I bounced off it the first time around. Playing with friends really changed the game for me. You have to gather more resources to kit everyone out, but it's much more fun roaming and exploring as part of a group and splitting some tasks.
I like the option to choose the progressively challenging biomes as well as the option to choose to lay back in the meadows and wipe out graylings like mosquitoes.
I've been playing since it first released. It's in my top 5 favorite games of all time. The sense of adventure, wonder, and exploration it provides is unparalleled imo. The souls-light combat is fun and rewarding. It's a truly beautiful and wonderful game.
This game hooked me about two weeks ago. It's very addictive. From RL experience, I've found the logging and ocean surge mechanics impressive. My only negative has been a boat glitch that ruined one character. Thanks for the video.
Thanks for taking the time to comment! I also particularly enjoy the ocean surges. Coming over the top of the waves in your boat during a storm is such a visceral feeling.
Very well said - you touched on so many of the aspects of Valheim that make it great! It's always nice to see Valheim getting the appreciation it deserves ☺ I think it's an absolutely gorgeous game and I'll constantly catch myself pausing while I'm sailing on the ocean or standing at the top of a mountain to just look out at the landscape 🤩
It's strange isn't it? You'll crest the ridge of a mountain, or emerge from the trees and think, "That is STUNNING!" The elegant simplicity of the game is definitely part of its appeal. Press on until Odin's hall, Viking!
One thing I really like about it is that the characters in worlds are separate and both have different saves so if you die to glitch or something, but you don’t wanna change your world at all you can just revert your character to before the save and have the world not be affected Vice versa
I haven't seen my mates for over a decade due to life getting in the way, and this game bought us back together like good old times. I love turning my hud off grabbing a boat and taking in the scenery. The lighting in this game is amazing.
@@athacusgaming I know right. And having a mate or two there with you to experience it too is priceless. Especially when the sea serpent turns up, haha
I absolutely adore Valheim. What I never see spoken about is just how well the tiered progression through each stage is brilliantly balanced. You can stay at one level for as long as you like and prosper, but if you take the step to challenge yourself against Trolls, Draugher, Fullings, or Seekers then you are rewarded across all aspects of the game - gear, visuals, and build opportunities
So I didn’t articulate this very well in the video but this was the point of my Pace of Technology portion. You can gear up in each tier and do something fulfilling there. You said it better than I did.
Honestly if there is a time to play it, it's now. The Mistlands and Ashlands biomes have really rounded out the late game and provided lots of good reasons to build anew with new materials, it used to feel a bit pointless to rebuild in the lategame but not anymore. With the final biome on it's way, now is the best time to have a couple playthroughs and some build experience under your belt. Will only increase the quality of your play, and there's even ways to update/regenerate sections of your world for new updates.
So, I'm not at the Mistlands yet but we're on our way now. The goal my crew and I have is to get at least two solid playthroughs in, one vanilla, one modded. After that, we're going to take stock and see what is next. I'm deeply interested in the Mistlands personally since there is such a chasm in opinions in the playerbase about it. Still, the game is an easy recommend in my 60 hours with it even without lategame content. There's so much to do.
Valheim is a great game and the first time I played it with friends back when it came into early access we were blown away. But I think it has a few glaring issues that you didn't get far enough into the game to see. First off the game starts to borderline on tedium at many points so be ready to spend HOURS of time mining/searching for RNG dungeons and sailing that stuff back. The sailing is really cool at first but becomes more of a chore and loses its charm. Plus there is really nothing to do in the ocean after a certain point. The quality of life need major improvements. There is quick stack but no stack to nearby chest or craft from chest feature. Your armor, food, and equipment take up most of your inventory space leaving little room to pick up other items. Late game especially your inventory feels like its always full and cluttered. The worst part of the game for me is the AI. They seem to be programmed to attack and then do a frustrating long flank circle on you while you get swarmed by other creatures who do the same thing. The bosses are cool but many of them are damage sponges that have resistance to certain types of attacks, so if you want to play as a specific class you cant and are forced to craft different items to get by. At times the game feels unfairly punishing, if you die you drop everything and if your portal breaks you need to craft a new boat and sail back to your body. This can actually take hours of time and at points makes you wonder if its worth it. If you want to keep your sanity PLAY WITH QOL MODS and change your world settings to fit your playstyle. It makes the game more tolerable and fun imo. Only reason for this rant is I think the game need to be improved by the actual devs since its been out for almost 4 years now.
So, I have seen some of your points since this video went live. We are just into the mountains now after about 50 hours of play while the video went live after about 20 hours of play. 20 hours is the line where I look at any game to see how much enjoyment I'm getting out of it and either drop it or carry on. Valheim passed the 20 hour test with flying colours despite already being able to see some of the issues you've mentioned. In fairness, those issues should have gone into the video but I am quite new at this so I'll have to beg your forbearance. I will be making a second video to discuss these drawbacks since there are quite a few and they deserve addressing. If you're still reading at this point, here is my response to each of the pain points you raised. 1. The grind is real. No doubt about that. As an MMO vet though, that's not necessarily an issue for me but I can understand why some people would find it an slog. This one is down to individual tolerance I feel. 2. Sailing is a split between me and my crew actually. I adore it and have spent hours sailing around mapping out coastlines and potential forward base locations. I even fish from my boat frequently. My crew on the other hand loathe the boats and always want to minimize time spent in them. I'm obviously in the minority. In my last stream, I did agree that the Ocean biome really deserves more love. There's heaps of room for it in the lore and I would be shocked if Iron Gate doesn't visit the Ocean biome again for another pass prior to EA ending. If I don't get to fight a spawn of the Girdle of the Realm, Jormungandr or something similar, I'm going to be quite sad. 3. QoL you're going to get big agreement for me. The interface is very bare bones, almost inexcusably so. I was quite surprised to find out how old school the UI was when I installed the game. It would not look out of place on the Win 95 era games I grew up playing. That's not a compliment. This needs to be addressed. 4. Inventory is a pain but that's an intentional choice I feel on their part. They want players to feel like they need to streamline their kit and plan ahead for encumbrance. Here again, I know my age is showing, but it hearkens back to the old style CRPGs and even games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R where weight was a serious consideration and you often couldn't bring your whole kit along, just the most essential bits. 5. AI needs work in general. Some of the behaviours I've seen have varied from Terminator to C3-P0. Either viciously deadly or utterly inept and getting stuck everywhere. Bosses are really nothing, just speedbumps to get some piece of loot to open up the next biome generally. I agree with you right up until you talk about damage types. I think this is why the game is very clearly without classes. They want solo players to explore the full range while group players are freer to adopt more focused roles. This is definitely going to be a problem for a lot of people. 6. Unfairly punishing is a matter of perspective and can be accounted for in the game's settings but I can see your point. No big disagreement here. 7. I'll be playing with mods in our next playthrough and I'm going to scour the internet to narrow down what will help the most. Some helpful posters here have already suggested some. Another agreement. Thanks for the comment here. I can feel the energy you put into it. I hope the issues you have are addressed sooner rather than later.
Any and all of these complaints are addressed by the devs adding World modifiers, which are able to be toggled on and off before you load the map, even on maps you already created. Don't like losing your items? Turn it off. Don't like sailing solo to transport metals? Turn on Portal Items.
@@Jophilli yep! Once I actually got digging around in the settings, outside of AI and UI, most of these are actually accounted for in the map sliders. I actually just rebalanced some stuff four days ago for the crew and I on our current seed. I do stand by my comments on AI and UI though. I added five mods which addressed the latter but AI and enemy movement both need more love I think. I do still hope Ocean Biome gets some love too. I want to be in my boat hunting monsters to make rib bone longhouses to support my leviathan shell roof. None of these would give me any hesitation to recommend the game. If anything, the time I’ve spent since the video went live would only make me more likely than I already was to recommend this game to others.
