Roaming Mistlands before getting Wisp

[Chiller]

Has anyone managed to roam far into mistlands without beating 5th boss? If so, can you tell of your adventures? Did you manage to find a mine to get cores pre-mistlands?

The furthest I have roamed was a few dozen steps to grab some yggdrassil wood for pickaxe,
but I think the visibility is not much worse than when wearing a wisplight, especially when you zoom in and keep attetion to the sounds (sneaking helps too). I also managed to find a petrified skull, a couple of roots, some dvergr ruins (but no mine) and a few seekers that I managed with the help of nearby mountain wolves (should bring my own pack next time). Hopefully I wasn't gjall'd b4 getting to safety again (was wearing root set :)).

[Toutius Sextius]

beat boss. makes world of difference

[Chiller]

Originally posted by geezer:

beat boss. makes world of difference

This subject is about the challenge of NOT beating the boss.

[Nerevar]

i actually did that on my very first mistlands experience since i couldnt find yags altar in my (back then) new world and i simply didnt know any better.

it was done by people. plenty of times. people havent just roamed in. they finished mistlands without the whisp. its less hard than people think if you zoom the camera in a fair bit.

you definitly have to take it slow. really slow.

watch some speedrunners like threadmenaece. they do that all the time.

in terms of tediousness of skipping the intended boss progression i would rank it like this :

eik : slow but possible

elder : VERY tedious to skip.

bonemass : VERY easy. probaly the eaiest boss to skip of them all. sadly has the most useful power by far in exchange ^^

moder : straight up not possible to be skipped currently. youre hardgated without a blast furnace down the road.

yagluth: 3nd easiest boss to skip. harder to find your way in mistlands but far from impossible.

queen : 2rd boss in order of easy skip difficulty as its a 1 time trip you have to pull off only. if you can reach the outer spires before your ship breaks you will make it. alot easier with the feather cape than without. downside : only reason for early visit is the stone portal. you NEED the forge and tables from mistlands to make anything from the gear.

i wrote a post about mistlands without whisp back then iirc.


it was pretty tense and atmosphereic. youll quickly learn to use the rock spires to get above the mist to get a rough idea of your surroundings.

[Chiller]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

i actually did that on my very first mistlands experience since i couldnt find yags altar in my (back then) new world and i simply didnt know any better.

it was done by people. plenty of times. people havent just roamed in. they finished mistlands without the whisp. its less hard than people think if you zoom the camera in a fair bit.

you definitly have to take it slow. really slow.

watch some speedrunners like threadmenaece. they do that all the time.

in terms of tediousness of skipping the intended boss progression i would rank it like this :

eik : slow but possible

elder : VERY tedious to skip.

bonemass : VERY easy. probaly the eaiest boss to skip of them all. sadly has the most useful power by far in exchange ^^

moder : straight up not possible to be skipped currently. youre hardgated without a blast furnace down the road.

yagluth: 3nd easiest boss to skip. harder to find your way in mistlands but far from impossible.

queen : 2rd boss in order of easy skip difficulty as its a 1 time trip you have to pull off only. if you can reach the outer spires before your ship breaks you will make it. alot easier with the feather cape than without. downside : only reason for early visit is the stone portal. you NEED the forge and tables from mistlands to make anything from the gear.

i wrote a post about mistlands without whisp back then iirc.


it was pretty tense and atmosphereic. youll quickly learn to use the rock spires to get above the mist to get a rough idea of your surroundings.

Very informative points here. Thanks.
In short, the game offers some interesting alternative ways to progress if you like though at a cost (designed very carefully).
I just don't remember if mines have Mist inside them (I think not), so if you get inside you can start facerolling ;)

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by Backdoorer_Haldir:

Originally posted by Nerevar:

i actually did that on my very first mistlands experience since i couldnt find yags altar in my (back then) new world and i simply didnt know any better.

it was done by people. plenty of times. people havent just roamed in. they finished mistlands without the whisp. its less hard than people think if you zoom the camera in a fair bit.

you definitly have to take it slow. really slow.

watch some speedrunners like threadmenaece. they do that all the time.

in terms of tediousness of skipping the intended boss progression i would rank it like this :

eik : slow but possible

elder : VERY tedious to skip.

bonemass : VERY easy. probaly the eaiest boss to skip of them all. sadly has the most useful power by far in exchange ^^

moder : straight up not possible to be skipped currently. youre hardgated without a blast furnace down the road.

yagluth: 3nd easiest boss to skip. harder to find your way in mistlands but far from impossible.

queen : 2rd boss in order of easy skip difficulty as its a 1 time trip you have to pull off only. if you can reach the outer spires before your ship breaks you will make it. alot easier with the feather cape than without. downside : only reason for early visit is the stone portal. you NEED the forge and tables from mistlands to make anything from the gear.

i wrote a post about mistlands without whisp back then iirc.


it was pretty tense and atmosphereic. youll quickly learn to use the rock spires to get above the mist to get a rough idea of your surroundings.

