Valheim - a brutal exploration and survival game - now available on Early Access

[OctavianRomulus]

What this game needs is some handcrafted sections randomly spliced in the generated world.

I would also love to see the basebuilding expanded. Maybe you would have to defend your house every once in a while from waves of enemies. Maybe players could establish towns too.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Maybe you would have to defend your house every once in a while from waves of enemies.

That happens yo.

 

[Alienman]

Maybe you would have to defend your house every once in a while from waves of enemies.

That happens yo.

Problem is that they buzz off after 2 minutes. Not sure why. Had an army of undead attack, thought I was screwed for sure, but then they just ran away after a few minutes - "the skeletons tire", like wut?

 

[whydoibother]

this looks like something that is on fire for 4 weeks until everyone plays it enough to realize how shallow it is. Fuck early access and especially fuck early access survival games.

Its not a mini-MMORPG style game, like a lot of the other early access open world survival shovelware. This doesn't require a big install base, because:

• You host your own dedicated server
• Its designed for 2-4 people, and playable even solo
• You can take your character away from a "dead server" if your friends quit, and take the same character to another server, like in Terraria

In general, the game is much more like Terraria than the other offerings in its genre. And like Terraria, you don't need many people to have fun.
Me and a friend played it for ~10 hours across 3 days, and at all times we were doing the usual survival game loops, but also discovering new stuff. I am sure the trickle of new stuff ends eventually, but as it was, it was a constantly fun game. Finding out that you can kill things by chopping big trees into them (or yourself), and that you can die if you build a big fireplace but no chimney, these discoveries are very fun and remind me of early Minecraft days and figuring out you can use a bucket to move a river, for example.

What this game needs is some handcrafted sections randomly spliced in the generated world.

The world I played on had a bunch of abandoned watch towers, church style buildings, etc. Few, but honestly having more would ruin the mood.

I would also love to see the basebuilding expanded. Maybe you would have to defend your house every once in a while from waves of enemies. Maybe players could establish towns too.

You do have to defend against waves, eventually. Just progress the game a bit. As for the village bit, they should do it like Terraria, where if you make a house that satisfies certain requirements, a blacksmith for example moves in there.

 

[Calthaer]

So it kind of sounds like I need to check in on this game in two or three years once they've added more stuff. Like most people who play with friends mine have a bit of ADD and we will probably only get one shot at this one. Also, I hate Early Access and I don't want to give potatoes even if the game is the best pixelated drug since playing multiplayer DOOM on the school's token ring network.

 

[OctavianRomulus]

Help, I can't find the swamps. I found a tiny swamp biome beyond Black Forest but it was a dead end...

Also, the fact that you can make sausages out of zombie guts is quite questionable. Or perhaps...WE ARE TEH ZOMBIES dun dun dun.

 

[Cyberarmy]

This game is the opposite of brutal? Had fun with friends for 2-3 hours and that's it. Killed a boss, plundered a dungeon etc.
I'd play Conan Exiles instead of this one TBH.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

But is it good?

I've played about 6 hours. So far, yes. The graphics, animations, etc. are reminiscent of Gothic 1 & 2 (low poly). The environments are very beautiful (lighting effects, etc.)

It avoids what I consider to be some of the worst things about survival / crafting games pretty deftly. Namely,
1. It avoids the constant resource grind by making all equipment free to repair at a crafting station. The equipment is also upgradeable, so there is a sense of progress.
2. The overall goal of the game is to find and defeat a series of bosses throughout the world, meaning that all the resource gathering, base building, and exploring you do has a definite purpose.

So it's 3D terraria with slower combat and less building variety.

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

I've been playing this in single player for a few hours and I don't really get the hype. I built a house, killed the first boss and now I am supposed to go and collect tin and copper to make better items... then the game crashed and I lost progress. I can't be bothered anymore and just uninstalled.

It plays a lot like an MMO, but I would rather play any MMO than this. The most fun I had was chopping down trees and building a house.

 

[Raghar]

But is it good?

It's basically minecraft with graphics.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I don't usually like survival/basebuilding games, but I've been having some good fun with this one, playing with one other friend.

It started out really strong, when you're moving around finding new things at a good clip, etc., but I found the progression ground to a halt when I had to find the materials to build a smelter/kiln/forge in order to make bronze items. I don't know if it was our particular world seed, but the first stretch of black forest we found didn't have any ruins whatsoever. None. We must have trudged through 4-5 hours combing across every inch of a huge area without finding anything except a few troll lairs. Then we went around the frost mountain to the other side of black forest (a solid 15 minutes of nonstop walking) and there the crypts/dungeons were a dime a dozen.

That particular bit was quite frustrating as I'm more interested in fighting off tougher monsters, etc. and there's a huge barrier to going up the mountain and fighting off wolves (wolves in this game are 10x more deadly than a 15 feet high troll). Anyway, I've done some bronze tools and weapons now and things are back on track.

I like the quiet atmosphere of the game, combat is not a complete shitshow (there's even riposting - which is probably overpowered given how lenient the timing window is and how many free hits you get off of one), it looks and runs well enough, there's some interesting physics (chopping wood especially) and as it's early in development, it can improve a lot. I'll keep playing it as I think it's much more interesting than the previous game of this type I tried (No Man's Sky, which bored me to tears).

 

[Fedora Master]

But is it good?

It's basically minecraft with graphics.