@@athacusgaming i agree with you and thanks for taking the time to respond. Just want to give you an update. I beat the game with my friend and let me tell you. The ashlands was horribly designed. Let me explain. The biome itself looks really cool. But man whatever dev designed the game balance was smoking crack. There are so many mobs it lags your game to 20-30fps. There are 6 different mob types and trust me you will see every single one at the same time making it almost impossible even when we upgraded to ashlands gear. My friend and I sailed back to our bodies 4 times after dying and the portal breaking. It was not fun, it was not challenging, it was straight up unfair. Once we finally got a foothold we were doing ok until we had to wander farther from the portal to progress the game. We got completely soft locked in a fortress after dying next to a mob spawner. We tried running back over 50 times but died every time due to the swarm of mobs. We ended up using a tp anywhere cheat to get our gear back because we just simply did not have time to keep trying to run back. I really like valheim but this playthrough literally made me never want to start a new game ever again. Lol
@@GregoryRyan115 I think that Iron Gate realizes this. They've been taking in a lot of feedback from Ashlands and are currently doing further work to it. We are well into the Mistlands now and are looking forward to the Ashlands. Hopefully some of the bugs and other pain points are smoothed over by the time we are ready to go in. The corpse marker screens I've seen on Reddit have been a mix of hilarious and daunting.
the lumberjacking is so gooooooooood and I love building so much the system is great cause you keep getting new toys to play with in construction like stone and core wood and finewood furnature ect.
You are absolutely correct. Every time someone points that out it is a reminder for me to be more rigorous in my editing process. Easily the thing I regret most about this video.
Just a small quibble: Iron Gate is the dev team--Coffee Stain is the publisher. Dev team responsible for the combat system. That being said, agree with pretty much all your takes.
I only noticed that mistake once I had released the video. I was kicking myself hard. I’m glad to hear that you agreed with the takes I had. I’m mulling over some ideas for a few more Valheim vids now.
Thank you for mentioning this. You are entirely correct and Iron Gate deserves full credit for their hard work. It's my biggest regret of the video that I misspoke when discussing combat. I don't know how I missed that but I will try to be more diligent about editing in future projects.
Oh yea! And the thing I do. Is that I do not check out YT before a new biome. I love the suprise aspect of the game, the "holy shit" moments. I really hope the keep the magick of the game how it is. And just add more stuff. Oh and the mod community are sweet as well.
I agree..experiencing this game for the first time was unlike any other game I've played. It felt like my life was on the line, fully immersed into the world. This game is amazing. Like a lot of people I didn't give it a fair shake at first, but I came back to it a year later and put 400 hours into it. Defeated the queen with my nephew! Great times.
@@itsgryme1081 haha thats how it's suposed to be played. I mean , I love to play the game. But it really shine when you play togheter with other players. Sometimes its a bit empty in the world, so hopfully they will add more stuff. There is a buildingstreamer thst have made a huge oroject with other streamers. Like a more rpg game withe towns etc in valheim. Its crazy, would love to try it out.
I think it is a pretty inescapable comparison. It’s like a city vs a village in social structure. Classic MMOs like wow offer a lot of big fancy lights but have become kind of soulless as a result of the intense focus on instanced dungeons. Valheim is all about creating intimate settings with a lot of life in them due to how important those social bonds are to the experience.
I play solo or with one friend most of the time. My biggest complaint is the inventory system being too small. You will fill your inventory up within a minute of fighting or gathering resources.
If I made this video again, I think I’d mention the inventory, and the connectivity issues to counterbalance the four things I think make the game worthwhile for a beginner to check out. I think the game is amazing but the drawbacks like the inventory (both space and organizational) and the sometimes wonky ui deserve to be discussed.
Is it worth it? i mean yes, i spent 500 hrs in it. Is mistlands and ashlands good? not really. Mistlands never was fun, and felt a bit broken, the enemies were annoying and you just wanted to get it over with. A lot of the stuff felt unfinished, like the dwarves, so much opportunity to make something interesting. And in the end you had to kill em aswell as everything else in this game. Ashlands was a pain and another biome i just wanted to get over with.
So, I keep seeing really divided opinions over those two additions in particular. Did you find that the rewards you could get out of the biome not worth the effort or was it that that mechanically the biomes were just not to your taste?
Just sad I'll never get to play this game for the first time again. This game is incredible for 1gb. No other game has such fun mechanics, animations or building like Valhiem.
The crew and I are working through the first playthrough now without mods. I'm excited to see what they add to the game. There are definitely some pain points like inventory management that feel like a mod would help a lot.
That is a big statement but it's hard to disagree. I feel like both Valheim, and the genre itself, is so fresh. I'm more enthused about logging in to play than I have been about any game in years.
I've got 2500 hours, and it was my favorite game for a while, but theyve been phoning it in. Game is less and less stable, and ashlands didn't deliver. Play soulmask, they care about their game.
I'll check out Soulmask for sure, thanks for the recommendation. After I've put a few hundred hours into Valheim it is Enshrouded and then Aloft after that if it has something more than a demo ready to go. If it doesn't I'll queue up Soulmask. I'm not sure why survival failed to grab me prior to this but the genre has its claws in now.
In real life, failure is the best teacher. But in Valheim you are penalized for it. In fact, failures are cumulative and take some time to come back from. So you can be kept from trying new and more difficult things. In real life, failures make us smarter and more skilled but not in Valheim. You already have to run and pick up your gear if you die. And possibly die again. I could get behind tool damage or loss. But it is unrealistik to get worse at everything if you make mistakes or get unlucky. (here is where some will say how great THEY are)
We talked about this back and forth a lot. In general, and I'm saying this as an older guy who played a lot of MMOs, I hate weapon skills in particular, as a system. It becomes particularly rough in Valheim for the reasons you mentioned. We wound up turning down skill losses on death as far as the slider allowed in the end. Learning a new biome, especially on a higher difficulty, became far too punishing otherwise. I'd suggest to anyone to tailor their Valheim experience to what they want. With all the sliders in now, it's not too hard to make something that feels comfortable for you rather than what Iron Gate might consider their "default" experience.
I feel like this is the correct take. AAA studios have their priorities in the wrong places now. I know that's a generalization and exceptions like Larian do exist but they are just that, exceptions. Smaller studios have the ability to follow their own projects and interests without having to worry about pleasing a faceless suit who only cares about short term growth.
The Mistlands forces you to adapt, I love the queen fight, it makes you take all things into account, sword and board, demolisher and the staff of protection feel like the perfect combo, but full magic works really well too, fire staff for adds, ice for the queen, the important things are take your time, keep up rested buff and stay on top of the adds.
I'm really excited to have a look at this now! We are just about to leave the Bronze Age in our first playthrough and we can't wait to see what's next. The Queen sounds amazing!
@@athacusgaming that much hype and you're only in the bronze age?! You have so much fun ahead of you. The first playthrough is a magical experience, I'm excited for you and your group.
@@Dracrek I know! We started playing about ten days ago and this video is the less excited version. The three of us can’t stop talking about it to each other. I’m going to start posting our scheduled sessions and I promise to restrain myself a bit.
That's definitely ok if it's not for you. I'm not sure at which point you tried the game but as of the last month when I dropped in, the controls feel fairly tight and the resources can be adjusted via a slider to match your desires so that you can tailor how much grind is necessary. I think that the devs are taking the feedback they're getting and trying to make the best game they can. Maybe have another look if you bounced off the game before.
I kinda agree. This is exactly why I play with a crap ton of QoL mods to get rid of arbitrary grinds or inflated difficulty mechanics. The essence of the game is fun, just needs more tweaks to hit your liking
@@avalerionbass agreed! I just started using mods this week and it really makes a difference. A few little tweaks like a UI improvement, the equipment mod to give the mysteriously absent paper doll for your gear slots and the craft from boxes and we are in Chef's Kiss territory now.
So, I’m working through the Iron Age now. The community seems super divided about Mistlands and I’m curious why. Without having seen it, it seems like, in terms of tone, a change from historical fantasy to high fantasy as well as being mechanically different.
@@athacusgaming Well to me mistlands simply used a cheap trick to raise the "difficulty". We all agree that the game is beautiful but in the mistlands the mist obfiscates everything. You can put down things to disspell it but they have such a laughably low radius that you need tens if not hundreds around any settlement you make. There are sometimes a mist free valleys which only adds to this pain cos it shows you how pretty the landscape you're nearly never able to see really is. The terrain is slow AF to travel which when combined with the mist makes it tedious and annoying. Oh and if you go too fast or change direction swiftly the only thing that you have on you that lets you see anything cant keep up with you. Mistlands is a joke, a bad one, every anti-mist thing needs a buff of like 150-200%. The ashlands are truly more difficult and even tho they are much more hostile they are fair. I enjoyed my time there tho they are much more demanding. Why? cos they do that without cheap tricks and taking away my awareness. My advice to you is: make galdr table and craft a feather cape asap, as a top priority. The problem is you need either a lot of luck or you need to explore the mistlands a lot to a point where you might be halfway done with em. Just about anything with mistlands is wrong.
