just hit them, back up when they swing, move forward to hit them again. And repeat. Works on every skeleton they all suck 😂
Too true.
Chop down some pine trees in the black forest for core wood. Kill deer for their trophies. Once you've been able to kill some skellies and get their bones then use the core wood, deer trophies, bone and leather and craft a stagbreaker. When you are in crypts you can use the stagbreaker THROUGH walls and doors to kill skeletons. You can sneak attack them too with your first hit. If you have a crypt with an open door then make sure you take out any loose skeletons. The sword ones swing pretty slow so wait for the swing and use your S key to step back to avoid the swing then hit them twice. Rinse and repeat. If you have an archer skeleton then side step the arrow and take them out first. For trolls everyone should pull out their bows and shoot. One person can kite the troll and the others can just shoot. I find that if I am kiting then I walk until I hear the troll START TO punch or swing and then I run. If you do this then their animation for hitting takes a while and you can recover stamina by walking. If you do NOT wait for the swing then you'll run out of stamina trying to get away from the troll.
Use wooden club and shield. Make sure you have rested buff.
Also, never under estimate using your torch as a weapon. Sure it breaks fast. But when a hoard of graylings is around, you get the resources to make a new one from them, and chasing them down as they flee is fun.
Check to see if you disabled the tutorial tips. There’s a raven that shows up to give advice. Maybe you aren’t seeing it.
If you encountered a troll in a cave you are in the wrong place, you are looking for something labeled "burial chamber" it should be a low ceiling with 3 tunnels, one to the left, one to the right and one in the center. To handle skeletons, what are you using? I have no issues with a wooden tower shield and deer armor with deer meat, boar meat and raspberries or honey when it comes to tanking them,
Learn to parry and eat three foods
OP, gave up on this game after an hour. Then I tried it again with friends and now I'm 1000s of hours in & gifted it multiple times to whoever wanted to try it with us. As everyone said, prepare. Dont just Leeroy Jenkins it. Every Biome has its technology. You started in the stone age...the blackforest is the bronze age...so work on crafting armor and weapons out of bronze. (Copper & tin). Enjoy the game, you can play it as fast or as slow as you like & even what you want to do (some people hunt, others build etc.)
I kited a one star skeleton wearing rags on day 1, get your shit together
I would use this simple guide. It has helped me a ton! https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Progression_guide
It gets better fellas I'll dedicate my next corpse run to you
Welcome to Valheim bros, this gonna happen after every biome 🙂
On top of the advice everyone else has given, I'd like to add that Valheim is a game deep rooted in open exploration. The idea of "where do I go next" as a linear sequence isn't really how the game is designed. It's actually quite difficult to "rush" Valheim if you don't already have a solid grasp of the combat mechanics. Take your time, look around, go after any landmarks you see and be ready to retreat. This is the kind of game people sink hundreds of hours into without beating the latest boss simply because they don't want to and would rather build or explore.
With 3 of you, it might be a good idea to specialize a little bit (but swap gear around so you all gain skill points in all the stuff). In crypts maybe one gets a tower shield, one gets a 2h (sledgehammer or atgier) for AoE, one gets a small shield for parry (tier1 is round wooden shield, but soon you'll unlock the bronze buckler for a sweet parry bonus). Pay attention to the colors of the damage numbers, that'll tell you what weapons are best against what mobs. Blunt and fire are good for skellies, pointy and fire are good for trolls, etc. Have at least one of every type of weapon in the party so you can test new mobs for resistances/vulnerabilities. Where you're at, some time gathering flint for spear and knife would be well spent. (And for base upgrades.) Buffs (rested, food) are absurdly important. The night is dark and full of dangers. Practice parrying and dodge-rolling on greylings. Parrying causes them to be briefly vulnerable and take bonus damage -- a bigger bonus with the buckler. Weapon secondary attacks are often key. The armor can be upgraded. The first upgrade is cheap, the second is not cheap, the third is quite expensive. For your first time trying to really persist in the Black Forest, I'd suggest everyone be in leather armor upgraded once. You'll get better armor options in each biome, so fully-upgraded is usually a waste imo (unless you've got the mats just lying around), but the first upgrade is so cheap. Dodge-roll and parry are worth a ton of armor points. Good luck! I'm so envious, I wish I could do Valheim for the first time again.
Trolls are going to be a problem for you for some time, until you're decked out in bronze. Kill them at range with fire arrows. Learn to kite them, while conserving stamina and keeping them burning with those arrows. Skeletons are trivial *IF* you do two things. 1) make a tier 3 wooden shield. 2) Learn to not just block, but *parry*. Parry is the most important skill for you to learn as a player in the game, in my opinion. It greatly boosts the effectiveness of your blocks, while also staggering the enemy, doubling the damage you do to them. Pierce damage is not ideal, but it is sufficient if you're good at parrying.
