Ashlands is a HUGE disappointment

[Marianski]

I am playing Valheim since it was released.
I love the progression through the biomes. Each biome is unique.
Building a nice, possibly awesome-looking base is a key component of the game.
Each biome allowed for such builds.
Then came Mistlands and broke with that.
Mistlands is kinda hostile to building bases. The terrain prevents many builds.
The fog adds to that and the constant theat of Gjalls rounds it up.
But it was doable, but "under rough conditions". Still - accepting Mistlands took a while.
Then came ashlands...
This whole biome shouts only 1 message into your face:
"you are supposed to SUFFER here!"
Nothing is pleasant here. Nothing is even "fun".
Yes - the biome has multiple good and new variants, but the annoyances overpower all of that.
You are constantly swarmed by tons of different mobs.
All mobs aggro from miles away, unlike in any other biome.
Certain resources are so incredibly scarce and hard to obtain, it ruins all the fun, e.g.
Flametal is required for tons of things, even for building pieces (16 bars ofr a gate, seriously), while at the same time: the total amount of flametal bars is extremely limited.
There are no "safe zones" at all, you literally have to build a massive fortress with trenches, myriads of workbenchs / fires to prevent spawning, high walls etc... and that still doesnt make the base "safe".
Long story short:
The game introduced itself as a colorful explorational game that invited you to settle down and build the base of your dreams. and it did this job in an AWESOME way.
But with each content update, that promise dwindles, leaving people more and more with a "souls like" experience.
You are constantly busy to just stay alive and every piece of progress is a struggle.
All these new building materials are literally only meant for being transported away into more pleasant biomes, since the Art of fine build-crafting is not recommended in Ashlands at all".
The main features of Valheim got lost for me in Ashlands. Its not "fun" anymore.
Its only struggle and annoyance at this point.

[Nerevar]

the part about no breaks and no safety at all is a false claim. fortresses are pretty much 100% safezones once conquered. putrid holes are 100% safe once cleared out. the very tall grausten ruins and towers are also mostly safe as nothing sees you up there aside some voltures or a valk.

mistlands allowed for building some uniquely designed bases you couldnt make in any other biomes. plenty of creative examples of this on youtube. so mistlands didnt break with anything. only thing mistlands could make use off is a bigger more expensive whisp torch to clear out a bigger area at a way bigger resource cost. like an eitr whisp lighthouse or something like that. rest is all up to player adjustment to the biome.

we still have peaceful moments where we do farming breeding crafting etc. so i dont get what that statement even is supposed to say.

flametal isnt the limting factor. that claim alone speaks for itself on beeing false. gems are the real limiter currently. not flametal. flametal is barely used for building and once you have the gear you dont need it much anymore. and you get enough metal from fortresses alone for the gear already. the pillars are just a bonus. and they even disabled pillar sinking on the next version so you get 90 flametal per pillar which is alot.

flametal beams are the same as ironwoodbeams so they are a bad deal resource wise no matter what.

the only other things that need flametal are lava lanterns and the gate. the lanterns need ONE bar. not worth mentioning therefore as nobody needs 100 lanterns unless you wanna break your bases fps counter.

ashwood doors need some flametal aswell but thats really about it for building purposes already.

so flametal is overall less of a problem then gems.

you can build whatever you want in a fortress or on the spires offshore of ashlands.

there is no special plantable that only grows in ashlands and there is the new stone portal makeing metal transport as trivial as it can get. due to this there is actually no real reason to build a base in ashlands to begin with.

you COULD always build bases in any biome. yet hardly anyone build in the swamp or the black forest despite that. due to no ocean access very few people build bases on the mountain either as it just wasnt practical.

ashlands follows all of that just with a new tone of course.

the charred could definitly use some more useful drops. i already suggested makeing them drop ashwood like greydwarfs drop wood. and add a chance for 2 star ones not spawned from spawners to drop the gems to make them more worth fighting.

enemy aggro range is actually not different from other biomes. i tested this myself. aggro range is about the same as black forest. if the player makes alot of noise aka copping trees mineing metal or building ♥♥♥♥ enemies come for you. same as black forest. ashlands just has more enemy spawns than other biomes since its an endgame biome and not a meadows.

ashlands ia also way smaller as a biome compared to all others. plus no real dungeon crawling and all fortresses beeing the same layout. this means it has the fastest progression system of all biomes overall aside maybe plains. the enemies stats are balanced for a strength in numbers game. take the numbers away and youre left with enemies which are actually weaker than some mistlands enemies. which would be terrible balance. it would also greatly speed up the already short and fast biome progression even more.

overall i am a bit letdown by ashlands compared to mistlands it feels like we got alot less overall this time and the game lost more than it gained overall with this update. but for different reasons than what the tc claims.

