Let's talk about Mistlands update problems - Blood Magic

[deadshooter]

So, we have skeletons and magic barrier - both are kinda cool, but there are some things i want to discuss

1. Eitr bar as HUD element and eitr max level reducing over time.
1a) Why eitr level going low over time as stamina and health??? Starting max level is nice, but you can use only in first minute after consuming meals - mostly for summoning and first barrier casting. Then it can go so low, so you can't even summon a skeleton!!! So the full food time almost never used - there are no 25-30 minutes of being well-fed, it's more like 15-20.
1b) Eitr bar is hidden by default and showed to player only while eitr is being used. So right before combat player don't knows what amount of mana he has, because max level is lowering over time. This is critical information! IT SHOULD BE VISIBLE ALL THE TIME! Imagine don't knowing your current amount of health?

2. Two eitr foods give us 80+85 eitr, so 165 total at max (which is used only once), so you can't summon two skelebuddies instantly. Each summon requires 100 eitr! Also this amount is vital during active combat, when you need to recast skeleton.
2b) For using skeletons we are forced to go with two eitr foods, one is just not enough. At least at low skill levels. This limits health or stamina pretty dangerous.

3. Time required to summon skels is way too big. With cast time like this it's complicated to find a window during fight to recast summons. This problem exists with barrier - time to cast too big, also casting requires to stand still.

4. Skeletons themselves. They are slow and stupid. They are hunting everything, you can't give them any commands. You can't stop them from hunting a random deer. You can't order them to guard certain area. You can't even say them "follow me". Also they can't hold the pace of a running viking, so you need to wait for two dumbbutts after every short run. Skeletons can't follow you into instances and portals - why I need to recast them every time I want to go inside random cave or mine? And how I supposed to get them into boats?

5. Skeletons and the HUD. Where are those bastards? Are they following me? Are the killng random mob? Are they dead? Using them in forest or on a harsh terrain is a pain. They are always behind, always stuck and so on.

6. How powerful those skellies actually are? Can I know their health level by numbers? How much damage they do? Can I summon specifically archers or swordmen? Can I have the answers for this in-game please?

7. Actual power level of skeletons. They are destroying everything in Black Forest, looking good in Swamp, easily killing regular fulings in Plains (but useless against big camps). But in the Mistlands they are just cannon fodder, not even a MMO-tank. Yes, I need to level up the skill. BUT IT'S MISTLANDS CONTENT! It should be useful here and now, not two biomes ago. If they are good at swamps - they should be unlocked in swamps.

8. Barrier. Can I see the health left in barrier? Yeah, it's "235 (based on skill level)", but how much left after some hits? Can I see the barrier status for skellies?

9. Do we really need barrier timer if the damage absorbtion is limited? Recasting damn thing once per minute while traversing hostile environment - not fun, pure annoyance.

[jonnin]

1) as you level up they use less, so you can still summon at higher levels. Early on in your career you need to eat all 3 eitr foods to use it once your food wears down.

2) ^^^ it uses less after a while.

4) you can shield and harpoon them into a boat or walk into them to shove them a bit.
6) they get stronger with higher skill. They do fine in mistlands at 50+ skill and shielded. You can use your butcher knife/pet killer knife and resummon until you get the pair you want.
7) wait until your BM skill is 50+ to complain here. The if you are unhappy, circle back on it.
9) I agree, the timer could be longer, but the barrier is very powerful at higher BM skill. They maybe don't want you to be immortal.

a lot of this stuff could be better. eg it could normal attack, melee skel, alt attack, ranged one. They could keep up with the player better. They could be less moronic about deer specifically. They could stand a 'stay and guard' vs a 'follow and fight' mode. Maybe we will see some improvements? As they stand, though, they are incredibly awesome at grey dwarf butchery. The #1 most annoying thing when gathering wood or something, they take care of it. They are decent at defending your home in invasions if you play the 'fight the invasion' style (rather than the 'you can't get to me style'). They are possibly OP at max skill, but its hard to say: its a long road to get that high.

[deadshooter]

50+ level skill is quite a lot to grind, isn't it? While every other weapon in the game can be used directly from zero level of respective skill.