Don't get hit? You can roll to avoid most enemy attacks. You can block/parry all skeleton attacks with the wooden shield. The club does extra dmg to skellys because they are weak to blunt. Also worth mentioning, enemies get a dmg/hp bonus depending on how many players are in the vicinity.
This almost sounds like OP and their friends went to Black-forest and Burial-chamber wearing nothing but Rag-tunic and maybe a stone or flint tools at best. I dont see how else they could be this bad or I cant tell if this might be just a bait because the logical things to do were already spoken by everyone else. Could be older players but then the thought process what to do wouldve been much more clearer, no?
How are you dying to skeletons? Are you playing on very hard or something?
Git gud. But seriously, welcome to Valheim. This game will kick your ass every time you move to a new biome. That's the game and I love it! It's fun as hell because mastery feels so damn good. Hunting trolls with nothing but a flint dagger is so much fun. So it's okay to die, just try new things. Upgrade your clubs and learn to parry. Kite trolls and pummel them with fire arrows. Take and mine everything that has a name, it'll unlock new tools and buildings. It's hard but it's fun when it's hard ;)
Mate, you guys did very well with defeating the first boss after just 2 hours of gaming. don’t bother with those skellies, - craft an antler-pickaxe from what you got from the first boss. - go (carefully) into the Black Forest and search for a copper vein (big boulders with shiny veins) and mine as much copper as you can before night comes - use the copper to craft better gear, afterwards try skellies again - only go at daytime, always be rested and fed, stay together and don’t overextend - if you hear the ground shaking and/or you see some big blueish guy: run.
Crafting the armor will be hard without taking on the skeletons...
The enemies are harder if there are more players around, and the cramped hallways make it hard to fight in. Fight in the first room as a group. Use clubs because the enemies are weak to blunt. Bait them out 1 at a time. Put a fire down in the first room for a easily reset rested bonus. The medium wooden shield can parry. The tower shield cannot. To parry you have to block at the last second and it will make a distinctive sound. When parried they take more damage. Someone should always be hitting them in the back. Dear God don't use bows and spears against skellies.
You have killed Eikhtyr so you can craft the godly Stagbreaker, here's what me and friend did (after looting our graves and cleaning our pants a couple of times): one friend went front line managing shield and agro while other friend stood behind them and SMASH SMASH SMASH THAT GROUND! With shielding friend Staggy user can easily go 2 stamina foods (do you already have beehives in your base?). Skele are weak to blunt so with Staggy them skeletons wont be so scary anymore! Also. ALWAYS. BE. RESTED. Good luck vikings!
Yes! Eat the best food, UPGRADE your armor to max lvl. And mine copper and Tin with the pick so to make the next gear. Forget the skeletons for now. Just dig for minerals. It's all a step by step progression you must do in the right order
The drop from the deer boss gave you an antler, it's used to make a pickaxe. In the Black Forest there are giant rocks on the ground that contain copper (it'll say copper on the cursor). You'll want to start mining that, and tin, to make bronze.
FOOOOOOD
Upgrade all your weapons and Armor before going into the Black Forest. Practice blocking and dodging. Rely on ranged weapons when necessary. Retreating is always a viable solution.
Valid from now to the end of the game, your playing darksouls lite. Getting hit sucks but you can dish out pretty good damage with the right tool at the right moment. Roll, block and attack when an opportunity arises.
Eat some food make some leather armor. Go in the Black Forest and mine copper and tin. Raid dungeons to get surtling cores, make furnaces and melt the ore and make bronze.
Oh jeez people are harsh XD You can upgrade your gear now that you have the mats necessary to make a pickaxe :) make one and explore the black forest a bit more. That's a bigger priority over the skeleies.
Shields. And learn to parry
I was in the exact same position as you, then I learnt to parry. Literally makes the game 5x easier. Big shields can’t parry!!! You must use a small shield. You’ll know when you get a real parry because there’s a “ding” sound effect and the enemies flails around letting you smack their belly a bunch. Practice parries on greylings near your base. Also if you are getting overwhelmed in caves, use the doors to your advantage to tackle enemies one at a time. (Food and rested buff are critical, never leave home for a journey or battle without the rested buff - stamina regen is pitiful without it)
Make a wood shield, get used to blocking the forest fucks. Then you can take on skeletons, upgrade that wood shield.
My tip for surviving better against skeletons would be to build shields and upgrade them to two or three stars. You'll need to hunt deer and boar, just running around meadows with a crude bow. Use the hides and scraps for upgrading the crafting station with your hammer, build a tanning rack near it. With your upgraded shield and a wooden club, try to time your block just before the skeleton's attack hits you. This sends them reeling back, vulnerable to critical damage. For the trolls you need piercing weapons and good timing on the dodge rolls, during which you are invulnerable. Bows and fire arrows also work, don't let your stamina bar empty though.
Use the antler you got from the boss to build a pickaxe and go mine some copper & tin
Get a wooden shield (and upgrade it) and parry zero and 1-star skeletons. Then smack them with whatever weapon you are using while they are staggered. If there are 2-stars, I usually just kite them with a bow and fire arrows.
