Does Valheim get harder the longer you play it?

[Gamer Shanksi]

Day 100 here and still unsure whether Valheim gets harder the longer you play it. My char is pretty buff atm in the Black Forest but a little apprehensive about other biomes.

[Riitoken]

Originally posted by Ragnaman:

Originally posted by Gamer Shanksi:

Day 100 here and still unsure whether Valheim gets harder the longer you play it. My char is pretty buff atm in the Black Forest but a little apprehensive about other biomes.

this game is literally about reaching breakpoints with your armour + parry value for each particular zone or just rushing obsidian to be able to use bow without dying of boredom.

If you dont have the "designated zone armour" and a few upgrades to it, expect to get oneshot. Once you DO have the designated zone armour expect to never die unless you meet starred enemies.

If you dont parry, you die.
If you dont have each biomes armour, you die.
If you dont have respective biome level food in you, expect not to be able to parry and die.

this game is barely an RPG, its more like a puzzle game where you have to know in what sequence to do things. In short, game design concocted by people who should never work on video games again. All damage vs armour is just FLAT REDUCTION :emofdr:
And your char never really becomes stronger, food is your level up :emofdr:

Skills are a slow boil level-up. Same with gear.

Killing any particular mob gains skill (slowly) for the skills used, and gains the drops.

No character levels (for XP) reduce the psychological value of killing monsters.

[*fu* Dr.n00b]

You can sometimes go to the next zone without defeating the boss. I usually do freeze gland hunts before facing the swamp boss, to make 400+ frost arrows. Helps that Mountain is my favourite biome.

[vinyblaster]

Originally posted by Riitoken:

Originally posted by vinyblaster:

If your forward base is a workbench and a portal it will never be raided.

So, you're saying that random monsters nearby will ignore it entirely?

I was replying to this part: "Build a portal and protect it. If you have raids enabled, then do everything in your power to make your base raid proof."

Raids have nothing to do with it if you keep your "base" to the 2 items I listed, raids won't trigger there. You do need to protect the portal from roaming enemies though.

[caroraim]

Harder but really it just gets more complex. You generally begin using the boats a lot more transporting ore, you need to build new outposts with portals or whatever, foods and crafting expands greatly as you progress, more tamable creatures and mist lands seems to require precise proper planning to explore. Ultimately, Valheim seems to have the perfect curve, so the game never gets so easy that you simply get bored.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Ragnaman:

If you dont parry, you die.
If you dont have each biomes armour, you die.
If you dont have respective biome level food in you, expect not to be able to parry and die.

You can play the entire game without parry and only kill enemies with movement, dodge, stagger from burst or plain ranged combat. You never need to get hit and can play with 1-2 tier lower in armour and weapons in the new zone, as long as you don't get hit by every little thing and especially not starred enemies. You can still "tank" most non-starred enemies with armour and block if you are below the current tier. You can also go with cheap, lower tier food and even sometimes raw or just grilled food. You have less options and more risk for combat then, but you can.

Originally posted by Ragnaman:

this game is barely an RPG, its more like a puzzle game where you have to know in what sequence to do things. In short, game design concocted by people who should never work on video games again. All damage vs armour is just FLAT REDUCTION :emofdr:
And your char never really becomes stronger, food is your level up :emofdr:

Armour vs damage is only flat reduction up to half of the enemies damage. If you go beyond that, it reduces less and less damage from each hit. You do get immensely stronger with skill levels and those can be pretty important to e.g. reach damage stagger level. When you play in the plains, you can have close to a 100% damage bonus compared to when you started the game as a bonus on top of the gear upgrades you've got and probably also quite a bit of bonus to block if you went into that a lot. If the bow is you main weapon, you also get a ton of attack speed and even more stamina reduction than other weapons get. On top of that dodging with movement gets easier when your sprint and jump skills get higher.

If you die a lot though or don't intend to change things up after a death and learn more mechanics or ways to combat other than hitting block and follow with a 3 hit combo and always play by that formula instead of reacting to enemy movement or severity, you will probably never reach higher skill values or new tactics and have to grind up every bonus you can to progress. The new world modifiers can change a lot though, both due to being able to nerf enemies and death penalty.

