Wind direction

[Unthinkable]

Why is it that when I'm sailing in a boat, the wind is 80% always blowing in my face? Why are you being so cruel to us?

[Suzaku]

I despise how the wind works while sailing. It's amazing that no matter what direction you choose to go in, it's almost always blowing directly against you. After dozens of hours of that nonsense, I just downloaded a mod that is basically perma-Moder's power.

[knighttemplar1960]

Wind speed and direction is tied to specific day and time by the code. If it weren't all you would have to do to trick the wind is start off sailing in the opposite direction from that which you wish to go.

What you are describing is observation bias. You remember the 25% of the time the wind is directly in front of you because its annoying and forget the other 75% of the time when its with you.

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Wind speed and direction is tied to specific day and time by the code. If it weren't all you would have to do to trick the wind is start off sailing in the opposite direction from that which you wish to go.

What you are describing is observation bias. You remember the 25% of the time the wind is directly in front of you because its annoying and forget the other 75% of the time when its with you.

I really wish I could believe this. My observation is that it's against me 100% of the time, regardless of where I want to go. No way in Helheim could the game possibly have the wind pre-programmed to blow in a certain direction on certain days, and that being against the player 100% of the time.

[Veseljko]

What Knighttemplar said is true. The wind is hardcoded into the game. All the weather conditions are.
Check it here and test it. https://jerekuusela.github.io/valheim-weather/
All you need to know is which day it is.

[Exodite-Dragon]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Wind speed and direction is tied to specific day and time by the code. If it weren't all you would have to do to trick the wind is start off sailing in the opposite direction from that which you wish to go.

What you are describing is observation bias. You remember the 25% of the time the wind is directly in front of you because its annoying and forget the other 75% of the time when its with you.

I really wish I could believe this. My observation is that it's against me 100% of the time, regardless of where I want to go. No way in Helheim could the game possibly have the wind pre-programmed to blow in a certain direction on certain days, and that being against the player 100% of the time.

Man, you are usually more level-headed than this. I promise the wind is not trying to spite you. The direction/weather/etc. are all pre-programmed regardless of map seed, it's true.

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by Exodite-Dragon:

Man, you are usually more level-headed than this. I promise the wind is not trying to spite you. The direction/weather/etc. are all pre-programmed regardless of map seed, it's true.

I know. But I'm at a point that it occurs with such consistency, you could literally show me the lines in the code proving that the wind is predetermined, and my only honest response would have to be "Ok. Wind is still screwing me at every turn."

Like, I'll pick a day to go find a new biome, thinking "I'll head west today and see what's out there.", and not get 50 feet off the shore before the wind decides to blow to the east. So I think "Ok, west is out. Guess I'll head north." and sail north for about a minute as I slip between 2 islands and then... the wind blows from the north. Because I'm surrounded on both sides by land, I either paddle against the wind, or turn around and head south. If I decide to paddle, the wind will not change for at least 10 minutes. Once I've passed any island and can finally turn, the wind will then turn again to blow right in my face. If I turn south, I'll have to cover the area I've already traveled, and juuuust as I finally reach new waters, the wind whips around and blows from the south, ruining my travel plans yet again.

This happens literally 100% of the time. It's out of control. It can't be a coincidence. This is the only system in any game I've ever played that feels like it's specifically designed to make simple water travel the most infuriating task ever.

This is my one pathetic hill to die on.

[ling.speed]

The faster we move the more wind turns to face us, because by moving we are generating our own anti wind (the effect is called apparent wind). Its a bit exaggerated in the game due to gamified efficiency of sails.

While this cant explain wind fighting us completely, it does make it much more common to have even small wind change look annoying.
The only way out would be to slow all the boats up or speed the wind significantly.

Another important effect is that the more difficult the winds are the longer we spend in them due to lower average speed. This means that even if wind was rotating around us at constant rate we'd spend majority of the trip in bad wind. In game this is multiplied by the fact that we are often chained to a ever changing directions due to landmasses. And its just easier to remember the long time we spent in bad situations especially since they happen often. While good wind is drown in situations where its not needed or even against us (like side wind in tight passes).

I have been frustrated with this just like Suzaku, many times, but ultimately its just our brain being dumb (like with optical illusions etc), and the bad effect disappears when being scrutinized.


ps: Also if there were hidden parameters included in creation of the weather plan, we could have a higher chance of bad wind happening.

For example if the wind was limited in how often a completele 180 can happen when going across biomes or time. It would make it more common to get from a bad situation to another bad one. Ah statistics :)

later edit: yep checked the first 10 days and its wind direction is faaar from random. I would not say its built against the player, but it might end up working like it in practice.

[Exodite-Dragon]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Originally posted by Exodite-Dragon:

Man, you are usually more level-headed than this. I promise the wind is not trying to spite you. The direction/weather/etc. are all pre-programmed regardless of map seed, it's true.