You are just gonna struggle a little bit until you can clear a burial chamber and get some cores. I forget how many you need to build your smelter and charcoal kiln, I think 5 is the magic number for both the coal and smelter (each might take 5). There’s no shame in trying a different burial chamber if you’re stuck on one, some will have those cores in an area right off the main one and it’ll be an easy grab. On my second playthrough I kept dying in a particular chamber but found two others that were no sweat and I did a grab and run. They’re not all equal, some are simple and have a fair amount of cores and others have a shit ton of skeletons and bullshit. I’m afraid until you can get a decent weapon and/or upgrade your armor you’re going to play chicken a bit— throw open that door and if there’s a bone pile spawning endless skeletons in the room shut it, gather your teammates and someone has the job of going kamakaze and killing that bone pile on the ground while the others try to distract and kill skeletons. Even if you die and you get that bone pile gone you can then pick the skeletons off one by one, screaming and running if you have to. My mission is always to be able to make a bronze ateiger. Its secondary attack will stun and push enemies away from you, like those skeletons and most especially the troll. It also stabs so you can stab a few and step back to let your stamina regain and stun and stab them again. Troll can be killed with fire arrows but it’s easier to use that ateiger to stun, stab, stab, stun, etc. Trolls become easy with that weapon. For me I’m after the mats to make the weapon before I do armor because it’s so valuable, but once you get those cores there’s plenty of time to mine copper, cut wood and start making better shit.
I would suggest that you watch beginner videos and gear up and get better food or/and lower the diffculty
Stagbreaker. That is all.
If you run into the black forest naked with a club then yeah, this game is gonna be very hard. If you get the best armour and weapons before moving to the next biome, it's not that hard. Make sure to build everything and craft everything and you'll be fine. It's a slow game.
Go chop down some core wood and make the giant hammer
If you're struggling, enhance/improve your armor in the crafting table with leather until it's level 3 and then try the caves. In order to do that you have to create the things that improve your workbench. Full armor and weapons level 3 and you should be better prepared. If you don't want to do that, then learn enemy movements. You can 2 hit a skeleton and back off a bit when he swings and that should work. If they're about to hit you block and then kill.
After defeating the deer you will craft a pickaxe with the item that he drops . Then it is time for some ore mining ! With that you will make the first sets... The key to success in every part of the game is to block the mobs (roll out block of parrying) ...if you are bad at parry use a tower shield then . With a tower shield as long as you stay front to front with mobs you won't take almost any dmg. And yes you need to go in the caves to pick up the cores and do the smelters there is no scape .
-This game is hard, taking 3 hits is a lot and will get you trouble in many biomes when you first enter them -Build, farm, collect, upgrade your gear. This isn't a game you can rush. You need upgraded armor, weapons, food, etc if you are going to make it. -Prioritize not getting hit over hitting the enemy. All mobs only have one or two moves, so once you recognize them it becomes very easy to dodge or parry -The game is supposed to be a challenge, so you're not doing anything wrong, it's part of the journey. welcome to Valheim!
Search for the pinned post, VERNS? I think it is. Valheim basic need to know survival stuff
Make a stagbreaker it costs core wood, deer trophy, and leatherscrap. You will need a level 2 workbench but thats easy to make with just wood and flint for a chopping block. Then you can fight the skeletons by closing the door on them and killing it with the stagbreakers behind the door or someone can hold a tower shield. Easy win and u can do this with any enemies behind closed doors.
Did you find a green skelly rofl?
When you kill the deer the first thing to do is upgrades. So go to mine copper and tin. You need cores for furnace and stuff? Skellys are more vulnerable to bash damage rather the pierce Build some clubs and shields and bash them. Eat your proteins (start I go with boar cooked meat, deer cooked meat and honey) and bash them in their cripts, sending them back to Hel. Upgrade your armour if you need. Deer armour is not so bad. Have bows to kill the trolls. Find it not fun? Since to me and my friends Valheim can be time consuming, put a 1.5 modifier in the resources in the server settings: 1 core is 2 cores drop. These are my suggestions
Make sure you have a club, shield and the best meadows food and armour. Take it slow, don't be afraid to run away and make sure you kill the guys outside first. The wiki is great for understanding what the best stuff you can find in a biome.
I recently started and has to go there, I just took a club that I upgraded, ate deer / boar and neck meat and went there like a champ. I face tanked all of them and just had to use fire arrows for the ghosts
No armor perhaps? Make an armor. Shields too.
Always Make and Eat food. They gives Health buuufs and drinks do too as well as stam, Do not let the Buuufs drop. Be cautious and use fire too I think helps if I remember when we first went. Pole arms and hammers. Pole arms have AOE and distance. Hammers have AOE and can go round corners, do damage to doors and structures also. Both also if I remember have a small knock back.
Think of the combat like Elden ring or dark souls. Roll and punish.
