What's the deal with the monsters in the Ashlands?

[MacKaris]

In all the previous biomes you could at least have a bit of a breather after you killed a randomly spawned monster, and you could even move around for a bit without necessarily running into another one immediately. In the Ashlands the philosophy seems completely different: first of all getting any kind of a foothold on the biome was a MASSIVE chore, and when you venture some 50m away from the base you're met with a literally endless rampage of 2-star charred warriors and morgens. If you manage to kill one, another one (or two) will spawn out of nowhere. Apparently you're not even meant to kill them, you're just supposed to try and outrun them and search for something that will somehow turn the tide, or what's the idea there?

[adritheonly]

Originally posted by Capybarasan:

The fact they had to nerf the number of enemies once before proves it. It's still bad for new players and will certainly put new players off from continuing if Mistlands already hasn't. You seriously need to stop protecting the devs. Look at all the complaints about Mistlands and Ashlands. There's so many, but I guess they're all wrong and they all just suck, huh?

Stop looking at these comments as insults towards your precious game. It's feedback, not matter harsh they are, they're feedback.

You seriously need to stop defending your inability to play this game and move on. The devs don't need protection, they're doing just fine. New players won't find themselves in Ashlands or Mistlands or even the Swamps unless they're suicidal or just plain stupid. You are simply whining now.

[Exodite-Dragon]

Originally posted by Capybarasan:

Originally posted by adritheonly:

Yep! Pretty much accept to add, is everything that you struggle with poor game design? Gauging by how many continue to enjoy this game, how do you judge? Do you and only you decide what is "poor game design"? Tsk!

The fact they had to nerf the number of enemies once before proves it. It's still bad for new players and will certainly put new players off from continuing if Mistlands already hasn't. You seriously need to stop protecting the devs. Look at all the complaints about Mistlands and Ashlands. There's so many, but I guess they're all wrong and they all just suck, huh?

Yes, actually. All those people do, in fact, suck at the game. I've seen the way the average person plays this - how they fail to prepare adequately, how they piggishly stick to a single 'build' instead of considering other weapon and attack options, how they treat the combat like a button-mashing aRPG instead of employing methodical tactics, how they don't upgrade their gear at all, how they don't learn enemy attack patterns, and most especially how many of them throw in the towel at the first stiff obstacle.

Yes. People suck at this game. This complaint spree you're on is not unique to Valheim; these kinds of threads get brought up on every game discussion forum for virtually every game on Steam regardless of how difficult (or not) a game might be. A lot of people who think they know what they're doing and consider themselves good at video games are far, far below the skill level they imagine themselves to be at.

Get better at this game or find something else to play. If you don't want to do either, turn the difficulty settings down so you never need to worry about being challenged by a piece of software.

[Capybarasan]

Originally posted by Exodite-Dragon:

Originally posted by Capybarasan:

The fact they had to nerf the number of enemies once before proves it. It's still bad for new players and will certainly put new players off from continuing if Mistlands already hasn't. You seriously need to stop protecting the devs. Look at all the complaints about Mistlands and Ashlands. There's so many, but I guess they're all wrong and they all just suck, huh?

Yes, actually. All those people do, in fact, suck at the game. I've seen the way the average person plays this - how they fail to prepare adequately, how they piggishly stick to a single 'build' instead of considering other weapon and attack options, how they treat the combat like a button-mashing aRPG instead of employing methodical tactics, how they don't upgrade their gear at all, how they don't learn enemy attack patterns, and most especially how many of them throw in the towel at the first stiff obstacle.

Yes. People suck at this game. This complaint spree you're on is not unique to Valheim; these kinds of threads get brought up on every game discussion forum for virtually every game on Steam regardless of how difficult (or not) a game might be. A lot of people who think they know what they're doing and consider themselves good at video games are far, far below the skill level they imagine themselves to be at.

Get better at this game or find something else to play. If you don't want to do either, turn the difficulty settings down so you never need to worry about being challenged by a piece of software.

Jesus... no wonder development of this game isn't getting anywhere when they keep listening to people like you.

[Psojed]

Originally posted by Capybarasan:

Well this war is pretty bloody one sided.

It's bloody one-sided in the player's favor. As most games are.

Originally posted by Capybarasan:

It just makes it frustrating to progress through the zone until you unlock the flametal weapons and armour.

WTF are you talking about dude.
Rank 3 Carapace set is 108 armor. Rank 1 Flametal set is 114 armor. There's barely any difference.
Mistwalker is 75+58 = 133 damage. Nidhogg is 135 damage.

You're suggesting that 2 extra damage and ~5% extra armor somehow changes the game from "frustrating" to "not frustrating".

Originally posted by Capybarasan:

Maxing your skills also helps a ton here but good god leveling them is just a pain in the ass. If you die you lose points in ALL skills? Who thought this was a good idea? When they're also this vital to progress through this content?

Give us training dummies that quickly level up our weapon skills at least.

Skills are not vital to anything.
Had elemental magic lvl 10 when I started Ashlands. Didn't stop me from bombarding a spawner from safe distance. Didn't stop me from clearing a fort over the wall.

