How Mistlands put me off my favorite game

[Slevin]

Hi.
I don't come here to complain again and again. But I'd like to give a constructive opinion about Mistlands and one of the games that made the biggest impression on me in recent years.

I love Valheim very much and I thank the developers very much for making such a masterpiece. Two years ago, I spent almost two hundred hours on this game and I didn't regret any of them. It was for me an excellent discovery.
Recently, I started the adventure again from scratch to discover the mistlands. And until the mistlands, it was still for me an exceptional game.

But this last biome has been for me a purge. And it's not because of its difficulty. I discovered it without knowing anything and yet I didn't die once in the mistlands, until the queen.

Nevertheless, several problems appeared. First of all, a level design mistake.
Valheim is not a game like Assassin's Creed or Dishonored, where you can jump from surface to surface and climb easily everywhere. It's also not a game like Minecraft where the whole world is made of blocks to jump on or climb easily. This is a game where verticality is not favored, or very little. This is not really a problem in biomes like mountains, even if you often have to climb 90 degree surfaces. But in a biome like the mistlands, where you can't see more than five meters, it's a big problem. This is where I think the biggest level design mistake lies. Putting the mist AND a very vertical and fractured terrain is a very bad choice in my opinion. You should have made a choice between the two, and kept the other for a future biome.

This is what made my exploration of the mistlands laborious. My pace of play dropped considerably as soon as I arrived in the mistlands. My enjoyment and desire to play quickly evaporated. It's sad, when you consider that this was an update I had been waiting for two years for one of my favorite games.

Then, another mistake in my opinion is the spawn rate of infested mines. When you are in a difficult environment, where you can't see the scenery very well, then you shouldn't have to travel long distances to find other dungeons. I had to explore several islands in the mistlands just to get the fifteen black cores needed to progress. It was long and tedious.

All this to arrive against certainly the best animated boss of the game and the most terrifying, but also the least balanced.
It is an enemy against which ranged combat is not very possible. Whether it's with magic or the bow, the boss goes to the other end of the citadel as soon as he can't reach us, where we can't see him anymore. So you have to get closer, and therefore start hand-to-hand combat again. But hand-to-hand combat is also very difficult and above all very frustrating, since the boss keeps pushing us back twenty meters away from him. This is where I died for the first and last time in the mistlands, when I tried to fight the queen by putting myself against a wall to avoid being pushed back too far. She blocked me and summoned a lot of seeker brood that prevented me from moving. Considering the damage she does, it was over for me and my Valheim adventure.

I was disgusted by this biome and I sincerely believe that at the next update for the future biome, I will not do the mistlands again. Unless obviously if improvements are made for this biome. But according to me, there are several adjustments to be made to make this biome more enjoyable. Be careful, I don't mean to make it easier. Just more enjoyable. The difficulty of Valheim is very good and I like the challenge of this game. But not being able to see anything more than five meters away and struggling to climb any surface, even with a lot of jumping levels, is just horrible to play.

I hope the developers will take the players' opinion into account, because I'm obviously not the only one who thinks this. Again, I really like Valheim and I hope they will continue to improve it, because this game deserves it.

Mistlands need balancing.

(Translated with Deepl, sorry if it's not perfect.)

[vinyblaster]

I've said it a few times since it has been released, but it baffles me that the devs spent a year working on this biome to cover it in the mist. I really can't imagine a group of people, sitting around a table, and all agreeing that "yeah this is great. Let's design the most aesthetically pleasing biome and then make it impossible to look at!" And then, of course, the follow up meeting: "and you know what would be even better? You know this whole broken mechanic we have where players can't hit stuff that's slightly above or below them? Let's botch the terrain in Mistlands to highlight even more this broken mechanic!". Who OK-ed these things?

The mistlands is not even hard, it's just painful and tedious.

I won't even go into how I really dislike the introduction of magic (it's a personal preference, it's completely subjective contrary to the poor design of the biome) or how unbalanced the progression is (others have put it perfectly: "you're given the tools to beat mistlands once you've beaten mistlands").

[Angry Baseball]

I agree! Lame. Love the concept but it is unplayable. You get sneak attacked all the time cause they can see and you can't. Also, WHAT THE HELL!, every time you go to the next biome your weapons and armor are worthless. The big bugs take like 100 hits to kill, oh ya your bow is worthless it dose like 2 damage and the last greatest armor is now tin foil.

The scaling sucks in this game. I love the game but Mistlands although cool is very unfun.

[Honorable_D]

There are plenty of mist free areas in the biome to make a base and you can also climb high enough that the mist does not reach you. You can also place Wisp Torches safely as they will no longer be targeted by enemies. The mist is fine and I have no real problems. I do agree though that combining the mist with brutal terrain was a no-no.

As for the Queen, grind your Elemental and Blood magic skill up. Elemental into the 40's or 50's and Blood Magic into the 30's. Go find a swamp mob spawner or a grey dwarf spawner to help with this. Then fight the Queen with the Ember Staff and Staff of Protection. If your bubble shield breaks run off the edge and float down as you recast the shield. The Ember Staff will demolish all the adds and do great damage to the Queen. I killed her in around 14-15 minutes. Stay mobile, run away and jump off the ledge with Feather Cloak if you need a breather.

