Serious discussion about Mistlands

[Colonel McDoogle]

I don't understand why people are liking Mistlands. Before getting there I died maybe 10 times mostly due to stupid trees falling or stupid building mistakes. Didn't die to any of the bosses other than Yagluth (because I didn't know he was fire based) which was only once before I grabbed fire potions. I always use S&S when fighting and parrying is my favorite part of any rpg/melee games. Probably died 20 times before I found my first infested mine. Then another 20 after that just because seekers, cliffs, water, and then mobs can hit while swimming.

So the question is how are you guys that are liking Mistlands playing it? Meaning are you solo or multi-playing? Are you using seeds that are easier? Are you using the load different maps and just swap materials back and forth for ease of comfort? Did you make full bases (not just a portal base) in Mistlands? (I don't do any of these and I'm solo, boat rides are getting ridiculously long 30+ minutes)

Somethings got to give because I honestly like the game but the death loop in Mistlands and the material transport by boat are both miserable.

Also if you're commenting on here think your statements through and don't just post in anger or frustration outside of trying to better the game.

P.S. 'get gud' is not acceptable. Be genuine.

[Nonviolent Gunshot Wound]

Adapt. The mistlands have a steep learning curve. You need to use more then just sword and shield initially, at least until you get the mistlands tier gear.

The cliffs aren't necessary to get through the mistlands. The vast majority of the landmarks are in the valleys. Valleys also provide a better landscape to fight in. At least until you get the new cape, think of the mistlands as a maze instead of a series of cliffs.

[DeMasked]

Mistlands is annoying to me due to the mist mechanic being too oppressive even with Wisp Light, Wisp Torches or Mistwalker weapon. That and the terrain is very stop and go due to how jagged it is, having to jump a lot and having an extreme cut into water resulting in less then dependable shorelines.

Exploring wise I used padded helm/leggings and root chest piece (pierce resistance is great against seekers and dverger rangers) and carried materials for workbench, stone cutter and a portal for when I find either a dungeon or a dverger tower that I would dismantle for materials (having wood for a chest can be good as well).

Weapon I just used Frostner and didn't really bother with the shield since with timing and the special attack + slow it's pretty easy to handle a lot of the Mistland enemies. Iron Sledge is good for cheesing enemies via ledges or killing ticks. Drauger bow for those enemies you can get away with killing from a distance or you do not want to fight a certain enemy (like a 1 star soldier in the mines).

Beyond that make sure you have decent food and potions. Mead can be really good for gaining back stamina quickly while having zero cooldown though you can't make use of it while running but instead walking / staying in one spot. Fire resist / cold resist potions can be nice against the Gjall or Dverger mages - sometimes I'd have a stack of fires but not cold.

When moving around I find it best to try and reserve a bit of stamina just in case I need it and move around rather slowly because of the mist. Use the map to mark locations or points of interest like dverger forts, docks, ruins, bridges, giant armor, giant sword, petrified bone, and petrified skulls. Map use can be extremely helpful.

edit: I finished solo via cheesing the Mistland boss as I was rather annoyed with how the new biome was designed. Built a base in plains outside of a mistland location and tried to never land my boat on mistland shores except one time to explore a dverger fort that was on an island. Better to land in a safer biome and set up a safeish portal and then portal around when exploring inside.

[Zep Tepi]

I think I have modded out a lot of the things people complain about to be honest. And even then Mistlands took a lot of getting used to. I also consoled one of my corpse runs inside a mine because I died in a crowded room. (Partly that was lack of player knowledge. There were so many seekers showing up that I was certain there had to be a spawner in there and I had to go find it to stop the constant stream of them, but ghosting around I discovered there wasn't one, just a huge room with a lot of spawns close by. Had I known that, I wouldn't have charged in.)

So, double wisp range, no skill loss on death, portal everything. I wasn't sure what you were talking about with boat rides because surely you have portals? Or were you bringing materials back and forth that wouldn't go through the portals?

I haven't quite gotten the hang of gjalls, but I suspect the protection orbs you get later help with the ticks so you can concentrate on shooting them. The draugr fang seems to work better in Mistlands than the spine snap because gjalls don't care about spirit damage. Ice is short range and gjalls are resistant to fire, so if there's something better than the dragur fang, I'm not sure what it is. We got all these new toys and the most annoying thing in there has defenses to all of them. Yes, I know about shooting at the belly. It seemed like the longer I was there, the more of those things spawned until I was hearing their snoring and bellowing all over the place. Luckily the Mistlands also provide a lot of places to get under cover like skulls, ribs, armor pieces and sheltered rocks.

Seekers and even soldiers didn't seem as bad since running away from them wasn't too difficult. They don't follow very well when you bounce around the rocks. The soldiers have way too many hitpoints though. It was easy to shoot them from up high, but it took forever. I found the silver sword to be effective for the seekers, and then the mistwalker later. My blackmetal atgeir just seemed to scratch them a little, but it (or any atgeir) was useful for knocking them off the cliff when doing a corpse run.