[OctoberSky]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Marianski:

I appreciate the replies so far.
What i actually mean is that being in Ashlands equals a constant struggle for survival without any rest.
The amount of mobs + the aggro range + the insane respawn times make it as uncomfortable as it gets.

Many thanks and please keep me honest here when I misrepresent your points. It is not so much the combat difficulty that is compromising your time in Ashlands as the combat rate - the aggravation ranges and spawn/re-spawn timers - that give you no time to get a look around and maybe build a structure or two? If so, that seems to be one of the general hot button topics that has motivated some of the negative feedback since ptb and even since Ashlands went live. A close second seems to be that the Ashlands has limited points of interest compared to earlier biomes and the loot or reward from exploring those points is itself somewhat limited. Might be a third in there from some of our more skilled combat players (i.e. not a dunce like me) that our opponents have less combat diversity than they may have experienced from earlier biomes and especially the charred might benefit from being able to block or parry our attacks just as we can to theirs.

Regarding the spawn rates, the current test branch is trying to find a balance that might be better for many of our players (while being too light for many others) but more than a few from both sides of that debate have asked why the developers cannot add some level of configuration management for spawns to the existing world modifiers. I suspect the developers may indeed be cooking this even as we speak but it probably won't make it to ptb before the end of this year. The wiki[valheim.fandom.com] does an excellent job explaining destructible spawn structures like the Monument of Torment[valheim.fandom.com] and the invisible spawn zones that are triggered by player movement. We've experienced these zones since greyling spawns that seem to multiply for every tree we fell in the Meadows to our most recent experiences in the Ashlands. And as stated in the wiki players have suggested spreading base structures like workbenches and campfires to use that style of spawn suppression as the player moves about the Ashlands just as they likely used this same technique to suppress growths from re-spawning in emptied tar pits in the Plains. But perhaps in addition to the above mentioned dynamic modifiers for spawn amplitude and frequency there needs to be a static modifier at seed generation to reduce the density of zone spawning for players that still want that challenge but just not so much.

Apologies for the post length but quite a few good players and even some of the great players (I am neither) have provided similar feedback. I suspect the developers have heard this clearly. Then again they may have to prioritize some of the fundamental performance issues before they can address these other issues certainly before 1.0. Time will tell. In the meanwhile, we do our best.

[Silthanas]

Not my experience. I did a ♥♥♥♥ remodeling of a ruin but left holes in it and every few days a charred walks in through the holes and gets killed if I'm around.
Ashlands is not as aggressive as I'd hoped. There's lots of mobs, but if you've mastered mistlands, you've already mastered ashlands. The new weapons aren't even worth crafting, mistwalker and spinesnap are more effective in the biome than any of the upgrades, so why bother except for RP. Pretty much showed up, and there's already nothing to do but fight the boss.
This used to be my favorite game, but this biome is not what it is supposed to be and lacks intrinsic motivation to make progress.

[Schism]

Agree with OP. The game lures you in with easy going based gameplay and then ramps up to Dark Souls NG+ really fast.
It feels a bit bait and switch especially when the game's combat is so sloppy. You cant have Dark Souls difficulty with a combat system that is the opposite of tight.

World modifiers are a cheap cop out and not a reason for the game to feel so punishing later on. Most of the game is pretty easy going with a bit of a challenge here and there. Then a sudden giant difficulty spike at Mistlands, and another insane jump in Ashlands. That is just bad game design.

Normal shouldn't feel like you are sticking your ♥♥♥♥ in a grinder, its supposed to be the balanced difficulty that the majority of the player base can enjoy without feeling the game is to tedious.

IMO survival games that have to rely on overly complex "world modifiers" are games that the developers have given up on balancing.

[Darren Daulton]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Silthanas:

Not my experience. I did a ♥♥♥♥ remodeling of a ruin but left holes in it and every few days a charred walks in through the holes and gets killed if I'm around.
Ashlands is not as aggressive as I'd hoped. There's lots of mobs, but if you've mastered mistlands, you've already mastered ashlands. The new weapons aren't even worth crafting, mistwalker and spinesnap are more effective in the biome than any of the upgrades, so why bother except for RP. Pretty much showed up, and there's already nothing to do but fight the boss.
This used to be my favorite game, but this biome is not what it is supposed to be and lacks intrinsic motivation to make progress.