The comments are showing up now! I removed the oldest two so there was only one to reply to. I can definitely understand why people would find the Mistlands unpleasant. I’ll come back to this comment when I hit it and let you know how I’m doing. It sounds rough
@@MrYossarianuk You only need to get one birch tree knocked down and you can use the whole opening/closing doors thing to move the fallen birch tree to other birch trees and ram it into the trunk till it falls too, and just rinse/repeat till you have as much as you need. Just gotta make sure you do it on relatively flat land near several birches.
I am 45 and i spent my gaming years on rts games and mostly starcraft. I stopped playing games for many years and occasionally i played a short adventure game and maybe not finish it even. I discovered Valheim about 6 months ago and something felt warm inside me when i saw the gameplay on a yt video. Now i can honestly say that Valheim is the love of my life when it comes to gaming. I cant say all the reasons but every bit of it is perfect. I even enjoy just walking in its majestic wolrd and gaze at the beauty of it. I never liked a game so much.
Not at all! Valheim is the sort of game that invites curiosity and has functionally infinite replayability. Odin watch over you as you walk in the 10th realm!
As a 80s kid, Valheim is the game we all wished could exist back then while playing Diablo, Zelda and Baldur’s Gate. Easily the best game I’ve played. The gameplay is great. The soundtrack alone makes the game. Building is limited by your imagination. The graphic choice make the game so immersive and lets the player enjoy a good game instead of pushing thru a bad game with great graphic like nowadays. And it’s fun to play with my kids. We have a world named "fathers&sons". It’s our best map. Basically a bunch of dudes who had kids and kept gaming :P Thank you Iron Gate for THE best game!
You have hit upon all the themes I was striving for, however inadequately in the video. I am also the father to four year old twins. Your "Fathers&sons" map is LITERALLY my dream. I can't wait to be able to do the same thing with them. Keep on as you are and thank you so much for the positive and heartwarming feedback.
Still EA. They have a small team and they're focused on getting all biomes up and running before full launch. Deep North is next now that they've got Ashlands sort of where they want it.
The game is great upto Mistlands. Mistlands is such a game changer, the environment is lethal, the enemies are lethal, and they come in big numbers. Players who have a "I will never retreat" philosophy.... lose. But for most its the games fault, they refuse to change their tactics.
So, you are the first person to mention the Mistlands' combat in this light but I think what you're saying is true for a lot of the game already. "Never retreat!" is the wrong way to come at Valheim to start with. Tactical retreats have great merit and save party wipes and corpse runs. I think that's the real underlying cause of most of the vitriol that Mistlands gets leveled at it. I plan to make a Mistlands video once we're properly into it and I hope that you'll come and see where I landed in my feelings toward it. Feedback and responses really help me reflect on why I have the opinions I do. Until Odin's halls, warrior!
@@puhbrox Yeah, I'm going to play around with them and put up a video about the results. I'm curious to see what I wind up overlooking in the first pass.
Favorite part is easily the combat, how open ended it feels and the things you can accomplish with multiple people. Been a couple years now since I've had someone to play with, but solo is still fun. Will always be better with friends though.
I’m deeper into the game now than I was when I made this video. The combat continues to please as new enemies appear but the fundamental core of the combat remains the same. Better with friends, but great no matter what.
With 1128 hours currently played, Valheim is one of the best game purchases I've ever made. That's less than two cents an hour and will decrease as I continue to play.
EA has come to mean “Kickstarter Round 2” or something to the industry I think. I mean. Valheim currently is a complete game for the price point it is at. I don’t know what Early Access really means for them at this juncture. I would love to have the chance to interview the devs and pick their brains a bit.
@@athacusgaming Yeah I would love to know. I've played some EA titles and they were always janky and clearly not finished. But even a couple years ago I played Valheim and it felt complete.
Awful combat where you have to be on the same level as enemy or hit is not counted, too many people praise a game that can't even do basics right...standards in gaming have dropped so far people don't even know where they are.
@@athacusgaming they wont, the fact the enemy can hit you at any level but not vice versa says it all. Its literally coded that way, the game has charm for sure but i will not praise a game that has so many fundemental flaws...
Steam says I have played Valheim for 2400 hours. I have played solo, with friends and on dedicated servers and have helped running one. I have two things why I love the game, firstly the combat is great and lot's of weapons to choose from. When Ashlands update came I started solo with knife and stabbed through everything and when I got into mistlands I changed to magics. After killing Queen I got ready to embark to Ashlands and my friends joined there and we all had the experience of new area and new challenges and learning how to overcome them. And the other and main thing is the building mechanics. Pieces are good and you can make amazing builds, but when you get into mods things become even better. When use mod that rotates pieces 360 degrees around any direction, more build pieces and no structural integrity you can make anything you can think of. Should you play Valheim in 2024? Absolutely.
These are my favorite kind of comments. I am a convert to mods wholeheartedly now too. Start small with the most glaring issues then slowly increase to taste.
Best game ive ever played. The progression is slow but rewarding. The risk of exploration and discovery drives you forward to fashion new equipment all throughout the game. The game loop is anything but boring!
I could not have put it more succinctly myself! Well said. The game does have its burrs and quirks but they are so miniscule compared to the joy of the loop that I rarely notice them.
One of, if not THE best game of the last 10 years. I have sooo many hours in this. Ashlands is punishing, but strangely beautiful once you're established there.
Fully agreed! I enjoyed it all the way up into Ashlands although we did decide to let the PTR cook a bit more before we finish it off. I want to have a better idea of their vision for the biome before passing final judgment on it.
Very nice video. For those wondering, this is 100% spot on. The game is solid and it's best played with friends, although I have a solo game going because my friends can't always join me to scratch that viking itch
Thank you for saying this! I’m much farther into the game now and if anything I’m more passionate about it than I was when I made the video. The game’s bumps can almost entirely be ameliorated by either map seed sliders AT ANY TIME or by grabbing a few small QoL mods. Valheim is awesome!
You can absolutely play it solo but I think the game works best with a couple friends or family in there with you. If you’re curious about how the dynamics work with friends, have a look my last couple streams.
The game is super enjoyable with friends. but.... the issue is the game lagss sooo much when you build bigger structures and do some wide terraforming of lands in a way that, you walk in and get like 13fps on your builds no matter how strong your pc is. thats the main issue of this game. but if this problem will be solve daym this game is supper great. expect lag when your instances on the game gets about 15k then it will show you the problem
Yep, we have seen this exactly ourselves. The engine also struggles once a certain amount of creatures or particle effects are being displayed. I haven’t seen the devs say anything much about this but it’s hard to think they’re not aware of it. I am sure we will see updates addressing performance in the future to polish this beautiful game.
@@athacusgaming yeah that thing makes me sad cuz, i love the game so much tho, i also tried to fix it with mods, but no mods available to fix the instances problems. mods available are just adjustments for graphics and not fixing instances problem. The game is almost perfect if they fix this problem, i hope devs look on to this problem more seriously.
I love Valheim also and have played it for a few years off and on. Try “Enshrouded” as it’s a new game in early release. So much interface is pretty much identical to Valheim, except it’s better in graphics and play smoothness. It’s like the Big V on steroids.
I have a roadmap of games to play for this Fall/Winter and Enshrouded content should start turning up after a short dalliance with Space Marine 2. I’m very hyped for it.
Brother! YOU SOLD me ! This was such a great video my friend, props to you. One question... Is ther a lot of freedom in building Structures and such, compared to other survival titles out? I am gonna show my wife this video! We're currently playing ARK and played 7 Days before that, but I am looking for something to GRAB ME... like The Burning Crusade did many years ago now. Thank you again for a fantastic Intro to Valheim!
