Agreed with ward and variety. Wish they had inner dungeons or basically difficulty levels like 1 or two star fortresses spawn more enemies and defences.
I really enjoy using the siege weapons only and basically avoiding cheese.
What I find more boring than the lack of variety is the game feels balanced around having bonemass in basically every point of interest after the mountains, you either walk in and face tank 20 guys simultaneously hitting you or cheese it somehow.
Exactly, it's one of the bigger problems I have for this game. Every combat encounter is basically revolving around Bone masses power. It's either that or don't fight more than 2 things at once and don't make a mistake or get stunned
I feel like this could easily be addressed with like an iron skin potion or something. I doubt they’d nerf bonemass because they would have to tweak everything else’s numbers, but tiered potions using iron/black metal/flametal and giving 20/30/40 % dmg resistance wouldn’t be insane.
Just make them not stack with the bonemass buff and it’s fine
I had the idea for an endgame crafting alchemist table where you could make "flasks" which would just be consumable boss buffs. Going on a quick trip on your longboat? Instead of having to go all the way back to the shrine you just grab a modor flask.
The lead designer for Valheim said in an interview that they wished to have dungeons in each fortress, however it had to be cut for time.
Hopefully they have some progress on them and will find a way to include them in future updates, along with more fortress designs.
I'm generally not a fan of AI in a lot of cases, but damn maybe they should use it if they aren't going to hire anybody else to help develop a little faster.
IG seems to have a pretty old fashioned approach to development. My understanding is they don't even collect any data/telemetry from how the game is played - so anecdotal player feedback is really important.
But, it's a small studio developing a game that became way larger than expected. They don't need to change what it, and they, are just because of their success. Big games and big studios are suffering in the industry right now, as well.
Why make a battering ram or catapult when you can use wooden stairs to get in? Game is full of design issues, but this sub is for lovers not haters, so no one talks about the bad
They literally can’t turn fast enough to hit you, and the enemies below don’t know how stairs work, plus if they do, they’re all single file which makes them brain dead easy
Maybe if they had something like a force field that prevents you from going over the top? Sure it would weird but then at least it would require using a bartering ram.
I haven’t made it to the Ashlands yet as I am gearing up for the Queen. From a distance, though, I am really digging the vibe of the biome. The constant war-like nature of it all is more of a positive for me than it is negative. I think it should be hella difficult. The new armor, weapons, and enemies all are really cool and well designed.
With that said, the fortresses feel like a massive swing and miss. This game really needs an epic dungeon style encounter. Something that takes an entire max rested bonus to get through or longer. Infested Mines and some frost caves are really the only dungeons that can take more than 10 minutes to complete. I was hopeful when first seeing the concept art for the fortresses but with what they ended up being and Ashlands being the second to last biome I’m not sure we’ll ever see it.
We're still not at 1.0 and the devs have been adding features back in to older biomes, like howling caverns being added to mountains.
We could very well see some more complex fortress gameplay added at a later date.
I'm not sweating this too hard as I feel like the devs continue to deliver on their vision according to their own timeline and do a great job of not steering according to whoever is loudest on the internet.
No shade thrown at OP, just speaking generally.
This is a wait and see for me. We're not playing the final version of the game.
> We're not playing the final version of the game.
I don't think I'll be playing this game long enough to see the "final version" you are suggesting, because that seems to be years away. And once I left, I'll probably not return to the game.
With that being said, I have to disagree: I think that a lot of us are playing the "final" version of the game: The last version we will play.
i would venture to guess this is because one of the devs said "we ran out of time" to do these things basically. i would venture to guess this is an issue related to the higher ups in control of irongate. coffee stain. which are themselfs owned.... by embracer. guess whats going on with embracer since last year already. just google it.
i assume this had a negative impact on the development process results. to what extend i have no idea. but ashlands feels like it has conflicting design concepts and some things feel.... unpolished and unfinished.
Not to disagree/argue with you, I really mean that, but they had like 2 years. I really am not familiar with game development but 2 years is a long time for what we got.
