charred fortress: working approach

[w.f.schepel]

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197983924492/screenshot/2499016543982144858/

1 - build a mini outpost with raised walls. Shield and everything.
2 - build a series of stone stairs, well in the protection of the shield
3 - bombard the fortress as needed
4 - enter

Watched somebody on YT do much the same thing with wood and struggle with the constant destruction of the wooden stairs. This seemed to me a valid improvement and, above all, a way to do this solo.

Hope this may help. :-)

[glass zebra]

With bombard you mean "with staff of embers on the spawners/enemies on the walls" right? That is pretty much the easiest way to do it imo. No need to fight the enemies or open up the way for the horde.

You can also use raised walls from the hoe to make stairs that do not get destroyed and do only need to bring stone and wood for that. I usually just take the wooden stairs though. They are not in much danger if you don't pull the warlock shots at them and do not build next to lava and you only need to jump in ~2-3 times

Personally I find it so weird how easy it is to just enter the fortress with some stairs and destroy their spawners and kill most enemies on range without them really being able to fight against that. It seems the devs have designed the fortresses in mind with players spending extra resources just to make the enemies in the fortresses not only relevant, but even kind of dangerous. If you shoot with a catapult or use a battering ram, they are really mostly backdrop. If you do that with melee, you have to dodge a bit when you destroy the spawners but.. ranged enemies will also easily destroy any spawner you are hiding behind and you can then jump out.

I really hope they make them more interesting to fight. How it is right now it also shows Valheims goofiness with enemy pathing, with the enemies just stacking on the walls, idling around or pushing themselves into a corner and catapulting each other into the fields... It is worse than the Moder fight, Fuling tower stairs or Draugrs stuck on platforms. It shows so much that the places enemies are running around are not really capable of being navigated by them until you as a player decide to run into them or help them get to you.

[Nerevar]

all you really need is a stonecutter and bench and some grausten stairs. rest CAN be done but is excessive.

climb 3-4 stacked grausten stairs. fireball/arrow the 2 spawenrs from the top of the staircase (ballistas can be destroyed from outside to begin with and should be)

press bonemass. jump on fortress wall. bully the rest with melee. take warlocks out with priority.

you win. theyll all easyly die within the 5 minutes of bonemass. if you need hp walk along the frotress wall to lose the melee guys.

if a valk joins the fray just kite it along the wall and take it out.

[ministrog]

same here. laddering over to heist a fort is just so efficient. but i also feel like leaving this method for the daring is a good thing too. problem then becomes why is it so rewarding in terms of end game mats. yes you can get unlucky with empty boxes outside (or at least no metal or gems). that doesn't mean it should pay out the same stuff as mining from spires. i also think it's a lost opportunity to have morgans drop the cog. the skugg could just drop a unique mat for the ripper.

about the topic, the process i did was build ladder, then staff of fracture the corner. i did try it without staff and used my arbelest. it works but it'll take longer and the window to climb the ladder and clear out spawners is smaller.

[w.f.schepel]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

With bombard you mean "with staff of embers on the spawners/enemies on the walls" right? That is pretty much the easiest way to do it imo. No need to fight the enemies or open up the way for the horde.

You can also use raised walls from the hoe to make stairs that do not get destroyed and do only need to bring stone and wood for that. I usually just take the wooden stairs though. They are not in much danger if you don't pull the warlock shots at them and do not build next to lava and you only need to jump in ~2-3 times

Personally I find it so weird how easy it is to just enter the fortress with some stairs and destroy their spawners and kill most enemies on range without them really being able to fight against that. It seems the devs have designed the fortresses in mind with players spending extra resources just to make the enemies in the fortresses not only relevant, but even kind of dangerous. If you shoot with a catapult or use a battering ram, they are really mostly backdrop. If you do that with melee, you have to dodge a bit when you destroy the spawners but.. ranged enemies will also easily destroy any spawner you are hiding behind and you can then jump out.

I really hope they make them more interesting to fight. How it is right now it also shows Valheims goofiness with enemy pathing, with the enemies just stacking on the walls, idling around or pushing themselves into a corner and catapulting each other into the fields... It is worse than the Moder fight, Fuling tower stairs or Draugrs stuck on platforms. It shows so much that the places enemies are running around are not really capable of being navigated by them until you as a player decide to run into them or help them get to you.

I tried raising earthen walls first, but the limit was below the fortress walls so that plan failed.

Also, the mini outpost in front of the fortress proved crucial. That way I had a safe place to portal in (and out) for materials and it allowed me to attack bright and early. I am sure it could be done without, but I like to play it safe and I do believe that a great number of complaints in this forum is down to a lack of prep work. I died twice in lava (pixels that I didn't notice and boiled my poor guy in no time) and a safe place to retreat to right after picking up your stuff is a wonderful thing.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by w.f.schepel:

I tried raising earthen walls first, but the limit was below the fortress walls so that plan failed.