I'm so pleased that you enjoyed the video! There is a massive amount of freedom in what you're able to achieve. The start of my latest stream record has the in-progress version of the keep our Hearthkeeper, Toke, built. TH-cam has a massive amount of guides of people showing off what can be achieved. I will say that the snapping can be a bit finnicky some times but with patience, much can be achieved. I highly recommend pulling your wife and a couple friends in to play. If you have an old laptop or PC lying around to act as a dedicated server (I'm using a dinosaur with 4gb of ram and it servers perfectly well) you will be shocked by how quickly and naturally that MMO vibe but far cozier, turns up. Onward to Valhalla, warrior!
Man…. I have to add and truly hope that you explore mods if you and the fam like building…. I play on a dedicated server with my Dad…. We could not be happier. Comfy gizmo mod. At the least start there. Promise you won’t be let down
played both vanilla and modded. This game needs to be modded. Makes it 10x better. The season mod makes the game more dynamic and interresting to play. Monstrum mod makes the game more challenging, there are several mods that makes this game hella strong. The basic vanilla game in it self tends to be a bit to repetative, but with some mods u get QOL (Quality of life) and more building materials that makes building and setteling mroe fun. My advice is to test a play trough without mods first, and then after you elarn the game you can mdo it for a more fun experiecne.
Thank you so much for calling out specific mods. That is very helpful. I’m really intrigued by a seasonal mod. That is something that is oddly missing in vanilla. My crew and I are doing a vanilla playthrough now. There are a couple stream records up while I get my ducks in order for additional content if you’re curious to see how we are doing. To Valhalla!
@@athacusgaming Nice one ! Will go and check them out. yes, seasonal mod is a gamechanger. Actually made me come back to the game. prob played 20 hours the last 3 days because the game looks and feels better. And for the new players -> Test vanilla first, and if you are looking to spice it up, do mod by mod and test them out on ur local machine before uploading them to ur friends public server. We rented a server to play on for the fun of it. Mods are based on my personal preffrence. Have 34 mods installed. Armory v1.2.1 by Therzie BepInExPack_Valheim v5.4.2202 by denikson Better_Blast_Furnaces v1.0.0 by joryjuky_team BetterArchery v1.9.7 by ishid4 BetterSounds v0.31.0 by Wianda BetterUI_ForeverMaintained v2.5.6 by BetterUI_ForeverMaintained Bounties v3.0.17 by Digitalroot CoreWoodExtras v1.2.2 by MagicMike CreatureLevelAndLootControl v4.6.1 by Smoothbrain DropMoreLoot v1.2.2 by TastyChickenLegs Dryzlers_Mass_Pickup v1.0.1 by dryzler EpicLoot v0.10.1 by RandyKnapp EquipmentAndQuickSlots v2.1.13 by RandyKnapp ExploreTogether v1.3.0 by Rolo Farmyard_Animals v0.4.7 by Horem FloatingItems v1.0.0 by castix ItemStacksandWeight v1.0.0 by TheHomesteaders Jotunn v2.20.1 by ValheimModding MagicPlugin v2.0.5 by blacks7ar Mining v1.1.5 by Smoothbrain MissingPieces v2.2.0 by BentoG Monstrum v1.4.2 by Therzie OdinsSteelworks v0.1.25 by OdinPlus PlantEverything v1.18.1 by Advize Quick_Stack_Store_Sort_Trash_Restock v1.4.7 by Goldenrevolver Sailing v1.1.7 by Smoothbrain SeaAnimals v0.2.6 by Marlthon Seasonality v3.3.7 by RustyMods Seasonality_HD_Texture_Pack v0.0.7 by RustyMods SeasonalityTextures v1.0.0 by RustyMods SeedBed v1.2.2 by blacks7ar Spawn_That v1.2.14 by ASharpPen TeleportEverything v2.6.1 by OdinPlus Warfare v1.7.5 by Therzie For those who are looking for a QOL and a more challenging experience, u can copy pasta the text into thunderstore or Nexus. FYI : The mining mod is marked to not be working, but i cant find any issues with it. had one incident where the copper mine was empty, and then i got back out the copper veins was laying aroung the mine. this has only accourd 1 out of 15 mines.
@@Ching91919 I’m going to dump this into a txt file. Thank you so much for that detailed list! One of the biggest challenges when modding a new game is where to start. This will save lots of time. I appreciate it!
Yes! Choose your direction, choose your goals, choose your weapons, it is all up to you. So refreshing and easy to do whatever strikes your fancy without any pressure.
I love this game from the deep of my heart but I have an issue that makes me upset, whenever I try to join my friends server ( non-dedicated ) a Failed to connect appears every time even though I have tried every possible solution ( PC )
I am so sorry to hear that you’re having this issue. The game does indeed have some bizarre connection issues. I’m sure you’ve tried common fixes like unchecking cross play and making sure that you’re both showing as online on Steam. Are they able to connect to you if you host? If you can’t connect to them but they can connect to you it would immediately eliminate a possible source and let you and your friend narrow down the root issue. I hope that you’re able to solve the problem and venture together in the tenth realm in the near future!
Root issue is some pinging problem with the game, a VPN usually fixes it somehow, some friends had the same issue, once you start having connection issues your only way is to VPN somewhere
@@athacusgaming likely is, but it seems it came with the Mistlands update from what sources you can find online, and VPN usually fixes the problem faster than waiting for a fix for this, sounds like an obscure bug and usually haunts lower end PCs more than higher end based on comments around online forums/helplines
Genuinely probably the best game I’ve ever played
Definitely one of those *looks at clock* "IT'S WHAT TIME???"
@@athacusgaming 900+ hours into this game and i get you bro
@@forcedge2302 I'm just about to cross 60 hours now. Any game that sticks with me past 20 hours is going to be a long-term investment.
1700, only the last 100 or so in multi
@@capatheist Woaaaaah! That is dedication. How were you spending your time? Building? Exploring? Trying different mods or seed variants?
I bounced off it the first time around. Playing with friends really changed the game for me.
You have to gather more resources to kit everyone out, but it's much more fun roaming and exploring as part of a group and splitting some tasks.
Friends change everything.
I like the option to choose the progressively challenging biomes as well as the option to choose to lay back in the meadows and wipe out graylings like mosquitoes.
Self-determined gameplay is just what the doctor ordered sometimes.
I've been playing since it first released. It's in my top 5 favorite games of all time. The sense of adventure, wonder, and exploration it provides is unparalleled imo. The souls-light combat is fun and rewarding. It's a truly beautiful and wonderful game.
No arguments here on all points. My only regret so far is that I let it sit in my stream library for so long without trying it.
In this game I made a huge maze that probably nobody will escape if they want to try it.
This game hooked me about two weeks ago. It's very addictive.
From RL experience, I've found the logging and ocean surge mechanics impressive.
My only negative has been a boat glitch that ruined one character.
Thanks for the video.
Thanks for taking the time to comment! I also particularly enjoy the ocean surges. Coming over the top of the waves in your boat during a storm is such a visceral feeling.
Very well said - you touched on so many of the aspects of Valheim that make it great! It's always nice to see Valheim getting the appreciation it deserves ☺ I think it's an absolutely gorgeous game and I'll constantly catch myself pausing while I'm sailing on the ocean or standing at the top of a mountain to just look out at the landscape 🤩
It's strange isn't it? You'll crest the ridge of a mountain, or emerge from the trees and think, "That is STUNNING!" The elegant simplicity of the game is definitely part of its appeal. Press on until Odin's hall, Viking!
One thing I really like about it is that the characters in worlds are separate and both have different saves so if you die to glitch or something, but you don’t wanna change your world at all you can just revert your character to before the save and have the world not be affected Vice versa
This is an excellent point! It was a great feature to add.
I haven't seen my mates for over a decade due to life getting in the way, and this game bought us back together like good old times. I love turning my hud off grabbing a boat and taking in the scenery. The lighting in this game is amazing.
I'm right there with you. The first moment when you're freshly out to sea and turning into the breeze is its own thing.
@@athacusgaming I know right. And having a mate or two there with you to experience it too is priceless. Especially when the sea serpent turns up, haha
@@F4ngel that roar lives in my nightmares.