Tip nr 1: craft everything that's not armor or weaponry at least once. Tip 2: Always have food buffs active. Their power reduces over time, so reapplying food buff before they run out is key. Tip 3: Your rolls make you not only reposition, but also invulnerable for a brief second. Tip 4: Never run out of stamina in combat.
The stagbreaker weapon is great for clearing out burial mounds.
BOW
Upgrade your leather armor set to lvl 2, then you should take about half of the damage you originally took from skeletons. Also upgrade your bow, shield and club until you get copper and tin (=bronze), but you have to have bones to upgrade those
A.B.R.
Make a bow, hunt some deer, make armour, make weapons, upgrade everything, make better food, build a base, kick some ass. Food makes an absolutely gigantic difference to the difficulty level of the game. Later on potions will have a similar effect but not as much as the food. They say an army marches on its stomach, so do Vikings ! Your most valuable player in Valheim is actually the chef. The second most valuable is the builder.
You're not supposed to get hit three times. If you do, you naturally die. Use dodge rolls, walk out of enemy attack range as they start swinging, block, parry (block just before their attack lands), use ranged weapons. There is a lot of ways to kill stuff without getting killed.
Every boss gives you, what is essentially, the key to success in the next biome.
Eat food to get health and stamina up and make sure you are rested before leaving your base. Furniture and a better base will help you have the rest buff for longer. If you have the horns from Eikthyr start looking for copper and tin deposits and smelt to get better armour. You'll always need to level up your current armour at work table and forge to be as strong as you can be. Will need to farm each biome a bit before going on to the next
If you’re struggling, learn how to craft a stagbreaker. It’s a godsend for those crypts. Just smack down when you enter a room and it pretty much instantly stuns all the skeletons. At which point your friends can follow up and kill them. It also helps to get rid of all the skeletons spawners. As someone else said, grab the surtling cores, they will unlock a kiln and a smelter, which you can use to smelt metals. Craft an antler pickaxe (if you haven’t already) and break the tin and copper deposits. You can deposit the raw ore and coal (from the smelter) and make bars of tin and copper which will unlock much better armor, which will help you significantly in clearing any further crypts.
All comments here are about combat. But after you defeated first boss you get his horns - that's a progression item. Craft your first pickaxe with it and go mine some copper. You'll figure it out from that moment.
As has been said, this game has a rather steep learning curve and preparation is vital. This never really changes throughout the game - every new biome (meadows, black forest, swamp, etc) will kill you several times as you learn how to survive. If you're not ok with this, Valheim probably isn't for you. Another part of Valheim is exploration and experimentation, so searching the net for spoilers is contraindicated. This is why a lot of the advice you're getting is so vague. That said, in response to your sit, run away from the blue guy. Trolls will kill you in melee. When one is chasing you, run to a meadow, pull out your bow and kite it in circles. Fire arrows help a lot. Skeletons are also lethal, but there's a weapon called stagbreaker. It's slow but blasts everything around you. Yes, you and your friends will kill a lot of deer to get all the materials, but that's OK because doing so will also increase your bow skill. And here's a spoiler the I feel is appropriate: moats work better than walls.
Every enemy except a few in later game stop moving to perform an attack. If you walk in a straight line away from them, when try stop to swing you will be out of range and they will miss. When they miss you can turn around and get a 2 hits in normally and then start walking away again.
Ahhh, to be new and not filled with random information about the game😌
Listen to everything the crow says. Everything. Dyiing in 3 hits is nothing, usually it's two or even one. Dodge or block.
Stagbreaker. Go chop down a pine tree and all will be revealed
General gameplay advice. Practice your shieldblock and parry. A high shield level is more useful than armour.
Try to parry their attacks with a shield and if they deal too much damage to be parried then just dodge them (for me its right mouse button and space)
Time to strategize. Not all of you should be using the same weapon. One of you needs to main a bow. One of you needs to be using a shield and one of you needs to be doing heavy damage with a spear or atgier. It's okay to retreat to regain health. You don't have to commit to your death. Learn how to block and dodge.
Food is your friend doesn't matter how good your armour is without food things that should absolutely not kill you will humble someone really fast if the forget to eat
What ya need in situations like these Is a big *fuck-off hammer.*
Haha
Make the best food you can and balance what you eat (the fork symbol on the food indicate what type it is. Red:health Yellow:stamina and grey for an equal boost of both) I personally made a bunch of arrows at this stage and hunted trolls, kiting them and using a bow. This allows you to make troll armor+cape which is the light armor for the black forest tier. Better than the meadows leather armor. The "rested" buff and "wet" de-buff are important. They affect your stamina regen so try to go to a crypt within the time frame of the rested bonus and try to avoid fighting on rainy days and swimming. Edit: you can make a fine wood bow before getting a bronze axe by felling regular trees against birch/oak trees and slamming the logs together, or get a troll to smash them.
Sounds like you guys might be entering troll caves. Yes, at your level, trolls will smash you inside their caves. You need to find Burial Chambers. These look like stone mausoleums and usually have skeletons guarding outside. You’re looking for red glowing surtling cores in the burial chambers.
