Weapon skills

[bbyhighness]

Is there actually a point to weapon skills in Valheim? The way it's done currently just doesn't make sense to me with the craftings system and weapon classes.

The dual axes for Ashlands seem to be a great example. The previous axes are pretty slow weapons and I feel like if you actually want to use them, you need to adjust your way of fighting. But the dual axes seem to be basically knives, only if you're using knives in the playthrough, your axe skill might be pretty low.

And this is just one example out of many. The weapons themselves are really cool and I also understand that it's good to develop more than one weapon skill, but trying to build up skills for both knives and axes doesn't make sense to me when it makes more sense to pick something that has a different damage type.

I also know people say that the skill level doesn't matter as much as your own skills with parrying, dodging, ect., but the tech tree for weapons seems to pretty much entirelly disregard skills. Plus, surely, I will feel a difference if I have a lvl 10 or lvl 50 skill in a weapon.

However, since I have limited experience in the game and haven't gone past plains yet, I wonder what people, who have progressed to endgame think about it. Have you tried the dual axes with low skill? Does it still perform well? Do you feel like the weapons themselves have enough damage to make up for low skill if you want to switch to something else later? Or do you grind skills when you switch?

[Zombits]

What's low skill exactly . In this game lvl 30-40 is good enough to do anything and it's QUICK enough to get there.

My highest combat skill is 90 magic , only because of multi frag and dundr . each little pellets make faster xp

[OctoberSky]

Excellent questions. Please check The Arena chapter in this guide and experiment. By using raiseskill from console commands[valheim.fandom.com] your experimental character can determine the best answer that fits your playstyle.

[Lorska]

Saying it doesn't matter is hyperbole.
If you are neo and can dodge and parry everything, have perfect spacing etc. then it doesn't matter if your weapon deals 1 or 200 damage, you'll win eventually.

There's 2 important breakpoints.
Around 50 is where you start dropping efficiency and 75 is where is drops off a cliff.
If you can't be bothered grinding up a weapon to at least 40 (at the later biomes) just use console commands.

[ministrog]

so there are weapon skills which are evergreen. that is, they're effective more or less in most fighting encounters. Things like blocking, magic and maybe spears.

then you got skills that are solid but on rare occasions find them lacking. Hammers, atgeirs, and bows. im currently playing a pure solo bow playthrough. they're hella thristy for feathers. i'm currently still finding a way to survive wolves raid without preparations. i'm praying that bonemass buff will be enough.

next group are mostly mediocre but they can shine or have unique value. swords, axes, and not really a skill but thrown consumables. what i recently found was krom/slayers make farming barley kinda nice (1 click compared to 3 e press). axes chopping trees obviously, and thrown stuff can help with aoe or build platforms.

last group is just for extremely niche circumstances. daggers can never backstab (or critical from sneak) bosses in a legit way. that's what that weapon type is balanced around. it'll 2 shot trolls if not 1 shot, but i don't think it's possible to dps down bonemass' regen. crossbow is another interesting skill. it's amazing for hunting rabbits, sneak one shot twitchers, have longest range and have little ballistic drop off. but man the down sides are wild.
- can only ever do pierce damage
- long reload
- self knockback
- it's inherent knockback on enemies doesn't always work.
even more so now in ashlands. i've seen twitchers survive a shot with like 5% hp and not get staggered or blown away.

then there's the real unconventionals stuff for challange runs. there's a bloke on YT that's finish the game with just the build hammer and pufferfish/etir balls.

[ling.speed]

Yup, there is tons of all over the place mechanics like that. For a solo game its pretty bad, but Val is a multiplayer challenge/social game. And quirks like that can facilitate content rather than restrict it based on how players approach it. So we cant say its universally bad. If it was nobody would be here anymore.

IMHO the game is as popular precisely because it strays from typical game design and has "rough edges" like that, its not just direct correlation.

We got too used to smooth game design, but you know what does not have smooth progression at all? Real life, so subconciously the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ weapon skills fit, and as long as rest of the game can keep us in, overcoming the challenge of levels (by grind or acceptance) is content as well, as long as there is somebody to witness the progress.
We could almost say OP is a meta part of that too.



What saves weapon skills somewhat is that everything else is not progressing fast at all. Weapon upgrades barely add anything (especially looking at damage per stamina). And the same goes to biome progression, after swamp enemy damage stalls for a long time... Heck some (non starred) swamp creatures have similar/better stats to basic ashland mobs.

So while starting skills from zero sucks its not a total gimp, it takes some time to get basic levels, as well as player proficiency down and we barely take one or two more hits to kill.

Except for bows, they are either goldlike or suck totally due to multiplicative level scalling. I hate bows haha :).