I absolutely adore Valheim. What I never see spoken about is just how well the tiered progression through each stage is brilliantly balanced. You can stay at one level for as long as you like and prosper, but if you take the step to challenge yourself against Trolls, Draugher, Fullings, or Seekers then you are rewarded across all aspects of the game - gear, visuals, and build opportunities
So I didn’t articulate this very well in the video but this was the point of my Pace of Technology portion. You can gear up in each tier and do something fulfilling there. You said it better than I did.
Honestly if there is a time to play it, it's now. The Mistlands and Ashlands biomes have really rounded out the late game and provided lots of good reasons to build anew with new materials, it used to feel a bit pointless to rebuild in the lategame but not anymore. With the final biome on it's way, now is the best time to have a couple playthroughs and some build experience under your belt. Will only increase the quality of your play, and there's even ways to update/regenerate sections of your world for new updates.
So, I'm not at the Mistlands yet but we're on our way now. The goal my crew and I have is to get at least two solid playthroughs in, one vanilla, one modded. After that, we're going to take stock and see what is next. I'm deeply interested in the Mistlands personally since there is such a chasm in opinions in the playerbase about it.
Still, the game is an easy recommend in my 60 hours with it even without lategame content. There's so much to do.
Valheim is a great game and the first time I played it with friends back when it came into early access we were blown away. But I think it has a few glaring issues that you didn't get far enough into the game to see. First off the game starts to borderline on tedium at many points so be ready to spend HOURS of time mining/searching for RNG dungeons and sailing that stuff back. The sailing is really cool at first but becomes more of a chore and loses its charm. Plus there is really nothing to do in the ocean after a certain point. The quality of life need major improvements. There is quick stack but no stack to nearby chest or craft from chest feature. Your armor, food, and equipment take up most of your inventory space leaving little room to pick up other items. Late game especially your inventory feels like its always full and cluttered. The worst part of the game for me is the AI. They seem to be programmed to attack and then do a frustrating long flank circle on you while you get swarmed by other creatures who do the same thing. The bosses are cool but many of them are damage sponges that have resistance to certain types of attacks, so if you want to play as a specific class you cant and are forced to craft different items to get by. At times the game feels unfairly punishing, if you die you drop everything and if your portal breaks you need to craft a new boat and sail back to your body. This can actually take hours of time and at points makes you wonder if its worth it. If you want to keep your sanity PLAY WITH QOL MODS and change your world settings to fit your playstyle. It makes the game more tolerable and fun imo. Only reason for this rant is I think the game need to be improved by the actual devs since its been out for almost 4 years now.
So, I have seen some of your points since this video went live. We are just into the mountains now after about 50 hours of play while the video went live after about 20 hours of play. 20 hours is the line where I look at any game to see how much enjoyment I'm getting out of it and either drop it or carry on. Valheim passed the 20 hour test with flying colours despite already being able to see some of the issues you've mentioned. In fairness, those issues should have gone into the video but I am quite new at this so I'll have to beg your forbearance. I will be making a second video to discuss these drawbacks since there are quite a few and they deserve addressing.
If you're still reading at this point, here is my response to each of the pain points you raised.
1. The grind is real. No doubt about that. As an MMO vet though, that's not necessarily an issue for me but I can understand why some people would find it an slog. This one is down to individual tolerance I feel.
2. Sailing is a split between me and my crew actually. I adore it and have spent hours sailing around mapping out coastlines and potential forward base locations. I even fish from my boat frequently. My crew on the other hand loathe the boats and always want to minimize time spent in them. I'm obviously in the minority. In my last stream, I did agree that the Ocean biome really deserves more love. There's heaps of room for it in the lore and I would be shocked if Iron Gate doesn't visit the Ocean biome again for another pass prior to EA ending. If I don't get to fight a spawn of the Girdle of the Realm, Jormungandr or something similar, I'm going to be quite sad.
3. QoL you're going to get big agreement for me. The interface is very bare bones, almost inexcusably so. I was quite surprised to find out how old school the UI was when I installed the game. It would not look out of place on the Win 95 era games I grew up playing. That's not a compliment. This needs to be addressed.
4. Inventory is a pain but that's an intentional choice I feel on their part. They want players to feel like they need to streamline their kit and plan ahead for encumbrance. Here again, I know my age is showing, but it hearkens back to the old style CRPGs and even games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R where weight was a serious consideration and you often couldn't bring your whole kit along, just the most essential bits.
5. AI needs work in general. Some of the behaviours I've seen have varied from Terminator to C3-P0. Either viciously deadly or utterly inept and getting stuck everywhere. Bosses are really nothing, just speedbumps to get some piece of loot to open up the next biome generally. I agree with you right up until you talk about damage types. I think this is why the game is very clearly without classes. They want solo players to explore the full range while group players are freer to adopt more focused roles. This is definitely going to be a problem for a lot of people.
6. Unfairly punishing is a matter of perspective and can be accounted for in the game's settings but I can see your point. No big disagreement here.
7. I'll be playing with mods in our next playthrough and I'm going to scour the internet to narrow down what will help the most. Some helpful posters here have already suggested some. Another agreement.
Thanks for the comment here. I can feel the energy you put into it. I hope the issues you have are addressed sooner rather than later.
Any and all of these complaints are addressed by the devs adding World modifiers, which are able to be toggled on and off before you load the map, even on maps you already created. Don't like losing your items? Turn it off.
Don't like sailing solo to transport metals? Turn on Portal Items.
@@Jophilli yep! Once I actually got digging around in the settings, outside of AI and UI, most of these are actually accounted for in the map sliders. I actually just rebalanced some stuff four days ago for the crew and I on our current seed.
I do stand by my comments on AI and UI though. I added five mods which addressed the latter but AI and enemy movement both need more love I think.
I do still hope Ocean Biome gets some love too. I want to be in my boat hunting monsters to make rib bone longhouses to support my leviathan shell roof.
None of these would give me any hesitation to recommend the game. If anything, the time I’ve spent since the video went live would only make me more likely than I already was to recommend this game to others.
@@athacusgaming i agree with you and thanks for taking the time to respond. Just want to give you an update. I beat the game with my friend and let me tell you. The ashlands was horribly designed. Let me explain. The biome itself looks really cool. But man whatever dev designed the game balance was smoking crack. There are so many mobs it lags your game to 20-30fps. There are 6 different mob types and trust me you will see every single one at the same time making it almost impossible even when we upgraded to ashlands gear. My friend and I sailed back to our bodies 4 times after dying and the portal breaking. It was not fun, it was not challenging, it was straight up unfair. Once we finally got a foothold we were doing ok until we had to wander farther from the portal to progress the game. We got completely soft locked in a fortress after dying next to a mob spawner. We tried running back over 50 times but died every time due to the swarm of mobs. We ended up using a tp anywhere cheat to get our gear back because we just simply did not have time to keep trying to run back. I really like valheim but this playthrough literally made me never want to start a new game ever again. Lol
@@GregoryRyan115 I think that Iron Gate realizes this. They've been taking in a lot of feedback from Ashlands and are currently doing further work to it.
We are well into the Mistlands now and are looking forward to the Ashlands. Hopefully some of the bugs and other pain points are smoothed over by the time we are ready to go in. The corpse marker screens I've seen on Reddit have been a mix of hilarious and daunting.
the lumberjacking is so gooooooooood and I love building so much the system is great cause you keep getting new toys to play with in construction like stone and core wood and finewood furnature ect.
Exploring leading to new toys that you can then use to make new buildings and decorations is one of the best gameplay loops ever.
05:20 Coffee Stain are the publishers, Iron Gate are the game developers
You are absolutely correct. Every time someone points that out it is a reminder for me to be more rigorous in my editing process. Easily the thing I regret most about this video.
Just a small quibble: Iron Gate is the dev team--Coffee Stain is the publisher. Dev team responsible for the combat system. That being said, agree with pretty much all your takes.
I only noticed that mistake once I had released the video. I was kicking myself hard.
I’m glad to hear that you agreed with the takes I had. I’m mulling over some ideas for a few more Valheim vids now.
Glad to hear the toonami guy is doing game reviews.
You mentioned that Coffee Stain made a great combat system.
FYI: Coffee Stain is just a publisher. And the developers are Iron Gate Studio.
