Does anybody actually like the Ashlands?

[Dregora]

Because i've been playing with a friend in the Ashlands for about a day now and I can safely say it's genuinely one of the most unfun biomes.

Constantly spawning enemies, like an insane amount. They're not hard in particular, but the sheer number makes stamina management an actual nightmare. In the most unfun way, even with lingering stam potions and you name it.

It's dark as hell, no matter if it's day or night. Nights are horrible. You can't chop down a tree before they ''randomly'' walk exactly towards where you are. There is absolutely no way this is all random. I'm convinced they know where the player are and ''randomly'' wander towards it.

And yes I know there are spawning stones and we clear all of them.

Sailing through the spikes in the water is a nightmare too. And they knew, otherwise they'd never have made the next ship a huge pos, knowing full well nagivating is a nightmare, once again not in a fun way.

This isn't ''difficult'' anymore, this is just annoying the player the best you can. In the most unfun way.


I love difficulty, I love souls like type games, adore them. But when you use stamina as a management resource but then throw endless mobs at players that makes this a gigantic pain, you're not doing it right.

[glass zebra]

Enemies being being made aware of players chopping down trees was a thing since meadows.

You don't really have to fight most of the enemies in Ashlands. Twitchers do hardly anything, Archers miss all the time and warriors just leave combat if you walk away from them. I personally found stamina too ridicuously high in number and reg for Ashlands compared to basically the rest of the game, especially since the new weapons do not cost more stamina for the first time, you get items that reduce stamina cost further and usually have high weapon skill at that point and the enemies are just so squishy, especially with the new lightning weapons. You also don't really have to run or jump much and the changed feather cape made that even cheaper than before if you choose to e.g. jump onto a rock to escape enemies or reg Eitr.. or over them.

It is definitely not fun for me to play though and it is the update I dropped the earliest so far. You get everything for free just by going through POIs, enemies are both weak and kill each other, too many items and food added to make choices interesting and new additions that make the rest of the game obsolete. I don't even want to think about what they did with fortresses after they had Fuling villages and Dverger possts. You jump in, kill the spawners, jump out and then pick off the enemies, while they mostly just look at you doing all that. Why would I ever shoot rocks at the walls for a long time or open the front gate with a ram so they can swarm me? Sure because it was probably designed that way, but it is just so much slower and inefficient while also costing resources and is Flametal gated.

[Vexov]

A number of problems.

1) Food needs to change so HP and stam stay max, at least until flash. Sadly the devs seem way too stubborn to ever change this stupid system. We start losing Max HP and stamina the moment we finish eating. By the time we can eat again we've already lost HALF our max HP and stamina.

2) Stamina needs a freaking change. Changing this to +50% regen felt so much better and fair for ashlands. Combining it with stam regen mead felt great. Why do we have no food effecting regen of stam. All we have is a giant bar that slowly regens. Problem is Ashlands is basically NEVER ENDING HORDES. It was crap in Mistlands and it is just unfair in Ashlands. It is getting to the point you probably need to stand there doing nothing for a full minute before you can turn around and make 3 FRACKING SWINGS.

Ashlands. This place is endless frustrating BS.
* Farming melt requires some unique methods of building a bridge. OH WATCH OUT THERE IS THE FLAME BALL THAT KNOCKS YOU OFF INTO THE LAVA!!!. Make sure to build a wall too.

* Never ending hordes. Kill that spawner?, too bad still gonna be hordes. Not enough getting hordes of Ash-Skeletons?, here is a Morgan, 3 birds, a Fall Valkyrie, 3 dogs.

* Farming. NEVER ENDING HORDES.

* It is so damn dark even tho there is lava everywhere. Night is near pitch black.

* Taming. It is terrible. Sadly very much needed cause for some magical reason these beasts make you immune to heat and they are immune to lava. They kill one another basically tho, so you kind of need to tame them 1 at a time. I imagine a horde would try to kill them... probably out in the lava while you can't do anything except regret relying on them instead of the a complicated bridge.