Mace skill was under 20, since I mained a spear this playthrough. Frostner works just fine in Ashlands.

Could you perhaps stop making up random excuses that have no basis in facts?

[Gal Kraft]

Feedback goes both ways. Some agree some don't. Happens to both positive and negative posts.

Again, though, if it's meant to feel like a war, more troops would be nice.

[blackphoenixx]

You can kill most of the fodder in 2-3 hits with upgraded mistland gear.
Just knowing how to use Demolisher or Himminafl makes you immune to 90% of the enemies in the biome, the others can be taken care of with the crossbow.

And don't even get started on magic. The staff of embers two-shots marksmen & twitchers with some elemental magic skill and doesn't do too badly against most other things either, the frost staff turns valkyries and asksvin into a joke fight. Voltures too but they are already a joke with their pitiful hp anyway.
And the bubble staff is basically immortality if you're not a complete failure at dodging attacks.

And once you get the staff of the wild and a trollstav the entire game becomes a joke in terms of difficulty, including the ashlands boss fight. Just have your fire-immune trolls fight him and resummon if one dies.

Ashlands PTB before the nerfs was great fun. Now it's lame, and still the whining continues. How much easier does it need to get?

[Capybarasan]

It's so funny to see so many people argue how Ashlands is actually a joke..... after you farm it and get all the gear and all the skills and all the weapons and all the armour and max out your skills then yeah... the zone's easy! Haha, you people are really something else.

[Chris]

I haven't played in a year and I was quite literally the best player of about two dozen that I knew of or played with, so the game was so easy for me that I had to use mods to make it harder and more interesting. I didn't necessarily have a problem with Mistlands other than the big grip being how much of a pain it is (and time involved) in getting what you need there. Though yea, it was definitely a bit asinine in several ways.

And reading this I'm thinking: yea that's stupid. They want people to go from an annoying area like Mistlands into spawn hell among other things? Doesn't make me want to start playing again. Not even me, when I liked the game so much and found it easy after the initial 30 hours or so.

Sounds like they need to rethink their implementation quite a lot.

[Landorf]

At least, Ashlands are different. I like it!
But yes, it's shocking. So no one will blame you for some dirty tricks like dual portals, pits (to shoot them from beneath), camping morgen mounds and castles and so on...

[Psojed]

LOL, it's as if using high ground isn't allowed or something.

Yesterday I cleared another fortress. It was a bit further away from my closest portal and in the middle of a lava field, so I put my new Stone portal to use and brought 2 iron bars for a Stonecutter. Close to the target fortress I raised ground in a square shape, plopped down a portal, workbench and stonecutter, and made a roof out of flat grausten floor tiles with 2x2 hole to get in and out. Easiest safespot :)

Also don't tell Capybarasan that Staff of Embers and Mistwalker are pre-Ashlands gear, let him cook.

[Mineralwasser]

Originally posted by Capybarasan:

It's so funny to see so many people argue how Ashlands is actually a joke..... after you farm it and get all the gear and all the skills and all the weapons and all the armour and max out your skills then yeah... the zone's easy! Haha, you people are really something else.

How hard is it? Find two dverger outposts. Let the ashlands handle the dvergers and get the first flametal to get the cauldron and blackforge upgrade. Improve the mistlands gear to another level. Now you have food and better armor/weapons to really get going. But hey, if you need millions and millions and millions of charred bones instead of doing this task for about 15-30 minutes that is your problem.

[Capybarasan]

Originally posted by Psojed:

LOL, it's as if using high ground isn't allowed or something.

Yesterday I cleared another fortress. It was a bit further away from my closest portal and in the middle of a lava field, so I put my new Stone portal to use and brought 2 iron bars for a Stonecutter. Close to the target fortress I raised ground in a square shape, plopped down a portal, workbench and stonecutter, and made a roof out of flat grausten floor tiles with 2x2 hole to get in and out. Easiest safespot :)

Also don't tell Capybarasan that Staff of Embers and Mistwalker are pre-Ashlands gear, let him cook.

I actually had Mistwalker. I got my bow to 100 skill so I could cheese pretty much everything in there with it. If you refuse to accept that Ashlands is still just a frustrating experience for new players you're being incredibly disingenuous and straight up delusional.

Again, try to stop feeling personally insulted about people saying a certain aspect of your favourite game is bad. Instead look at it as criticism and hope it gets fixed so that new players can have a better experience with the game and enjoy it in the same way you do now. Do you not want this game to be as successful as it can be?

[Psojed]

Originally posted by Capybarasan:

If you refuse to accept my personal opinion, you're being incredibly disingenuous and straight up delusional.

There, fixed it for you, in case you weren't clear on what you just wrote.

Originally posted by Capybarasan:

Again, try to stop feeling personally insulted about people saying a certain aspect of your favourite game is bad. Instead look at it as criticism and hope it gets fixed so that new players can have a better experience with the game and enjoy it in the same way you do now.

You somehow think the people that reply to comment on your opinions feel personally insulted? By telling you the game is easy and giving advice?

So far, you're the one attacking our opinions by namecalling us, trying to emotionally blackmail us with "don't you want this game to succeed?" and willfully ignoring posts that address your reasoning with facts (see post #19).