Thank you for mentioning this. You are entirely correct and Iron Gate deserves full credit for their hard work. It's my biggest regret of the video that I misspoke when discussing combat. I don't know how I missed that but I will try to be more diligent about editing in future projects.
I have 350 hours in game (solo), and I've just gotten to the mountains.
I spend wayyyyyy too much time building.
I'm working on a full village :)
Nothing wrong with that at all. A village sounds super cool. Have you thought about repurposing a draugr village?
after playing the game till the end a few times i found out how easy it was to mod and how that changed the game for me
It seems like a lot of folks feel that way. Can’t wait to try them out.
Started in EA now 1200+ hours later …. Still playing! And on PC the Mods are amazing
What mod is the most impactful for you?
The only thing I hate with the game, are that I wil nerver get to play it for the first time again. Jellus for the new players. But I love it!
Aye, the shine goes a bit when the systems become more obvious but it is still so easy to love the game.
Oh yea! And the thing I do. Is that I do not check out YT before a new biome. I love the suprise aspect of the game, the "holy shit" moments. I really hope the keep the magick of the game how it is. And just add more stuff. Oh and the mod community are sweet as well.
@@nidhugg4904 this is so important! Lots more exciting stuff to come, I am sure.
I agree..experiencing this game for the first time was unlike any other game I've played. It felt like my life was on the line, fully immersed into the world. This game is amazing.
Like a lot of people I didn't give it a fair shake at first, but I came back to it a year later and put 400 hours into it. Defeated the queen with my nephew! Great times.
@@itsgryme1081 haha thats how it's suposed to be played. I mean , I love to play the game. But it really shine when you play togheter with other players. Sometimes its a bit empty in the world, so hopfully they will add more stuff. There is a buildingstreamer thst have made a huge oroject with other streamers. Like a more rpg game withe towns etc in valheim. Its crazy, would love to try it out.
It was hard to narrow this down to four points but I did my best. Let me know what you think about Valheim.
I dont know about playing it alone, but if you have a friend or more of them this is more addictive than sugar
That’s what I found for sure. I would have played a lot solo too but once the crew got into it, the hooks went deep.
@@athacusgaming yuppp
I just started playing a month ago and it is my favorite game
Just before I did! What have you enjoyed the most so far?
Brad Shoemaker made the same comparison to WoW.
I think it is a pretty inescapable comparison. It’s like a city vs a village in social structure.
Classic MMOs like wow offer a lot of big fancy lights but have become kind of soulless as a result of the intense focus on instanced dungeons.
Valheim is all about creating intimate settings with a lot of life in them due to how important those social bonds are to the experience.
I play solo or with one friend most of the time. My biggest complaint is the inventory system being too small. You will fill your inventory up within a minute of fighting or gathering resources.
If I made this video again, I think I’d mention the inventory, and the connectivity issues to counterbalance the four things I think make the game worthwhile for a beginner to check out.
I think the game is amazing but the drawbacks like the inventory (both space and organizational) and the sometimes wonky ui deserve to be discussed.
AzuExtendedPlayerInventory you pick how many slots you want. works wonders for that what to throw away scenario
@@capnsmashy5718 great recommendation, thank you! I’ll look into it for playthrough 2!
Is it worth it? i mean yes, i spent 500 hrs in it. Is mistlands and ashlands good? not really. Mistlands never was fun, and felt a bit broken, the enemies were annoying and you just wanted to get it over with. A lot of the stuff felt unfinished, like the dwarves, so much opportunity to make something interesting. And in the end you had to kill em aswell as everything else in this game. Ashlands was a pain and another biome i just wanted to get over with.
So, I keep seeing really divided opinions over those two additions in particular. Did you find that the rewards you could get out of the biome not worth the effort or was it that that mechanically the biomes were just not to your taste?
One of my Favs
Yeah, I’ve been playing every day since I picked it up. Perfect solo or when my friends are on as a group.
Just sad I'll never get to play this game for the first time again.
This game is incredible for 1gb.
No other game has such fun mechanics, animations or building like Valhiem.
Sometimes simple is best and the creators seem to get that.
Great game, and QOL mods make it even better!
The crew and I are working through the first playthrough now without mods. I'm excited to see what they add to the game. There are definitely some pain points like inventory management that feel like a mod would help a lot.
Yes, the most fun in gaming since the Amiga days
That is a big statement but it's hard to disagree. I feel like both Valheim, and the genre itself, is so fresh. I'm more enthused about logging in to play than I have been about any game in years.
Superb game
Absolutely. It has its flaws but the things it does well absolutely outshine them.
Yes.
Easy answer is best!
I've got 2500 hours, and it was my favorite game for a while, but theyve been phoning it in. Game is less and less stable, and ashlands didn't deliver.
Play soulmask, they care about their game.
I'll check out Soulmask for sure, thanks for the recommendation. After I've put a few hundred hours into Valheim it is Enshrouded and then Aloft after that if it has something more than a demo ready to go. If it doesn't I'll queue up Soulmask. I'm not sure why survival failed to grab me prior to this but the genre has its claws in now.
In real life, failure is the best teacher. But in Valheim you are penalized for it. In fact, failures are cumulative and take some time to come back from. So you can be kept from trying new and more difficult things. In real life, failures make us smarter and more skilled but not in Valheim. You already have to run and pick up your gear if you die. And possibly die again. I could get behind tool damage or loss. But it is unrealistik to get worse at everything if you make mistakes or get unlucky. (here is where some will say how great THEY are)
We talked about this back and forth a lot.
In general, and I'm saying this as an older guy who played a lot of MMOs, I hate weapon skills in particular, as a system. It becomes particularly rough in Valheim for the reasons you mentioned.
We wound up turning down skill losses on death as far as the slider allowed in the end. Learning a new biome, especially on a higher difficulty, became far too punishing otherwise.
I'd suggest to anyone to tailor their Valheim experience to what they want. With all the sliders in now, it's not too hard to make something that feels comfortable for you rather than what Iron Gate might consider their "default" experience.
@@athacusgaming I appreciate the reply.
Love this.
Thanks man!
Indie games like this are the new AAA games
I feel like this is the correct take. AAA studios have their priorities in the wrong places now. I know that's a generalization and exceptions like Larian do exist but they are just that, exceptions. Smaller studios have the ability to follow their own projects and interests without having to worry about pleasing a faceless suit who only cares about short term growth.
Put on god-mode for the Queen fight (still a tough fight) or you will stop playing in the shitty Mistlands and you miss the awesome Ashlands.
The Mistlands forces you to adapt, I love the queen fight, it makes you take all things into account, sword and board, demolisher and the staff of protection feel like the perfect combo, but full magic works really well too, fire staff for adds, ice for the queen, the important things are take your time, keep up rested buff and stay on top of the adds.
*trepidation rising*
I'm really excited to have a look at this now! We are just about to leave the Bronze Age in our first playthrough and we can't wait to see what's next. The Queen sounds amazing!
@@athacusgaming that much hype and you're only in the bronze age?! You have so much fun ahead of you. The first playthrough is a magical experience, I'm excited for you and your group.
@@Dracrek I know! We started playing about ten days ago and this video is the less excited version. The three of us can’t stop talking about it to each other.
I’m going to start posting our scheduled sessions and I promise to restrain myself a bit.
I don't like it, controls are clucky and delayed. Resources are artificially scarce, the grind uncalled for. 3D terraria but worse.
That's definitely ok if it's not for you.
I'm not sure at which point you tried the game but as of the last month when I dropped in, the controls feel fairly tight and the resources can be adjusted via a slider to match your desires so that you can tailor how much grind is necessary. I think that the devs are taking the feedback they're getting and trying to make the best game they can.
Maybe have another look if you bounced off the game before.
I kinda agree. This is exactly why I play with a crap ton of QoL mods to get rid of arbitrary grinds or inflated difficulty mechanics. The essence of the game is fun, just needs more tweaks to hit your liking
@@avalerionbass agreed! I just started using mods this week and it really makes a difference. A few little tweaks like a UI improvement, the equipment mod to give the mysteriously absent paper doll for your gear slots and the craft from boxes and we are in Chef's Kiss territory now.
👍👍👍👍
3:10 that wasnt even that bad tbh.