Originally posted by Riitoken:

Skills are a slow boil level-up. Same with gear.

Killing any particular mob gains skill (slowly) for the skills used, and gains the drops.

No character levels (for XP) reduce the psychological value of killing monsters.

You get skills for hits landed on creatures (for most of them) and their deaths grant nothing more than the loot (no matter what killed them). Tanky creatures and bosses can grant quite a lot of skills levels, especially when you are using a new weapon with very low skill. I think I got close to 30 skills levels when I used fists first on Yagluth.

[Oakshadow]

Difficulty is tied to increasing mechanic complexity with each biome, as well as a hidden difficulty scale triggered upon defeating a biome boss for the first time.

Basically for each boss head you collect, monsters are more likely to spawn as 1+ starred monsters. In addition new monsters and raid types are added to base raids. With their frequency increasing slightly.

All the passage of time does is roll for the next raid. Otherwise you could spend 100 days never leaving meadows and the game will never get any harder than what you've already experienced.

[Delle(DK)]

difficulty
1). meadows
2). black forrest
3). swamp
4) mountain ( snow )
5). plains
6) mistland
7). Ashland ( not in the game yet )

The above is how you are supposed to advance in the game.
If you example go from meadows to 4 mountains you will die all the time, but if you go 1-2-3-4 then you have a chance since you level up and get better gear and also potions to survive in the cold weather ect.

In general nobody push you forward and you can go forward slow and take your time to explore or build stuff, its up to you ;-)

An imortant tip.. Get a shield if you block the enemys attack and then attack him back.
its a good strategy. Also hit and run is good sometimes. And if you find a big powerfull enemy then you can lure them away from an area and example make them stand over a firrepit OR drawn them towards other enemys that might attack them.
Example swamp enemys do not like enemys from black forrest and might fight each other.
And avoid going out at night, sleep ;-)

[katsuragi]

Originally posted by Nephturi:

Originally posted by Ragnaman:

this game is literally about reaching breakpoints with your armour + parry value for each particular zone or just rushing obsidian to be able to use bow without dying of boredom.

If you dont have the "designated zone armour" and a few upgrades to it, expect to get oneshot. Once you DO have the designated zone armour expect to never die unless you meet starred enemies.

If you dont parry, you die.
If you dont have each biomes armour, you die.
If you dont have respective biome level food in you, expect not to be able to parry and die.

I've never parried, I kept my troll armor until I got the Fenrir one, and I'll wait until the Ashlands drop to consider leaving the Fenrir gear behind, so everything you just said is flat out wrong. Oh, and I'm only using wood arrows, because I can't be bothered to farm feathers.

Don't be so quick to give "advice" when you clearly don't know enough about the game. And don't let your obvious dislike of the game prevent you from learning how it works.

I'm the same way. I wear Troll until I get Fenris which I am still wearing in Mystlands. Nothing beats being fast.
Weapons, on the other hand, you need to keep up to date. Always have the newest shiniest instrument of death in your hand.

[MagikarpMagi]

I know I do, so I hope so

[muchdebate]

I think swamp is one place that I started to realized that all of "X biome" are not alike. Meadows - mostly similar; Forest - some variety in that the crypts/troll caves were something I had to keep track of.

Swamp gets even more complicated:
I have one "swamp area" that spawns a crap ton of leeches; any time I need more of their drops, I go to "that swamp".

A different one had like 7 crypts near to each other - yowza! More recently I found one that had multiple fire / spawn sites. Now depending on what resource I need, I go hunting in "that swamp".

For me a lot of swamp survival (and this has turned out to be true with each new biome) was getting over the "hair on fire/mad scramble to press all the keys/accomplish nothing".

Situational awareness, and having the thought in mind that "if X happens, I'll do Y" and "any time I find myself thinking 'oh sh*t' I will hit the bonemass" helped a lot.