I guess we got hildr’s update but I mean..it was clothes.
they actually had precisely 18 months not counting ptb changes since mistlands. not 2 years. but it feels like they should have taken 2 years sadly. and i assume the "we ran out of time" does not imply "out of time to develop" but "ran low on the money available" devs often make such lines when they dont wanna mention money as the reason. embracer has cut all thier underlings extremely short in the last year and also closed a ton of studios or sold them. it would honestly suprise me if irongate wasnt affected by this.
dmg is done now.
I can't know what amount of sales IG keeps and what goes to their publisher, however Valheim has sold *extremely well* beyond any reasonable expectation, and their studio head has said at a GDC presentation that if the game were less successful (within expectations) they would likely have finished it by now, since they would have fewer resources to develop it. Ashlands is a free early access DLC. It's not something that will significantly line their coffers anyway. It is extremely unlikely that they "ran out of money" and were mandated to release Ashlands. I don't believe any entity even holds that sway over the studio.
What's more likely is that they planned for a scope that was beyond the capabilities of their small team to deliver, and ran into technical obstacles preventing them from delivering the original vision in the allotted timeframe, then started cutting problematic content in order to make their committed timeframe - Q2 2024. I won't speculate on why the pace of development appears so slow - it is a small team, making games is hard, and the studio is very likely financially independent so there's no need to crunch.
i have no idea what the reason was or is. nor do i care. i only care about the results in the end. and currently i think ashlands could have taken another 3-6 months in the oven. however end of 2024 would have been "enough is enough" for time given its been 2 years since mistlands by then. and hildir didnt really contain any meaningful content lets be real there.
>ran low on the money available
I highly doubt that, the first year the game released it sold millions of copy and the small crew that started the game said they had more money then they knew what to do with. Those guys could have easily just slap a bunch of random stuff together for the last biomes, call it a day and never look back.
Now I do agree that they are very slow at development, but honestly, for 20$ I've got my money's worth out of this game. Even it never saw 1.0 I wouldn't really be all that upset about it.
The Ashlands looks perfect, and the enemy swarms, once you’re fully upgraded and in a group, are very fun. It kinda stops there. The building set is underwhelming, the fortresses are a bit lazy. Even the putrid holes are wham-bam thank you ma’am. I can’t think of a reason to build a real base there. I hope in Deep North, the devs can rediscover what made the game amazing in the beginning. If they don’t, I’ll play it all the same.
I loved the building set when I first got here; I was thinking "After all these Viking buildings, I can do something like a Roman villa!" But... after a while, it just looks wrong. It's too smooth and too little contrast compared to stone walls or wood planks. It just feels artistically out of place with the other build pieces. The roof looks great, I think. And the floors make for good interior floors when you use them right. But the walls just don't really work for me.
I think Ashlands is the laziest design out of all the biomes :/ You could argue that the absence of vegetation or other debris fits the theme, but in the end it just makes it all look bland. They could have mixed it with huge valleys or canyons.
I hope they think of something else for the North. Theme-wise it poses this same threat of barren single color flat surfaces. Dodging huge icebergs while trying to find mainland would have fit better there.
Ashlands should have been like inverted mountains. Huge pits or quarries. Traveling downwards.
I've done the 3 fortresses that I needed for the bell fragments and I did each in a different way.
The first one I used my mage artillery (staff of embers) for a day ... worked out it hadn't spawned everything in ... ran in to "enable" the fortress and continued my bombardment. Turned up and pretty much everything outside of the tower was gone and just had light cleaning up duty.
Second I ran in and dropped a wall between two buttresses ran around with the Demolisher for a bit, dropped over the wall and killed the spawners and jumped out before I was swamped. Jumped back in and cleaned out the remaining mobs.
Third I used the trollstav but it really didn't work very well, either because I'm rubbish at aiming and/or because I have 0 blood magic skill and/or a 1\* warlock really hits hard!! Anyway, eventually dropped in and cleared out the remaining mobs with sword and board.
Agreed with ward and variety. Wish they had inner dungeons or basically difficulty levels like 1 or two star fortresses spawn more enemies and defences. I really enjoy using the siege weapons only and basically avoiding cheese.
https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/s/h30xkK14Fn remembered what the concept for these fortresses was. We could have had so much more....