Use Misthare Supreme, Seeker Aspic and Ygg Pudding. Use Poison Resistance/Lingering Stamina/Minor Eitr/Major Healing potions as needed. Above all run and dodger roll away to recast Staff of Protection ASAP after it breaks or fades. If you can do that then its just a matter of time as you blast her and the adds to flaming bits with the Ember Staff.

[Humpenstilzchen]

Originally posted by vinyblaster:

I've said it a few times since it has been released, but it baffles me that the devs spent a year working on this biome to cover it in the mist. I really can't imagine a group of people, sitting around a table, and all agreeing that "yeah this is great. Let's design the most aesthetically pleasing biome and then make it impossible to look at!" And then, of course, the follow up meeting: "and you know what would be even better? You know this whole broken mechanic we have where players can't hit stuff that's slightly above or below them? Let's botch the terrain in Mistlands to highlight even more this broken mechanic!". Who OK-ed these things?

The mistlands is not even hard, it's just painful and tedious.

I won't even go into how I really dislike the introduction of magic (it's a personal preference, it's completely subjective contrary to the poor design of the biome) or how unbalanced the progression is (others have put it perfectly: "you're given the tools to beat mistlands once you've beaten mistlands").

This 100%. I could play the other biomes all day long but Mistlands no thanks. It sucks and it is ugly thanks to that awful mist. I don´t even want to fight the queen and her 1 million hitpoints by chipping away on her for an hour just to get nothing from it. Almost two years waiting for a bunch of rocks , some oversized cockroaches and mist. I´m very disappointed tbh.

[Rhapsody]

Mistlands doesn't need "balancing", what y'all need is spatial and temporal awareness. Fortunately these skills can still be learned, even on a video game basis.

With your kind of logic a river or ocean should disappear just because you couldn't see it until you got wet.

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by vinyblaster:

I really can't imagine a group of people, sitting around a table, and all agreeing that "yeah this is great. Let's design the most aesthetically pleasing biome and then make it impossible to look at!"

To be fair, Blizzard did it first. Play anything in the Diablo series for long enough to be able to pay attention to the art while you're playing, and then wonder why they bothered paying artists when most of the time you either can't see anything because it's pitch black, or you can't see anything because everything on the screen is intensely bright, or you can't see anything because the screen is covered in some stupid shader effect.

If people are complaining about not being able to see in Mistlands, while no one has said a word about the blindness-inducing mist, fog, and rain effects in the Black Forest, the Swamp, or while on the water... Bleh.

"Full-screen swirling grey" might as well be static; can someone please remind me why I bothered buying a 34" 4K display and a high-end graphics card?

I'll probably end up counting this game as "done" well before I get to Mistlands, because I already have to limit my playtime to avoid eyestrain-induced headaches.

[Rhapsody]

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

To be fair, Blizzard did it first.

Hardly. We can go back very far in time to find countless number of examples of reduced visibility in games: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackoutBasement

[vinyblaster]

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Originally posted by vinyblaster:

I really can't imagine a group of people, sitting around a table, and all agreeing that "yeah this is great. Let's design the most aesthetically pleasing biome and then make it impossible to look at!"

To be fair, Blizzard did it first. Play anything in the Diablo series for long enough to be able to pay attention to the art while you're playing, and then wonder why they bothered paying artists when most of the time you either can't see anything because it's pitch black, or you can't see anything because everything on the screen is intensely bright, or you can't see anything because the screen is covered in some stupid shader effect.

If people are complaining about not being able to see in Mistlands, while no one has said a word about the blindness-inducing mist, fog, and rain effects in the Black Forest, the Swamp, or while on the water... Bleh.

"Full-screen swirling grey" might as well be static; can someone please remind me why I bothered buying a 34" 4K display and a high-end graphics card?

I'll probably end up counting this game as "done" well before I get to Mistlands, because I already have to limit my playtime to avoid eyestrain-induced headaches.

People complain about the fog on the ocean all the time bro.

The big difference is that fog and rain are temporary and occasional occurrences. Not the permanent state of the biome.

[Pussy Pink Like Cocaine]

I agree. The concept is good and the biome is beautiful but it was executed poorly IMHO.

[jamesc70]

Agreed. The mist + the vertical areas are just not fun.

It's like the devs thought "What do players hate? Let's combine those into a biome". My most hated things pre-mistlands were running up steep inclines and having to wait for stamina to regen, and the soupy-fog while sailing that blocks all vision.

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

To be fair, Blizzard did it first.

Hardly. We can go back very far in time to find countless number of examples of reduced visibility in games: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackoutBasement

I see what you're saying (pun not intended), but the games referenced there are supposed to be visual challenges. Diablo is ostensibly a looter-shooter (of sorts), but the screen effects and light level issues that they decided provided "challenge" are some of the things that made me stop playing them. If there's an in-game way to mitigate, that's fine (eg, +Light as an equipment affix in the first Diablo game), and those kinds of mechanics definitely add to the "interesting choices" aspects... but Rifts in Diablo III, for example, are sometimes so ridiculously dark and/or obscured by full-screen shader effects that one ends up playing by staring at the minimap instead of the actual play area.

