Bonemass power root cause of some of the complaints?

[SumatranRatMonkey]

I find that with Bonemass active I can fight anything in Ashlands with my Mistlands-level gear, at least on default difficulty. Without it, I have to stay near my base.

Moreover, Bonemass stacks in coop since each player has their own timer. So when I play with my friend it becomes a lot easier for us to have Bonemass activated a significant portion of the time, compared to solo.

Now, imagine the devs were trying to balance the game and they used Bonemass - the results of the balancing might be very different from from if they weren't using Bonemass. I speculate that to the extent there are complaints and differing opinions about how hard Ashlands is, a lot of it might originate from No IQ stuff like Bonemass (and maybe potions) that situationally "rebalance" the game into something much easier.

TL;DR: Having an "I win"-button leads to broken outcomes.

[glass zebra]

I really doubt they used it in testing at all to balance anything. I've been in Ashlands solo with a rouge in Fenris and an Archer in Root with Eikthyr and mage in Etir with Queen and most of the mobs still did not seem very threatening over seekers (which their stats reflect). I died a lot on first entry and then stopped after finishing the first fortress. With any other char after that I skipped the dying phase. Archers/twitchers do minor damage over Fulings and are less aggressive/have a harder time hitting. Warriors are the only trash that is rather strong, but those are balanced by how slow they are. Basically everything else has friendly fire and kills each other and has a hard time turning and hitting (except Valkyries). There are also the blobs that are practically allies.

Bonemass definitley makes an "I-win" button, but I doubt they balanced it to "so everything is super easy and does nothing. Sounds good!". Even without bonemass the archers and twitchers are doing just a bit over digit damage in heavy armour, hardly ever hit you if you move sideways and the others are so easy to outmaneuver. It is a bit weird to get these easy enemies after much harder to dodge crossbow, spread fire blobs and fast and strong flying enemies in the last biome, but that is likely the reason for the spam. At least with sword/hammer warriors can also be killed quickly and safely with altfire, without even having to deal with their attack and Asksvin/Morgen can't really do much against you if you run to their side and hit them from there. You are definitely not supposed to go into them and just hit them or they would not have inserted that extra group fight mechanic solely present in Ashlands.

The common complaint is "it is just not playable, you die so often" "many people can play it without much dying. The key is to adapt" "actually I don't even find the enemies strong and can do them easily, but there is just too much fighting". There were a few complains about enemies 1 hitting you, but for the most part it is now "just too much fighting". The enemies present are numerous but often:
- weak and hardly hit you
- somewhat strong but super slow
- somewhat strong but very sluggish and have friendly fire
- a Valkyrie that is visible from very far away

Enemy strength is really not the big complaint about Ashlands after the discussion starts. Bonemass makes things easier, but does not reduce the amount of fighting that much. The non-aggressive part of enemies (twitchers running far away, Morgens rolling around a lot) is imo also what prolongs the fights more than is interesting, especially when most enemies do not even drop something that you need after a few kills. The fights are really the exploration increaser there, like the terrain in Mistlands or the multiple big empty areas without anything you need in Plains. The "war" part is the theme of Ashlands.

[Amble]

Bonemass is overpowered compared to all the other powers, and the forsaken powers in general are all over the place and don't really make sense, however I don't think the content is balanced around Bonemass because the damage you receive scales pretty linearly from biome to biome, including Ashlands.
If they expected Bonemass usage there'd be more physical damage spikes. Instead Bonemass simply trivializes the next 5 minutes of your gameplay, regardless of biome.

Ashlands is just hard because they want the game to get harder as it goes on. Mistlands was also quite a lot harder than what came before it.
Whether Ashlands pushes things too far is obviously a whole other debate, but for just the question of if they balance around Bonemass, I'd say no.

[Faceplant]

I don't consider Bonemass to be an 'I-win' button. I consider it more of an 'I-survived' button, but it does affect how far abroad I can go in Ashlands. If you need it all the time, that's a problem, but you can get piled on pretty quickly in Ashlands, so I don't feel comfortable running around far from some form of safety when I'm in cooldown.

I will generally feel free to roam afar and take chances until I get myself into tough situation, then I'll pop Bonemass, handle the situation, then likely start heading back closer to safety. That's not dissimilar to how I deal with earlier biomes, but I don't normally have to pop Bonemass in earlier biomes.

[Zombits]

Like root top, op vs skitos. becomes mandatory like bonemass in the aahlands, especially in harder modes.

Why complains ? raid a fortress, I activate it. Makes a morgen kill me in 3 hits instead of 1 , lol

[Psalms]

You'd be surprised of how many streamers I've watched that didn't have bonemass active and died because of it.

When progression gets tougher it forces you to utilize all your resources given to you. Skilled players who take advantage of this technique usually make the game easier for them in the long run.

So I don't believe bonemass is overpowered. It's just the most suitable forsaken power to use in the game.

[ministrog]

bonemass reliance is part of the problem with combat in valheim. as others have said here and many times before, so many things in the game deal substantial physical damage when you first enter the biome. the only anomoly is the root harnest or whatever that chestpiece is called. it's basically perma bonemass for alot of projectiles and stabby things which is a massive quality of life. heck im using it now and for the first time ever felt confident enough to use yagluth.

there is one thing people should consider when talking about balance. these power mechanics should be tested in vacuum. that is to say, the enemies in front of a player might not be a one on one encounter. sure you can single out a morgan, and fought it with out bonemass after learning it's moveset. however, that's not what, imho, makes them so dangerous.

it's the destruction. for whatever reason, each time THEY snap a tree or break a ruin block, EVERYONE knows about it. that swipe that deals a 3rd of your health? suddenly wears on the back of your mind when it's homies rock up. all your careful stamina and stagger bar juggling goes out the window. also your time to death is just increase 2 fold because when you're staggered you receive twice the damage.

it's almost ironic that bonemass halfs incoming damage.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by ministrog:

it's the destruction. for whatever reason, each time THEY snap a tree or break a ruin block, EVERYONE knows about it. that swipe that deals a 3rd of your health? suddenly wears on the back of your mind when it's homies rock up. all your careful stamina and stagger bar juggling goes out the window. also your time to death is just increase 2 fold because when you're staggered you receive twice the damage.

it's almost ironic that bonemass halfs incoming damage.

Only non-player creatures receive twice the damage when staggered. Players do not

Bonemass buff very often comes closer to quarter of the damage taken due to armor mechanics.

I'd still rather not get hit with most characters and slowly move out of the hits of Morgens. They are unable to hit you with anything but the pounce if you do that and they keep killing their allies that run past it towards you with those swipes that miss you. Unless you are ranged, that would lower you killspeed of them quite a bit though. As a melee you can run to their side and hit them from there. Eikthyr helps a lot with that when you are also in need to run some to dodge other enemies (basically makes jumping free with ask set + feather cape too), though if they are solo it is not that useful. You can kill a Morgen from 100% to 0% with 1 stamina bar without while it tries to turn. Eikthyr just turns on invincibility mode (you reg much more stamina while floating down than the jump cost) against anything but ranged and some bigger aoe attacks with the feather cape.

It is a shame the other powers are so specific to the point of maybe been used 0-1 times by many. They could have given the Moder buff +10% ranged damage and Elder +10% melee damage or something like that. At least The Elder is useful for builders or bow mains. Yagluth is just so useless once you get to barely wine (which you already have when you kill the boss that grants the buff).