Ashlands difficulty

[loppantorkel]

Is another thread needed? Yes, because most previous ones are all tilted in one way or another. This is a neutral thread, if you want to avoid bumping threads you don't agree to.

If you've played Ashlands -
state your experience;
how far you've gotten;
in what way;
some sort of conclusion and your wishes for the final release.

We're playing coop - two people. Both experienced and playing on normal difficulty. By no means elite gamers, but both skilled well above average for most games. That said, we both play below fully upgraded gear and have most skills below 50, often well below.
First attempt to land and get a foothold was unsuccessful, and we reloaded, which was the first time we've done that.
Second attempt - much better and we now have a foothold in Ashlands, but have also just scouted some bit and haven't built a base yet. We're still learning by experience, with very few spoilers.

Conclusion so far: It's the toughest biome so far. Unsurprisingly. It seems manageable, fun and pretty balanced difficulty-wise while playing 2-player coop. Would I have liked it in SP? I probably would've struggled a fair bit. The spawn rate does appear high, if it remains the same in SP as in coop. I'm not sure how the difficulty is balanced between SP and coop. We did see several 1* enemies and at least one 2* in the two runs we've done so far, which of course added to the struggles.

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by Nokturnal:

Originally posted by DvRk:

However with amber staff we managed to destroy charred spawners.
Frost staff is a must against charred warriors and trash mobs. But the lack of damages make me wonder if it's viable in a SP.

Oddly enough, the Fire Staves still work just fine against Ashland enemies. Both the new one and the Mistlands one.

The Mistland fire staff can 2 shot regular Archers and Charred and has a decent AoE + Knockback. The new Firestaff requires precision aiming but does decent damage to stronger targets meanwhile the Gungir does great burst damage against the tankier targets but lacks range.

that aint odd at all. the staff of embers does blunt and fire dmg. and aside the morgen nothing resists blunt dmg.

and funnly enough there is only 4 ashlands enemies which deal fire dmg and some of them do not even resist fire but are neutral to it. and 2 of these 4 fire enemies are enemies you wont commonly have to deal with either on top.

[Nokturnal]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

that aint odd at all. the staff of embers does blunt and fire dmg. and aside the morgen nothing resists blunt dmg.

and funnly enough there is only 4 ashlands enemies which deal fire dmg and some of them do not even resist fire but are neutral to it. and 2 of these 4 fire enemies are enemies you wont commonly have to deal with either on top.

It's odd in the sense that most players would assume Fire damage is bad against Ashlands enemies lol, but yea Fire damage works perfectly fine against them. Apparently they can all walk through lava perfectly fine with 0 damage taken but a Fireball to the face hurts.

It's not just the blunt damage either, the Fire dot still does decent damage to them.

[HunApo]

Played with my brother as duo, me being the host.
Hard difficulty (very hard enemies, very frequent raids, lowered the death penalty to 1% from 5%)

He went fully melee heavy armor dual axes i went full mage using every staff except the mistland embers as it is obsolote.

Just finished the boss, and oh man oh man.
It was freakin FANTASTIC.
Took us the whole weekend to kill the bastard, we didnt spoiler anything didnt check anything and went in blind.

- First time we took him to 20% hp, then he burnt down our portal and we kinda ended in a loop of constant deaths and abandond after 2-3 hours of fighting.
- Second time we got smarter, went in with 2 relatively close by portal bases, but he fcked up the first, the second was too far and so many enemies we couldnt reach our corpses and eventually run out of every kind of food after 5 hours of non-stop fighting.
- So 3rd time's the charm, we did 3 bases, stockpiled up on best food for 70+ deaths ready and extra to be made.
Now that we knew his pattern and figured how to make it, we killed it in mere 40 mins of fighting.

The wasteland he left is majestic, Ashland my arse, more like Flatland.
In a 100m radius of our fighting zone nothing left except the lavalakes and a single morgen cave.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3240463936
Even landing on the very beginning took us about 5 hours until we started to figure out what to do actually.
The first fortress siege was also amazing, died like 30 times each, lasted like 2h, but enjoyed every second of it.