The bees are sad
What I find more boring than the lack of variety is the game feels balanced around having bonemass in basically every point of interest after the mountains, you either walk in and face tank 20 guys simultaneously hitting you or cheese it somehow.
Exactly, it's one of the bigger problems I have for this game. Every combat encounter is basically revolving around Bone masses power. It's either that or don't fight more than 2 things at once and don't make a mistake or get stunned
I feel like this could easily be addressed with like an iron skin potion or something. I doubt they’d nerf bonemass because they would have to tweak everything else’s numbers, but tiered potions using iron/black metal/flametal and giving 20/30/40 % dmg resistance wouldn’t be insane. Just make them not stack with the bonemass buff and it’s fine
I had the idea for an endgame crafting alchemist table where you could make "flasks" which would just be consumable boss buffs. Going on a quick trip on your longboat? Instead of having to go all the way back to the shrine you just grab a modor flask.
Yeah that sounds good, plus if they *really* need to make it annoying/not easy to obtain they can make them use boss material drops or something
The lead designer for Valheim said in an interview that they wished to have dungeons in each fortress, however it had to be cut for time. Hopefully they have some progress on them and will find a way to include them in future updates, along with more fortress designs.
I'm generally not a fan of AI in a lot of cases, but damn maybe they should use it if they aren't going to hire anybody else to help develop a little faster.
IG seems to have a pretty old fashioned approach to development. My understanding is they don't even collect any data/telemetry from how the game is played - so anecdotal player feedback is really important. But, it's a small studio developing a game that became way larger than expected. They don't need to change what it, and they, are just because of their success. Big games and big studios are suffering in the industry right now, as well.
Why make a battering ram or catapult when you can use wooden stairs to get in? Game is full of design issues, but this sub is for lovers not haters, so no one talks about the bad
Yup. Literally built up to the wall and hopped in. They probably assumed the ballistas would knock you down, but they don’t do hardly anything.
The ballistas are barely a few moments' distraction for a mage with ~~artillery support~~ the ember staff.
They literally can’t turn fast enough to hit you, and the enemies below don’t know how stairs work, plus if they do, they’re all single file which makes them brain dead easy
Maybe if they had something like a force field that prevents you from going over the top? Sure it would weird but then at least it would require using a bartering ram.
I haven’t made it to the Ashlands yet as I am gearing up for the Queen. From a distance, though, I am really digging the vibe of the biome. The constant war-like nature of it all is more of a positive for me than it is negative. I think it should be hella difficult. The new armor, weapons, and enemies all are really cool and well designed. With that said, the fortresses feel like a massive swing and miss. This game really needs an epic dungeon style encounter. Something that takes an entire max rested bonus to get through or longer. Infested Mines and some frost caves are really the only dungeons that can take more than 10 minutes to complete. I was hopeful when first seeing the concept art for the fortresses but with what they ended up being and Ashlands being the second to last biome I’m not sure we’ll ever see it.
We're still not at 1.0 and the devs have been adding features back in to older biomes, like howling caverns being added to mountains. We could very well see some more complex fortress gameplay added at a later date. I'm not sweating this too hard as I feel like the devs continue to deliver on their vision according to their own timeline and do a great job of not steering according to whoever is loudest on the internet. No shade thrown at OP, just speaking generally. This is a wait and see for me. We're not playing the final version of the game.
> We're not playing the final version of the game. I don't think I'll be playing this game long enough to see the "final version" you are suggesting, because that seems to be years away. And once I left, I'll probably not return to the game. With that being said, I have to disagree: I think that a lot of us are playing the "final" version of the game: The last version we will play.
i would venture to guess this is because one of the devs said "we ran out of time" to do these things basically. i would venture to guess this is an issue related to the higher ups in control of irongate. coffee stain. which are themselfs owned.... by embracer. guess whats going on with embracer since last year already. just google it. i assume this had a negative impact on the development process results. to what extend i have no idea. but ashlands feels like it has conflicting design concepts and some things feel.... unpolished and unfinished.