[A]

ive put in 1000s of hrs, and my skills rarely got about 25 during my actual play throughs i die constantly

[bbyhighness]

Originally posted by ling.speed:

Yup, there is tons of all over the place mechanics like that. For a solo game its pretty bad, but Val is a multiplayer challenge/social game. And quirks like that can facilitate content rather than restrict it based on how players approach it. So we cant say its universally bad. If it was nobody would be here anymore.

IMHO the game is as popular precisely because it strays from typical game design and has "rough edges" like that, its not just direct correlation.

We got too used to smooth game design, but you know what does not have smooth progression at all? Real life, so subconciously the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ weapon skills fit, and as long as rest of the game can keep us in, overcoming the challenge of levels (by grind or acceptance) is content as well, as long as there is somebody to witness the progress.
We could almost say OP is a meta part of that too.



What saves weapon skills somewhat is that everything else is not progressing fast at all. Weapon upgrades barely add anything (especially looking at damage per stamina). And the same goes to biome progression, after swamp enemy damage stalls for a long time... Heck some (non starred) swamp creatures have similar/better stats to basic ashland mobs.

So while starting skills from zero sucks its not a total gimp, it takes some time to get basic levels, as well as player proficiency down and we barely take one or two more hits to kill.

Except for bows, they are either goldlike or suck totally due to multiplicative level scalling. I hate bows haha :).

Lol, that's a good way of looking at it. I play really slowly, so chances are my axe skills will be ok anyway once it's relevant for me. But I was curious about the general experience with it. It is interesting that the impact on multiplayer is different, I didn't think about that.

[bbyhighness]

Originally posted by A:

ive put in 1000s of hrs, and my skills rarely got about 25 during my actual play throughs i die constantly

I don't really have a problem with dying. I died a couple of times as part of a learning curve, but once I know the biome and creature mechanics, I rarely die, unless I make a serious mistake (which is usually something I know is a huge mistake as I'm doing it 😆). And since I play very slowly, I don't have a problem getting the skills back up to where they were.

I would consider lowering the difficulty if you die that much. Aside from that it's difficult to give a general advice, because it depends on why you're dying so much. Every time I died I thought back on what happened and what I could have done differently and adjust my approach next time. I'm honestly a little chicken, so I'm overly cautious most of the time, but I tend to get reckless once I feel like I've figured stuff out and that's usually when the game gives me a lesson 😆

[A]

can't relate lol i don't mind so much mostly i don't like to waste food i do stupid things, use a bow as my primary don't learn how to fight, and most deaths are by far while building stuff in those play throughs, or falling in my own moats I just learned acceptance lol

Originally posted by bbyhighness:

Originally posted by A:

ive put in 1000s of hrs, and my skills rarely got about 25 during my actual play throughs i die constantly

I don't really have a problem with dying. I died a couple of times as part of a learning curve, but once I know the biome and creature mechanics, I rarely die, unless I make a serious mistake (which is usually something I know is a huge mistake as I'm doing it 😆). And since I play very slowly, I don't have a problem getting the skills back up to where they were.

I would consider lowering the difficulty if you die that much. Aside from that it's difficult to give a general advice, because it depends on why you're dying so much. Every time I died I thought back on what happened and what I could have done differently and adjust my approach next time. I'm honestly a little chicken, so I'm overly cautious most of the time, but I tend to get reckless once I feel like I've figured stuff out and that's usually when the game gives me a lesson 😆

[Liro Raériyo]

i dunno man, i kind of love my running 100... and my jumping 100... and my swimming 100...
that last one took me an hour to design an auto-grind structure to level up swimming to 100 while i went AFK but it did the job! hit 100 overnight and now i can swim TWICE as far before my stamina drains out completely

but uh yeah, unless your gonna actively try to get them to 100 most skills wont get their naturally, running/jumping might if you arent prone to dying but most combat skills dont get used enough to reach 100 in any reasonable timeframe.

as for their actual specific effect, most skills all across the board simply reduce stamina costs by .5% per point while increasing the effectiveness of the skill by .5% per point, so running would cost half as much stamina while letting you run 50% faster as well, 100 in running literally lets you cross 3X as much ground per stamina bar as opposed to 0 running.

bow has a third effect in reducing how long it takes to reach full pull by .5% per point, considering thats what determines your damage and waiting to reach that costs stamina bows kind of have this weird relationship with skill level where each point is more effective then the last, at 100 skill your firing off twice as many arrows that are dealing 50% more damage while costing a quarter of the stamina to reach full draw, unlike other combat skills bows absolutely get stupid good with high skillpoint values.

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by Lorska:

Saying it doesn't matter is hyperbole.
If you are neo and can dodge and parry everything, have perfect spacing etc. then it doesn't matter if your weapon deals 1 or 200 damage, you'll win eventually.