The difficulty is spot on (again, hard difficulty settings), the constant fighting means it isnt like any other biome where we are just casually walking by once the biome gear is properly set.
Here, the nights are brutal.

My only sore point are the catapults.
10+ fortress raided, not a single cog dropped (known bug) so had to spawn it in.
Built it, shoot eachother once and never ever touched it again.
The battering ram is just far morer superior and easier to use.

After this glorious D-day warzone, we cant wait the deep north and see what kind of hell 2.0 awaits us there.

p.s.
The lagg was insane tho, i have a decent hardware i7-13700k, 4070Ti, 32Gb DDR5 and we were lagging badly and wasnt uncommon to see glitching enemies.
My FPS is stable 144 pretty much everywhere, in Ashlands 60-80 was the bestt after spending 5 mins there.
But since it is PTB kinda expected.

p.s.2
The funniest fort siege we had is when we were about to drop the ram to break the walls and then we got 4! Morgan crawling out of the ground in 5s.
That was, khmm, interresting to say the least :D

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by Nokturnal:

Originally posted by Nerevar:

that aint odd at all. the staff of embers does blunt and fire dmg. and aside the morgen nothing resists blunt dmg.

and funnly enough there is only 4 ashlands enemies which deal fire dmg and some of them do not even resist fire but are neutral to it. and 2 of these 4 fire enemies are enemies you wont commonly have to deal with either on top.

It's odd in the sense that most players would assume Fire damage is bad against Ashlands enemies lol, but yea Fire damage works perfectly fine against them. Apparently they can all walk through lava perfectly fine with 0 damage taken but a Fireball to the face hurts.

It's not just the blunt damage either, the Fire dot still does decent damage to them.

i wouldnt call it decent.

most creatures have 50% fire resist in there.

fire is especially bad vs any of the charred. no matter what type of charred dont use :

pierce (50% reduced dmg)
fire (75% reduced dmg)
poisen (fully immune cause undead duh)

pierce is by far the worst phys dmg type in ashlands. no contest there. most of the enemies resist it by 50%.

only the morgen resists every type of phys dmg like seekers. it also resists fire by 50%. use frost or himmin vs it. himmin does neutral dmg overall to it because its weak to lighting but resistent to pierce.

frost arrows are your BEST friend when going to ashlands for the first time. everything that can attack you in the water is weak to frost (150% dmg taken) so the bow is the clearly superior tool for dealing with the enemies that will try to attack you on the ship. no contest there. the staff of frost lacks the dps and range of the bow simply. and none of these enemies resist pierce either.

the only other enemy besides the morgen that resists slash dmg is the blob (who would have tought duh) which is also funnly enough the only enemy weak to blunt (duh) the charred do not share the regular skeletons weakness to blunt at all.

in generel blunt and slash are the best phys dmg types in ashlands.

all charred take 1.5 dmg from spirit. (but only mistwalker and spine snap can really make use of that without giveing up too much other dmg factors the other spirit options are so much weaker that you would lose dmg overall despite the weakness)

due to the abundance of pierce resisting enemies the only viable ranged non magic tool early on is the bow with frost arrows. forget regular arrows. dont even bring em. not worth it as only 2 of all the enemies dont resist pierce and both are neutral to frost so regular arrows are... a waste of a inventory slot in ashlands. they really took a dump on pure pierce dmg in this biome^^ so dont bother with the crossbow as it sadly has no elemental bolts.

for melee combat early on the 2 best weapons are mistwalker and himmin afl and the demolisher for aoe. despite the pierce resistence the himins spin to win and its lighting dmg are still very helpful nothing resists lighting. sadly there is also nothing weak to it aside the morgen. the demolisher does more aoe dmg but its way slower than the himmin and lacks the knockback power of the laters spin to win.

magic users are ok with the staff of embers and frost for the start. the bubble is as OP as always if you leveled blood magic just dont try to tank charred warrior hits with it as they break it rather quickly.

oh and if you encounter a 2 star lord reto : dont get hit. like. seriously. dont. due to his dmg beeing mostly magical despite beeing melee bonemass will NOT safe your ass vs him. he will end you quickly. avoid his swings at all costs. he can also easyly break most parry attempts. not recommenced. keep your distance instead and wittle him down.