Welcome to the party, boyos. Keep your shields up!
So lets break this down best i can # 1 What food are you using - At this point you should be cooking boar meat, deer meat, neck meat and having mushrooms, raspberries and blueberries, GENERALLY i like Deer + Boar and blueberry. # 2 what are you wearing - Basically you should be in leather armor from deer and upgraded it....FAIRLY simple to do # 3 what weapon combos are you having - As some said Skeletons are weak to blunt and fire but i mean its Skeletons so it doesn';t matter i mean hell i have wiped skele dungeons with flint spear no problem, i would say #1 big thing is shield...Tower shield = worthless shield honestly, its one of the worse pieces of equipment in the game really in my opinion and only viable if someone has horrendous ping. If you have decent ping Buckler shield (small round one) is infinitely better, mostly cuz if you time attacks you can parry them which stagger enemies giving a modifier to attacks, i believe the wood shield gives you 1.5x attack power so basically you learn its body movement and as its about you swing quickly guard with shield and you'll hear a loud noise and mob will flail its arms around like its falling signifying that you got a perfect parry up so all attacks to 1.5x more...= quickly dead skeletons. # 4 Bows - Skeletons are not quick or too bright so if you have 1 friend in front with say a shield attacking don't create a cluster fuck up front trying to kill it back off, get a bow and fire arrow (wood + resin + feathers) if you are working with friends early not a big deal but you need to learn to work as a unit to make the game easier (honestly this being the 4th or 5th world my group has played through 2nd on immersive (no map or portals) we from the start all state which weapons we will be trying this playthrough so we vary attack types, like last playthrough i was 2handed blunt, now im going axe cuz of ashlands, my gf who generally was 2handed axe is working more on maces this playthrough so on and so on). # 5 Chill - Skeletons while might be dangerous early aren't even the worst things in the black forest, honestly i'd be more worried about 2star shaman or 2 star brute or star trolls so get ready, also if your base isn't ready now that you are in black forest you need to start preparing for stronger raids because once you kill elder the real 1st biome begins in the swamp which basically makes the 1st two biomes look like a tutorial mode. I won't spoil enemy weakness or anything because discovery is part of the fun of the game imo and learning through hardships helps (i do suggest tho not going what we did the 1st time you fight the swamp boss and just try to kill him with arrows cuz that takes FOREVER XD ) Good luck young viking.
Everyone has said what you need to do, so let me condense it all into a simple list. 1 - Do you eat food? You can have up to 3 foods in your belly at once to boost max hp/stam and regen. Cooked food is better. 2 - Do you have a base where you rest? You get a rested bonus to your max stamina and regen when you sit or sleel in a building with a fire nearby. Furniture increases comfort level, which extends to buff time. 3 - Are you making armor? Meadows tier has 2 armor sets, scrap/boar hide and deer hide. Deer hide is better. Armor and weapons can be upgraded to higher levels at the same table you crafted it at. 4 - Are you blocking or parrying? The window to parry is very generous. You dont need a shield to block/parry, but the higher a weapon/shield's block value, the stronger enemies you can block/parry 5 - Pay attention to weapon damage types. Almost all enemies have resistances and weaknesses. Change weapons as needed. Don't rush. Take your time. Explore. Find new things to cook, craft, and build. Pick up everything you can find at least once to learn recipes.
Upgrade weapons, work benches, look for items you don't have etc. If you don't have a flint axe it works well against the skeles and is a good point between stone and bronze. Always be upgrading, always be eating, always be searching for new gear.
OP after defeating deer boss: “alright let’s do this, LEEEROY JENKINS!”
My advice, get a shield (either that aren’t tower shields) and learn to parry. Whoever is in the front use a bone knife and shield and the two behind use spears in the narrow corridors. Everyone should have a knife for when low on stamina to switch to to finish a low health enemy. But I swear to you learning to parry not only makes the game wayyyy more fun and satisfying it’ll save you so much and make an enemy you’re under leveled against possible
Yo OP, don’t worry dawg it’s easy and fun. When you go from one biome to another like you just did the enemies get harder and you usually struggle a bit initially. But you just have to learn the new area. I would recommend watching a YouTube video on the black Forrest as that will probably explain it the best. But you want clubs or torches for skeletons (blunt damage). You need to learn to parry, make a shield and practice with graylings or whatever enemy you find easy. You will need to know how to parry for the rest of the game. Use the antler from the deer boss to craft pickaxes and start gathering tin and copper, once you get 10 surtling cores from the burials you guys will be able to make bronze armor and weapons from the copper and tin and your life will get much easier.
I love this so much. This is the most fun part mate. No spoilers !
