Swamps are way too hard

[teammatezero]

Let me preface this by saying I love this game and will continue to play and have watched tons of guides on Youtube about the swamp, but I've come to the conclusion that the swamp biome is not a good difficulty increase from the black forest. Full bronze armor, the best food you can get at tier one of the cauldron, upgraded weapons, increased skills, are simply just not enough in MY experience to deal with the challenges that the swamp biome introduces. My friend and I played this game with little real difficulty up until the swamp, easily overcoming even trolls. We knew beforehand that the swamp would be a jump up in difficulty, so we got the best armor we could. However once we finally got to a swamp with crypts in them, draugr spawners EVERYWHERE, tons of leeches destroying our boat, and abominations galore. I mean there were literally three abominations within a couple 100 feet of each other.
I have been to the plains, and with the correct tactics and proper health and stamina, I was able to build a massive longhouse with a stake wall surrounding base, take out several lox with little to no problems at all. amass up to 60 black metal ore from killing fulings and many arrows made from deathsquitos.
The swamp has you always wet, and if you dont manage time correctly which is hard to do given that its always pretty dark, you might get cold and have to deal with wraiths which spawn at night. Wet and Cold, Wraiths, Abominations, Two star Draugr Archers which kill you in one snipe, tons of leeches and blobs with enough poison to kill you despite your armor, and crypts in my experience really dont spawn all that often. Maybe we've just been unlucky.

Not to mention whenever we die in the swamp it takes ages and multiple more deaths to get our stuff back. I want to progress but I dont see how we can even begin to contend with the swamp at our current gear and without getting extremely lucky. Has anyone else had a particularly hard time with the swamp or just us?

(and if ur response is "just get gud" pls shut up)

[Levodrago]

I really agree with him. Oh and it was like 5 or 6 abominations. I was the friend.

[Erimaki]

its definitely not just you.. i just arrived in the plains with my friend and the difficulty increases are ridiculous especially cause all the armor you made before INCLUDING upgrades, is rendered useless.. enemies one shot you THROUGH my tower shield (serpent one) and even small enemies are a pain to block. wanna get your stuff back? good luck dodging mach 2 mosquitos that one shot you. its so tedious to upgrade armor, just to manage to survive the CURRENT biome you are in and be rendered useless basically the moment you enter another biome

[RequiemsRose]

The swamp is the first massive difficulty jump for sure. Meadows to black forest is perfectly fine and then you get to swamp and everything is death until you know exactly what to do.

Poison resist meads are a must, and if you do have mead production up already you can also make at least the minor healing and stamina meads to help you survive as well. I would recommend that the first time you get to a swamp, grab some turnip and gtfo for a bit. The turnips will let you make a spice rack to upgrade your cauldron with so you have some better food options as well. A hoe is also one of your best weapons for the swamp. It does no actual damage, but it can help you deal with the terrain being your biggest enemy, plus you can cut off different pools from each other so you dont get so incredibly overwhelmed by leeches either (still wouldnt recommend trying to land your ship in the swamps, leeches maul those to and the undead have no issue firing arrows from underwater where you might not be able to fire back). With the spawners you either have to rush in and wreck them before they can spawn enough to overwhelm you, or take potshots from afar with your bow until they finally go down. If its a geyser spawner, break out the hoe and level the ground to just under the water level. Water hurts the surtlings so you just turned that fire hazard into a passive core farm instead.

[Rhapsody]

Originally posted by SaLaD:

Wet and Cold

Sooo... you been to the plains, but don't have frost resistance cloak? Or is that just general comment about the state of the biome? Everyone is dealing with it.

Originally posted by Erimaki:

good luck dodging mach 2 mosquitos that one shot you.

Wow I didn't know oversized mosquitos and viking warriors can break the sound barrier like that.

[Jogo]

You say you watched "tons of guides on Youtube" and yet leeches destroy your boat, blobs poison you and wraiths appear at night. There are multiple approaches to each of these "problems". Either you guys are not learning from your experience (you repeat the same mistakes, as we all sometimes do until we realize it) or you managed to find a swamp that is home to Bonemass -- those are known to have spawners galore as well as crypts.
Also, someone just posted how they are seeing an unusually high number of creatures around their bases. It could be a rare bug or just particularly unfortunate seed or rng. You could test it by finding another swamp; see if it behaves differently.

The only really hard time I had in my current run was when a 2-star Draugr archer had spawned the second before I destroyed a spawner inside a crypt. It took multiple runs to get my stuff back because he and another Draugr kept camping in the lobby. I still absolutely loved the challenge. It has been a few weeks and I still remember it fondly. :-)

If you have mastered the plains, like it sounds you did, swamp should be a piece of cake indeed.