[Nokturnal]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

i wouldnt call it decent.

most creatures have 50% fire resist in there.

they really took a dump on pure pierce dmg in this biome^^ so dont bother with the crossbow as it sadly has no elemental bolts.

The Fire dot still ticking for 20-30 dmg per tick is still pretty good to finish off enemies and the Ember staff's AoE effect allows you to quickly deal with multiple Archers and regular Charred.

Far as the X-bow, it's not exactly useless but yea Pierce is definitely the weakest damage type for this biome. The trick with X-bow is combine Sneak with it for the Sneak attack hit, Sneaking is actually pretty useful in Ashlands due to the amount of enemies you have to deal with and the fairly flat terrain allows you to not have to deal with elevation too much while sneaking. Coming from Mistlands where sneak was nearly useless (too much elevation changes + mist obscuring vision made the Ranged sneak attack less easy to pull off), Sneak is back on the menu now.

With the Sneak crit + Xbow hit on whatever Ripper you prefer you can 1 shot Archers, regular Charred and do a pretty good Alpha attack on Valkyeries and works well on the Asksvin too. With the Askskin you can even just use multiple hits of the Xbow on them if you don't mind the long reload, but mainly the Xbow's Sneak Alpha attack is the main reason to use it.

[Conan]

the badest enemy is lavaslime, he can destroy embankment. heavy destroyed my fortress

[glass zebra]

All solo: Landing felt horribly dangerous and I panicked and died a few times. After I started fighting the enemies a bit I was disappointed how weak or slow they were. All solo experience with different characters and as of the 2nd one the landing was no issue and the 3rd one (fire mage) just dominated everything there from the second they landed.

Ashlands feels dangerous for the first time you enter it and then it feels about swamp level of difficulty. Nowhere near mountain or plains I'd say. Especially with how much stamina and how high or skills are now, the enemies feel like no contestants and can only hope to make us panic with spam. The twitchers and archers deal next to no damage (even in light armor with 2 stamina foods you do not get staggered) and die very quickly, while the warriors are unable to close the gap while you are killing all of their allies.. until they give up on combat and just walk away.

Askvinds felt dangerous when I first met them, especially since they often come in crowds and start sprinting in yellow alert already but... they constantly headbut all other enemies to death and miss you all the time. Their attack cooldown is high and they easily dash past you if you move around a bit. Morgens looked super dangerous due to their hits but.. they hardly hit. They mostly roll around for low damage (which means instant parry stagger) or to give you a big time window to run away if you don't feel like fighting them. They are dangerous when they do their double hit combo but.. you can just walk to their side while they start it and hit them into their thighs. If you have frostner or mistwalker, you can kill them after a single dodge if you got enough stamina and just keep hitting them while moving past them. They also kill their allies even faster than Asksvinds do. Just walk in front of them and a step back and watch them smash apart charred and Asksvinds.

Valkyries seemed pretty dangerous and still kinda feel like that, because running away can be pretty hard. Their attack can charge up to you even if you run away with light armour and they hit pretty hard, while you miss melee attack time windows if you just dodge those attacks. They do however kill their allies even faster than all the others, especially with their whirlwind attack (the fire is not that great against warriors).

Blobs looked really scary at the start, especially with the new fire vulnerability from the feather cape but.. they explode so slowly and can be steered into enemies that they just become exploding friends after a bit. They take out twitchers and archers pretty quickly and still do decent damage to Asksvin.

All in all the enemies are a big let down once you fought them a bit or realised how easy it is to just not fight them and run away with the mobility capes and the big stamina pool we have now, combined with the easy to climb rocks. Even the fortresses are.... You can just build some stairs up (or shoot yourself in with a catapult), go to the spawners and destroy them with hits, then jump out of the fort before the Michael Myers warriors even reach you.. reg some stamina and do it again for the 2nd spawner. I expected them to be a lot more interesting and engaging. I once destroyed the front door while the spawners were still up, since that seemed more like the intended way to besiege them and in that case the army coming out was in deed a bit scary... though mostly the warlocks, since archers and twitchers still die when you look at them and do no damage and the warriors just run away from the fort after not being able to hit you for a bit. Fire mages can also just shoot into the crows and kill all of them fairly quickly.