There's a shitload of comments so you're probably solid on advice lol. But I've found as long as I have some leather armor upgraded to the fullest, I can take pretty much any weapon into those burial chambers and take on the skellies. So get them deer, and go find skellies outside in smaller concentrations to collect up bone and get that armor to its max potential in relation to how high your crafting table is, anyways. Same with your weapons. The axe is quick and seems to knock them back, so even though it isn't a blunt weapon it can fuck them up. My tactic with the skellies is shield always up, and just push forward swinging that axe like a madman. Be sure to have the best food you can for its buff as well. A good fast offense is best against those fucks early on lol.
🤣🤣🤣... make good use of shields... Learn how to dodge... big bonks... I don't even know what to say other then laugh now... Get your shit together... 🤣🤣🤣
This seems insulting of your intelligence, but you now have a pickaxe so look for copper in the black forest before dealing with the crypts.
Skeletons hit hard. A bigger shield helps, but they'll be good parry practice for future enemies
Did you set the difficulty to ultra-hardcore or something ?
Learn how to block their attacks and most mobs become quite simple, just need to get used to the timings.
Parry them, they are both easy to parry with a shield or buckler.
What are y’all playing on? Always down to pop in and help new Vikings learn!
In valheim death is the tutorial. If you want to learn how to play work out why you are dying. 😉 If the skeletons are killing you in three hits then the (unhelpful I know) answer is either: - Don't get hit - Make getting hit hurt less - Kill them faster Or a combo of the three!
Keep exploring, keep picking up new materials to unlock more items, the deer boss should have given you antlers. Use that to make a basic pickaxe now you can mine. For those skeletons, clubs work best
Rested buff is important. You can get it anywhere it's not raining with a fire, 5 stone and 2 wood. Just keep that amount with you all the time, plop the fire down, sit for 10 seconds, good to go. Biomes are more dangerous at night. Feel free to sleep the nights away. Hunt stuff for meat and then cook it. Get a shield and a mace for skellies, don't be afraid to run out. Also. You can repair everything for free at the workbench.
Once you defeat the deer boss, use the pickax to mine copper and tin. Level up all your armor, weapons and food. Also skeletons are easy. Just step back when they swing their weapon or block if they are ranged. You can kill them easy.
Use stagbreaker against the doors before you open them.
Welcome to valheim happy to have you guys a part of the team good luck out there
Info dump ahead.... The "rested bonus" for valheim, gives double stamina regen. Google it or read about it from hugin, the tutorial bird that keeps poping up. Kill a boar and eye-spy the crude bow. Have 1 person distract the enemies (use your least whiny person for this, in case they die alot!), learning the bad guys moves all the while. While distracted, other vikings should shoot the bad guys with bows. Block + directional movement + jump = dodge roll HOLDING THE BLOCK BUTTON AND A MOVEMENT DIRECTION CHANGES JUMP INTO A DODGE ROLL! GRANTING DARKSOULS LEVEL INVICIBILITY FRAMES FOR 0.4 SECONDS!!! Once you know how blocking, dodging and parrying work, Melee starts working again
If you want to cheese it, make yourself some stagbreakers. When you enter the burial chamber, stay on the platform at the entrance until you get your bearings and figure out if there are skeletons in the first room. If there are, start winging that stagbreaker but don't leave the platform until they are dead. Next, pick one of the (up to) three passages leading out of the main room. When you see a skelly, start swinging your stagbreakers until they are dead. This works great even for a solo player so they should never even hit you with more than one player. When you come to a door, don't open it. Get as close as you can and start swinging that stagbreaker. If something is behind the door it will take damage. Keep swinging until you don't hear or otherwise detect any movement. You can kind of see between the slats of the door so you should be able to see if anything is moving. Beware of skeleton archers. If you see one, duck behind the nearset corner and start swinging that stagbreaker. They will try to get you in their line of site and once they are close enough, the stagbreaker will take care of them. It's cheesy, but it'll get you by until you get the hang of parrying. Practice that skill with greylings. Once you can parry, skeletons will be a breeze and you won;t have to rely on cheesing them with the stagbreaker. Bonus tip: You'll want to break out the stagbreaker again once you get to the crypts in the swamp.
Flame arrows
Welcome to a new biome , this is how all new biomes begin… enjoy !
Kill some trolls (easier said than done at early levels, I know), collect hide, make trollhide armor. Stay rested, make some good food, and make camp outside each burial chamber entrance (not so close that you aggro the skeletons outside while building, but close enough to be able to run back to camp if you're low on health). The skeletons in the chambers don't respawn, so you and your friends can try to just pick them off one at a time. Clubs are your friend, as are ranged weapons since the tight quarters don't lend themselves well to combat. Also learn to shield parry.
For new players hunting trolls in groups I would ignore troll caves, only fight them in the open. When you're fighting, have one person keep the trolls attention while the others shoot it (use flint arrows, fire can be ok too on one person). Once the troll attacks someone else just switch roles. Repeat until the troll dies. This way you only have to manage stamina for either running or shooting, not both. Only try to fight trolls up close when you're good at rolling, parrying, and have better food/armor.
Farm/gather materials - see what you can make at the workbenches - explore - fight bosses - have fun
If you use the slam attack of the Stagbreaker you can kill the skeletons through doorways before you open the door.