Worse graphics.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It's another one of those games that tricks you into thinking it's fun by getting you to play with friends, when playing with friends makes even shitty games fun.

 

[Terenty]

Yeah, the game has this cool old school aesthetic going, kinda a mix of Myth/unreal 1/outcast graphics, and for the first several hours it's engaging in coop. But then comes the grind and totally kills it. The same fucking mobs almost everywhere don't help

 

[rusty_shackleford]

 

[whydoibother]

This post is the Dark Souls of Steam reviews.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Yeah, the game has this cool old school aesthetic going, kinda a mix of Myth/unreal 1/outcast graphics, and for the first several hours it's engaging in coop. But then comes the grind and totally kills it. The same fucking mobs almost everywhere don't help

It's only a grind if you don't have the right exploration strategy.

You can build an "outpost" with walls and a campfire in a couple minutes. If you get bored of base building, go explore and build outposts. Don't return to ur home base for a while.

Run as far as you can and just before it turns dark build an outpost base. Then run through the night if you feel strong enough, or just wait for day.

The key to making the game fun is finding the dungeons and boss fights. If all you do is farm food and build, it probably won't be fun past a couple hours.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Well, sometimes you get fucked by the map generator, which is what I experienced in my coop game. We built our first big base between the meadow and the first black forest we found, but there were no ruins there. None. We scoured every inch of the map for them, as progression is tied to finding that item that opens up the kiln and the smelter. This went on for hours and we had to trek to the other side of the mountain (taking the long way around, through the coast because if you don't freeze to death, wolves will one-shot you), which took hours, just to be able to find our first dungeon.

This killed the game's momentum for me. Something similar happened when looking for the swamp. Exploring is fun, but getting fucked by map RNG isn't. I'd imagine t's something easily fixable within the seed algorithm, so I'm not mad or anything. I still look forward to playing the game some more.

Last session had some truly memorable moments. Feeling strong enough to venture up the mountain for the first time, even if we don't have any way to protect ourselves from the cold yet, we decided to build a series of bonfires as we progressed upwards. Upon reaching one of the peaks, I saw cold drakes for the first time circling overhead - decided to see if I could shoot one - success! After killing a few (they're surprisingly easy), I saw something shining in the distance. Moving closer with some difficulty due to the need to keep building bonfires to keep frost at bay, we noticed it was a pearlescent dragon egg. I have no idea what it's for (playing the game blind and not reading wikis and so on), but decided to take it to base. Realize it weighs 200 units, so need to ditch a few things. Fumbling in the cold and terrified because we start hearing wolves closing in on us, I drop the egg by mistake - it rolls down the slope of the mountain and nearly falls off the edge! Physics in this game can sometimes be pretty cool - it rocked back and forth a few times but finally it stabilized. Feeling like a bit like a viking Indiana Jokes, I inched forward (fearing falling down the slope myself) and managed to pick it up. We take the long trip back to our base going through a blizzard (first one I saw in the game). We can't process the dragon egg just yet and still have no idea what it's for, but there was a palpable sense of achievement in the air. Memorable moments like this really make the game for me.

Wouldn't stomach playing it solo, though.

 

[JarlFrank]

Well, sometimes you get fucked by the map generator, which is what I experienced in my coop game.

My pal looked for good map seeds online, and picked one that's pretty cool. It's called Europa and it has a sizeable starting island with plenty of black forest in it, several dungeons, lots of berries, copper and tin, and an island with a snow mountain and wolves within swimming distance (we built an outpost there, captured and tamed wolves, and led them back to our home base over a wooden bridge).

He's going totally insane with the building though. We have HUNDREDS of chests to dump materials in, and the home base is the size of a small town. So big, in fact, that the game starts lagging whenever you approach it due to having to load too many assets lmao.

 

[Burning Bridges]

We all have such a pal

 

[Great Deceiver]

Yeah, I don't give a rat's ass about base building outside of very basic stuff, but my coop pal is nuts about it.

This is why I couldn't stomach playing the game alone. The busywork of building shit in games of this type just isn't for me.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Exam week is over, time to valheim and chill :D

 

[Talby]

 

[Ranselknulf]

In a way, this game is the perfect anti min/maxer game.

People who get too obsessive about always having everything perfect will lose interest in the game fast.

It's still fun casual gaming for me and friends. We might play once a week though and we don't bother reading guides, just play and figure things out.

Got our farms going today, found the snow biome, built a few outposts, and got our bronze armor going. It was a good day. We can probably kill the second boss soon, we are aiming for a full set of bronze gear and then gonna give him a go.


Something that we found helpful is building multiple beds to act as "waypoints", that way if you die its not a long run back to your "stuff"

Ie.. as you pass a small outpost you built (literally just big enough for a campfire, workstation for repairs, and bedrolls), you click the bed to set your respawn point. You can expand this concept as far as you need, but you can literally build a shantytown shack in a couple minutes if you don't care about using it for anything but a waypoint/respawn.

 

[Grunker]

I really like this game, but brutal it is not. After the first wave of attackers me and my friends totally neglected defenses even though the game told us to build some. Then we were attacked by a horde of Greylings. By all rights they should have utterly demolished our base. Instead they kind of lazily hit the front of our main house a bit, then left. It took 1 minute to undo the damage of a totally undefended wave of 25 enemies (3 defenders).

That’s what the game needs right now IMO; difficulty. Everything else is p. cool