Valheim has one flaw for me: mistlands.
So, I’m working through the Iron Age now. The community seems super divided about Mistlands and I’m curious why. Without having seen it, it seems like, in terms of tone, a change from historical fantasy to high fantasy as well as being mechanically different.
@@athacusgaming Well to me mistlands simply used a cheap trick to raise the "difficulty". We all agree that the game is beautiful but in the mistlands the mist obfiscates everything. You can put down things to disspell it but they have such a laughably low radius that you need tens if not hundreds around any settlement you make. There are sometimes a mist free valleys which only adds to this pain cos it shows you how pretty the landscape you're nearly never able to see really is. The terrain is slow AF to travel which when combined with the mist makes it tedious and annoying. Oh and if you go too fast or change direction swiftly the only thing that you have on you that lets you see anything cant keep up with you.
Mistlands is a joke, a bad one, every anti-mist thing needs a buff of like 150-200%. The ashlands are truly more difficult and even tho they are much more hostile they are fair. I enjoyed my time there tho they are much more demanding. Why? cos they do that without cheap tricks and taking away my awareness.
My advice to you is: make galdr table and craft a feather cape asap, as a top priority. The problem is you need either a lot of luck or you need to explore the mistlands a lot to a point where you might be halfway done with em. Just about anything with mistlands is wrong.
why "dear" yt you keep removing my comment? wth?
@@tyraelplI’ve gotten notifications that someone has commented but nothing is there. I don’t have any idea why YT is eating comments.
The comments are showing up now! I removed the oldest two so there was only one to reply to. I can definitely understand why people would find the Mistlands unpleasant. I’ll come back to this comment when I hit it and let you know how I’m doing. It sounds rough
Over 3200 hours. Need I say more?
That is a towering edifice of in-game experience, well done!
Skal !!!
Skal!!! Odin sees you!
The stamina system made me refund the game. cant stand it
I don’t mind it too much since one can strategize for it with food but I can understand your view too.
Guess you only played a few hours and didn't experiment with food
My favorite thing is trying to cause the largest possible tree felling chain reaction.
It's like dominos but with lives at stake.
its a way of getting fine wood early in the game..
@@MrYossarianuk You only need to get one birch tree knocked down and you can use the whole opening/closing doors thing to move the fallen birch tree to other birch trees and ram it into the trunk till it falls too, and just rinse/repeat till you have as much as you need. Just gotta make sure you do it on relatively flat land near several birches.
Oooh, getting a shit ton all piled onto a single lynch pin tree, the knocking THAT on over?! Yuussssss
@@avalerionbass that beautiful creak, then the crack and swoosh of branches coming down? 'Yuusssss' indeed!
I am 45 and i spent my gaming years on rts games and mostly starcraft. I stopped playing games for many years and occasionally i played a short adventure game and maybe not finish it even. I discovered Valheim about 6 months ago and something felt warm inside me when i saw the gameplay on a yt video. Now i can honestly say that Valheim is the love of my life when it comes to gaming. I cant say all the reasons but every bit of it is perfect. I even enjoy just walking in its majestic wolrd and gaze at the beauty of it. I never liked a game so much.
That's where I am still! I'm happy that you're still getting so much pleasure out the game!
5.500 h and still curious, Am I a nerd?
Not at all! Valheim is the sort of game that invites curiosity and has functionally infinite replayability. Odin watch over you as you walk in the 10th realm!
As a 80s kid, Valheim is the game we all wished could exist back then while playing Diablo, Zelda and Baldur’s Gate.
Easily the best game I’ve played. The gameplay is great. The soundtrack alone makes the game. Building is limited by your imagination.
The graphic choice make the game so immersive and lets the player enjoy a good game instead of pushing thru a bad game with great graphic like nowadays.
And it’s fun to play with my kids. We have a world named "fathers&sons". It’s our best map. Basically a bunch of dudes who had kids and kept gaming :P
Thank you Iron Gate for THE best game!
You have hit upon all the themes I was striving for, however inadequately in the video. I am also the father to four year old twins. Your "Fathers&sons" map is LITERALLY my dream. I can't wait to be able to do the same thing with them.
Keep on as you are and thank you so much for the positive and heartwarming feedback.
I would love to have people to play with... This 0/10 is getting old after 5 months
There are often folks looking for friends on the subreddit and on the Discord. I hope you can get a few folks together soon!
Valheim is awesome the biggest plus in this game is world generation
The procedural generation is a plus, I agree. It makes each seed feel fresh.
is that game complete or still EARLY ACCESS for so many years now?
Still EA. They have a small team and they're focused on getting all biomes up and running before full launch. Deep North is next now that they've got Ashlands sort of where they want it.
Great voice... You should be doing voice work of some kind
I really appreciate that, thank you. I think I would quite enjoy doing voice work. I wonder if it’s hard to get started on? Something to look into!
The game is great upto Mistlands. Mistlands is such a game changer, the environment is lethal, the enemies are lethal, and they come in big numbers. Players who have a "I will never retreat" philosophy.... lose. But for most its the games fault, they refuse to change their tactics.
So, you are the first person to mention the Mistlands' combat in this light but I think what you're saying is true for a lot of the game already. "Never retreat!" is the wrong way to come at Valheim to start with. Tactical retreats have great merit and save party wipes and corpse runs. I think that's the real underlying cause of most of the vitriol that Mistlands gets leveled at it.
I plan to make a Mistlands video once we're properly into it and I hope that you'll come and see where I landed in my feelings toward it. Feedback and responses really help me reflect on why I have the opinions I do.
Until Odin's halls, warrior!
Modded? Yes
Vanilla? No
This seems to be a pretty popular sentiment.
There are some really good mods out there
@@puhbrox Yeah, I'm going to play around with them and put up a video about the results. I'm curious to see what I wind up overlooking in the first pass.
Favorite part is easily the combat, how open ended it feels and the things you can accomplish with multiple people. Been a couple years now since I've had someone to play with, but solo is still fun. Will always be better with friends though.
I’m deeper into the game now than I was when I made this video. The combat continues to please as new enemies appear but the fundamental core of the combat remains the same.
Better with friends, but great no matter what.
With 1128 hours currently played, Valheim is one of the best game purchases I've ever made. That's less than two cents an hour and will decrease as I continue to play.
DAyym. That voice.
Thanks a lot! I have been trying hard to improve my voicework so I’m glad you like it.
I can't believe it's still in early access. I bought the game in March 2021 and checked today and it's still in early access...
EA has come to mean “Kickstarter Round 2” or something to the industry I think. I mean. Valheim currently is a complete game for the price point it is at.
I don’t know what Early Access really means for them at this juncture. I would love to have the chance to interview the devs and pick their brains a bit.
@@athacusgaming Yeah I would love to know. I've played some EA titles and they were always janky and clearly not finished. But even a couple years ago I played Valheim and it felt complete.
@@Japanimal1992 right? Who knows. Maybe they’ll release more information in a forthcoming devblog.
raft mod and vr mod makes it even better
I'm doing this first playthrough mod-free but I plan to include some in the next one. I'd love to hear about what you consider to be core mods.
I love building. Been playing since the beginning.
I wish I had installed right away. You chose wisely.
Fantastic game.
I wholeheartedly agree. I wish I’d installed it when I first bought it.
Awful combat where you have to be on the same level as enemy or hit is not counted, too many people praise a game that can't even do basics right...standards in gaming have dropped so far people don't even know where they are.
I get where you're coming from on the level issue in combat. It has caused me grief too. I hope they take steps to address it.
@@athacusgaming they wont, the fact the enemy can hit you at any level but not vice versa says it all. Its literally coded that way, the game has charm for sure but i will not praise a game that has so many fundemental flaws...
“So many fundamental flaws” bro, you only mentioned the combat, and yeah that can be annoying but is not something to put down the game for
@@t7_br0k3n3 then your not a real gamer, if you think combat is not a reason a game is flawed you are a sheep...
solid video, you know I'm something of a Valheim enjoyer myself
You are clearly a person of taste and culture then! Well met and thank you for the compliment.