Also, the mini outpost in front of the fortress proved crucial. That way I had a safe place to portal in (and out) for materials and it allowed me to attack bright and early. I am sure it could be done without, but I like to play it safe and I do believe that a great number of complaints in this forum is down to a lack of prep work. I died twice in lava (pixels that I didn't notice and boiled my poor guy in no time) and a safe place to retreat to right after picking up your stuff is a wonderful thing.

I think the main complaint in this forum might come in this case specifically, because players try to use the things the devs seem to provide for the fortresses: Battering rams and catapults + ammunition. What you are doing with those is making sure 20 enemies can stream towards you and possibly destroy your base.

Sometimes put a portal one some rock a bit further away so that it is at no risk or someone destroying it. Sometimes I put it directly against the wall of the fortress so there is little risk of fire falling directly onto it and that I don't have to run much to go back to base. The warlocks can't really hit it when it is directly on the wall and I just kill everything that falls down.

Terrain height difference is definitely a thing, but the feather cape lets you jump so high and far that I have not yet seen any issue with that. Frankly the first fortress ever I raided had some higher area so close by that I could just jump in without building anything. Using graustein, destroying all the ballistas first and using ranged weapons is definitely the safer way to do it, but I think the biggest issue a lot of players have is still using what seems to be made for tackling the fortresses, which is a trap.

[Gunnar Hurtya]

I think clearing fortresses is why the trollstav exists

[w.f.schepel]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Originally posted by w.f.schepel:

I tried raising earthen walls first, but the limit was below the fortress walls so that plan failed.

Also, the mini outpost in front of the fortress proved crucial. That way I had a safe place to portal in (and out) for materials and it allowed me to attack bright and early. I am sure it could be done without, but I like to play it safe and I do believe that a great number of complaints in this forum is down to a lack of prep work. I died twice in lava (pixels that I didn't notice and boiled my poor guy in no time) and a safe place to retreat to right after picking up your stuff is a wonderful thing.

I think the main complaint in this forum might come in this case specifically, because players try to use the things the devs seem to provide for the fortresses: Battering rams and catapults + ammunition. What you are doing with those is making sure 20 enemies can stream towards you and possibly destroy your base.

Sometimes put a portal one some rock a bit further away so that it is at no risk or someone destroying it. Sometimes I put it directly against the wall of the fortress so there is little risk of fire falling directly onto it and that I don't have to run much to go back to base. The warlocks can't really hit it when it is directly on the wall and I just kill everything that falls down.

Terrain height difference is definitely a thing, but the feather cape lets you jump so high and far that I have not yet seen any issue with that. Frankly the first fortress ever I raided had some higher area so close by that I could just jump in without building anything. Using graustein, destroying all the ballistas first and using ranged weapons is definitely the safer way to do it, but I think the biggest issue a lot of players have is still using what seems to be made for tackling the fortresses, which is a trap.

Absolutely true. Although I expect that if you play with a party, beating down the front gate is perfectly viable. Doing so solo is a very bravy course of action indeed. :-)

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by w.f.schepel:

Originally posted by glass zebra:

I think the main complaint in this forum might come in this case specifically, because players try to use the things the devs seem to provide for the fortresses: Battering rams and catapults + ammunition. What you are doing with those is making sure 20 enemies can stream towards you and possibly destroy your base.

Sometimes put a portal one some rock a bit further away so that it is at no risk or someone destroying it. Sometimes I put it directly against the wall of the fortress so there is little risk of fire falling directly onto it and that I don't have to run much to go back to base. The warlocks can't really hit it when it is directly on the wall and I just kill everything that falls down.

Terrain height difference is definitely a thing, but the feather cape lets you jump so high and far that I have not yet seen any issue with that. Frankly the first fortress ever I raided had some higher area so close by that I could just jump in without building anything. Using graustein, destroying all the ballistas first and using ranged weapons is definitely the safer way to do it, but I think the biggest issue a lot of players have is still using what seems to be made for tackling the fortresses, which is a trap.

Absolutely true. Although I expect that if you play with a party, beating down the front gate is perfectly viable. Doing so solo is a very bravy course of action indeed. :-)

It is kinda a lot more fun, though increasing the difficulty for yourself is frankly what makes parts of Ashenlands fun imo. The fortresses are too easy and so are most enemies if you use their slowness, friendly fire and play on normal.

Beating down the front down with my hammer main was rather fun, though I still did not expect just how many charred poured out. My Demolisher was not prepared for that.. With my spear main I ran past them and still just went in and destroyed the spawners before jumping out again, but that was of course a bit more action loaded than using stairs. It is a bit sad just how easy you can skip using the siege machinery (except for the middle tower) and how useless the ammunition seems to be compared to ignoring the walls and enemies.