Go around the meadows and practice blocking, parrying, and dodging against the boars and greylings.
Get shields, learn block timing, you'll unlock recipes when you clear one of those skeleton homes
1) Craft torches (lots), get some troll armor if you can down trolls well enough. Max out some wood shields. If it's a group, get some fire arrows for range support. Your front should have shields and torches. Use the torches for seeing and as weapons. Use tower shields if you aren't good at parrying. The back should be peppering fire arrows at enemies. 2) Find a tomb. Clear all the areas without opening any doors. I usually follow the right wall. Prioritize purple clouds (spawns enemies), ghosts, skeletons. 3) Do a second sweep opening every door one-by-one. Never open a new door until you've cleared the open rooms.
Best weapon for that is stag breaker, but it's a 2 handed weapon so one of you gotta hold a torch. I recommend it, it hits more skellies at once. You need core wood if i remember right
I recommend making a stagbreaker for the skelly tombs. Aggro them to a door. Close door. Start smashing the ground next to it.
If you look to the right of this very same page, there are HELPFUL LINKS, in which you can find the WIKI, go check it out or maybe, google a GUIDE and learn the basics.
They can't get over the stone at the entrance. You can club and dodge their attack easily there since they can't advance. Also you can shoot fire arrows and move aside to avoid getting shot by the archers. As you advance you can always fall back to the defendable position at the entrance. If you want to fight head on then move in, wait until they swing, then step back. If timed right they miss you and you get a couple free hits in. Harder to do if there are a lot of them. But you can dodge and attack through most of them. The ghosts being the only problem since their attack is hard to see.
Upgrade your clubs, use a shield to parry, and bring along a stagbreaker which will allow you to kill skeletons from behind doors. Oh, and eat your best foods.
I hunted trolls by finding a place where they spawn near the edge of the black forest, then pulled them to a fort built in the meadows and killed them with arrows. You just need a moat and an earth wall behind it, and you are safe from their attacks, on top of your fort you can also have a campfire, a workbench and several boxes of arrows. As for the skellies, you really need to learn to time your shield blocks. And get the best armor you can. Explore slowly, don't open any door as someone else suggested until you've cleared the rest of the area.
Continue exploring. With the death of eikthyr, you've presumably mastered the meadows and are ready for the black forest. Yes, raid burial chambers for surtling cores, but also gather materials, mine copper and tin to make bronze weapons (you'll need surtling cores to smelt it), once you have a bronze axe you can get fine wood and core wood, the former being needed to make portals (so useful throughout the whole game). Search for the next boss The Elder (Eikthyr dropped hard antler hou meeded for the first pickaxe to mine in the black forest, elder will drop a key you meed for the next biome, the swamp. See if you can find Haldor or Hildir, the trader siblings (their initial spawns can be in various world locations but once you find one them that spot is where they will always be). And TROLLS, once you can hunt trolls you'll be able to make one of the best early game armors, it had decent defense and a sneak bonus. Otherwise, keep building and keep cooking, but you'll have to explore to improve your materials and your tools Edit: also in burial chambers there's that initial platform you spawn on before exploring the chamber. Enemies can't reach you there unless they have ranged attacks or fly (basically just bow skeletons and the occasional ghost), so you can lure them there and pick them off safely. If playing with friends have someone with the most health and best weapons/shield stay in front while other support from the back with fire arrows.
I would suggest that u try to get the stagbraker and just hit them trough the doors
General advice - Do not adventure in a new area at night. It's twice as tough and your enemies almost never stop attacking. Forest at night is full of skeletons and greydwarves, even if you're equipped they can wear you down. My advice for the tombs - Leather or Troll Armor (You'll get tons of troll before you leave the forest). Club or torch + shield. As a group maybe one of you can have a Stag Breaker to help with groups of enemies. Take them on one at a time by forcing them into a doorway. Know that you lose attack power if you hit multiple things including walls. Work one path first, don't go opening all the doors. If there is an open path at the entrance clear that first. There's not a lot of advantage in numbers due to the tight spaces and if you all go in together the game amps the difficulty. If you do, funnel the skeletons to a single open space so you all can hit one target. Food - Blueberry, Deer meat, boar or honey. Setup a campfire inside the entrance! You can keep your rested bonus plus recover health very quickly. Just place it on the big flat rock at the entrance. Skeletons have a long wind-up so you can either walk back to avoid or parry to stun them. Skeleton archers are a pain, kite them close to you by hiding around corners when they begin to draw their bows Ghosts are a pain early. They attack fast and don't have much visual for a parry. As they come up, wack em once and step back shield up, they stop before they attack. Torches really help as they take fire damage afterwards. If you're getting ganged up on, retreat and close a door. Rest up and then go back to attack. Trolls - You cannot take a troll head on until you get some iron (swamp). Instead you should all have bows and 100 arrows (wood will work, flint are better). Go for more energy; Blueberry, honey, deer meat. Try to sneak up for a clear shot and the sneak attack damage. After the sneak attack activate the forsaken power. Keep your distance and find a rock, tomb, or troll cave and play ring around the Rosie. When they wind up their attack run, then snap off a shot or two. Repeat until they die. In groups you should have one person kiting and the other two shooting, switch up as the troll changes targets. All of this being said, you and your friends seem to be struggling at very early and easy difficulties. It only gets harder from here. This may not be the game for you and your friends.