What I hope is that they maybe reduce the spawn a bit, but buff the enemies and especially the fort defenses against people just jumping in, since most enemies are just too weak, slow or non-aggresive compared to e.g. the super aggressive, fast, close and hard hitting fulings, if this is really meant to be "almost the end of the game". When fighting Asksvin waiting for their next attacks feels.. way too long and Morgen basically are not combatants, but try to serve you in a Krump.

I hope they also take a long hard look at the new items, since what I did with all chars was basically making the new kitchen part and cape and then... was ready to forget about flametal for the most part. I was good to be able to bring Mistwalker to level 4 though and the new 2h sword is just a direct upgrade but.. the rest feels sadly like bloat from a mod. Made to look special, but for the most part very ignorable. They also very obviously copy pasted from old weapons, since the stamina did not increase, Dundr is getting 3 piercing damage per level (like the crossbow it is most likely copied from), the 1h hammer has stamina cost as the last 1h hammer.. which is not Mistland level but Plains level of cost etc. It seems like they mostly tested some very specific playstyles (did they test archer/rogue? Why would anyone craft the ask armor?), but definitely not all of them and did not look much at the weapon upgrades. Mistlands beta felt pretty much like a finished release, but Ashlands has so many smaller issues and bugs... I hope they take some more time.

[Braedon]

As a solo, they just need to reduce enemy spawn rates. I finally found a fortress and just approaching it I have to fend off a valkyrie, 2 ashkvin, 2 warrior archers, and a bunch of tweakers. I'm putting the game down until the full ashlands release and they've reduced enemy spawn rates.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

i wouldnt call it decent.

most creatures have 50% fire resist in there.

fire is especially bad vs any of the charred. no matter what type of charred dont use :

pierce (50% reduced dmg)
fire (75% reduced dmg)
poisen (fully immune cause undead duh)

pierce is by far the worst phys dmg type in ashlands. no contest there. most of the enemies resist it by 50%.

Pretty sure they have pierce and fire resist due to those mostly being on ranged weapons and our skills are now really high - same reason that bosses have that. It is no problem at all to kill charred archers and twitchers with crossbow or bow with a sneak attack and even without sneak attacks they die extremely quickly to them, due to their low HP and high or quick attacks. Warriors can take quite a bit more, but they are so super slow that you can still easily kill them with arrows/bolts before they get close. Spinesnap also has spirit damage. I did not use anything but carapace/ash arrows/bolts in Ashlands on chars that did not have very high skill and they were extremely useful against most enemies. On Morgen they were pretty terrible due to their resistance and high HP and speed though. Asksvin also die easily to a crossbow pull plus ~2 shots after that at skill ~30 and often do not reach melee range, despite their speed.

Fire still easily kills big hordes of charred. If the fire resistance would not be there, the staff of embers would be even more ridiculous than it is now. You can easily take out the entire crowd of charred hugging the corner of a fort with a single Etir bar, which also only takes a few second and requires hardly any aiming or skill. You can do the same if you accidently pulled half a dozen charred on a spawner and just jump around (with the new invicibility fly cape) the spawner flinging firesballs and everything around you just dies. The fire resistance is straight up needed in Ashlands, especially with the extra damage from the flames you spam everywhere. You should absolutely use the staff of embers against pretty much everything until you get Dundur. I suspect the fracture staff gets nerfed soon, since right now it levels you from 50 to 51 after killing 2 non-star warriors. It does a fair bit of single target damage but.. the staff of embers is so much easier to use and kills everything around you (except Morgen, which require more than 1 Etir bar).

