I think the game really sucks after getting the pickaxe

[Simpson]

i absolutely love chopping down trees and creating chain reactions. i love the the structural integrity and smoke simulation.
however, mining is dull and metal transportation is an incredible chore, even before iron and boats. surtling cores are too rare and/or furnaces and kilns need too many of them.

this game goes from the most relaxing and enjoyable base building game to an absolute chore fest without satisfying mechanics. i just wanted to unlock stone building pieces, but it's not worth it...

and no, installing "teleport everything" is not the solution

[vinyblaster]

Originally posted by CrazyWithPower:

Originally posted by Quintium:

For you maybe. Others enjoy it.
If you don't like grind games, maybe they are not for you. And that is OK. Plenty of other games. A lot of games are not meant for everyone.

then help us understand what do you find enjoyable about mining?

Help us understand what you find enjoyable about the color yellow or about the sound of piano.

[Emme]

Originally posted by Simpson:

i absolutely love chopping down trees and creating chain reactions. i love the the structural integrity and smoke simulation.
however, mining is dull and metal transportation is an incredible chore, even before iron and boats. surtling cores are too rare and/or furnaces and kilns need too many of them.

this game goes from the most relaxing and enjoyable base building game to an absolute chore fest without satisfying mechanics. i just wanted to unlock stone building pieces, but it's not worth it...

and no, installing "teleport everything" is not the solution

Personaly I like it how it is. You know you can use the cart for transportation, do you?

[Marksman Max]

Originally posted by Simpson:

...
however, mining is dull and metal transportation is an incredible chore, even before iron and boats. surtling cores are too rare and/or furnaces and kilns need too many of them.

this game goes from the most relaxing and enjoyable base building game to an absolute chore fest without satisfying mechanics. i just wanted to unlock stone building pieces, but it's not worth it...

Yeah, the Bronze Age sucks. There's no question about it, honestly. Everything afterwards is considerably easier to gather the materials for than the Black Forest portion of the game.

I'd say that for a new player, the best thing to gather once you have at least five Cores is to get at least eight Copper Ore and one Tin Ore. That's fairly easy on your weight limit (less than a hundred). This then lets you build a Forge and one Bronze Ingot, which you can turn into 20 Bronze Nails to craft two carts. Carts allow you to transport FAR more metal than you could otherwise carry. They theoretically don't have a weight limit, but they become noticeably harder to drag past around 2000 weight.

EDIT: Also, while you can't deconstruct carts, you can manually take then down with a weapon (i.e. an axe) and get all of your materials back.

Once you have enough materials for a Bronze Axe (16 copper and 8 tin), you can really speed things up. Since you can then get Fine Wood from Birch and Oak trees, you can then make Portals to return to your base for Rested and repairs, and the Karve to transport metal over open water much faster than you can drag a cart. The Karve needs 80 Bronze Nails (4 Bronze Ingots, which equals 8 Copper/4 Tin).

Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

You can "chain reaction" ore deposits as well. Dig them out completely and hit them will cause the whole node to explode.

Don't do this. It's completely impossible for Copper deposits due to their depth, and while it is possible to make most of the Copper deposit explode, it's an absolute pain in the ass, with several major problems making it much harder than you'd expect. You're better off just mining the deposit manually, which also increases your Pickaxe level quite a bit (useful for later Scrap Iron mining in the crypts).

My tactic for mining Copper is to just mine on the top, right in the middle. Dig down pretty far in the middle (even down to the eight meter dig limit, if you want to), and then expand outwards from there. That way, you can dig out most of the terrain from below, which erases the terrain much faster than doing it from above.

Originally posted by Actionhanz:

Then just make the bars there and either run them home with your cart, or sail with the ship, you can transport only 120 bronze bars sadly but thats enough for half of what you need for a long time.

I have absolutely no idea what the hell you're making, but you do NOT need 120 Bronze bars. I mean, the only things you really need to make are:

- Bronze Axe
- Cultivator
- Adze/Anvils
- Cauldron
- Forge Cooler
- Fermenter
- 100 Bronze Nails (Two Carts + Karve)

That adds up to 66 Copper and 38 Tin. Now, if you're a melee class and you want to be able to parry all enemies in the Swamps (or Trolls in the BF), you'll also want a maxed Bronze Buckler, which will run you another 50 Copper and 25 Tin (so 116 Copper and 63 Tin total). A Bronze Mace wouldn't be a bad idea, either (40 Copper and 20 Tin is required for a Level 3 Mace), since most Swamp enemies are weak to blunt damage.

Troll Armor is almost as good as Bronze Armor; level 3 Troll Armor can easily carry you through the Swamps until you craft Root/Iron Armor, and can even work in the Mountains if you're playing on the cautious side. Also, Antler Pickaxes can mine Muddy Scrap piles for Iron, so you don't need a Bronze Pickaxe for those. Antler Pickaxes can also be repaired at a standard Workbench, while a Bronze Pickaxe requires a Forge.

