Hardcore without a map is pretty damn good

[SomethingCoolBro]

TLDR:

- It's easy to get lost.
- Paths and roads have become more useful.
- Creatures are scary once more.
- Base defense has greater importance.


The game is challenging, but not excessively difficult. It could still be made harder.
I know the Hardcore world modifiers on PTB aren't for everyone, but they're really resonating with me. In my new play-through on a large starting island, I noticed the following:

You can become disoriented and lost, enhancing the survival aspect. It's an unusual feeling to be genuinely lost in Valheim. What's the point of these vast continents of procedural land if everything is mapped out in advance? Are you really exploring, or just revealing?

The modifiers change the way you play—or at least they did for me.

For the first time, I've created paths between places of interest. Without any way to navigate, the concept of "pathing" suddenly makes much more sense to me, and I find myself upgrading the Hoe earlier. This adds an extra layer to gameplay, creating useful paths and roads. Linking things helps me navigate and remember where everything is in relation to each other. It's as though you're carving the map onto the world, changing the way you build and travel.

It's an enjoyable mini-game to widen or neaten paths you frequently travel. Barely used paths remain rough, while commonly used paths become more noticeable. This adds authenticity to the world.

Creatures have become scary again. Veterans can make the game trivial by maxing out upgrades before taking risks. I've encountered far more ** mobs when I wasn't ready for them. Getting caught without an escape route turns into a real fight for survival.

However, you can still overcome the challenges if you approach the game with respect. Now, dodge-rolling has become a meaningful action. Parrying is straightforward, but it wasn't really necessary before.

The increase in raids makes base defense more crucial. But once your defenses are strong, there's still plenty of time to relax and engage in building, farming, and decorating.

[Mharr]

How does ocean navigation work in this mode?

[Veseljko]

In my 3000+ hours and 15 worlds played, I must admit that no map run was the most enjoyable run. I really loved how it completely changes your approach to the game. Roads, signs, big arrows on islands to point you in the right direction while sailing, looking at Yggdrasil and sun all the time, making compasses on locations you visit frequently… all the things you never think about suddenly become important part of the game.

I did it in multiplayer which adds another challenge - “where are you?”
No pinging, no orientation… you start running through the forest together with your friends and in a blink of an eye, you are alone. You don’t know how to explain your location to your friends. So we often needed to go back to the last known location or to the nearest shore to regroup and start exploring again.

[Veseljko]

Originally posted by Mharr:

How does ocean navigation work in this mode?

At first very difficult. I used to leave a lot of signs in form of big wooden arrows on shores to point my way back to the base. After some time I started remembering some landmarks and everything became way easier.
Looking at Yggdrasil can help a lot too. Just remember your place under it and you will always be able to navigate back.

[SomethingCoolBro]

Originally posted by Mharr:

How does ocean navigation work in this mode?

I haven't done much yet because my starting island has several biomes, which is lucky I guess.

I would imagine I would travel close to coasts, ensure docks are well lit, make short trips where possible and create coastal outposts, and just think about each journey in advance. Travelling to another continent will require a long term-base setup, which will increase the time required to set up defences at each major location.

I haven't done this yet though, so I can't really answer very well.

[Empada]

I did a no map no portal play. yes, it was amazing, unfortunately it was alone, but make you think differently about how you play. the funny thing for me is that be able to know where you are is most dificult in the meadows forrest than in any other biome. besides the central meadows an the first swamp I did not make any roads.

[ling.speed]

Originally posted by Mharr:

How does ocean navigation work in this mode?

You navigate by the Yggdrasil, its "easy"in good weather, in bad weather and known waters its ok, especially since fires can be seen from quite a big distance so you can do lighthouses. In bad weather into unknown you have last resort tactic of build mode objects always keeping their rotation.

Personally i'd prefer noportals than nomap on hardcore. We just dont have enough ingame tools to play without map without using out of game resources like excel... (i mean like sextant, compass, a piece of paper to scribble on etc)

Also boss stones have been trolling me a lot which just sucks as you can end up sailing for many days only to realize its a false lead... They are probably fixed in newer test branch patches but it seems like the map does not update.

