skill loss on death kills my motivation to play the game.

[Parts]

running through ashlands with some buddies and frankly after lots of intense fights and deaths my ability to do anything other than run feels like ♥♥♥♥. i enjoy the building aspect of the game, made some nice keeps that aspect 10/10. the hey you died so lets spawn more enemies where you died after the fact as a ♥♥♥♥ you is infuriating. i spend ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hours on hours leveling up skills and then one wrong fight and im worse off. sick of that aspect of the game. Devs need to add break points where you dont reduce your skills once you get to a certain point. or you guys can just say skill issue and loose a player. what the ♥♥♥♥ ever rant over

[thethomasgeorge]

you know you can turn that off.

[Optimus Prime]

Originally posted by thethomasgeorge:

you know you can turn that off.

Can you? I know you can nerf it into the ground but I didn't think you could turn it off.

[Exodite-Dragon]

You can't disable it entirely, no, but you can scale it down. Frankly, however, this sounds like a skill issue on OP's part, so I suppose he can uninstall at his leisure.

Skill levels in-game are far, far less important than overall experience with the game, and actual ability to play the game well. People put too much emphasis on them and hinge too much on what the numbers say.

[thethomasgeorge]

I watched the numbers and they didn't go down after a number of deaths. Maybe the amount wasn't that noticeable, but at level 58 for most skills after 4 deaths, it was still at 58. The death message said they were being reduced, but I never noticed the numbers go down.

[blackphoenixx]

You don't keep losing skills if you die back to back because the first death gives you the "no skill loss" buff for 10(?) minutes, so you can keep throwing yourself at an enemy without worry as long as you have a portal or bed nearby.

As for the OP? Cry more.
When i first entered Ashlands my run & jump went from 100 to somewhere in the low 40's - and yet i still beat it after figuring out how stuff works and learning the enemies moves (and now they're at 100 again).

As Exodite-Dragon said skills in Valheim are nice to have, not required. If you want to stop losing them get good and stop dying.

[SyxtySyx]

The skill loss is meant to instill a bit of fear of dying. If there was no penalty for death, there would be less incentive to avoid death, and invite better strategies going forward.

There is a no skill drain period after dying, so you don't loose extra skill if you get into a death loop. As long as you have a spawn point near by or a portal, so you can get back to your tombstone in a reasonable time frame. If you aren't playing with the fore-mentioned strategies, you may want to add some logistics to your game play.

[SyxtySyx]

If you were to play this game with god mode activated, I bet it would become un-fun way faster than with skill drain activated.

[Veseljko]

You can lower death penalty to zero only by using devcommands.

Warning: using devcommands can ruin your experience because once you start using it, it will be difficult to stop 😅

“Setkey skillreductionrate 0”

This will lock your skill levels, but you will still lose progress between levels. Also, you need to do this every time you start the game. I don’t know why is that required. Some world keys will stay forever and some will reset each time you close the game.
To check your active keys and check if you set it correctly, type “listkeys”.

[IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII]

I understand the frustration. Even if you use ValheimPlus to increase skill gains, some of the skills take hours of grinding to increase past a certain level. For example, I did a deathless run with 3x experience and by the time I was finished with the game, my running skill was only up to 70, and most of my weapon skills were not over 50. Now if I had died I would've lost 5 of those levels on default settings.

Once you realize it takes you 1.6 million arrows to max out your archery skill you make peace with the fact that the developers are insane and skill gains are there just to give a false sense of progression, and you are never meant to really benefit from them.

[hardy_conrad]

Hmm. I use default settings but never really noticed skills drop when I die. Probably just not paying enough attention, heh.

[Pönnukaka]

Originally posted by hardy_conrad:

Hmm. I use default settings but never really noticed skills drop when I die. Probably just not paying enough attention, heh.

You do.

All in here:
https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/World_Modifiers#Death_Penalty

[Jack]

Originally posted by Parts:

running through ashlands with some buddies and frankly after lots of intense fights and deaths my ability to do anything other than run feels like ♥♥♥♥. i enjoy the building aspect of the game, made some nice keeps that aspect 10/10. the hey you died so lets spawn more enemies where you died after the fact as a ♥♥♥♥ you is infuriating. i spend ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hours on hours leveling up skills and then one wrong fight and im worse off. sick of that aspect of the game. Devs need to add break points where you dont reduce your skills once you get to a certain point. or you guys can just say skill issue and loose a player. what the ♥♥♥♥ ever rant over

wanna know what keeps my motivation after already playing through it multiple times? Mods :D you can change EVERYTHING about the game and even add new enemies and monsters

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by Exodite-Dragon:

You can't disable it entirely, no, but you can scale it down. Frankly, however, this sounds like a skill issue on OP's part, so I suppose he can uninstall at his leisure.

Skill levels in-game are far, far less important than overall experience with the game, and actual ability to play the game well. People put too much emphasis on them and hinge too much on what the numbers say.

Wrong. I mean player skill certainly matters a lot, but Bows for example fire up to 5x as fast, for 1/8th of the stamina per shot and deal over 2.4x damage, or over 16x damage-per-stamina when the skill is maxed out compared to at 0. That kind of difference isn't something that can be readily compensated by "gitting gud".

Other weapons are less extreme, but with 2.4x damage at max skill, which I believe also includes Stagger damage, the difference between high skill values and low is absolutely huge.

(edited because I misremembered the damage multiplier, it's +141% I thought it was +171%

[HunApo]

Originally posted by Sotanaht:

Originally posted by Exodite-Dragon:

You can't disable it entirely, no, but you can scale it down. Frankly, however, this sounds like a skill issue on OP's part, so I suppose he can uninstall at his leisure.

Skill levels in-game are far, far less important than overall experience with the game, and actual ability to play the game well. People put too much emphasis on them and hinge too much on what the numbers say.

Wrong. I mean player skill certainly matters a lot, but Bows for example fire up to 5x as fast, for 1/8th of the stamina per shot and deal almost 3x damage, or over 20x damage-per-stamina when the skill is maxed out compared to at 0. That kind of difference isn't something that can be readily compensated by "gitting gud".

Oh but it can.
Frankly, you dont need any skill level to beat the game, even on hard difficulty.
Sure, higher level skills are making things easier, but that's pretty much it.
Making things easier, nothing more, nothing less.

[Tomiro]

Originally posted by SyxtySyx:

The skill loss is meant to instill a bit of fear of dying. If there was no penalty for death, there would be less incentive to avoid death, and invite better strategies going forward.

You still have to do a corpse run to get your stuff back, so it's not without penalty.
And the 10-minute grace timer after dying, actually incentivizes you to yolo more, when fighting a difficult boss. In this case dying 20 times to a boss, can lead to less skill loss, that only dying a few times.