Combat Engineering

Construction recipes that can make your Valheim experience safe and enjoyable. (Updated to include information on Ashlands)

Introduction

New single players may find some of the challenges in Valheim more than they can handle. For many, this can now be adjusted with the world modifiers. But even with these modifiers there may be occasions that can be overwhelming if you face them alone. Combat engineering borrows from Sun Tzu's classic The Art of War to understand and even prepare a battle area to give you as many advantages while at the same time minimizing the advantages of your opponent. And in Valheim, many of us could use all the help the game can offer.

A Secure Home Base

Many players choose to build magnificent structures only to have these destroyed by Valheim events[valheim.fandom.com]. World modifiers may allow players to simply disable these events so that their creations do not suffer destruction. But with a little site preparation, events do not need to be feared even if your combat skills are not enough to kite mobs away from your home. Instead, they can be looked at as a delivery truck bringing raw materials to your doorstep.

When first arriving in your new seed, you will no doubt just be looking at building a new home or renovating some structure in the Meadows biome. But before you sally forth to take on the first Forsaken, you may want to spend some time locating some site where you can build something a bit more permanent. Many guides point you to a location near the Ocean or even near the Black Forest to minimize time hauling materials back to your crafting stations. In any case, you will probably want to find a location with an area of relatively even terrain.

Probably not here
But this shows more promise.
Next, you want to explore your Meadows biome to pick up between 600 and 800 free stones laying about and bring them back to your selected site. Locate an area roughly in the middle of your site but at what you believe will be the lowest point and use your hoe to raise the terrain to build a plateau.

Build a ladder up to the top of this plateau and build whatever structure you intend to live in for a brief time. After having this structure, you can now go off to face Eikthyr.

With the antler picks now in your inventory, it is time to dig your moat. Moats have clean edges if they are placed on the cardinal and ordinal compass directions. You can use the inner map to help align your dig but the pick will tell you when you have a clean edge.
It is up to you of how large a base you wish to build. But a single player can probably get a fairly good set of structures built in an area roughly 80 x 80 blocks but by all means shrink (or expand) this to suite your eventual home base (or village) dimensions. To help lay out the settlement, you can use the roundpole fence.

Place wooden torches at the corners so you can spot these as you are digging and then know where to turn.
Be sure to have wood to build stairs on either wall of the moat
It is likely you will get the Forest is moving event while in your construction. You can retreat to the top of your plateau if you are not quite ready to face the mob. Note that this can occur soon after defeating Eikthyr which is why you want the minimal plateau noted earlier before fighting the stag.

Eventually, your moat is complete.

Now you need to complete the inner plateau. In spite of your best efforts to locate a site with even terrain, you will likely have some variation. If you located your initial plateau at the lowest point in the eventual site then you can expect a bit less than 20 stones to create more terrain columns. Here is a reference of a 20 stone column showing the width at the base and the top in terms of roundpole fencing and as you can see this is more of an isosceles object. Depending on how many roundpole fences you laid out your structure with you can likely calculate the number of stones you will need to complete the plateau. For reference, this structure used a little less than 5000 stones.
Once the plateau is complete you can build whatever you wish for a home and various other buildings and you should be relatively safe from most mob events..

First Troll

Many new solo players may be terrified of their first encounter with a troll whether in the Black Forest or in a Meadows area that is close enough to trigger a troll attack. In terms of combat engineering, both biomes provide at least one means of avoiding the worst of a troll attack and the satisfaction of scoring their first collection of troll leather for a much needed armor upgrade.

Both the Meadows and Black Forest feature these henge arrangements at various locations.



By parking inside this henge, a player can snipe a troll with flint or fire arrows even with Meadows level gear.



Later after clearing above ground burial chambers, the player can again find a safe location for a murder hole from which to launch arrows or retreat into after a more classic melee engagement.



In any case, the much coveted troll leather armor soon becomes part of the player collection and they can move with more confidence in the Bronze Age.

You Are Being Hunted

After defeating Bonemass, you are subject to the wolf event whenever you are in either the Mountains or Plains biomes. There are many suggestions for handling this event with combat style but in the theme of combat engineering, this event becomes an opportunity to collect wolf pelts, meat and trophies if you go prepared with 10 wood, 20 stone and a hoe. When the event triggers, you have time to drop a workbench and use your hoe to elevate yourself on a terrain column. You don't need to go very high to get above the wolves and from your elevated position you can snipe them at your leisure.