I do like the dverger camps. But they are a bit hair trigger. Don't bother trying to help them when they get raided or you will accidentally set them off. Although you have a real reason for not helping them. Not real fond of having to bring harm to the first friendlies in the game that aren't tames. I discovered that skulls, if entered from the side, make relatively secure outposts. They are roomier than expected. The gjall can hang overhead all they want but they don't fire on you in there.

Final verdict, it was both interesting and annoying and I'm not entirely sure whether I liked it or not. I played around with the magic a bit then declared the run over. I'm not that interested in going after the queen.

[DeMasked]

Also with Infest Mines make sure that you proceed slowly and clear everything that is open before opening doors or breaking down board / vines. Often times you can retreat back to the entrance to more easily fight enemies since they usually can't get past the ledge - usually.

[XTazmanianDevilX]

I agree that ML was quite challenging and I can understand the frustration some players will get there. I wouldn't play it solo. I think it is better playing with a friend because you can discuss tactics. Me and my friend play on a private server. We had a hard time establish a portal at ML. We found a big island with no surrounding other biomes so we had to go with this. We dug a hole under one of the big rocks beeing instantly bombarbed by gjals.

We died a few times. It was frightning not seeing your enemies and hearing those creepy crawlers around you but it also gave a good chilling adventure.

After we found out, that we can make a wisplight, things went much better. We kept exploring this island while following some blue lanterns in the distance and found the first crypt. We found our first crystal and died by a bunch of seekers and a onestarseeker on our way home. The stamina draining was terrible. So we returned rested, with good food, stamina and health potions (don't forget fire potions) and took our revenge. We decided to attack a dvergr outpost but that was a very bad idea beeing oneshotted by a crossbow. Lessons learned. So we needed the stuff they had and waited till the outpost was decimated by seekers and a gjal and finally got an extractor.

So tbh ML is not that very much like the other biomes. You had to improvise, adapt and overcome. First the mist seems annoying but there are always some mistfree areas. IMO ML landscape is quite a beauty if you are standing on top of some of the large rocks while the sun raises (should set lodbias to a minimum of 5).

The best thing is the new cape: having a 2star seeker chasing you, just jumping from the top of a rock and flying away like batman ...you should have seen the look in his compound eyes.

[Rhapsody]

The biome is also the most impressive technically. Even if the mobs now frequently get stuck since the first balance patch, especially in dungeons, they are still impressive-looking, imaginative and have pretty robust animations compared to other previous creatures. The terrain generation system also never fails to impress me. I've had the same world going since almost the beginning of early access and never ran into any hiccups. Placement of Yggdrasil trees is sometimes little wonky, but that's how it is in all biomes. The biome has worked as intended even on an old pre-update world. I'm also glad they didn't leave dungeon verticality as unique feature of frost caves, and it's always fun to find a hidden chamber or extra royal jelly even if the current seeker AI is a mistake in the confined quarters. And visually and graphically ML is just golden.

Edit: Draining Yggdrasil sap and digging into literal brains of jotun is also pretty great. It's far better than something like mining for ore and such everyday video game business.

I completed the biome before the balance patch so the current iteration is pretty boring to me. Maybe I just have a lot of experience in the game under my belt (400 hours or something when ML launched) or I just know my own playstyle and capabilities and limitations better than most.

I don't know what the trouble with material transport is, that seems pretty subjective to me. In my opinion it's the mining of silver and at some points the iron that is more tedious than shipping it. You don't actually need to ship any metals from Mistlands since there are no new ores or metals there. Black metal is widely available thanks to fuling patrols that can spawn even in Meadows once Yag is defeated. If anything, ML update reduces very much of the need to transport metal since all essential metals except black metal are available in the biome, and ML biomes are often adjacent to Plains; You no longer need to mine hundreds of silver to get a decent sword; magic requires virtually no metal to upgrade whatsoever and the magic staves are better than bows.

Popping Bonemass power before entering a dungeon and making use of the root harnesk trivializes the danger in Mistlands, especially in the current version of the game.

[Godsmutant]

I only solo play and I don't do mods. At first I did find Mistlands hard to play through and died countless of times but i enjoy the mist because it gives you a challenge but now I walk through with ease, all you need to do is learn how travel the terrain and in the Mistlands higher the altitude you are the better! Only ever had the one seed which is still far from explored and I have more than 2000 in game days played. Before the Mistlands update I had travelled in that biome and after the update those areas didn't have the mist but Seekers still spawn, so I used that as training ground to learn to fight the Seekers without having disadvantage of mist.

[Godsmutant]

I still die a lot in the Mist but mostly down to my stupid mistakes, like picking a fight with three Seekers while in sitting in a karve was really stupid! Odin laught at my attempts of getting my gear back.