[Nerevar]

the swamp IS the worst biome in this game for a reason sadly. the constant wet effect is actually the biggest offender here by far as it CANNOT BE AVOIDED. and there is no counter (no building a roof over the entire swamp path is not a viable tactic^^) to it. its the only biome with a permanent uncounterable debuff.

the amount of enemies isnt even the issue as you can avoid hordes by running and useing the terrain but archers AMOUNG these hordes is a serious problem.

wraiths are not an issue overall as they only spawn at night. and as the game tells you even during loading screens : its dangerous to venture out during the night....

crypts are fine overall. there is lots of enemies but the narrow path prevent them from swarming you. 2 star elite draugr are seriously dangerous but thankfully also insanely rare.

the leeches are ok inside the biome. at ocean side they are a pain in the rear. but still not a big deal.

the darkness can be countered with the dvergr circlet pretty effectively.

but the constant wet effect just by entering the biome from anywhere is just dumb. provide a potion to prevent wet status for like 10 minutes and the swamp would become far less problematic in total already. a item with a permanent effect would maybe be too strong overall.

swamp is the only biome i would make an adjustment too currently (aside adding content of course) and that is this damn constant wet debuff. its just not fair to debuff players stamina and health regen permanently just for BEEING THERE.

in other biomes you get bad weather and get wet too but there youre supposed to find shelter till the storm stops clearly to prevent issues with the debuff. but in the swamp that concept simply doesnt work as the debuff is instantly reapplyt even if you never step into the swamp water.

i died by far the most in this biome myself. my map proves that^^ includeing my most painful death at day 171.

spawners are actually great to level weaponskills up later on.

[Maelstrom]

Like most things in Valheim it's just the learning curve. Your first trip to the swamps is a brutal hardcore survival experience. Your second trip to the swamps in a new game will have you thinking they nerfed it into the ground.

Tips for swamps:

Turnip seeds, sooner rather than later.

Root armor. It's light, it has poison and pierce resist on it, and it directly counters all the really nasty swamp stuff except abominations. Seriously it's just super good, I still put it back on when I go back to swamps. Remember rule of thumb for mitigation is shield > resists > armor.

Suggested upgrade priority is cauldron > shield (to level 3) > weapons > iron armor. I know I just raved about root armor but you still want a heavy set for Bonemass.

Abominations are slow and get stuck on everything. Use the terrain to your advantage. Use a sword. After you get an iron shield and swamp food you can parry them. You can try with a bronze buckler, serpent stew and 2 black forest HP foods but I wouldn't. Their attacks are super telegraphed and quite easy to avoid by dodge rolling. Don't use a mace or a spear or a bow, swamps is where enemy resistances become important.

Don't go out at night when you're still in Black Forest gear

Put portals on top of crypts. Only wraiths can reach you up there.

Learn how stagger works if you don't already.

Go slow and be careful while you're undergeared. Spawners will wreck your face if you just yolo into them, usually it's 2 corpse piles and 1 bone pile. If you're having a really tough time you can snipe them from range with a bow but it takes a while and lot of arrows.

Keep poison resist up 100% of the time if you're not using root armor, but I think you're doing that already.

[Xenomorph]

swamp easy all you need rocks and hoe :) than chop all the ugly trees down and your good but do not stay the night :(

[KingKickAss]

The Swamp is like a game knowledge check. I think something doesn't add up with your post though. You don't watch guides, have all the knowledge you could ever need, have the best gear and food available, defeating one of the strongest enemies in the entire game and taming the Plains biome, and then for some reason drive your boat right into the swamp and get overwhelmed by Draugr. It just doesn't make sense.

Draugr are comparable to Greydwarf Brutes, Abominations to Trolls. Bringing the boat in is a huge mistake.

Myself and a friend just made level 1 bronze gear and conquered the swamp without a cauldron(meaning no mead or prepared foods), going on to fight the boss after getting poison resist meads and iron gear. You also shouldn't be dying on the way back to your corpse unless there's like a wraith or something because of how insanely fast you can move while unarmored.

There's something going on with how you guys are playing it, and the losing your boat thing makes it sound like you guys just charge in there with little caution.

[teammatezero]

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

Originally posted by SaLaD:

Wet and Cold

Sooo... you been to the plains, but don't have frost resistance cloak? Or is that just general comment about the state of the biome? Everyone is dealing with it.

Originally posted by Erimaki:

good luck dodging mach 2 mosquitos that one shot you.

Wow I didn't know oversized mosquitos and viking warriors can break the sound barrier like that.

I meant to say that at night you are both wet and cold as apposed to only being cold at night in other biomes and not always wet since it is always raining in the swamp. Yes i know you shouldnt be out at night but it doesnt always work out that way for us at least.