Forsaken

For many new single players, Forsaken engagements may seem nearly impossible to solo without very advanced combat skills. However, even those of us with mediocre combat skills can once again use combat engineering to even the playing field and collect those Forsaken trophies just like the veteran players.

One technique is to build an asymmetric figure-8 around the Forsaken site with the larger ellipse enclosing the sacrifice stone and a smaller ellipse for the player. A very small gap between the ellipses allows the player to make the sacrifice and then jump through into the safety of the smaller ellipse and then manage the fight as they please. The enclosure not only isolates the Forsaken but also blocks additional enemies from encroaching other than those spawned by the Forsaken itself.

For the Elder.


Bonemass

And even Yagluth
Note the extra size of the player ellipse for Yagluth which allows plenty of room to avoid its meteor attack.

These figure-8 enclosures require a modest amount of stone - usually 2000 is enough - and some wood to build stairs on either side of the wall of the player ellipse. But the payout is a relatively safe combat experience.

Since Moder can fly, a more practical shelter directly around her altar stone gives the player a safe area to avoid her frost and projectile attacks and if the gaps around the altar are left wide enough the player can even shoot poison arrows into her with impunity.

And in any case, her tears are yours.

The Queen

The summoning altar of the sixth Forsaken is, unfortunately, a combat area that allows very little by way of combat engineering. You can spread wisp torches and even fires around the inside of the Infested Citadel (and those fires can inflict significant damage on your opponents) but by the time you reach the Mistlands you had better learn how to survive with whatever you carry in your inventory as well as nutrition and rest. But pay attention to skill levels by the time you reach the Mistlands. There are many opinions as to whether skills matter and by how much. If you decide to invest time in developing them for the Mistlands, then you should also consider one or more skill academies.

Draugr villages provide a supply of archers that can be coaxed into blocking trainers to help level up your blocking skill.

You can even surround the village with palisade fencing and recruit draugr from the various spawners to level up your melee skills and even your skills with range weapons if you prefer.

If the Mistlands have not already advanced your run and jump skills, you can craft a simple in-home gym to level both. Running against a wall while within your comfort area will allow you to gain skill while resting, which increases your leveling rate by %50. Likewise, you can put a simple 2x2 floor piece about 1 meter above you in the comfort area and repeat the jump key underneath it to quickly level up your jump skill (yes, you are hitting your head on this piece of floor).

Be sure to remove the feather cape while doing this jump training.

If you are also including mage skills then greydwarf spawners are perfect opportunities to let your skelet broods level your blood magic. Note that you can get best results by excavating a large pit below the spawner thus keeping both your broods and the spawns safely confined (and preserving all their drops). This also decreases the possibility of your broods or the spawns damaging the spawner.



Elemental magic may best be developed with a stone golem trainer.
Once again, build a terrain enclosure but leave a gap. Lure an ice golem to chase you into the enclosure through the gap and have a step ladder to run up and then finish the enclosure trapping the golem within. Now you can return with a Staff of Frost and tickle the golem as your elemental magic levels rise. Remember that skill levels grow faster if resting so you can construct a small fire and resting shed to use the Staff of Frost from.

The Arena

Many new players pose extremely good questions in the forums looking for advice on weapons, gear, and simple survival skills. There are also extremely good answers from Valheim veterans who genuinely wish to see the new player enjoy the game as much as they have. But for some this may seem like trying to satisfy thirst by drinking from a fire hose and not know what suggestions to try in their game and which may be less than helpful. Since everyone's experience is unique, new players may wish to experiment and the best way to do this is by using an experimental Valheim laboratory - The Arena.

You can create your own laboratory seed and use creative mode (devcommands, debugmode, 'B') to create a place where you can try equipment, food, rest and skill levels against a variety of opponents.

First, create a character that you probably would not use in your actual game.

And then, bring this character to your arena. There are any number of excellent arena builds on content channels. Here is a sample.


The combat area should be large enough to accommodate large opponents that may be capable of flight (e.g. gjalls). The arena should have an area where your experimental character can sample nutrition and potion recipes.


And it might benefit from some in-game reminders of how to use the primary console commands in arena experiments.


Be sure to include a crafting area to experiment with equipment mixes and to repair damage.

Have a rest area with as many comfort items you want to try.


And then armor and equipment.


And then it is time to take your walk into the Arena itself.


Experiment. Is Troll armor successful against Swamp opponents? What skill levels do I need? What about rest? How do I do the dodge-and-roll move? You have questions. The forum has answers. The Arena helps you select the answers that best fit your game style.