There's 2 important breakpoints.
Around 50 is where you start dropping efficiency and 75 is where is drops off a cliff.
If you can't be bothered grinding up a weapon to at least 40 (at the later biomes) just use console commands.

this is a commonly spread myth. there is no skill drop of at 50 at all. only at 75 where the top dmg value simply HARDcaps aside for bows and crossbows.

[bbyhighness]

Originally posted by Liro Raériyo:

i dunno man, i kind of love my running 100... and my jumping 100... and my swimming 100...
that last one took me an hour to design an auto-grind structure to level up swimming to 100 while i went AFK but it did the job! hit 100 overnight and now i can swim TWICE as far before my stamina drains out completely

but uh yeah, unless your gonna actively try to get them to 100 most skills wont get their naturally, running/jumping might if you arent prone to dying but most combat skills dont get used enough to reach 100 in any reasonable timeframe.

as for their actual specific effect, most skills all across the board simply reduce stamina costs by .5% per point while increasing the effectiveness of the skill by .5% per point, so running would cost half as much stamina while letting you run 50% faster as well, 100 in running literally lets you cross 3X as much ground per stamina bar as opposed to 0 running.

bow has a third effect in reducing how long it takes to reach full pull by .5% per point, considering thats what determines your damage and waiting to reach that costs stamina bows kind of have this weird relationship with skill level where each point is more effective then the last, at 100 skill your firing off twice as many arrows that are dealing 50% more damage while costing a quarter of the stamina to reach full draw, unlike other combat skills bows absolutely get stupid good with high skillpoint values.

I prefer only gaining skills through gameplay, but I do take things very slow. I enjoy exploring, establish small outposts and hoarding resources, so my skills are usually higher than expected in each biome. And I also have time to level up a variety of weapons. I don't like axes though, so I don't have high hopes for actually levelling them up that high. But the dual axes look so good. If I get to Ashlands and survive there, I definitely want to make them.

I know about the bow skill being like that. I'm definitely trying to aim for a high skill there at least. And of course I didn't get to magic yet. I'm kinda excited to try, although I'm generally a melee player, so we'll see how I do with them.

[bbyhighness]

Originally posted by A:

can't relate lol i don't mind so much mostly i don't like to waste food i do stupid things, use a bow as my primary don't learn how to fight, and most deaths are by far while building stuff in those play throughs, or falling in my own moats I just learned acceptance lol

Lol, as long as you have fun, there's really no pressure about that. The fall damage definitely seems to be the top enemy for a lot of people 😆

[Lorska]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

Originally posted by Lorska:

Saying it doesn't matter is hyperbole.
If you are neo and can dodge and parry everything, have perfect spacing etc. then it doesn't matter if your weapon deals 1 or 200 damage, you'll win eventually.

There's 2 important breakpoints.
Around 50 is where you start dropping efficiency and 75 is where is drops off a cliff.
If you can't be bothered grinding up a weapon to at least 40 (at the later biomes) just use console commands.

this is a commonly spread myth. there is no skill drop of at 50 at all. only at 75 where the top dmg value simply HARDcaps aside for bows and crossbows.

No the reason it's commonly spread isn't because of a specific drop-off, but because the increases are linear somewhere between 40-50 it starts to become very inefficient compared to your current skill level (factoring in the XP required).
Technically efficiency is always dropping with each point but grinding beyond 50 is pretty much just a waste of time.

Oh also to whoever was saying that running bonus is 50%, it's not, it's only 25%.
Also stamina reduction was 0.33% per point iirc

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by Lorska:

Originally posted by Nerevar:

this is a commonly spread myth. there is no skill drop of at 50 at all. only at 75 where the top dmg value simply HARDcaps aside for bows and crossbows.

No the reason it's commonly spread isn't because of a specific drop-off, but because the increases are linear somewhere between 40-50 it starts to become very inefficient compared to your current skill level (factoring in the XP required).
Technically efficiency is always dropping with each point but grinding beyond 50 is pretty much just a waste of time.

Oh also to whoever was saying that running bonus is 50%, it's not, it's only 25%.

oh you mean it takes LONGER to get the same effect. well thats a different story. but the increase per point remains the same till 75.

but saying getting another 35% roughly damage increase is a waste of time is something i will always disagree with. more dmg is more dmg. and roughly 35% more is pretty noticeable.

the total dmg bonus for any melee weapon is 141% and 33% less stamina costs. this is at 100 skill. while the stamina decrease is linear all the way the dmg is not.

at 50 you have about 75% more dmg on average than on 0. at 75 you have about 112%. more than at 0. that is still a notcieable difference.