[teammatezero]

Originally posted by Maelstrom:

Like most things in Valheim it's just the learning curve. Your first trip to the swamps is a brutal hardcore survival experience. Your second trip to the swamps in a new game will have you thinking they nerfed it into the ground.

Tips for swamps:

Turnip seeds, sooner rather than later.

Root armor. It's light, it has poison and pierce resist on it, and it directly counters all the really nasty swamp stuff except abominations. Seriously it's just super good, I still put it back on when I go back to swamps. Remember rule of thumb for mitigation is shield > resists > armor.

Suggested upgrade priority is cauldron > shield (to level 3) > weapons > iron armor. I know I just raved about root armor but you still want a heavy set for Bonemass.

Abominations are slow and get stuck on everything. Use the terrain to your advantage. Use a sword. After you get an iron shield and swamp food you can parry them. You can try with a bronze buckler, serpent stew and 2 black forest HP foods but I wouldn't. Their attacks are super telegraphed and quite easy to avoid by dodge rolling. Don't use a mace or a spear or a bow, swamps is where enemy resistances become important.

Don't go out at night when you're still in Black Forest gear

Put portals on top of crypts. Only wraiths can reach you up there.

Learn how stagger works if you don't already.

Go slow and be careful while you're undergeared. Spawners will wreck your face if you just yolo into them, usually it's 2 corpse piles and 1 bone pile. If you're having a really tough time you can snipe them from range with a bow but it takes a while and lot of arrows.

Keep poison resist up 100% of the time if you're not using root armor, but I think you're doing that already.

thanks for the tips!

[knighttemplar1960]

Park your boat in the adjacent biome and walk in. Drop a work bench and camp fires to prevent mobs spawning in by the boat. Build a portal next to that work bench that leads to and from your main base for quick return in case of death.

Brew up and use poison resist meads. Like frost meads they only work before you take the damage but they last 10 minutes so consume them before you enter the swamp and renew while you are there. Poison resist meads make leeches and blobs trivial since they do very little physical damage.

When you run into large spawns of dragur there is a body pile nearby that is spawning them. See if you can locate it and then use your bow to destroy it. You might want to leave a couple body piles so you can farm entrails after you get iron gear. For dragur with bows hide behind an ancient tree so they will approach you. Step and let them draw, step back so the arrow hits the tree, (or parry block with a bronze buckler to stagger them) and then wade into melee. You can kill them with a level 3 bronze mace before they can shoot again. Melee dragur block or dodge and then melee. 3 or more use the bronze atgeir.

Long thin strips of swamp rarely contain crypts and they usually only have a single abomination spawn point. The other biomes are usually nearby so leading them out where they are easier to tackle is a valid strategy. The creatures in the other biomes will attack the abomination in preference to you and vice versa. This gives you extra time to deal with their menace (and troll/abomination battles are epic). This makes the strip swamps ideal places to farm blood bags, ooze, and entrails. They are also a good place to look for your first 3 turnip seeds. Plant those turnip seeds and expand them a few times with the seed > turnip cycle and add the spice rack to your cauldron for better foods and medium healing meads.

Use the better foods to explore larger rounder swamps that will have crypts. If you can find the Vegvisir there are usually several around Bonemass. Explore the entire swamp first and mark the crypts.

When you are ready for the crypts take enough material to build a workbench, a chest, and portal just out side the crypt that goes back to your main base. When you explore the crypt and need to empty your inventory, refresh your rested buff, repair your pick, etc. go outside and put the scrap iron in the chest and portal every thing back home. If you get killed inside the crypt you can portal right back.

When you are finished with that crypt take the scarp from the chest and walk it to your boat. If you fill the boat build a chest for the rest of the scrap. When the scrap is moved portal home, portal back to the crypt, dismantle the chest, portal, and work bench and repeat for the next crypt.

When all crypts are emptied sail the scrap back to your base and start smelting If you have to make multiple trips, deconstruct your Karve with your axe and pick up the pieces. Take them back through the portal and rebuild the Karve. Load your next batch of scrap and sail home. Repeat. If you still have a lot of scrap use that first batch of smelted iron to make nails and use a long boat to bring the rest back.

Smelt and be happy.

[Gregomoto]

Originally posted by Xenomorph:

swamp easy all you need rocks and hoe :) than chop all the ugly trees down and your good but do not stay the night :(

+1 the hoe is really useful in the swamp

[Ketamarine]

lolololol SWAMPS are too hard.

Probably the easiest of the last 4 biomes. Good luck my dood...you will need it!

[Levodrago]

The swamp we found was in the middle of the ocean so ALL there was, was swamp. and we couldnt park our boat to far because we would drown trying to get to it, and not too close because of all the leeches and surtlings and abominations.

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Park your boat in the adjacent biome and walk in