Very informative points here. Thanks.
In short, the game offers some interesting alternative ways to progress if you like though at a cost (designed very carefully).
I just don't remember if mines have Mist inside them (I think not), so if you get inside you can start facerolling ;)

mines have mist. but only inside these water filled seeker chambers which dont ever contain cores. they can however contain a boss marker.

[SirCampalot]

I sorta did it on my first playthrough. I was exploring to the edge of the map (didn't know about the world edge at the time as I went in blind) and mostly sailed along its coast. Also found some bunnies for hides and meat, but that's about it. I couldn't chop down the Yggdrasil trees for the wood and apart from having encountered a single dverg in his hut on the coastline, I didn't get any other mistlands resource.
Also found one of those giant swords, but I didn't need copper or iron at the time.

It sure increased the mystery factor about mistlands for me and it made me want to explore in there even more, only to end up getting badly disappointed because of how terrible I found the mistlands gameplay to be as it ruined my immersive blind playthrough (which I given up on).

It's still very pretty though, but unfortunately its gameplay I find terrible.

[Bone]

I went in solely to get the wood for the better pick axe. Grabbed some food and killed a rabbit, huge blimp dude chased me out. got my pick tho..

[Darren Daulton]

Me and friends tried to go in a bunch of times before we realized that we needed to use the Yagluth drop. Kind of embarrassing tbh. We weren't very successful.

[Gladius]

On my most recent play through I was able to get Krom before beating The Elder. If you sail around the mistlands biomes you can usually find infested mines fairly easily. You can get Yggdrasil wood by smashing the hexagonal dvergr doors either by using the cart strat or by leading enemies over to them (if they have a fire or ice mage they usually do an aoe attack the breaks their own door lol). Black marble is also not that hard as you can use a pick and break some of the stairs up to the infested mine entrance. Its usually pretty damaged already.

At this point I've skipped bosses so many times that it would feel weird to beat them when you're expected to.

[bacon]

i am doing no map no portal and was able to complete all mistlands tech before finding yagluth, which was very hard to find for some reason. everything but mistwalker, which requires wisps.

sail around the perimeter. you can find skulls, crypts, roots, mushrooms close to shore. also, i am playing on 3x drops, so, i dont need as many loot repetitions as vanilla.

[SoCalMike91]

Totally doable, even on hard difficulty.
Use your ears first and eyes second. staring at the mist itself is an eyestrain, something the devs should adjust imo.
Campfires do really well to mark a chest stash (dont keep workbench next to 'em to reduce aggro) or point of interest, bringing bonfire mats is nice but not necessary, since you can already see campfire smoke from quite a ways. Leaping from any height will not kill you if you have greater than 100 hp. Sometimes leaping saves your bacon. Place a campfire and rest asap for the health regen, even if its a health tick or two.
Also search for 'wet' debuff droplets and judge the mob by the size, look for the mud that creatures stir up when they walk, but sounds cues should have already identified them by this point. You'll even learn the sound of their unique footsteps and 'chirps'.

I like to level sneak to at least 30 on meadows creatures, 40 doesnt take that much longer.
(I used a controller thumbstick to do circles while making calls being placed on hold, or just chillin etc)
That plus troll set means you get away with quite a lot in Mistlands, at sneak 40+15 I've ranged Gjall down and they never found me, they're worse than lox at great range.
Frost arrows and Huntsman bow slay seekers easily, and the sneak means you can run (then walk a bit) out of LoS a ways and *then* start sneaking off to los the spot you began to sneak in.
Embrace the darkness, and keep appropriate crevices and overhangs in mind for hiding in.
Walk, don't run, as much as possible when you can help it. You'll ditch the heat quick if you always plan an out. Don't get lost scrambling around in fear.
Of course bring your healing, stam, and tasty meads.
Level swimming to at least 10, you'll thank me later for that.

Of course mines are doable with ooze bomb cheese, totally valid strat imo. You're a bug exterminator. Use the tricks available.
Frost arrow spam of course, but what really work great is the flesh rippers.
Not so great at 0 skill level but after some time ( I forget the exact level) your middle attack kick will stun seekers, you just have to time it right. I've also had maxed rippers and decent skill level just get a couple of full combos in on seekers in between attacks and they go right down. (Hard difficulty)
Kicking ticks is hilarious, and effective. get those nasty buggers away from you, and if they live you can shoot em or ooze, or just be ready for the next punch. You can try to parry a soldier slam if you're well fed with high tier foods, but I cant say with any certainty since I'm not familiar with normal damage values.