[Slevin]

It is irrelevant to say that you have to level up blood magic for the skeletons to be useful. Time to level up the skill, the game is already over. I did the greydwarf spawner technique. I let the skeletons kill them for almost two hours. I'm barely past level 20 in blood magic. And the skeletons aren't much stronger...

The skeletons, as they are, are useless, indeed. Summoning them consumes too much eitr and health. The best in my opinion is to mount the blood magic with the greydwarf spawner technique for the shield and drop the skeletons...

[Rhapsody]

Increasing your blood magic skill[valheim.fandom.com] is the answer to most of the "problems".

Skeletts are amazing because they act as a force multiplier together with your own attacks, thanks to staggering effects. You're not a minion master. You are not a blood mage. You're a viking warrior with skeletons and barrier. If you're relying only on skeletts for damage, you're playing the game wrong.

We can't yet be certain what the final limit for them will be.

[Ammikaameri]

Disagree with everything except the fact that Eitr bar should always be visible. Or at least when you have a magic weapon equipped. Maybe the barrier should also show how much health it has left.

Otherwise it is fine.

[OctoberSky]

You need over 5K hits from your skeletons to get to level 50. As you progress through the 30's and 40's you can find yourself spending days parked by greydwarf spawners but using the resting bonus can significantly improve that. But if using the resting bonus be prepared for events. While increasing my blood level I had two troll and 1 seeker event. By that point my skeletons had enough skill level to actually take on the seekers. Oh, remember Ulf? Well I guess he didn't make it. But his skeleton does a fairly decent job with a sword.

[Rhapsody]

Originally posted by OctoberSky:

As you progress through the 30's and 40's you can find yourself spending days parked by greydwarf spawners but using the resting bonus can significantly improve that.

Days... depends how efficient a farm you can have and how many hours a day you play. :p If the skeletts can attack every 3 seconds, the whole process in an ideal scenario should take less than 3 hours. It's faster and easier than leveling up blocking because you only need to buff the skeletts every minute or so with the barrier and let them hack away, if you so choose. And the only goal with speed-tracking progress to 45-50 blood is to gain the ability to summon skeletts with just one eitr food. There's hardly any downside in consuming two eitr food and going full mage so all in all it's a non-issue.

[Zep Tepi]

1b) This one I agree with. It would be good to know how much eitr you have before needing to use it.

Otherwise, I don't think skeletons were meant to do all of your fighting for you. More like run some interference to give a solo player some breathing room. Maybe that's the intended method for a solo player to get to a soldier's backside. (haha) Skeletons are limited on purpose.

But if you're going to spend all that time leveling it to 50 then you've done the work so you should get the reward.

[jonnin]

Originally posted by SlevinSnouh:

It is irrelevant to say that you have to level up blood magic for the skeletons to be useful. Time to level up the skill, the game is already over. I did the greydwarf spawner technique. I let the skeletons kill them for almost two hours. I'm barely past level 20 in blood magic. And the skeletons aren't much stronger...

The skeletons, as they are, are useless, indeed. Summoning them consumes too much eitr and health. The best in my opinion is to mount the blood magic with the greydwarf spawner technique for the shield and drop the skeletons...

There are 2 more biomes, so the game isn't over, and if you play after beating the queen, its not over.
However, yes, it takes a long time to level the blood staff skills. I wish that went a bit faster. I am not keen on getting it maxed out, but by design, once its pretty high level, most of your 'issues' prove to not be real problems**. I guess you can call it a meta-issue that it takes too long to level up AND its ineffective until you do, but that appears to all be by-design. Its an ongoing problem with the whole ML design that everything useful from it is available about 5 min before you are ready for the queen. Not just the staves and skills for them, but all the gear, the whole zone, really.

** I did not grind the magic, I started a new game and cheated in the staves, foods, and repair station for a 0-mistlands run using magic. In the process I got my blood magic a little over 40 and it was fine as long as you don't assume the pets do all the fighting. If you tank for them and support them, or let them get aggro and do backstab bow shots, or whatever, its a good team setup and effective. If you expect them to murder everything while you pick flowers, not so much, even at 40ish.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Originally posted by Ammikaameri:

Disagree with everything except the fact that Eitr bar should always be visible. Or at least when you have a magic weapon equipped. Maybe the barrier should also show how much health it has left.