Sounds like you have some issues dude, and you're projecting them on others.
That's not how discussion works. If you want to discuss, drop the fallacies and leave your emotional baggage outside. Talk with facts, provide examples.

If you don't want to discuss this and you only want to state your opinion, then you already did. We read it, we commented on it, that's where it should end.

[MacKaris]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

You can kill most of the fodder in 2-3 hits with upgraded mistland gear.
Just knowing how to use Demolisher or Himminafl makes you immune to 90% of the enemies in the biome, the others can be taken care of with the crossbow.

And don't even get started on magic. The staff of embers two-shots marksmen & twitchers with some elemental magic skill and doesn't do too badly against most other things either, the frost staff turns valkyries and asksvin into a joke fight. Voltures too but they are already a joke with their pitiful hp anyway.
And the bubble staff is basically immortality if you're not a complete failure at dodging attacks.

And once you get the staff of the wild and a trollstav the entire game becomes a joke in terms of difficulty, including the ashlands boss fight. Just have your fire-immune trolls fight him and resummon if one dies.

Ashlands PTB before the nerfs was great fun. Now it's lame, and still the whining continues. How much easier does it need to get?

Care to elaborate a bit on this? Because I got the feeling with my (or rather our since we usually play as a team) upgraded mistlands gear it takes more like 20-30 hits to take down any of the fodder. Twitchers are relatively easy, just let them hit you, block it, then spray them with the frost staff while they're staggered. Also works with the marksmen, they are also vulnerable to simple melee damage. The warriors, however, especially the 1- or 2-star ones are just nigh indestructible. It takes a proper joint effort to take down even one, and where there's more than one (and there are because, hey, infinite spawning, how cool is that?!) then everyone will run out of eitr and stamina and can't take them out before a couple of more have spawned again. The Morgens are again a whole different thing, they take SO long to kill that there's no point even trying. Just run away and hope they despawn sooner or later. If they don't then lure them to some place where there are no other monsters and pump them with the crossbow for like 10 minutes.

So WHAT gear exactly takes the enemies down in 2-3 strikes and how do you make yourself immune to 90% of them using the demolisher or the himminalf?

[Psojed]

Demolisher (2h/mace) has knockback on hit and Himminafl (2h/polearm) secondary attack has high stagger value, so he's knocking them back or staggering them.

Frostner secondary attack also knocks back, but usually you can only hit 1-2 enemies. Meanwhile Demolisher and Himminafl have larger area of effect, so they can hit many enemies at once.

---

Googled some (solo) melee and ranged+melee kills of Ashlands enemies for you:

Charred Warrior (no star) - Frostner, kill with secondary attacks (3 hits, ~9 seconds)
https://youtu.be/VW3cc9rEXP8?t=86

Charred Twitcher (no star) - Mistwalker, kill with normal attacks (3 hits, 3 seconds)
https://youtu.be/VW3cc9rEXP8?t=99

Charred Warrior (1 star) - Spinesnap, sneak shot + Frostner, secondary attacks + some human errors on the way (7 attacks, ~27 seconds)
https://youtu.be/VW3cc9rEXP8?t=105

Charred Marksman - Parry and Mistwalker, kill with normal attack (1-2 hits)
https://youtu.be/VW3cc9rEXP8?t=165
(his blocking skill is 27 apparently)

Charred Spawner - Mistwalker, kill with normal attacks (7 hits, ~5 seconds)
https://youtu.be/VW3cc9rEXP8?t=184

Morgen (no star) - Parry and Frostner, kill with normal attacks (12 hits, ~40 seconds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WMpeHgOK5M

Morgen (no star) - Spinesnap, sneak shot + Parry and Mistwalker, kill with normal attacks (13 hits, ~30 seconds)
https://youtu.be/VW3cc9rEXP8?t=552

Voltures (no star) - Mistwalker, kill with normal attacks (1-3 hits)
https://youtu.be/VW3cc9rEXP8?t=253

Lava Blob - trigger self-destruct into Dodge
https://youtu.be/VW3cc9rEXP8?t=291

Asksvin (no star) - Spinesnap, sneak shot + Mistwalker normal attacks (6 hits)
https://youtu.be/VW3cc9rEXP8?t=320

Asksvin (no star) - Mistwalker normal attacks (7 hits)
https://youtu.be/VW3cc9rEXP8?t=378

Asksvin (1 star) - Mistwalker normal attacks + some clutch Dodging + several human errrors (17 hits, 1 minute)
https://youtu.be/VW3cc9rEXP8?t=393

Fallen Valkyrie - Spinesnap, sneak shot + 7 normal shots + Mistwalker, normal attack finish. Walks out of the spin attacks. (~12 hits, ~40 seconds)
https://youtu.be/VW3cc9rEXP8?t=669

---

PS: This channel has gameplay with various weapons in Ashlands, but already wears full Flametal set. He has videos with Himminafl, Silver Knife, Silver Sword, Flesh Rippers and Crystal Battleaxe. Also has a video on pre-nerf ashlands landing experience :)
https://www.youtube.com/@sittingforgetting9907/videos