For finding more hives and Mistlands POIs, you can hop in a karve and just weave the coastline close to shore. Once you find a stairwell hive, look for the particular rock formation above it, helps you while sailing to catch an idea. Otherwise, groups of seekers will usually indicate a nearby POI. Glowy bits are the easier indicators.
There's a lot of good stuff on coastal Mistlands (not as much archipelago), and its easy to pick off wet seekers swimming towards you with frost arrows. Just dont get close enough to let them board.
You can sneak while you sail, so you can generally follow the same principles as land based sneak, just dont get in their front 180 if you can help it. Gjall will often not notice you at higher sneak levels, but karve can take at least 2 volleys before it breaks. drink that fire res pot just in case.
You can also find and mark coastal inlets that lead to a pleasant mainland area, sometimes I've found some really beautiful areas clear of mist that were build worthy and naturally secure.
You can see under the fog if you zoom in to nearly maximum, helps with identifying landmass ahead or shoals, but there's a whole lot of map abuse going on at my end, so immersive will have to stick to peeking under the fog and taking it slower.

If you use soldiers to stomp materials for you, then thats fine, but really only helpful for bulk Yggdrasil wood. Stonecutter is much better than using a solider for marble in great quantities, but if you happen upon the situation, grabbing enough marble for the crafting station upgrades and the black forge is worthwhile.
Don't forget to bring forge mats for breaking the iron cage in the bridges, or just portal in some surtling cores and coal.
If you're stuck in the wilderness, have a soldier stomp ancient armor or blade for the 6 copper, dverger mining camps and docks have copper scrap and chains (destroy the hook), destroying lanterns drops surtling cores, and coal from burning seeker meat on the iron cooking spit.

Doing this gives you food unlocks and arbalest, krom, couple other goodies I think. It's a huge deal, and if skipping Moder, that would be the priority.

One final note, is that when you do finally kill yagluth and use the wisp stuff, it is a literal breath of fresh air, a huge convenience. Mistwalker is so worth the boss kill, and paired with a lantern on sheath mode, I can really navigate Mistlands with ease. I usually bring a stack of wisps and cut down wood for more torches (adding surplus instead of using base stock ygg wood) and just spam the walkways or areas in use or around a POI, because I actually do dislike the foul mist and enjoy seeing it retreat.

[Chiller]

Originally posted by SoCalMike91:

Totally doable, even on hard difficulty.
Use your ears first and eyes second. staring at the mist itself is an eyestrain, something the devs should adjust imo.
Campfires do really well to mark a chest stash (dont keep workbench next to 'em to reduce aggro) or point of interest, bringing bonfire mats is nice but not necessary, since you can already see campfire smoke from quite a ways. Leaping from any height will not kill you if you have greater than 100 hp. Sometimes leaping saves your bacon. Place a campfire and rest asap for the health regen, even if its a health tick or two.
Also search for 'wet' debuff droplets and judge the mob by the size, look for the mud that creatures stir up when they walk, but sounds cues should have already identified them by this point. You'll even learn the sound of their unique footsteps and 'chirps'.

I like to level sneak to at least 30 on meadows creatures, 40 doesnt take that much longer.
(I used a controller thumbstick to do circles while making calls being placed on hold, or just chillin etc)
That plus troll set means you get away with quite a lot in Mistlands, at sneak 40+15 I've ranged Gjall down and they never found me, they're worse than lox at great range.
Frost arrows and Huntsman bow slay seekers easily, and the sneak means you can run (then walk a bit) out of LoS a ways and *then* start sneaking off to los the spot you began to sneak in.
Embrace the darkness, and keep appropriate crevices and overhangs in mind for hiding in.
Walk, don't run, as much as possible when you can help it. You'll ditch the heat quick if you always plan an out. Don't get lost scrambling around in fear.
Of course bring your healing, stam, and tasty meads.
Level swimming to at least 10, you'll thank me later for that.

Of course mines are doable with ooze bomb cheese, totally valid strat imo. You're a bug exterminator. Use the tricks available.
Frost arrow spam of course, but what really work great is the flesh rippers.
Not so great at 0 skill level but after some time ( I forget the exact level) your middle attack kick will stun seekers, you just have to time it right. I've also had maxed rippers and decent skill level just get a couple of full combos in on seekers in between attacks and they go right down. (Hard difficulty)
Kicking ticks is hilarious, and effective. get those nasty buggers away from you, and if they live you can shoot em or ooze, or just be ready for the next punch. You can try to parry a soldier slam if you're well fed with high tier foods, but I cant say with any certainty since I'm not familiar with normal damage values.