... much like navigating a watercraft in Valheim during anything other than high noon with zero weather conditions, now that i think about it.

Originally posted by vinyblaster:

The big difference is that fog and rain are temporary and occasional occurrences. Not the permanent state of the biome.

Have you not had it rainy/foggy for multiple days running? I spent 3 in-game days sitting on my butt in my base not too long ago, because I didn't feel like going out in the thunderstorm that apparently needed to park directly over my house. At least in Minecraft we can sleep through the bad weather... and in all honesty, we can see in it, too; at least, during the daytime.

[Fleshling]

I haven't found the Mistlands to be that bad really. It reminds me very much of the swamp. By the time you have found enough crypts to make all the upgrades, you don't really need to be in the swamp anymore. And they swapped out the constant wet/cold debuff with mist. Personally, I spent more time looking for swamps that had a decent number of crypts and fuling totems than I did infested mines.

You can lift the mist as you go by simply building wisp torches. There is enough Yggdrasil wood and wisps are so plentiful you can pretty much just burn it away as you go. Also, if you get to the valleys that have no mist, hit a tree with your axe. If you see the stealth eye go wide, wait for the enemies to come to you.

I do agree about the uneven terrain. Since Valheim is just poor with swinging over and under enemies when elevation differs, it seems strange to double down on that. Regardless, I wound up just using the bow most of the time, which negates that draw back. If you use Drauger Fang and frost arrows, you can kill a standard seeker in three arrows, maybe two plus it will be slowed. The new bow is actually better since Spinal Snap top loads all the damage as pierce. Yes, poison does more damage, but since the seeker fights are all relatively close quarters, you will typically shoot another arrow before the poison DOT finishes, meaning that damage is just flat out lost.

Mines, yeah, they tend to be few and far between. Although in the last larger mistlands area I was in, I found three mines, although they were spaced a ways apart. But there were three or so giant skulls to discover in-between. The four mines I've cleared produced 2,2,8,3 dark cores. So that search ended with 4 mines cleared which certainly isn't awful. I am at only 8 of 9 sealbreaker fragments, so I will have to go back and try to find a few more.

I didn't have an issue with having essentially beaten the mistlands before I could make any gear, because most other zones function that way too. The problem in my mind, is that the mistlands follows a zone that doesn't work that way, the plains. In the plains, all you need to make the padded armor is iron and some thread. So just steal some flax from a fuling camp, grow it on an isolated plot and you have the armor the entire time you are clearing villages looking for totems. And then you are still stuck wearing it for most of the mistlands adventure, which sort of gives this sense of stalled progression. Versus finally having all the forge upgrades and enough iron to make the iron gear and then immediately finding silver.

[jonnin]

the mist complaints I get, but 2 damage with a bow? I routinely hit the soldiers for 400+ with the crossbow. They are simply front armored, so you circle strafe them like quake or wherever that was invented (its a pvp technique but it works on NPC goons too). An hour with the queen? She takes like 15 min tops, but far less if you just toe-to-toe her. She can barely scratch you if you use the root chest piece, most of her attacks are pierce and toxic (potion for that). The mobs are mostly fine, though the gjall is a bit out of place (its fine, its just weird to have something so slow and inept). And your armor is wortless? Again root and bug armor combo leaves you more or less gently tapped if something hits you -- all the enemy are heavily pierce based. A fire potion for the occasional angry wizard or gjall. A toxic potion for the queen. Mistwalker for your weapon. Done and done. I don't argue that getting your upgrades takes some risk in lower tier gear, but even there padded, root chest, heal and fire potions, good foods, your old black metal weapons... avoid gjall and soldiers until you are forced into it inside a mine for soldiers, gjall are slow and noisy and easy to avoid. If you have to fight a soldier in a mine, you gonna need a larger room and circle smack its backside. You can toe-to-toe them with mistwalker and good armor, but not starting out.

[Introvertgeek]

I agree, Mistlands is just... just awful. Sorry, but it's not fun, climbing, swimming and fighting bugs is tedious at best. We've left it for dead and gone back to base building

[Delle(DK)]

I agree about mistland.. Personaly what will make mistland better is if the terrain become more user friendly. Yes it possible to jump/run up the highest peaks but problem is you have to do it so often that it just take a long time and become irritating and frustrating.. There need to be more "low land" and the high things spaced out a bit so its more easy to go from a-b. What typical kill me in the mistalnd is the seekers and another reason why i often die is the lack of stamina in general even though i eat good food ect. Its just frustrating.
But mistland is kind of cool but maybe it would be better if the area you have visited have better visibility ( like a light fog ) while what you have not discovered is thick fog ).
often when you die you also often run though territory you already know but if you did several times you often run out of the "spike" light flies or what ever they are called.