An honest review of the Mistlands

[Syrian Engineer]

Opening words

After reading multiple posts and discussions about the state of the Mistlands i'd like to share my point of view with the community. While the Mistlands update brought a lot of the playerbase back to the game (including myself) i struggle to have fun within the new biome.

Of course previous posts already show that the community is very bipartisan on the new biome and both sides have their valid points.

Good changes

The Mistlands is, in my opinion, a logical expansion of the Valheim lore and gameplay-flow. It stays in line with the general progress curve in a world/character as it effectively requires one to defeat Yagluth atleast once to start producing Whisplights.
Magic weapons like staffs and the Dead Raiser are indeed a lot of fun but these weapons lack the needed "oomph" to justify their cost. But we will get to that later.
Sadly the good part of the mistlands update ends here for me.

The big problems

Moving your character is still a huge problem in Valheim. As is climbing uphill or descending downwards. The rough and jagged terrain of the mistlands make it difficult to traverse the land or borderline impossible. For my experience you cant climb a slope that is more steep than 20° which seems, to me atleast, laughable. Sadly most of the mistlands i uncovered to this point consist of these long drawn out slopes forcing you to sprint. Which in turn burns your valuable stamina. And no, stamina potions are not a good solution. Not at all. Sorry guys.

Additionaly the gear progression in the mistlands is horribly unbalanced. Upon entering a new stage of the game (i.e. after defeating a boss) the player is expected to grab new gear ASAP. In my experience the previous tier gear still holds up in the next biome, although you have to excert caution especially without Bonemass buff.
But in the mistlands things start to get ridiculous. To craft carapace armor the player has to: Find atleast 5 black cores in infested mines swarming with Seekers and Seeker Soldiers. Aquire atleast one Dvergr extractor und soft tissue. Yes these materials can be aquired by just having the NPCs fight each other which, in my opinion again, defeats the purpose of playing a game. I'd rather do something myself than watch Gjalls and Seeker Soldiers fighting Dvergers.

At this point the player aquired everything to craft carapace armor. Now he needs to farm 50 carapace, a bit of iron (easy) and refined eitr. For 18 additional armor if we are talking about level 1 armor pieces? I'm sorry but this is ridiculous and not worth it at all. I'd rather watch paint dry than farm all this stuff and get 18 armor while padded armor already gives me 90+ armor. Just so you dont have to look it up. Level 3 padded armor gives 30 armor per piece which is easily farmed. Carapace armor level 1 gives 32.

And dont get my started on the fog/mist and the whisplights. Please do something about this. The wisp torches are a joke if they are not one shot by a random Soldier or Gjall and the whisplights are horribly underperforming. In a biome with enemies able to kill me in 2 to 3 blows i expect to see further than 10 meters.
Either give me a mead which removes the fog or overhaul it. As a suggestion i'd propose to make it gradually return over the course of 2 to 3 days after passing through it with a whisplight or something like that.

Last problem for me are the new carapace and magic weapons. While it is very refreshing to see new weapons and the addition of magic i again find them very lackluster. Regarding the general strength of Seeker (Soldiers) we need something to deal with them somewhat quickly. I dont say we need one shotting or anything. But fighting one Soldier for 2 to 3 minutes by parrying and hitting is just tedious and gets boring very fast.
Just as an example i want to discuss the Dead Raiser. While i acknowledge that the only really expensive part of it is the refined eitr i simply expect more from a late late-game weapon draining 40% of my current hp while i have to use 2 Eitr foods. 1 skeleton at a time which just dies if it doesnt get stuck in on a pebble, really?

I left out other general problems of Valheim like attack areas because other OPs already pointed that out which of course only gets worse with the very uneven terrain of the mistlands

Dont get me wrong, i am playing with a friend and we will probably finish this mess by defeating the Queen somewhat soonish. But a pleasant experience with fun gameplay-flow and somewhat rewarding feedback from the game is to be missed from the mistlands.

I hope Irongate somewhat reviews this patch and listens to the concerns of the community and tries to fix atleast the most glaring problems we can see right now.

As a last note i do acknowledge that the difficulty up to bonemass or even Moder is relatively low but the spike in enemy spawnrate and capability is in no relation with the rest of the game progression. Some might say that is the point of the biome, to be difficult at any point of progress, to which i can say "yeah sure" but then please Irongate, adjust the previous biomes aswell.

[DeMasked]

I beat Mistlands with fully upgraded padded helm / leggings and root chest piece for the pierce resistance. Only made the giant crossbow, giant iron sledge war hammer and the dead raiser because I had 2 green skulls. Didn't bother wasting time on any of the other items and mostly enjoyed making a base in the plains outside mistlands using marble and stone.

The mist mechanic sucks. The terrain sucks. Finding dungeons sucks. Finding Dverger Forts is easy but getting reliable certain drops from them that are required for progression is rng which kinda sucks. The monsters are meh when it comes to balance. Frostner, Iron Sledge and Drauger Bow pulled me through Mistlands with little difficulty - mostly died from upsetting the Dvergers and maybe once to the flying butt.

I felt like the game was cheesing me with the artificial difficulty increase when it pertains to the mist and terrain making exploration more of an annoyance then exciting or intriguing so I eventually stopped looking for dungeons / magical flesh blobs and just cheesed the boss using the Mistland's version of iron sledge weapon (good job developers on that arena design lol).

I think the best thing that Mistlands offers is the new building material pretty much because the environmental design just undercuts any amount of enjoyment I can find in a biome that was just released.

Here is my base after killing discount Duriel
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2902746991

[Leftcoast]

I have similar feelings. While I do enjoy a good challenge the mistlands has just too much frustration and not enough reward.

I feel like all the downsides already mentioned might just need a small adjustment. Just take the edge off and it would be much better.

My biggest wants:

- Tone back the mist a touch. This would be nice for aesthetic reasons too, I would like to be able to see more of the mistlands as it's a cool place.

- Stamina needs an upgrade, too easy to burn it all in very short amounts of time.

- Make materials less grindy to attain. At least to get the basics going with the new
mistlands items.

[yankeegunner]

I agree with most of the above. Mistlands just isn't as much fun... and I have played through 5 times prior to Mist...

[Sleepy]

Difficulty and Mist are fine. Wisps and morning clear up the mist just fine. If you want the mist gone in a wide area: use wisp torches.

The terrain is nice. I love having to navigate this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. It is a very welcome change of pace from sprinting across open terrain.

Stamina is the one thing they keep ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with and making worse. The problem is the glacial regen rate when you don't have the rested bonus. I get that they're trying to limit exploration range, but this is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ feeling way they could be doing this out of anything that's already in the game. Someone at Iron Gate really needs to play Dragon's Dogma and look at how they accomplished the same thing, where they make the player race the sun primarily due to environmental/world gen factors, and not from gimping the player. I love this concept, but the execution of it in Valheim is easily the worst part of the game.

My suggestion for this: Make the Rested regen rate the normal regen rate, cut the rested bonus time to 1/3 of what it is and make it give a 15% movespeed and healing tick rate buff instead. Rebalance the block stamina cost a little, and leave other costs as is. Then dial up night time difficulty with a few extra spicy mobs that avoid light and Meadows.

[BenchWarmer]

Thanks for making such a detailed and well-thought-out review.