[Zep Tepi]

The best way I know to make copper mining less grindy is to just harvest the tops off of several nodes. If you dig under ground you're basically mining twice, the ore and the ground. It means hauling over a greater distance though, so it depends on if you can find several deposits close together.

[blprice61]

Originally posted by Zep Tepi:

The best way I know to make copper mining less grindy is to just harvest the tops off of several nodes. If you dig under ground you're basically mining twice, the ore and the ground. It means hauling over a greater distance though, so it depends on if you can find several deposits close together.

Normally I place my forge site just out of sight/sound range of an area of BF with multiple copper nodes. Regardless of which method I use, I go out to a site, mine as much copper as I can carry (20-22 depending on combat load) and go back to the forge before dark. So really, there isn't any extra travel involved unless the nodes are further away.

[Soren]

Ore mining and hauling can be a chore yeah. I disagree about the surtling cores being rare though. They aren't. Only place they would be is in a multiplayer setting where the center island can be picked clean.

But the game doesn't really have big multiplayer experiences for the most part and is mostly a co-op experience.

[Lucidess]

I'd agree if you complained about the fact you find more Iron in chests than mining scrap piles, and even more Silver when you chew out the ground below a Silver node and use the Iron Pick to break the entire thing in 5 swings. Severely underused tool, exploitable mechanics, and the Bronze Pickaxe is completely pointless to craft.

Anybody saying Iron and Silver is harder to collect than Bronze? Wrong.

[Marksman Max]

Originally posted by Lucidess:

Anybody saying Iron and Silver is harder to collect than Bronze? Wrong.

Is there one person here that's actually made this claim? Seriously; quote it if someone has actually made this claim, because I don't believe anyone here has.

[Lucidess]

Originally posted by Marksman Max:

Originally posted by Lucidess:

Anybody saying Iron and Silver is harder to collect than Bronze? Wrong.

Is there one person here that's actually made this claim? Seriously; quote it if someone has actually made this claim, because I don't believe anyone here has.

I literally just typed it, and i've played this game long enough to know how much metal i get per run.

[Soren]

eh, I did see what person saying something kind of applicable.

Originally posted by CrazyWithPower:

sorry to tell you this but it doesnt get better further on in fact the chore part gets worse

Now that just implies it more of a chore, not that it's necessarily harder per se.

[Marksman Max]

Originally posted by Soren:

eh, I did see what person saying something kind of applicable.

Originally posted by CrazyWithPower:

sorry to tell you this but it doesnt get better further on in fact the chore part gets worse

Now that just implies it more of a chore, not that it's necessarily harder per se.

I mean, I do sort of get that. In a way, the entire point of Valheim is the grind, which is why I'm not in favor of making it too easy; you might think you'll be in heaven once you finally get past the grind, only to realize that there's nothing left to do anymore.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

The whole idea of the game is progress by finding things... what made you think you could build out of stone right away?

To be fair, that's a reasonable expectation. Or, rather, that you'd be building with stone before iron. Humans have been making all sorts of stuff with stone long before they figured out how to work with any kind of metal, and by the time iron was mastered many megalithic structures were already quite old.

It doesn't bother me enough to have a heated debate about how it has to be changed, but every time I'm reminded of it I go "oh, yeah, that's a weird progression choice from the devs."

[Soren]

Originally posted by shadain597:

Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

The whole idea of the game is progress by finding things... what made you think you could build out of stone right away?

To be fair, that's a reasonable expectation. Or, rather, that you'd be building with stone before iron. Humans have been making all sorts of stuff with stone long before they figured out how to work with any kind of metal, and by the time iron was mastered many megalithic structures were already quite old.

It doesn't bother me enough to have a heated debate about how it has to be changed, but every time I'm reminded of it I go "oh, yeah, that's a weird progression choice from the devs."

From a design perspective, the game gives you excess amounts of stone early on. You either need to store away chests full of the stuff for later, or throw it away. The assumption when you get that much stone is that you can use it sooner rather than later.

But on the flip side, stone is a pretty powerful building material in Valheim. Stronger than it usually is in other survival open world crafting games. Has quite a lot of advantages over building with wood.

[Kalysm]

I think they should have Greydwarves occasionally drop tin or copper. You will kill a ♥♥♥♥ ton of them anyway why not make it more beneficial. They either drop an eye or the metal. Boom its fun again. Or put small stacks in the Chests in their towers ala Crypt chest with iron. I make the bare minimum to get thru bronze. I despise bronze due to the 3 pieces needed to make 1 bar.

[vinyblaster]

Originally posted by Kalysm:

I think they should have Greydwarves occasionally drop tin or copper. You will kill a ♥♥♥♥ ton of them anyway why not make it more beneficial. They either drop an eye or the metal. Boom its fun again. Or put small stacks in the Chests in their towers ala Crypt chest with iron. I make the bare minimum to get thru bronze. I despise bronze due to the 3 pieces needed to make 1 bar.

The 1st boss is supposed to be a gate to mining so idk if that would work. Granted today you can bypass by luring trolls, but having ores in BF chests is way too easy. And now that I think of it you actually do find tins in their towers already.