Ashlands

Landing

Drakkar inventory (assuming default game settings)

1. iron - 5 stacks
   
2. copper - 2 stacks
   
3. black metal - 2 stacks
   
4. springs - 18 (the ballista is an excellent weapon to help guard your flank as a solo player)
   
5. wood - 2 stacks
   
6. return portal

Home base inventory:

1. stone - 20K (that's 40 chests)
   
2. shield core
   
3. marble or grausten - if you wish, you can start your Ashland adventure by visiting the grausten spires and harvesting grausten. It is more plentiful on the mainland than out here in the spires, but much more dangerous to harvest.
   
4. transportable items for the forge and stone cutter

Navigate the grausten spires and look for a charred ruin that is within sight of the mainland but far enough out to sea that there are still grausten spires between this ruin and the beach. It is ideal if you can see the mainland but the soundtrack is still playing the initial Ashland sailing track as you approach this ruin.



Place a workbench and lay a wooden floor and place your return portal. Put down some chests and unload your ship, then pilot the ship back out of the Ashlands and to the safety of whatever port you launched from. The drakkar is a good ship and may be needed later.

Come back through your portal and bring remaining supplies for a forge, stone cutter and shield generator. Look up into the spires next to the ruin and construct a matrix of iron beams and then place either marble or grausten flooring over the beams. You may want to visit a site that discusses Valheim snapping points so you can snap the beams end to end between the grausten spires.

Move your portal up to the new elevated platform and activate the shield generator. Phase one is now complete.



You took the trouble of locating this offshore charred ruin because it indicates the water is shallow.
This means you can lay down terrain and meet the sea floor. Terrain will not graft to grausten so you must drop it down from the charred ruin such that it can lay on the sea floor which is rock.



Now all that rock back at your base will be used to lay down a sea wall. The key to solving the Ashlands as a combat engineer is to move like a glacier. Slowly but persistently you will grow your sea wall toward the mainland, spot a good beach to put your mainland starting base and circumvallate the desired area - as large an area as you can manage. Now note the thickness of the sea walls. The ideal is 5 terrain columns wide or 10 meters. The reason for this are two-fold

1. The middle of the wall is typically out of sight of enemies on the ground.
   
2. Lava blobs. A blob is the enemy of the sea wall and if it explodes against the wall will carve a gash that is 2x2xZ meters. Best to destroy blobs at distance using frost arrows or ignore them if you can but if you have built the wall thick enough then it can take a hit and get repaired later.

And forget about iron cages. They are easy targets for blobs, asksvin and morgens.









Once you have established this initial foothold, take a break and return to some safer biomes and replenish your rock stockpiles. We are only just getting started.

Breakout

Perhaps the most well known combat engineer in Viking history is their arch-nemesis: Alfred the Great of Wessex. Alfred met the Viking threat by creating fortified settlements that could be fallen back into when the long ships were spotted sailing in for raids. We will take a similar approach as we continue our somewhat glacial movement into the heart of the Ashlands.

Each time you set forth, be sure your inventory includes

1. hammer and hoe
   
2. 100 stone
   
3. 20 wood

Move only as far as you can still run back and jump back up to the top of your sea wall and place a small perching outpost



A good method here is to set the workbench while things seem quiet. That changes so quickly in Ashlands that you want to take advantage of any interlude you can find. Then, use the hoe and put down a 4-square of columns using just 10 stone per column. Be sure the walls are clean and sharp. This creates a platform that keeps you up and away from danger but is still within the AoE range of the demolisher.



When danger encroaches, jump to the top of your 4-square and drive the demolisher into the center. The demolisher will take out rock (grausten), workbenches and your enemies. But the terrain column is (currently) safe.

But if this still seems too dangerous, you brought enough stone to build a 4-square twice as high and that allows you to snipe your opponents using the bow. Essentially, Ashlands is a non-stop You are being hunted event.



If you are caught out as mobs converge, then you should still keep a cool head and drop the workbench and raise yourself up out of danger. This is why you pack enough wood to place a second workbench atop your initial column since the one on the ground will likely get destroyed.

When you spot charred spawners, take them out with black metal (later charred) crossbow bolts. This is where the crossbow really shines as a piece of handheld artillery.



Continue placing these outposts and always keep them in sight as you drop to the ground to explore or to pick up drops from your kills. Putting campfires and/or workbenches atop these pillars can also help reduce re-spawns. This may even be a motivator to place as many of these outposts as you can. It is considerably less dangerous to take a few game days off, return to a safer biome like the Plains (!) and harvest those stone monoliths that give over 400 stone for very few swings of the pickaxe. While veteran combat players will indeed develop very high skills with range and melee weapons, a combat engineer can be spotted by their 100 pickaxe skill.