* Farming Metal. Is just painful. The deaths suffered figuring out how to deal with this. It is rare for me to die. So facing this well crafted cheesy bs death trap really pissed me off.



Also. Fk set bonuses FOREVER. Why are they crapping on heavy armor?. Heat resistant is kind of garbage. You figure Flametal would give you fire resistance and i guess heat resistance to a high level. All it does is basically give you from 1 second to now 2 seconds until you start burning near lava.

Mistlands was terrible terrain. And the devs decide to make Ashlands just frustrating if not just so annoying.

Where is our Frost gems?. Oh, of course we would get that. Mace + Frost would decimate the hordes.

[glass zebra]

Origineel geplaatst door Vexov:

1) Food needs to change so HP and stam stay max, at least until flash. Sadly the devs seem way too stubborn to ever change this stupid system. We start losing Max HP and stamina the moment we finish eating. By the time we can eat again we've already lost HALF our max HP and stamina.

You've lost 20% by the time you can eat it again.

[Goury]

Origineel geplaatst door glass zebra:

Enemies being being made aware of players chopping down trees was a thing since meadows.

And it was and still is annoying for the sake of annoyance and doesn't add anything to the game.

Origineel geplaatst door glass zebra:

You don't really have to fight most of the enemies

That's the point!
The game is not hard, it is just not fun.

[Draconis]

It took a while, but meanwhile I like the ashlands.

Felt exactly like you in the beginning, but I was somehow not able to totally quit it. So I started to try different things.

First of all, I never stayed there at night. Always had an eye towards the sun.
Second, I looked for a putrid hole to get cores for the stone portal. Stone cutter and shield generator were already there, beachhead somewhat secured with walls and spikes. Worked better than expected. Just had to repair the spikes regurlarly, what I did from inside (through the windows of grausten walls).

Just like for you, stamina became my major problem. More than getting hit. So I tried light armor for my first time, because the set reduced stamina use in several situations. Added the ashen cape as soon as I could and hat -30% stamina cost on attacks. From then on I could make good use of the demolisher even on waves of enemies.

Next came the shield, then my main weapon, then the bow... in the meantime I learnt to parry Morgens perfectly (you can totally stunlock them), learnt fighting valkyries and some more or less "exotical" tactics.
An example: I had a group of trees a bit off my beachhead, always with the problem of half an army on my feet as soon as I started to chop wood. So I took a stone cutter and a workbench with me, built a simple grausten wall along my way until I reached the trees. Didn't think it would work. I thought they would just tear down the wall. But no... they take the long long way around it, and I could chop my wood in relative peace.

I also learnt to take it slow but steady. Pulling foes from afar, fight them, then go ahead. Always with an emergency portal nearby. Later I used some kind of mobile outpost...
workbench, shield generator, stone cutter, stone portal and walls around.

Taming asksvins can provide three health foods quite easily. But I did that rather late, becaus I did not feel that sure how to manage that in ashlands. Then I discovered that staying in sneak mode while taming and having the asksvin to tame within an earth wall was totally enough. Built a second earth-cage for the tamed ones, after my first tamed ran off to fight a starred warrior - you can imagine who won...

So in the end I began to like the ashlands. I started to adapt to the constant mob spawns, secured some portal huts (of grausten) near some ruins with fern and berries, linked those up with portals... built some landbridges out into the coast to lure in some voltures (eggs for stamina, meat for health) and so on...

Step by step, but I admit, the first few days I was like "they can't be serious about that". I even wrote a negative review because I felt the ashlands totally out of balance, especially compared to mistlands. But as I found an argument against all my points to critisize in the meantime, I consider to change my review.

I'll neither troll anyone who struggles there, nor tell anyone to "get good" (getting good is only half the way here anyways). But if somebody needs advice I really need a specific question because I learnt quite a lot about the ashlands, and lots of that is actually little details.

[autumndragonfalling]

Yes.