Otherwise it is fine.

Yes to the Eitr-on-Hud, no to the Barrier HP remaining. It seems like a QoL change, but in reality it's a huge unbalancing of Magic, which is already incredibly OP, and one of the only skill checks of Magic is your ability to manage your barrier and weigh the risk/reward of when you should recast. If you have a HUD element telling you, well, as far as I'm concerned, you've removed the only element of Magic that requires even a whisper of foresight.

The skeletons are extremely strong, but like any tool, you have to use them right.

however the true stand-out Blood magic spell is the barrier.

Speaking of the Barrier, did you know you can cast the barrier on your skeletons?

Did you also know that Eitr Regenerates over time, quite rapidly? So the Skeleton's high Eitr cost is meaningless, you summon them during downtime, protect them in combat with barrier, and use the Staff of Frost to crowd control so they don't get overwhelmed.

The skeletons are not designed to win you the game, they're designed to put out a little DPS and serve as a distraction in combat. THey accomplish this, extremely well I might add.

Originally posted by deadshooter:

50+ level skill is quite a lot to grind, isn't it? While every other weapon in the game can be used directly from zero level of respective skill.

So can blood magic.

[deadshooter]

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

The skeletons are extremely strong, but like any tool, you have to use them right.

however the true stand-out Blood magic spell is the barrier.

Speaking of the Barrier, did you know you can cast the barrier on your skeletons?

Did you also know that Eitr Regenerates over time, quite rapidly? So the Skeleton's high Eitr cost is meaningless, you summon them during downtime, protect them in combat with barrier, and use the Staff of Frost to crowd control so they don't get overwhelmed.

The skeletons are not designed to win you the game, they're designed to put out a little DPS and serve as a distraction in combat. THey accomplish this, extremely well I might add.

Originally posted by deadshooter:

50+ level skill is quite a lot to grind, isn't it? While every other weapon in the game can be used directly from zero level of respective skill.

So can blood magic.

Yes, I know about barriers on skeletons and regeneration of eitr. This doesn't change anything. With high spell cost like this you need to wait for eitr regen wasting your food time. After all, i've come to play, not to wait for mana regen.

About skellies - so I can't play as a summoner? Why to kill such cool opportunity?

Distraction in combat? I need to wait for this "distraction" for eternity while they gonna arrive at actual combat point. This distraction dies after two-three hits even with barrier.

[jonnin]

I don't normally advocate this, but for once, I will. Cheat yourself 50, 75, 100 BM skill and test drive it with the console. Then put it back to where it was after a few tests. Of all the skills in the game, right or wrong, BM gets more from leveling it up that almost anything else. If you want to advocate normalization of that (eg start out where it is now at skill 50 and rescale 50-100 to 0-100) I won't argue against it. I am just saying that you can't rightly buff it at 0 AND scale THAT new value up the way they do at 100 without it being game breaking.

[deadshooter]

Originally posted by jonnin:

I don't normally advocate this, but for once, I will. Cheat yourself 50, 75, 100 BM skill and test drive it with the console. Then put it back to where it was after a few tests. Of all the skills in the game, right or wrong, BM gets more from leveling it up that almost anything else. If you want to advocate normalization of that (eg start out where it is now at skill 50 and rescale 50-100 to 0-100) I won't argue against it. I am just saying that you can't rightly buff it at 0 AND scale THAT new value up the way they do at 100 without it being game breaking.

sir, this thing should be in the list by number 10, I guess. :)

[OctoberSky]

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

Originally posted by OctoberSky:

As you progress through the 30's and 40's you can find yourself spending days parked by greydwarf spawners but using the resting bonus can significantly improve that.

Days... depends how efficient a farm you can have and how many hours a day you play. :p If the skeletts can attack every 3 seconds, the whole process in an ideal scenario should take less than 3 hours.

Game days sir. Game days.

[GladioSanctus]

Just cheat. This game doesn't have achievements or anything. And it's a grind by design... as a full time worker and family man I simply do not have the time for this. If it's only you and friends playing, use console commands.