This is probably some of the first criticism of Ashlands i can somewhat agree with.

Neat new boat is cool I guess , but it's chonky and unwieldy, and mine lodged on the beach when I got there and hasn't been used since. Recently me an a buddy made another and took it out for a long trip across the map to do the hildir quests we've never done and it took forever.

Raiding fortresses is a neat concept on the surface, but we actually just jumped into the top of the first one we did , just because it makes sense. We used the siege equipment for the next few and then that was it , we had enough of everything.

So yeah what was left was to use the bells and defeat the boss, and yes, it was fun , but it was all over way too fast.

I feel like every other biome took a lot more effort to defeat.

edit : TBF , the shotgun wand, and the new mage set are nice. Trolstav is aight as well.

[A]

And most players just find a way to cheese there way past most things anyway, but yeah combat feels pretty bad, stamina feels pretty bad, being unable to use the crosshair with the bow at close range feels bad, being unable to fight at elevation, being mobbed by enemies, rather than challenging enemies is a thing but typically in games where you fight countless waves of enemies combat is smooth and natural not clunky and painful find myself running a lot and trying to kite enemies waiting for stamina to recharge taking and doing it over and over

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Schism:

Agree with OP. The game lures you in with easy going based gameplay and then ramps up to Dark Souls NG+ really fast.
It feels a bit bait and switch especially when the game's combat is so sloppy. You cant have Dark Souls difficulty with a combat system that is the opposite of tight.

World modifiers are a cheap cop out and not a reason for the game to feel so punishing later on. Most of the game is pretty easy going with a bit of a challenge here and there. Then a sudden giant difficulty spike at Mistlands, and another insane jump in Ashlands. That is just bad game design.

Normal shouldn't feel like you are sticking your ♥♥♥♥ in a grinder, its supposed to be the balanced difficulty that the majority of the player base can enjoy without feeling the game is to tedious.

IMO survival games that have to rely on overly complex "world modifiers" are games that the developers have given up on balancing.

[canis39]

Agree with OP 100%. Ashlands isn't the Valheim that I fell in love with.

So I guess I need to figure out how to get back to that, or just move on to a different game.

[Zombits]

you're a few months late to the show

[Avetembi]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Steve:

Every problem suggested here can be addressed with world modifiers.

Valheim is not a cozy game by default. As many others have rightfully pointed out, this is a game where one is expected to earn one's place in Valhalla through combat.

THAT IS THE CORE FEATURE OF THIS GAME.

This is a game about FIGHTING. We are to FIGHT our way to the end. We are to FIGHT big, nasty bosses. And yes, as it's a player versus environment game, the environment itself is expected to fight you as well.

The building is cool. The emotes are great. The exploration is awesome. But the game is about the fight. .

I agree mostly but why haven't the fighting mechanics improved so we can melee uphill/downhill?

Ursprünglich geschrieben von A:

...being unable to use the crosshair with the bow at close range feels bad, being unable to fight at elevation, being mobbed by enemies, rather than challenging enemies is a thing but typically in games where you fight countless waves of enemies combat is smooth and natural not clunky and painful find myself running a lot and trying to kite enemies waiting for stamina to recharge taking and doing it over and over

The key is aiming above or estimating the trajectory anyway. The better you get at those things, and improving the skill for draw speed, the further away you can be to hit your target. Close up doesn't need crosshairs because you are right there. Bows are my fav all round weapon and I think they are done really well allowing for intuitive use.

[Falcon]

It's not even about settling there, I think. The issue is elsewhere.
It's that:
a) You are so bogged down by instant fighting with same enemies that you hardly get anywhere to explore. We ended up making second TP pair (to be carried) just on the ashland island so that progress a few hundred meters in some directing and in the evening build it and TP back to anchorage and main stone TP to main base.
This constant grind is not fun, it's just tedious.
b) In any time the tedious grind can suddenly get pretty nasty depending on a dice roll of how many and which enemies spawn. Some can be easily outrun, but if they get Morgen it's not so easy. Especially when the Morgen is supported by bunch of archers, stupid things can happen pretty fast.
I do think there is some issue with he spawning algorithm, because i got Spawn That! mod and extracted the configs, but what I see in game doesn't seems to mirror that.
For example just approaching the first island you can get 3 Great Maws spawned, basically 2 at once near to each other. And since you cannot build bench on the rocky teeth and cannot run in between those, that kind of battle may be pretty worrisome and unfair (though thankfully we did not panic and made it to the land).
Also, we encountered like 10+ Morgens (10% chance once 4000 ticks) before meeting first Askvin (30% chance) which is pretty strange checking the world-spawner config numbers. Basically no Askvin at all on 1st island.
No flammetal on first 2 island except in crates of dvergers who now one-shot you.

