Ashlands Difficulty

[Blakkrazor]

I'm just trying to wrap my head around how the Ashlands is supposed to be explored and/or settled. My first encounter this morning on the beach was a Serpent in the water with 6 charred on the beach and 3 asksvins. I began the engagment and they were joined by 3 vultures a Marrowgar and 2 lava blobs and more charred. I spent the whole of my rested bonus fighting on the beach and cleaning up the mess. I get back to trying to leave and there is nearly an identical number of mobs waiting for me once again. How am I supposed to get anywhere when it is literal nonstop killing and looting? Did I miss something I was supposed to craft to help with this?

[Muggyman]

Find a rock to sit on. That's how I did it. Add me if you want to play with a good player. :)

[OctoberSky]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3259776284

If I could have packed the kitchen sink in that drakkar I would have. But I packed other items per the Ashlands chapter of this guide and ... eventually made landfall.

[Jack]

My landfall in ashlands was accidentally running aground on a smallish patch of near perfectly flat land at just above sea level. Because of the storm I couldn't see it and assumed I'd got stuck on a rock. I didn't need to do much combat except a couple of voltures and charred - and a morgen when I missed a patch spawn-blocking.

If anyone wants the seed I'll add it when I can get it. Just hope you don't end up going to the moder spawn I did - it's completely surrounded by mistlands

[adritheonly]

Originally posted by Blakkrazor:

I'm just trying to wrap my head around how the Ashlands is supposed to be explored and/or settled. My first encounter this morning on the beach was a Serpent in the water with 6 charred on the beach and 3 asksvins. I began the engagment and they were joined by 3 vultures a Marrowgar and 2 lava blobs and more charred. I spent the whole of my rested bonus fighting on the beach and cleaning up the mess. I get back to trying to leave and there is nearly an identical number of mobs waiting for me once again. How am I supposed to get anywhere when it is literal nonstop killing and looting? Did I miss something I was supposed to craft to help with this?

Just a thought here:
- Take a hoe and stone, bow with frost arrows and frost staff, Mistwalker.
- After clearing initial mobs raise yourself on a platform (at least 8m) and put down shield and portal
- Forget the Drakkar, you will probable never use it again or for a while if you landed on the largest landmass (due South from spawn)
- Go home, sleep, eat the best food you can
- Return to portal and crouch down and study creatures, topography, etc.
- Are there spawners? Take them out
- Is the weather bad? Go home and do something else.
- Once the area is known move along and repeat process until you find a spot that looks cool. My base is next to a large ruin a little distance a way from a citadel on the beach. It has all the resources I initially needed which is why I built there.
- If you're playing solo like me, ballistas with black metal missile are a great help to do crowd control.
- The Ashlands is all about patience and prep.

[Zethell]

First attempt at base building in the Ashlands:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/Zethell/screenshot/2500143978199556934/

If I was a solo player I feel like this would have been impossible.
Thankfully we're 2, so we managed to build up ♥♥♥♥♥♥ stone walls everywhere and keep them repaired for 1~2 hours until we got things settled. Once you get the moats/ditches down, you will be fine.

[OctoberSky]

Originally posted by Letozeth:

If I was a solo player I feel like this would have been impossible.

You should have a bit more confidence in yourself. Worse players than you (e.g. me) have done this solo on default settings and you could too.

[Zethell]

Originally posted by OctoberSky:

Originally posted by Letozeth:

If I was a solo player I feel like this would have been impossible.

You should have a bit more confidence in yourself. Worse players than you (e.g. me) have done this solo on default settings and you could too.

I mean sure, maybe if I spent hours running, fighting, and barely scraping by I would eventually get something undesirable set up as a base. Unfortunately I can't play at that level anymore. In my older age I got serious health issues, but I still enjoy playing Valheim at a more casual level.

[electricdawn]

You can definitely lower the difficulty settings. Look under world modifiers. There's a wide variety of modifiers (combat, resource drops, etc).

[Barracuda]

Simplest solution is clear out the area around one of the larger ruins of the Dvergr palaces/cathedrals and plop down a stone portal ASAP. Make sure the immediate area is free of spawners and you should be fine. Another solution is to build a portal higher up in one of the ruins and build stairs to it. You could even remodel it so you have a couple full floors higher up away from the bad guys. Just watch out for Volture attacks.

[Torinux]

My experience so far with mods and very hard options via in game world creation+LootAndMobControl mod+Jewelcrafting mod:

Insanity 5 star mob spawning in the Ashlands

But to be honest, I'm loving it!

[adritheonly]

Originally posted by Letozeth:

Originally posted by OctoberSky:

You should have a bit more confidence in yourself. Worse players than you (e.g. me) have done this solo on default settings and you could too.

I mean sure, maybe if I spent hours running, fighting, and barely scraping by I would eventually get something undesirable set up as a base. Unfortunately I can't play at that level anymore. In my older age I got serious health issues, but I still enjoy playing Valheim at a more casual level.

I hear you. I became inspired and knew exactly what I want to build and when I am creating, constant pests are annoying, so, while I was building I switched to passive enemies, had a quite rollup with a char every now and then and a morgen and asksvin frolicking around me. I almost felt sorry for them once I placed the ballistas and switched back to active. Did it ruin the game for me? Not really, now I can concentrate on fighting.

[kl250d]

If you have a large, large, large amount of stone you could use the hoe to create a circular wall. It cant be destroyed and the only thing that gets over it is the lava slime, but that might be fixable if you make it taller

[Salty]

Get on a rock, get good, use magic, raise the ground would work but then what, you'd need 500 arrows or multiple versions of your staffs. Ashlands is just really hard. I have had encounters so lengthy that my staves break and I had to flee to repair while enemies kept coming, and I was in one spot. And it wasn't because of a Spawner nearby. Enemies from spawners don't come straight at you from the horizon. Even on Very Easy the constant agro makes it pretty much impossible for a solo player to harvest flame metal except by the most rudimentary and inefficient method which is to jump out on Basalt Platforms and hit it with a pick. You can't do Catapults, you can't use a Lava Dog. With all that said, there are moments of peace and calm but that ends as soon as you walk 10 paces to engage the next mob.
I like this game a lot. However, just like with Mistlands, I feel like Ashlands is a waste of a biome. It's a survival game, but you can't survive in Ashlands, you can only pretend to. You can make a base, but you can't farm so you can't make food. It shares no borders with other biomes so you will have to portal in and out to another base. It's just kind of there if you are looking for a fight. The new items are cool.
I turn on passive mode, put it on very easy, building costs off, 3x resources. I go in, bombard some Flame Metal Towers with catapults so I can load up then I leave. It looks amazing, but I think it should be counted as a kind of challenge mode like the Hilda Towers.

[Blakkrazor]

We broke the beach and used at least a couple thousand stone to build our walls to make layered defenses as those lava blobs just wreck up the place if not intercepted. Our problem comes down to my "Viking Party" being younger family members who I could coach through the previous material but Ashlands is pretty much a meat-grinder that quickly overcomes them and I'm unable to keep up. If they introduce healing magic as well as the protective bubbles perhaps but I'm at a loss and burning through resources just to make any headway there as every 100 yards ventured I gather an insane amount of materials. But not for the meads I need so I have to pop back to the older content daily to keep up that farm rotation. Kills me that not a single new recipe uses either chicken meat nor eggs. Seriously.

[MyUrp1]

Is simply running an option? I find this effective when entering the Swamps. It throws a pile of critters at you when you first enter, but if you run past them and the next several piles eventually the server tires of spawning new ones and you can find a quiet place to set up shop.

Has anyone tried this in Ashlands?