Even when I started using the catapult, I just went on to launching myself into the fortress after seeing how little the hits were doing. Basically any other open dungeon was more fun than looking at the caged enemies in the fortresses. Fuling villages and Dveger towers seem so much better in design, even if you don't really have a problem tackling them. At least you are on the lookout for stuff and they can reach you if you are not careful. They also seem to have done with the loot what they did with the Fuling villages and just spam you with metal but.. that still works a lot different than the villages. The whole "pillar in scary lava" stuff gets devalued by that quite a lot.

It really plays as if they had some cool ideas, but they are making themselves a bit unfun due to what you are given and what adversaries you are facing. It plays a bit too much like "I have to be part designer here to make this fun". Let's hope they improve stuff. They are definitely not finished with Ashlands yet (as seen by some of the stuff that look like first drafts, like the "questline"). You can make it more interesting even without mods though, but what you posted above is imo a bit the opposite : P It's fun for like 1-2 fortresses, but it just makes them so trivial and by extension large parts of Ashlands.

[w.f.schepel]

@ glass zebra

Perhaps we have different ideas of fun. :-) For me, finding ways to control the fight playing solo is satisfying. Getting through the game without dieing is something I value extremely, even if I failed doing so quite miserably. (Pixel lava spots with more or less instant death are annoying.)

In essence, the game presents an 'unfair' fight and it is up to you whether to accept that at face value (and probably die in the process) or to find a way to even the scales a bit.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by w.f.schepel:

@ glass zebra

Perhaps we have different ideas of fun. :-) For me, finding ways to control the fight playing solo is satisfying. Getting through the game without dieing is something I value extremely, even if I failed doing so quite miserably. (Pixel lava spots with more or less instant death are annoying.)

In essence, the game presents an 'unfair' fight and it is up to you whether to accept that at face value (and probably die in the process) or to find a way to even the scales a bit.

It does sound like we might have a somewhat similar idea of fun, which is why I dislike how it is currently. I do want to play efficiently and try to tackle situations with thinking around them a bit instead of just storming head in, but if some approach that seems so "obvious" and not glitchy, tricky or hard immersion breaking is so easy to do and makes it so darn easy to overcome the obstacles, it takes out a lot of the fun.

it would be cool if the approach makes it easier, but right now it just makes it too trivial. It does not feel like it evens the scales, but tips them hard in your favour - same with fighting many of the enemies in Ashlands where they are weak. The enemies basically waiting in their fortress until you've killed them all is just too goofy and reminds me of the Draugr in the tombs who could not leave the platforms and just hit the air in front of you, but it is sadly not just 2-3 of a lot of them. Ashlands feels a bit too binary in difficulty depending on your approach and I feel like I have to play at least somewhat inefficient and/or at a harder difficulty than the rest of the game to keep it interesting still, which is not a great feeling.

[Murder Medic]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

It is worse than the Moder fight, Fuling tower stairs or Draugrs stuck on platforms. It shows so much that the places enemies are running around are not really capable of being navigated by them until you as a player decide to run into them or help them get to you.

Yeah :( On a playthrough with my dad we prepared ourselves as though we were going to a massive battle in the Ardennes Forest during WWII.. Harvested and mined literal TONS of materials to upgrade all our weapons to fullest, potions etc.... I was excited because I really enjoy playing Valheim with my Dad.. Like I cant put it into words how much fin we have, so much that we rented a server and installed over 100 mods for it. Sorry to go off on a tangent there, point is, we get to Moder and i felt bad for her, she got stuck on a rock as we were just pummeling her with arrow after arrow. I was really hoping for this Epic fight especially due to the amount of resources we harvested to get there, we were prepped for all out war!

I really hope that the enemies attack patterns and enemy options get some love in future updates. Like enemies being able to block and/or dodge attacks, and have more attacks to create more variety. Each boss would/could be so much more fun to fight if they had more than 3-4 attack animations. I absolutly love Valheim and its by far my favorite all time game (largely due to mods, but the base game is great as well.)

We searched high and low for any mods that might add more dimension to enemy attacks and another member of the STeam forums suggested CLLC (Creature Level and Loot Control) And Im sooo grateful of that person that suggested it!! CLLC allows the player to adjust enemy difficulty through stars and also some enemies are actually bigger with more stars, was pretty cool to fight a slightly larger Greydwarf Shaman that had 3 stars. Im not sure if what I noticed was what i thought was happening, but after installing the mod I feel like the enemies do a little bit better of a job in fighting/flanking and retreating. Can also adjust the setitngs of the bosses as well, though no extra attacks, but for example, a player can choose to fight "elemental" versions of bosses, or even summon more than one to fight.

After grabbing CLLC, i find the challenge to be increased quite a bit, sadly its mostly due to enemies having buffed damage and health, but it definetly breaks things up quite a bit

[Zombits]

That's why I think catapult is bad. bombard a lot to destroy your chest and items despawn