High resistance does not mean "do not use", but is sometimes simply needed to make enemies not be extremely irrelevant with certain weapons. Once I reach Ashlands with my archer, I will probably only use wooden arrows (due to cost) and Spinesnap and expect it to work similarly well as in Mistlands, where those kill a small group of Seekers before they reached melee range, while staggering them quickly. It is pretty annoying for spears and knives right now though, but they still felt viable (except for spears against Morgen).

[Nerevar]

they cannot nerf spawnrates. the enemeis are balanced around them. like zebra said already above : reduce thier numbers and youre left with a few weaklings mostly. which would make the biome EASIER than mistlands overall.

the weapons need to have thier phys values reduced and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ elemental dmg actually added to them. especially the fire sword feels like a cosmetic useless addition.

it feels like completly different devs decided what to put into this update compared to mistlands overall. and too much of it feels worse than existing stuff or is added only to be made instantly useless again. like. why? thats so not valheim design to me.

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Originally posted by Nerevar:

i wouldnt call it decent.

most creatures have 50% fire resist in there.

fire is especially bad vs any of the charred. no matter what type of charred dont use :

pierce (50% reduced dmg)
fire (75% reduced dmg)
poisen (fully immune cause undead duh)

pierce is by far the worst phys dmg type in ashlands. no contest there. most of the enemies resist it by 50%.

Pretty sure they have pierce and fire resist due to those mostly being on ranged weapons and our skills are now really high - same reason that bosses have that. It is no problem at all to kill charred archers and twitchers with crossbow or bow with a sneak attack and even without sneak attacks they die extremely quickly to them, due to their low HP and high or quick attacks. Warriors can take quite a bit more, but they are so super slow that you can still easily kill them with arrows/bolts before they get close. Spinesnap also has spirit damage. I did not use anything but carapace/ash arrows/bolts in Ashlands on chars that did not have very high skill and they were extremely useful against most enemies. On Morgen they were pretty terrible due to their resistance and high HP and speed though. Asksvin also die easily to a crossbow pull plus ~2 shots after that at skill ~30 and often do not reach melee range, despite their speed.

Fire still easily kills big hordes of charred. If the fire resistance would not be there, the staff of embers would be even more ridiculous than it is now. You can easily take out the entire crowd of charred hugging the corner of a fort with a single Etir bar, which also only takes a few second and requires hardly any aiming or skill. You can do the same if you accidently pulled half a dozen charred on a spawner and just jump around (with the new invicibility fly cape) the spawner flinging firesballs and everything around you just dies. The fire resistance is straight up needed in Ashlands, especially with the extra damage from the flames you spam everywhere. You should absolutely use the staff of embers against pretty much everything until you get Dundur. I suspect the fracture staff gets nerfed soon, since right now it levels you from 50 to 51 after killing 2 non-star warriors. It does a fair bit of single target damage but.. the staff of embers is so much easier to use and kills everything around you (except Morgen, which require more than 1 Etir bar).

High resistance does not mean "do not use", but is sometimes simply needed to make enemies not be extremely irrelevant with certain weapons. Once I reach Ashlands with my archer, I will probably only use wooden arrows (due to cost) and Spinesnap and expect it to work similarly well as in Mistlands, where those kill a small group of Seekers before they reached melee range, while staggering them quickly. It is pretty annoying for spears and knives right now though, but they still felt viable (except for spears against Morgen).

its not like frost arrows are hard to make dude. sure use wodden arrows. but thats just lazy to me personally. why gimp my own dmg like that when i got boxes of feathers and wood and glands at home. its not like i need 1000 frost arrows at once.

you might be right about thier resitences but well. as you already said : nerf thier numbers and then what? we are left with an undertuned biome after that. they would have to redesign nearly all enemy stats aside the valkyrie maybe.

not even to mention how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ useless bonemaws where as an addition after all the hype about them.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

they cannot nerf spawnrates. the enemeis are balanced around them. like zebra said already above : reduce thier numbers and youre left with a few weaklings mostly. which would make the biome EASIER than mistlands overall.

the weapons need to have thier phys values reduced and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ elemental dmg actually added to them. especially the fire sword feels like a cosmetic useless addition.

it feels like completly different devs decided what to put into this update compared to mistlands overall. and too much of it feels worse than existing stuff or is added only to be made instantly useless again. like. why? thats so not valheim design to me.

