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.

[fiese Fee™]

I can already see them nerfing Ashlands into the ground so that players can lay the boss after one day...a shame.

[Zombits]

Originally posted by Falcon:

Originally posted by 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.

Everything like fortresses and flametal pillars are on main island . Directly south of map center.

Small islands east and west is what you explored it seems

[Mharr]

Originally posted by Falcon:

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.

Hmm. I wonder if there are differences between single player, peer to peer multiplayer and dedicated server.

[LostSoul]

Ashlands is a cluster****. Plain and simple. Minimal visibility, and an endless stream of ground clutter to get stuck on. A near-nonstop stream of hostiles throwing themselves at you every few steps. A sh**storm of new materials clogging up your inventory. I can barely leave my base before my stamina is completely depleted, my inventory is full, and the ground is littered with more stuff I have no room to collect.

Who the f*** thought any of this was a *GOOD* addition to the game?? Why not just light the player on fire, burn them to death, and delete them and the world once its done? It's about as enjoyable.

[Edward Blom]

Valheim is about fightning, but in Ashlands we are fightning server rubberbanding and stutters when more mobs load in over and over.

[ministrog]

yep a lot of what's been said (about how badly tuned on spawn rates, damage numbers, loot variety and sourcing, etc) have been posted here on the forums. you can call it blind faith, but i'll call it an educated guess that the devs know about it. i'll put in here an observation that the devs took 10 days to add mac support into cross play. sure it was buggy and the game engine devs (unity) would of gave them an even earlier heads up, but you gotta admit that's fast. after that, it took them 2 days to change the ptb server settings for spawn rates.

on another note, the community also complete and begin to engage ashlands at different times. it's one of the most celebrated things about valheim imo; to attract people from all play preferences. if they wanted to make a full combat oriented game from the start, then that's what they'd do. but that's not what they wanted (and increasingly a lot of others too).

they wanted Adventure, Building and Combat in equal parts. early versions of ashlands felt more like CC (Combat and Clowns in forums).

Edit: i just checked, this poor OP also got one too. sad times

[Vanadis]

Yeah i agree with the OP

[gerzald]

Too hard? Um, get the gun mod? And the balista mod?

[Rashaka]

I mean... to be fair. Not every area in a game should be reasonable to build in. If you were playing in Lord of the Rings universe you wouldn't go build a hobbit hole in Mordor. In Star Wars the rebels wouldn't go rent a room on an imperial star destroyer.

I do agree that this game tries on your every last nerve to piss you off, but I think you are grasping a bit on this one. We are hitting the final zones in the game. Those usually aren't meant to be hospitable. This isn't a building simulator. It is designed as a progression game and I think they have done a good job or keeping up with that idea from the beginning.

Just because you want to turn this into house flipper goes to hell doesn't mean that is in the scope of the game.

[Mharr]

Originally posted by Rashaka:

Just because you want to turn this into house flipper goes to hell doesn't mean that is in the scope of the game.

Although it is, because the world settings go all the way to passive creatures creative mode if you want. You can even do that just for the building then switch everything back to normal.

[Murder Medic]

I still have not yet been to Ashlands, but have quite a few hours in the game, I get overun in the mistlands still, and im glad! Sure id like the game to be more difficult in different ways, (Like enemies having more choices of attack movements AND FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE PLEASE ADD A BLOCKING PARRY MECHANISM FOR ENEMIES!!!!!)

At the suggestion of another steam forum member, I added CLLC mod to the game along with EPIC LOOT, and oh my goodness, I absilutly love the addition!!!!! Yes I am aware that the game should be fun with or without modding, I will however say that I love IronGates method with adding biomes and content, and I do hope for all the sake of hoping that they will improve the enemy fighting mechanics as they reach 1.0.

Imagine... They add blocking and parrying for enemies after adding deep north, then we'll all have a reason to go back and do a fresh playthrough as everything will be different. We need more enemies as well. Enemy types from Meadows all the way to Ashlands. If they surprise the player base with something like that, I cant imagine an idea that could possibly be more cool.

SLope combat definetly needs some love.... I will admit that its current state makes me very unhappy and annoyed when fighting on uneven ground. WHiffing any swing when an enemy is just below the player is exhausting....

[NukeAJS]

Ashlands isn't intended to be a place where you build a big cool place. It's meant to be hostile and unforgiving. Each biome has isn't own feel and Ashlands feel is definitely combat.

That being said, Ashlands can have relatively safe bases but you're probably going about it in the wrong way. Large cathedral complexes block spawns so if you can find a large one and build on the second or third floor, you'll be relatively safe to build an outpost. Lastly, you can clear out a fortress and build inside that. The fortress blocks spawns to a pretty far distance; also its walls are indestructible to all non-boss enemies so if you do get a mob headed your way -- they're just going to sit there and do nothing or attack a wall that can't be broken.

Probably the three most important pieces of advice for Ashlands are 1) DON'T run! Running draws attention from a pretty far distance -- even greylings will turn around and see you from a fairly large distance. If you run, you will pull mobs from a pretty far distance and you'll have less stamina to deal with them

2) Mining and wood chopping are going to heard from forever away. If you mine or chop wood, either clear out the local area first and deal with any newly spawned stuff later, or just expect to get ambushed 10-30 seconds in. This also applies to lava blobs and meteors knocking down trees -- any felled tree will attract a lot of attention regardless of how it got knocked down.

3) Always have an escape plan -- usually a morgen cave. Don't be afraid to run if things go south. A fight can be going really well and then a valkyrie shows up. You should always have a location in mind to fall back to WHEN (not if) that happens. Morgen caves don't respawn morgen if it has already been cleared. Mobs will usually wander away after a minute or two unless they spawned next the cave itself. Abandoned structures are good to run to because you can be sure there won't be spawns there though you might pull more because you just ran (see point #1). Of course, there's always an emergency portal -- again building them at abandoned ruins can usually ensure that you can warp in and not immediately attract attention. The bigger the ruins, the larger the area where they won't spawn is.

[A]

Originally posted by Nick:

WHiffing any swing when an enemy is just below the player is exhausting....

yeah i don't have the stamina for that