[deadshooter]

Never tried no-map-challenge, but I have a guess, that bonfire will be useful for sailing navigation, since it's can be seen from long distances

[Longboyfinn213]

Originally posted by SomethingCoolBro:

TLDR:

- It's easy to get lost.
- Paths and roads have become more useful.
- Creatures are scary once more.
- Base defense has greater importance.


The game is challenging, but not excessively difficult. It could still be made harder.
I know the Hardcore world modifiers on PTB aren't for everyone, but they're really resonating with me. In my new play-through on a large starting island, I noticed the following:

You can become disoriented and lost, enhancing the survival aspect. It's an unusual feeling to be genuinely lost in Valheim. What's the point of these vast continents of procedural land if everything is mapped out in advance? Are you really exploring, or just revealing?

The modifiers change the way you play—or at least they did for me.

For the first time, I've created paths between places of interest. Without any way to navigate, the concept of "pathing" suddenly makes much more sense to me, and I find myself upgrading the Hoe earlier. This adds an extra layer to gameplay, creating useful paths and roads. Linking things helps me navigate and remember where everything is in relation to each other. It's as though you're carving the map onto the world, changing the way you build and travel.

It's an enjoyable mini-game to widen or neaten paths you frequently travel. Barely used paths remain rough, while commonly used paths become more noticeable. This adds authenticity to the world.

Creatures have become scary again. Veterans can make the game trivial by maxing out upgrades before taking risks. I've encountered far more ** mobs when I wasn't ready for them. Getting caught without an escape route turns into a real fight for survival.

However, you can still overcome the challenges if you approach the game with respect. Now, dodge-rolling has become a meaningful action. Parrying is straightforward, but it wasn't really necessary before.

The increase in raids makes base defense more crucial. But once your defenses are strong, there's still plenty of time to relax and engage in building, farming, and decorating.

good luck to you when you get to the Mistlands bro👍

[SomethingCoolBro]

Yeah Mistlands will be a long term project :P

[vinyblaster]

It is indeed a game changer. It would be made much better though if the landscape was more "unique". Hard to telltale difference between 2 meadows. Another great addition would be a compass. I know you can use the sun, but it would make navigation a.bit more manageable.

[Veseljko]

Originally posted by vinyblaster:

It is indeed a game changer. It would be made much better though if the landscape was more "unique". Hard to telltale difference between 2 meadows. Another great addition would be a compass. I know you can use the sun, but it would make navigation a.bit more manageable.

Compass would indeed be very useful. But you can easily use Yggdrasil as compass. It grows from east to west. So the only situation where you are left helpless is when it's bad weather.

Originally posted by Longboyfinn213:

good luck to you when you get to the Mistlands bro👍

Mistlands are not that bad. We skipped Yagluth and went straight to Mistlands without a wisp (we were all experienced players and wanted to spice it up a bit).
We used standing torches and campfires to mark our way points.
Maybe it's just me, but i think that approach helped us to learn how to navigate through Mistlands. Stay up wheres no mist and dive down only when you see a blue light. Super fun experience... scary at some points but fun in general. It took us 3 RL days (10-12 hours) to find the Queen.
Later when we killed Yagluth and got wisps, it felt too easy. We would farm wisps for several nights and then go to Mistlands leaving wisp torches behind like bread crumbs to find our way back :)

[HangarPilot]

I don't generally don't want my games to be too hard/brutal. However I'm starting to get intrigued by ideas like this.

I saw a mod called "The Olde Road" that looks amazing. It says it was made with mods but you don't need to be running any mods to play it. Watched a couple YT videos of a guy playing it. Looks like a lot of fun.

https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/1862

[Veseljko]

Originally posted by HangarPilot:

I don't generally don't want my games to be too hard/brutal. However I'm starting to get intrigued by ideas like this.

I saw a mod called "The Olde Road" that looks amazing. It says it was made with mods but you don't need to be running any mods to play it. Watched a couple YT videos of a guy playing it. Looks like a lot of fun.

https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/1862

It’s not a mod. It is a world save file. Some mods are used by authors to be able to place/rotate some objects.
You just need to download that file and save it into world save folder on your PC and run it as you run your own world.

It is amazing and I already recommended that world on this forum several times.
I’d say it is a perfect world for your first no map experience.