Yeah it feels weird seeing this after the Mistland beta. The new weapons also got teased a lot in the walk and talks and such and then you see them and see "oh, 10 lightning damage! and 0 extra over level, but it makes the weapon cost a gem to upgrade!".. yeah no I'll stick to Mistwalker and even Frostner to be honest.

It really feels a bit like different people made this. The reason I liked Valheim was the high quality and how concise everything was. A lot of stuff was "missing" in tiers, but had pretty big impact on decisions for the stuff you did get. Now they flooded the game with a ton and most of it feels like just making the crafting list longer.

[Nerevar]

yeah some of this stuff feels like some cheap modded in stuff honestly. i fail to discribe it better than that. but new gear wise i have seen mods do a better job adding new interresting gear without adding overpowered ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like epic fail loot.

they got gear so right in mistlands. and now they failed so hard aside the dual axes (which are of course the new melee meta now as they grossly overbuffed them)

the lighting proc would be a cool addition if the weapon had some more base lighting dmg aswell. then the proc would be a neat bonus instead of "this is all that this gem system is about : RNG BASED PROC ELEMENTS" in a game whichs combat system is designed around doing consistent dmg.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

its not like frost arrows are hard to make dude. sure use wodden arrows. but thats just lazy to me personally. why gimp my own dmg like that when i got boxes of feathers and wood and glands at home. its not like i need 1000 frost arrows at once.

you might be right about thier resitences but well. as you already said : nerf thier numbers and then what? we are left with an undertuned biome after that. they would have to redesign nearly all enemy stats aside the valkyrie maybe.

not even to mention how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ useless bonemaws where as an addition after all the hype about them.

It sure is lazy, but farming arrows endlessly is just no fun for me. Even the much increased wood cutting need on my archers was only interesting for a bit, though that is pretty much gone in Ashlands anyway, since blobs get you all the wood you need. I just logged in and tested my old archer with a charred warrior and wooden arrows + spinesnap and no sneak attack. Needed ~8 seconds for the kill with wood, ~6 with charred and ~5 seconds with frost, so I really do not see much reason to use more than that. You also do not really need to kill warriors anyway. Archers with wood died in under 3 seconds and twitchers in 4. I do however usually take an extra stack of another arrow type for harder enemies, so I might take frost against Morgens. Wood should be okay for Valkyries and Asksvin, seeing how strong ranged damage is against them even on sidearm chars. I do however use the high tier arrows/bolts for those sidearms, just not on my archer who goes through hundreds each session.

Bonemaws pretty much feel like the "here is the 1 new food you can make without the new cooking station and the ones higher level that was missing in Mistlands. Also it weights 10, so you want to get over it quickly." introduction teaser to reel people in. A lot of other stuff in Ashlands just sits in chests until you get cores, metal or gems (aside from some mage stuff and Asksvin things), so Bonemaws are all about initial reward to motivate. I did like the danger emanating from them when arriving, but since they are a water only enemy.. you see like 1-2 of them per char per island and they drop enough teeth for all crafting needs.

Originally posted by Nerevar:

yeah some of this stuff feels like some cheap modded in stuff honestly. i fail to discribe it better than that. but new gear wise i have seen mods do a better job adding new interresting gear without adding overpowered ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like epic fail loot.

I would not call it cheaply (apart from them seemingly having not looked fully at all stamina cost or upgrade effects), but it does feel like modded stuff (especially Trollstav, which makes all other blood staves useless while it is up and kinda also you as an actor in general) and mostly to say "we have 30+ new weapons". Valheim was never about spamming items just to have them, which is what it feels now. There were always people who wanted "just more" of everything, but their high ratings should have been telling on how the majority of players felt about what the game was like.


I don't think Ashlands are terrible, but I expected more from specifically Valheim after the rest of the game and the hinted additions. On the other hand I am glad that most of the new items don't just majorly overshadow everything before them.