For finding more hives and Mistlands POIs, you can hop in a karve and just weave the coastline close to shore. Once you find a stairwell hive, look for the particular rock formation above it, helps you while sailing to catch an idea. Otherwise, groups of seekers will usually indicate a nearby POI. Glowy bits are the easier indicators.
There's a lot of good stuff on coastal Mistlands (not as much archipelago), and its easy to pick off wet seekers swimming towards you with frost arrows. Just dont get close enough to let them board.
You can sneak while you sail, so you can generally follow the same principles as land based sneak, just dont get in their front 180 if you can help it. Gjall will often not notice you at higher sneak levels, but karve can take at least 2 volleys before it breaks. drink that fire res pot just in case.
You can also find and mark coastal inlets that lead to a pleasant mainland area, sometimes I've found some really beautiful areas clear of mist that were build worthy and naturally secure.
You can see under the fog if you zoom in to nearly maximum, helps with identifying landmass ahead or shoals, but there's a whole lot of map abuse going on at my end, so immersive will have to stick to peeking under the fog and taking it slower.

If you use soldiers to stomp materials for you, then thats fine, but really only helpful for bulk Yggdrasil wood. Stonecutter is much better than using a solider for marble in great quantities, but if you happen upon the situation, grabbing enough marble for the crafting station upgrades and the black forge is worthwhile.
Don't forget to bring forge mats for breaking the iron cage in the bridges, or just portal in some surtling cores and coal.
If you're stuck in the wilderness, have a soldier stomp ancient armor or blade for the 6 copper, dverger mining camps and docks have copper scrap and chains (destroy the hook), destroying lanterns drops surtling cores, and coal from burning seeker meat on the iron cooking spit.

Doing this gives you food unlocks and arbalest, krom, couple other goodies I think. It's a huge deal, and if skipping Moder, that would be the priority.

One final note, is that when you do finally kill yagluth and use the wisp stuff, it is a literal breath of fresh air, a huge convenience. Mistwalker is so worth the boss kill, and paired with a lantern on sheath mode, I can really navigate Mistlands with ease. I usually bring a stack of wisps and cut down wood for more torches (adding surplus instead of using base stock ygg wood) and just spam the walkways or areas in use or around a POI, because I actually do dislike the foul mist and enjoy seeing it retreat.

Wow.. thanks for taking the time to write all those tips. Very interesting.
I like how unique this biome can be. So many mats there, cool bugs preying, atmosphere etc.
But I haven't tried that mistwalker + lantern combo. Not sure if it can increase visibility, I 'll need to check.

[SoCalMike91]

Thanks, I actually do enjoy mistlands without wisps but it's definitely a game changer for the better.

Miatwalker just does a tiny bubble, lantern just lights up your terrain. You're very visible but you can see little details without squinting for it.

You won't see her far into the mist but it's handy for combat visibility

Wisp itself I don't often use but it's handy, just don't expect it to reach gjall heights, gjall are best fought from mid level rock spires anyway. Above the mist but as low as possible for those belly shots, at the furthest possible distance for sneak pummeling is the sweet spot

[Faceplant]

Looks like everything has already been said here, but just to throw in my 2 cents...

I don't even make the wisp light. You can get quite a bit of Mistlands items before beating Yag, and it's not hard to find pretty much everything without entering the mist, or possibly going in a relatively short distance if you see a mine or skull near the edge of the mist. After I get Mistwalker, and the cape, it's easy to navigate Mistlands without the light and get all the items that are locked behind the wisp.

FWIW, I play no-map, no-portal, and hard difficulty, and even then it's totally doable. You need to be careful if you go deep in the mist without anything to clear the wisp when playing no-map, but once you get the sword, it's not an issue.

[JP_Russell]

I always like to go into higher biomes before defeating the last boss preceding them, to get at least a few of the resources from there and craft better stuff than you would normally have to fight said boss, and I do this with the mistlands, as well. Usually just enough to get some yggdrasil wood and hopefully clear out enough infested mines to make a black forge, and get all the necessary materials for enough refined eitr to make carapace armor, a shield, a demolisher, and whatever else I can manage. But I don't bother trying to go through the whole biome without wisps, that would just be boring and annoying for me. The wisplight isn't really necessary, but the torches are a must for me. My whole journey to the queen's lair is a long exercise in placing potentially hundreds upon hundreds of torches, if it's not close to the shore.