I know. But I'm at a point that it occurs with such consistency, you could literally show me the lines in the code proving that the wind is predetermined, and my only honest response would have to be "Ok. Wind is still screwing me at every turn."

Like, I'll pick a day to go find a new biome, thinking "I'll head west today and see what's out there.", and not get 50 feet off the shore before the wind decides to blow to the east. So I think "Ok, west is out. Guess I'll head north." and sail north for about a minute as I slip between 2 islands and then... the wind blows from the north. Because I'm surrounded on both sides by land, I either paddle against the wind, or turn around and head south. If I decide to paddle, the wind will not change for at least 10 minutes. Once I've passed any island and can finally turn, the wind will then turn again to blow right in my face. If I turn south, I'll have to cover the area I've already traveled, and juuuust as I finally reach new waters, the wind whips around and blows from the south, ruining my travel plans yet again.

This happens literally 100% of the time. It's out of control. It can't be a coincidence. This is the only system in any game I've ever played that feels like it's specifically designed to make simple water travel the most infuriating task ever.

This is my one pathetic hill to die on.

Hey, that's okay. We all got something, right?

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Originally posted by Exodite-Dragon:

Man, you are usually more level-headed than this. I promise the wind is not trying to spite you. The direction/weather/etc. are all pre-programmed regardless of map seed, it's true.

I know. But I'm at a point that it occurs with such consistency, you could literally show me the lines in the code proving that the wind is predetermined, and my only honest response would have to be "Ok. Wind is still screwing me at every turn."

Like, I'll pick a day to go find a new biome, thinking "I'll head west today and see what's out there.", and not get 50 feet off the shore before the wind decides to blow to the east. So I think "Ok, west is out. Guess I'll head north." and sail north for about a minute as I slip between 2 islands and then... the wind blows from the north. Because I'm surrounded on both sides by land, I either paddle against the wind, or turn around and head south. If I decide to paddle, the wind will not change for at least 10 minutes. Once I've passed any island and can finally turn, the wind will then turn again to blow right in my face. If I turn south, I'll have to cover the area I've already traveled, and juuuust as I finally reach new waters, the wind whips around and blows from the south, ruining my travel plans yet again.

This happens literally 100% of the time. It's out of control. It can't be a coincidence. This is the only system in any game I've ever played that feels like it's specifically designed to make simple water travel the most infuriating task ever.

This is my one pathetic hill to die on.

[conspiracy theory]
Are you left handed? The devs programmed the winds to annoy left handed players and help right handed players because they have an irrational hatred of left handers. Try switching hands. (Vice versa if you are right handed).
[/conspiracy]

No, really it is just observation bias. As a (now retired) engineer we were taught how to look for and filter out of our data as much observation bias as humanly possible. You remember the times the wind is against you and it annoys you and you forget when the wind is with you because you feel that's how it always should be.

If you were to record wind direction and changes every time you sail and gather lots of data you could see and eliminate the observation bias in your own thought process.

Or you are just possessed with anti-luck and you should never ever buy lottery tickets.

[katsuragi]

Originally posted by Unthinkable:

The wind hates me

Originally posted by Suzaku:

The wind hates me

IKR? 75% of all possible directions it could blow would be favorable yet no matter where you try and sail, it will change to that 25% that is no help at all.

TRUST ME I know the wind hates us.

[Cap'n Bells]

or learn to sail... its called "tacking" 75% of the time the wind assists me cos i know how to sail

[Ashley]

Meanwhile I just had a journey today like close to half way across the map where the wind was 100% of the time in my favor. Happens. And yeah weather is tied to day and all that.

[WallaceTheSane]

This is why I'm ridiculously ecstatic that my map seed has the first 5 biomes, with no sailing necessary. Not only that, but it has a Maypole a somewhat decent distant from spawn. I hate using mods for some reason, so I just use open portals. I play solo anyhow, so I'm not too concerned with it. When I was playing an earlier seed, I had everything baseline, and it took me forever to try and sail around due to wind being a nightmare.

[katsuragi]

Originally posted by Cap'n Bells:

or learn to sail... its called "tacking" 75% of the time the wind assists me cos i know how to sail

if the wind is blowing straight from the direction you want to go, you'll make more progress faster by just setting it to oar than you will by trying to tack left and right.

In real life, tacking is better because you don't have an immortal undead viking who can work the oar like a champ forever without breaking a sweat.

[Draconis]

I tried tacking in valheim quite a few times and I can confirm that it does not make you faster than rowing when the wind comes from right in front of you.
The best thing you can do is to change your direction until the point at which you can use the sail again - and hope the wind changes it's direction in time.

Well, that way you sometimes find oaks, traders, fuling villages etc without actually looking for them.

Sometimes, when I am in the mood for it, I just sail a different direction, following the wind and see if I can discover a different path to my destination.