[Ammikaameri]

Yep. Only changes needed are a bit more content with the fortressses and tuning of the drops of enemies like the fallen valkyries. You only need a few of their drops compared so they should drop something else too.

[cloverdew]

I don't like it at all. We play the game with friends and the previous biomes were more or less interesting, but Ashland simply discourages us from playing the game. For more than eight hours we did not find the fortress, although we explored a large area. We found only one ore vein from which we were able to collect only twenty pieces of ore.
But we constantly die due to the completely inadequate spawning of monsters and their aggro radius.
We are thinking about dropping the game until better times.

[Red]

I don't mind it. The area gives me vibes from the movie Constantine.

However,
This update is completely under-cooked.
1) Massive performance issues in Ashlands - constant stuttering.
2) Can't move more than 10 meters without filling the inventory with rocks.
3) Aside from going fort to fort, in search of gems, there is nothing to do.


P.S. For those who struggle - try going magic only. It feels slow in the beginning, but once you get yourself a Staff of the Wild, this biome becomes a non issue. No amount of enemies can withstand the tentacle spam.

[Nerevar]

yes. i would actually guess way more players like it than dislike it otherwise they would have made huge changes already but nothing happend. mistlands was overall more controversial back then and got nerfed within 10 days of its live release aswell.

since now world modifiers exist now which the devs added precisely so they dont have to nerf anything anymore in future updates as players can freely lower thier difficulty to thier own level of player capability.

i think ashlands lacks the POLISH of mistlands. and no dungeon crawling is a real bummer after mistlands mines. but well. what can we do. its done now. i hope deep north has cool new dungeons again and comes with another difficult but fair concept of a new type.

[Steve]

Yeah, I love the place. It's pure hell. It was even more challenging to beat than Mistlands.

I'm hoping Deep North is so difficult it makes me question whether I'm too old to be playing.

[Zombits]

In Ashland , you barely have time to check your map.

There is only one safe spot to breath, the putrid holes. That's where I set my portals while exploring.

But, crafting a workbench will alarm and spawn everything.

Not exactly a biome to relax

[Nerevar]

Origineel geplaatst door Just Steve:

Yeah, I love the place. It's pure hell. It was even more challenging to beat than Mistlands.

I'm hoping Deep North is so difficult it makes me question whether I'm too old to be playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJL8L9sYMTs

thats deep north footage^^

[Soma]

Origineel geplaatst door cloverdew:

I don't like it at all. We play the game with friends and the previous biomes were more or less interesting, but Ashland simply discourages us from playing the game. For more than eight hours we did not find the fortress, although we explored a large area. We found only one ore vein from which we were able to collect only twenty pieces of ore.
But we constantly die due to the completely inadequate spawning of monsters and their aggro radius.
We are thinking about dropping the game until better times. :BFSkull:

Better times are coming, obviously there wil be patches when vacations over. The list of bugs is 5x mistlands. Ashlands is broken. Everyone including devs know this. Mechanics, RNG, performance, crossplay.......... I expect 2 more major patches before end of the year with fixes. There needs to be catch-up done for a rushed biome.

Until then, since it is early access, its fine to change your review according to how you currently feel about the game. Our review is really the only way we can express ourselves without white knights coming out of the woodwork. Change your review as many times as you like. Your post is spot on, dont let it get wasted here in the forums.

[cloverdew]

Origineel geplaatst door Soma:

Better times are coming, obviously there wil be patches when vacations over. The list of bugs is 5x mistlands. Ashlands is broken. Everyone including devs know this. Mechanics, RNG, performance, crossplay.......... I expect 2 more major patches before end of the year with fixes. There needs to be catch-up done for a rushed biome.

Until then, since it is early access, its fine to change your review according to how you currently feel about the game. Our review is really the only way we can express ourselves without white knights coming out of the woodwork. Change your review as many times as you like. Your post is spot on, dont let it get wasted here in the forums.

Thank you, I also think that the developers will fix it over time. I'm just upset that I convinced my friends to take time off from work to try new content in Valheim.
I had to make a choice in favor of V Rising.