[Rhapsody]

Originally posted by Godsmutant:

At first I did find Mistlands hard to play through and died countless of times but i enjoy the mist because it gives you a challenge but now I walk through with ease, all you need to do is learn how travel the terrain and in the Mistlands higher the altitude you are the better

Having the feather cape helps immensely, but yeah, it's pretty badass feeling to just ignore the mist once you know what's what and where you are going. :) It's a good experience and I don't think it's been often or easily replicated elsewhere.

[Wraith]

I just love vanilla solo mistlands experience. Fog bugs and Jotun bones, ancient battleground of giants and players like parasites scavenging old gods territory. Died twice learning how to. Whinning about it and makes is more easy it is your personal decision nothing more this game is still EA and developing. Mists are not for weaklings :) Get your two handed and show these bugs who is master there for Crom. ^^

[Gunnar Hurtya]

I don't "like" Mistlands , but it's challenged me, I thought I had this game beaten, just kinda faffin about in boats and working on my build projects, then boom, get this up ya, sets a high benchmark for the 2 remaining biomes.

[FissionChips]

Couldn't see anything even with the wisplight. Certainly made "what is that noise" interesting with my first gjall encounter. Having cleared most of a mistlands island and finding some black marble and not much else I turned to the world generator to find somewhere else to try that actually had mines. I also started modding, first by increasing the wisp radius and eventually just removing mist altogether - it's cheese, but the mist is just not fun for me whatsoever.

In my experience there's the odd valley or flat spot but by no means the majority of the mistlands. Cliffs and water rein supreme. And I've got one large patch mapped as "mountain" that that is a large steep mistlands crater with the tallest cliff ever in the middle - almost impassable because it's so large you need massive stamina to get through it. The few valleys I have found have almost nothing of value in them. This is with a post update generated world. Even with the cape cliffs kettle you, it's difficult to just pick a direction and go explore - even without mist.

Currently I'm building with black marble, so I'm building in the the black forest, hauling iron from swamps, digging up copper for the new dvergr pieces, and every now and then I might make a run into the mistlands for some yggdrasil wood and to tap the extractors - just to add to my stash, I'm not using sap currently. Have been meaning to try out the crossbow in the mists though, it was disappointing against lox but still fun, keen to see what it does to seekers/gjall.

IMO something seriously needs to change with the mist, or I can't ever take vanilla seriously again. Which is a shame, I wanted to do a vanilla run, but it's just a bad experience currently.

[Tanyon]

I can't stand the mist and I think the landscape is terrible.. the cape changes the entire game. That should be able to be gotten with the first 5 cores should not require all 15.. by then it's too late. By the time you get the cape you are basically done with the biome and ready for the boss.

Second thing I would change is make the wisplight upgrade to T4 and each upgrade doubles both distance and speed at which the wisp clears around you... both those changes would greatly improve player experiences.

As it stands now I will probably just mod out the mist altogether and reduce jump stam drain by 50% my next play-through.

[FissionChips]

Originally posted by DarthTanyon:

That should be able to be gotten with the first 5 cores should not require all 15.. by then it's too late.

It can though, all three things can be built independently of each other - which means all you need is five cores and some juggling. It's only one more thing to juggle than kiln/smelter. I have I think 13 cores (which means I can repair weapons and cape) and imo I'm basically done with the mistlands except for two more seals to take on the queen sometime and farming mushrooms.

+1 everything else.

[Tanyon]

Originally posted by FissionChips:

Originally posted by DarthTanyon:

That should be able to be gotten with the first 5 cores should not require all 15.. by then it's too late.

It can though, all three things can be built independently of each other - which means all you need is five cores and some juggling. It's only one more thing to juggle than kiln/smelter. I have I think 13 cores (which means I can repair weapons and cape) and imo I'm basically done with the mistlands except for two more seals to take on the queen sometime and farming mushrooms.

+1 everything else.

Didn't think about the fact that you could just build one then the other.. still a pain though to have to do that. Still a good point to bring up and will remember it next time.

As it stands right now:

-You would need to get lucky and find a wiped out dwarven fortress and loot an extractor or kill them yourself (which isn't hard you can cheese the range with arrows)

-Then you need to collect the sap which you will need like 28 of to make the cape (including benches needed), 31 if you want to upgrade it.

-Go through 1-3 mines depending on drop chance to get the 5 cores you need. I've gotten as little as 0 and as much as 7 so that is completely RNG.

-You need 28 soft tissue, you can get this from 1 skull. Not too bad might have to kill 3-5 ticks.

-Kill 5-10 seekers/soldiers for the scales (no issue here) you'll passively get this while clearing the mines for the cores.

Now that I have mapped it all out if you focused on it you could have the cape within a couple hours probably depending on RNG. I will actually rush this next time.