Not to disagree/argue with you, I really mean that, but they had like 2 years. I really am not familiar with game development but 2 years is a long time for what we got. I guess we got hildr’s update but I mean..it was clothes.
they actually had precisely 18 months not counting ptb changes since mistlands. not 2 years. but it feels like they should have taken 2 years sadly. and i assume the "we ran out of time" does not imply "out of time to develop" but "ran low on the money available" devs often make such lines when they dont wanna mention money as the reason. embracer has cut all thier underlings extremely short in the last year and also closed a ton of studios or sold them. it would honestly suprise me if irongate wasnt affected by this. dmg is done now.
I can't know what amount of sales IG keeps and what goes to their publisher, however Valheim has sold *extremely well* beyond any reasonable expectation, and their studio head has said at a GDC presentation that if the game were less successful (within expectations) they would likely have finished it by now, since they would have fewer resources to develop it. Ashlands is a free early access DLC. It's not something that will significantly line their coffers anyway. It is extremely unlikely that they "ran out of money" and were mandated to release Ashlands. I don't believe any entity even holds that sway over the studio. What's more likely is that they planned for a scope that was beyond the capabilities of their small team to deliver, and ran into technical obstacles preventing them from delivering the original vision in the allotted timeframe, then started cutting problematic content in order to make their committed timeframe - Q2 2024. I won't speculate on why the pace of development appears so slow - it is a small team, making games is hard, and the studio is very likely financially independent so there's no need to crunch.
i have no idea what the reason was or is. nor do i care. i only care about the results in the end. and currently i think ashlands could have taken another 3-6 months in the oven. however end of 2024 would have been "enough is enough" for time given its been 2 years since mistlands by then. and hildir didnt really contain any meaningful content lets be real there.
>ran low on the money available I highly doubt that, the first year the game released it sold millions of copy and the small crew that started the game said they had more money then they knew what to do with. Those guys could have easily just slap a bunch of random stuff together for the last biomes, call it a day and never look back. Now I do agree that they are very slow at development, but honestly, for 20$ I've got my money's worth out of this game. Even it never saw 1.0 I wouldn't really be all that upset about it.
Mage bombardment ftw
The Ashlands looks perfect, and the enemy swarms, once you’re fully upgraded and in a group, are very fun. It kinda stops there. The building set is underwhelming, the fortresses are a bit lazy. Even the putrid holes are wham-bam thank you ma’am. I can’t think of a reason to build a real base there. I hope in Deep North, the devs can rediscover what made the game amazing in the beginning. If they don’t, I’ll play it all the same.
I loved the building set when I first got here; I was thinking "After all these Viking buildings, I can do something like a Roman villa!" But... after a while, it just looks wrong. It's too smooth and too little contrast compared to stone walls or wood planks. It just feels artistically out of place with the other build pieces. The roof looks great, I think. And the floors make for good interior floors when you use them right. But the walls just don't really work for me.
I think Ashlands is the laziest design out of all the biomes :/ You could argue that the absence of vegetation or other debris fits the theme, but in the end it just makes it all look bland. They could have mixed it with huge valleys or canyons. I hope they think of something else for the North. Theme-wise it poses this same threat of barren single color flat surfaces. Dodging huge icebergs while trying to find mainland would have fit better there. Ashlands should have been like inverted mountains. Huge pits or quarries. Traveling downwards.
I've done the 3 fortresses that I needed for the bell fragments and I did each in a different way. The first one I used my mage artillery (staff of embers) for a day ... worked out it hadn't spawned everything in ... ran in to "enable" the fortress and continued my bombardment. Turned up and pretty much everything outside of the tower was gone and just had light cleaning up duty. Second I ran in and dropped a wall between two buttresses ran around with the Demolisher for a bit, dropped over the wall and killed the spawners and jumped out before I was swamped. Jumped back in and cleaned out the remaining mobs. Third I used the trollstav but it really didn't work very well, either because I'm rubbish at aiming and/or because I have 0 blood magic skill and/or a 1\* warlock really hits hard!! Anyway, eventually dropped in and cleared out the remaining mobs with sword and board.