First Charred Fortress

When you have spotted the distinctive green streamer of a charred fortress, put down one of your raised terrain columns and build it out so that it can accommodate a portal and shield. Be sure that there is clear terrain (no lava) between you and the fortress.



Begin growing a terrain wall in the direction of the fortress. Use the 10 meter gauge we showed earlier as there will likely be lava blobs that will visit the site.

When the defensive ballista (skugg) come into view, immediately take it out with your crossbow.



This will likely get the attention of one or more charred warlocks in the fortress. If you spot them on the parapets, take them out with the crossbow. It is more likely that you will knock them down to the surface. If you stay back from the edge of your terrain column, their spells cannot hit you but be prepared with poison and fire potion just in case.



When you come in range of charred marksmen from the parapets bring up one or more ballista to provide covering fire. Hopefully by this point you have at least one charred trophy and this can program the ballista to target all charred. Make sure you position the ballista to provide covering fire from the marksmen on the fortress. Warriors, marksmen and twitchers on the ground can do little damage while you are up on your terrain wall but the marksmen on the parapet are the real threat as are any warlocks still remaining up there.



Let your ballista cover you as you continue to make progress pouring terrain until you get close enough to see the inside courtyard. If you can spot the top of a spawner, place down a stair and climb up to neutralize the spawner with your crossbow (kudos to player @Nerevar for this tip).



At this point you have the option of invoking bonemass and gliding in over the top of the fortress to eliminate any remaining spawner and skugg still on the wall.



And now you can relax and act like a kid at Christmas with your new fortress.



That inner wall can be probed with a blackmetal pickaxe and where it does not say too hard can be broken to reveal the treasures within.



And if you are truly fortunate, you will even get the vegvisir for Fader, our next milestone.

Fader

The Fader location is distinguished by the 3 receptacles for bells which you built from fragments recovered in the charred fortresses.



Unlike the Mistlands, we can build a terrain enclosure for Fader as long as we stay outside the mystical boundary of his summoning altar. Similar to our first landing in the Ashlands, this will be an effort for nearly 20K stone.



Yes, you can raise terrain over lava. Just don't stand there for a long period of time.



You will want an escape hatch. Your portal should be protected and far from the encirclement of Fader's combat area.



It is your choice, but you may wish to remove the charred ruin surrounding the summoning altar as this gives you cleaner ranged shots from your terrain wall. You can use a battering ram and pickaxe since you will not be able to de-construct this ruin with a stone cutter (or you can enlist the locals to work as a demolition crew on your behalf)





At this point, you have prepared the site as well as you can and can tap into multiple content guides that talk you through actual Fader combat. If you choose to engage Fader with tamed asksvin (preferably 1 or even 2-star) then this new enclosure is a perfect breeding pen.





If you prefer range or melee, be sure the enclosure wall is thick enough for you to stay mobile as Fader's grausten attack will sprout even on the terrain wall. There have been suggestions of luring Fader into a pit such that his movement is more limited but harpoons do not seem to latch onto Fader so you would have to rely on some other means of trapping him.

But persistence and patience have taken you this far. They will take you further.



... to the Deep North.

Many Thanks

.... for stopping by.

[chives]

i love how long this would take... im gonna try it :)

[Zombits]

well written

[Steve]

This is REALLY good, nice work!

[Brownie Master]

Montezuma wouldn't approve. You have too many luxuries that he doesn't have.

[OctoberSky]

Many of the great Khan's combat engineers were actually from vassal cities in China where siege tactics were developed since the time of Sun Tzu. The Khan himself disdained walls for his own cities since the horde itself was better than any wall.

[DoomTevis]

Genghis Khan and his mongol hordes set the standard of a true Siege, ceaser- tho great, was known for inspiration threw action and unwaivering moral, iron resolve

[OctoberSky]

Robert E Lee studied many of Napoleon's greatest campaigns and Lee's victory at Chancellorsville was in many ways like Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz. But from the aspect of combat engineering, we can probably go much further back in time to Julius Caesar's siege of Alesia and the use of circumvallation.

[DoomTevis]

Napoleon was the worlds greatest Strategist/Tactician, facts.

[biogeofanatic]

Congrats on this becoming viral, dork.

Sincerely, your daughter

[izopla]

good