This does not feel like a challenging adventure, it feels like a damn chore.

[A]

yeah, i get you can compensate for the obvious error in crosshair placement and yes im aware of arc over long distances, but at short distances the bows corsshair is wildly inaccurate at 8m its off by 1ft (game distance) vertically and a few inches to the left.

This could be fixed and should be fixed, the bow doesn't have a scope/optics just an arrow you'd aim by the arrow tip

over longer distances the bows accuracy and physics seem pretty okay and its w/e but rarely are you snipping enemies from super long distances and if you are you're only getting so many shots in

the crosshair also feels bad when aiming from elevated platforms, but id need to do more testing

I tested by having a wall piece, and 2 (4m) corewood to measure distance, aiming horizontally at full power and its off by the width of a 1m wood beam (which works out to about .3m) or 1ft vertically, and a smaller portion off to the left every shot, by what i estimate about 4 inches

you can compensate and overcome this unintentionally handicap, but why is it even a thing you'd be better off with no crosshair at that point at close range, the veer to the left seems to be lost at longer distances, and feels more natural over distances 100m + (smaller to im sure but just a frame of reference haven't measured yet)

the physics of the bow seem relatively okay, if you watch where the arrow is at short distances assuming its resting on the top of your characters hand(because the graphics are missing) if you aim from that point, its fairly accurate sometimes feels like it might even travel upwards but doesn't arc noticeably downwards over short distances which you wouldn't expect a bow to do at full power and if it did it would be fractions of inches not feet

but that being said its the crosshair that's off and misplaced and it just makes the bow feel bad because its unintuative, its not how bows work, there is no(edit)optics on these bows (the graphics show that much) where you're aiming from is the tip of the arrow in archery and yes you need to elevate your shot for greater distances, but you can shoot a target pretty much horizontal at 8m(24 feet) with a real bow meant for combat or hunting

So yeah im not saying you cant figure it out and work around it, im just saying its needlessly janky

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Avetembi:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Steve:

Every problem suggested here can be addressed with world modifiers.

Valheim is not a cozy game by default. As many others have rightfully pointed out, this is a game where one is expected to earn one's place in Valhalla through combat.

THAT IS THE CORE FEATURE OF THIS GAME.

This is a game about FIGHTING. We are to FIGHT our way to the end. We are to FIGHT big, nasty bosses. And yes, as it's a player versus environment game, the environment itself is expected to fight you as well.

The building is cool. The emotes are great. The exploration is awesome. But the game is about the fight. .

I agree mostly but why haven't the fighting mechanics improved so we can melee uphill/downhill?

Ursprünglich geschrieben von A:

...being unable to use the crosshair with the bow at close range feels bad, being unable to fight at elevation, being mobbed by enemies, rather than challenging enemies is a thing but typically in games where you fight countless waves of enemies combat is smooth and natural not clunky and painful find myself running a lot and trying to kite enemies waiting for stamina to recharge taking and doing it over and over

The key is aiming above or estimating the trajectory anyway. The better you get at those things, and improving the skill for draw speed, the further away you can be to hit your target. Close up doesn't need crosshairs because you are right there. Bows are my fav all round weapon and I think they are done really well allowing for intuitive use.

[Zombits]

I'll agree with spawn rate being ridiculous, they were suppose to balance it .

ressources like flametal are plentiful though.

Only playable in solo using full mage style imo. So you explore and conquer areas being the boss instead of a prey.

snipe tormented spawners the way you like. Voltures nests are not creature spawners apparently

[FREEZED]

ashlands may be bit hard at beginning, but when you manage to get ashland gears it will be as easy than any other zone is.

[Falcon]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zombits:

ressources like flametal are plentiful though.

I wonder how much randomized this is, becasue we literally completely explored 2 ashlands islands without ever finding the ore source as there were only tiny pockets of lava. Though we already found the altar of the boss by chance.
Also no fortress yet.

[Einstine]

As an observer so far... why do you feel you have to build your base in Ashlands? Are you fighting the game trying to play it your way? Couldn't you raid and plunder and return with your spoils?