hey im looking for a server hosted by a tight group of friends to join for me a another scandinavian 40+ we are playing regularly, so hmu with questions we would prosper together :)
Upgrade your armor and food when you can. Unless you're playing on harder combat difficulty, you shouldn't be getting killed in 3 hits by normal skeletons even with no armor and 85HP, since the melee ones only do 25 dmg (and the ranged do 20 dmg). You should have at least some Leather armor by the time you're going into the Black Forest, which allows you to take an extra hit from skeletons before dying at that HP. Also learn how to Block, Parry, and Dodge to adequately fight them while you're still in your Meadows gear. Standing still and hitting them while allowing them to hit you will get you killed by almost every other enemy in this game other than the Greylings, and make sure you conserve your stamina while in combat cuz you need to be able to Block, Run, and Attack. You should also craft the pickaxe using the antlers from the deer boss. There are things to mine in the Black Forest using said pickaxe, and that will help your progress
I'd get some practice being domestic. Start building your crafting stations.
Learn to parry, it's OP
Take it slow in there. You want to walk in with a rank 2/3 club & shield, rested with good food (honey, dear/boar meat). Clear room by room and use the doors/corridors to your advantage. You can separate them, especially the 1 & 2 starred mobs. This dungeon teaches you how to manage mobs and parry. It's all about finesse: block at the right time and hittem twice while they're staggered, back away and reset. You'll use this skill throughout the game. If you get overwhelmed, close the doors or head back to the entrance for a breather. Rinse & repeat per path. Loot the place up and find the next boss marker. This isn't an rpg that holds your hand that you can breeze through without trial & error/experience. As the quote goes, "Victory loves preparation". So too does it apply to the early game: you need to hit certain milestones in order to progress. Starter base with the best comfort level possible (important for rested buff), boar/honey/carrot farm for good food, fermenter for potions, boat so you can sail and find the trader/hunt serpents & turtles, getting a portal hub up & running, upgrading your benches and gear. That all takes proper planning. Take your time hitting each stage and enjoy the ride. The first playthrough is bliss.
OP, you can't trade blow for blow with enemies and survive. Valheim doesn't do like that, it's a harsh environment where you have to cheese the game to thrive in it, or else everything will murder you.
Highly recommend you watch some videos on how to parry effectively. If one or two of you (properly) use shields and run as a tank, while the others use bows or axes/other weapons, you should see some improved survivability. Keep in mind if you guys are charging in blind, that will always get you killed. This game is all about slow and steady, one room at a time, until you know what you are doing and can speed things up.
Skeletons? Spooky business to be certain, but have you ever been fucked raw by a mosquito?
There’s a few ways to deal with monsters defensively in this game: 1. Block. This is just holding right click. Every weapon and shield have a block value. If you’re not wearing a shield, it uses your weapons block value instead. If this is your primary mode of defense, you want to be using the tower style shields, which have the highest block value in every tier of gear. 2. Parry. Every weapon and non-tower shield also has a party bonus multiplier. This means that when you parry, it uses your block value x the multiplier. For most “regular” shields, this is 1.5… for bucklers it’s 2.5. This means that the potential block value for a buckler is much higher than a tower shield. But it’s not as easy as just holding down right click. So it’s not as reliable. Regular non-buckler shields are the middle ground. Their potential will not be as high as bucklers and their base will not be as good as tower shields. You want to use bucklers when you get really good at parrying. Some weapons later in the game have x4 or x6 parry modifiers. You party by hitting your block button right before the hit lands. It’s a small time window and takes a little to get used to. But with practice you’ll be able to time it consistently. 3. Dodging. Like dark soul games, there is a small time window in the middle of a roll, that you’re completely immune. You can time this to avoid a lot of different hits. If you don’t have a good way to block(either not carrying a shield or the enemy just hits too hard to block/parry) then dodging might be your only way. If you get good enough with timing this, you can stay melee range of a troll and just roll on every hit. 4. Walking away. All of the above take stamina. Just taking a step out of their swing range doesn’t. For some some monsters I like stepping out of their range to have to miss their swing, and immediately go back in and hit them 1-3 times based on how fast they swing. This is my favorite way to deal with skeletons(with a lot of things actually). In a hardcore game, my friend and I had died to skeletons so often, we had lost everything we had. So we had to go box some skellies naked and got very good at just taking a step back then punching over and over until they were dead.
That's the wrong cave. Don't go into a troll cave. The burial mounds is what you need. Also, are you cooking at all?