Steam says I have played Valheim for 2400 hours. I have played solo, with friends and on dedicated servers and have helped running one. I have two things why I love the game, firstly the combat is great and lot's of weapons to choose from. When Ashlands update came I started solo with knife and stabbed through everything and when I got into mistlands I changed to magics. After killing Queen I got ready to embark to Ashlands and my friends joined there and we all had the experience of new area and new challenges and learning how to overcome them. And the other and main thing is the building mechanics. Pieces are good and you can make amazing builds, but when you get into mods things become even better. When use mod that rotates pieces 360 degrees around any direction, more build pieces and no structural integrity you can make anything you can think of.
Should you play Valheim in 2024? Absolutely.
These are my favorite kind of comments. I am a convert to mods wholeheartedly now too. Start small with the most glaring issues then slowly increase to taste.
Best game ive ever played. The progression is slow but rewarding. The risk of exploration and discovery drives you forward to fashion new equipment all throughout the game. The game loop is anything but boring!
I could not have put it more succinctly myself! Well said. The game does have its burrs and quirks but they are so miniscule compared to the joy of the loop that I rarely notice them.
One of, if not THE best game of the last 10 years. I have sooo many hours in this. Ashlands is punishing, but strangely beautiful once you're established there.
Fully agreed! I enjoyed it all the way up into Ashlands although we did decide to let the PTR cook a bit more before we finish it off. I want to have a better idea of their vision for the biome before passing final judgment on it.
Very nice video. For those wondering, this is 100% spot on. The game is solid and it's best played with friends, although I have a solo game going because my friends can't always join me to scratch that viking itch
Thank you for saying this! I’m much farther into the game now and if anything I’m more passionate about it than I was when I made the video.
The game’s bumps can almost entirely be ameliorated by either map seed sliders AT ANY TIME or by grabbing a few small QoL mods.
Valheim is awesome!
Can i play it solo or do i need friend?
You can absolutely play it solo but I think the game works best with a couple friends or family in there with you.
If you’re curious about how the dynamics work with friends, have a look my last couple streams.
@@athacusgaming Thanks I'll wishlist this game For Now, I'll play it when i find friend who enjoys this type of game👍
@@kirtan3015 happy adventuring! You won’t regret it!
The building on this game is really good with so many ways to build and creativity being your only limit
Fully agreed! I’m constantly amazed by what our resident architect comes up with.
The game is super enjoyable with friends. but.... the issue is the game lagss sooo much when you build bigger structures and do some wide terraforming of lands in a way that, you walk in and get like 13fps on your builds no matter how strong your pc is. thats the main issue of this game. but if this problem will be solve daym this game is supper great. expect lag when your instances on the game gets about 15k then it will show you the problem
Yep, we have seen this exactly ourselves. The engine also struggles once a certain amount of creatures or particle effects are being displayed.
I haven’t seen the devs say anything much about this but it’s hard to think they’re not aware of it. I am sure we will see updates addressing performance in the future to polish this beautiful game.
@@athacusgaming yeah that thing makes me sad cuz, i love the game so much tho, i also tried to fix it with mods, but no mods available to fix the instances problems. mods available are just adjustments for graphics and not fixing instances problem. The game is almost perfect if they fix this problem, i hope devs look on to this problem more seriously.
I love Valheim also and have played it for a few years off and on. Try “Enshrouded” as it’s a new game in early release. So much interface is pretty much identical to Valheim, except it’s better in graphics and play smoothness. It’s like the Big V on steroids.
I have a roadmap of games to play for this Fall/Winter and Enshrouded content should start turning up after a short dalliance with Space Marine 2. I’m very hyped for it.
I just posted my first Valheim video ever, if you could let me know what you think about it I would highly appreciate it, any feedback is welcome!
Brother! YOU SOLD me ! This was such a great video my friend, props to you. One question... Is ther a lot of freedom in building Structures and such, compared to other survival titles out? I am gonna show my wife this video!
We're currently playing ARK and played 7 Days before that, but I am looking for something to GRAB ME... like The Burning Crusade did many years ago now.
Thank you again for a fantastic Intro to Valheim!
I'm so pleased that you enjoyed the video! There is a massive amount of freedom in what you're able to achieve. The start of my latest stream record has the in-progress version of the keep our Hearthkeeper, Toke, built. TH-cam has a massive amount of guides of people showing off what can be achieved. I will say that the snapping can be a bit finnicky some times but with patience, much can be achieved.
I highly recommend pulling your wife and a couple friends in to play. If you have an old laptop or PC lying around to act as a dedicated server (I'm using a dinosaur with 4gb of ram and it servers perfectly well) you will be shocked by how quickly and naturally that MMO vibe but far cozier, turns up. Onward to Valhalla, warrior!
Man…. I have to add and truly hope that you explore mods if you and the fam like building…. I play on a dedicated server with my Dad…. We could not be happier. Comfy gizmo mod. At the least start there. Promise you won’t be let down
@@Inkinred it’s on the list. I already couldn’t play without the five I’m using now. Thanks for the recommendation.
played both vanilla and modded. This game needs to be modded. Makes it 10x better. The season mod makes the game more dynamic and interresting to play.
Monstrum mod makes the game more challenging, there are several mods that makes this game hella strong. The basic vanilla game in it self tends to be a bit to repetative, but with some mods u get QOL (Quality of life) and more building materials that makes building and setteling mroe fun. My advice is to test a play trough without mods first, and then after you elarn the game you can mdo it for a more fun experiecne.
Thank you so much for calling out specific mods. That is very helpful. I’m really intrigued by a seasonal mod. That is something that is oddly missing in vanilla.
My crew and I are doing a vanilla playthrough now. There are a couple stream records up while I get my ducks in order for additional content if you’re curious to see how we are doing.
To Valhalla!
@@athacusgaming Nice one ! Will go and check them out. yes, seasonal mod is a gamechanger. Actually made me come back to the game. prob played 20 hours the last 3 days because the game looks and feels better. And for the new players -> Test vanilla first, and if you are looking to spice it up, do mod by mod and test them out on ur local machine before uploading them to ur friends public server. We rented a server to play on for the fun of it. Mods are based on my personal preffrence. Have 34 mods installed.
Armory v1.2.1 by Therzie
BepInExPack_Valheim v5.4.2202 by denikson
Better_Blast_Furnaces v1.0.0 by joryjuky_team
BetterArchery v1.9.7 by ishid4
BetterSounds v0.31.0 by Wianda
BetterUI_ForeverMaintained v2.5.6 by BetterUI_ForeverMaintained
Bounties v3.0.17 by Digitalroot
CoreWoodExtras v1.2.2 by MagicMike
CreatureLevelAndLootControl v4.6.1 by Smoothbrain
DropMoreLoot v1.2.2 by TastyChickenLegs
Dryzlers_Mass_Pickup v1.0.1 by dryzler
EpicLoot v0.10.1 by RandyKnapp
EquipmentAndQuickSlots v2.1.13 by RandyKnapp
ExploreTogether v1.3.0 by Rolo
Farmyard_Animals v0.4.7 by Horem
FloatingItems v1.0.0 by castix
ItemStacksandWeight v1.0.0 by TheHomesteaders
Jotunn v2.20.1 by ValheimModding
MagicPlugin v2.0.5 by blacks7ar
Mining v1.1.5 by Smoothbrain
MissingPieces v2.2.0 by BentoG
Monstrum v1.4.2 by Therzie
OdinsSteelworks v0.1.25 by OdinPlus
PlantEverything v1.18.1 by Advize
Quick_Stack_Store_Sort_Trash_Restock v1.4.7 by Goldenrevolver
Sailing v1.1.7 by Smoothbrain
SeaAnimals v0.2.6 by Marlthon
Seasonality v3.3.7 by RustyMods
Seasonality_HD_Texture_Pack v0.0.7 by RustyMods
SeasonalityTextures v1.0.0 by RustyMods
SeedBed v1.2.2 by blacks7ar
Spawn_That v1.2.14 by ASharpPen
TeleportEverything v2.6.1 by OdinPlus
Warfare v1.7.5 by Therzie
For those who are looking for a QOL and a more challenging experience, u can copy pasta the text into thunderstore or Nexus.
FYI : The mining mod is marked to not be working, but i cant find any issues with it. had one incident where the copper mine was empty, and then i got back out the copper veins was laying aroung the mine. this has only accourd 1 out of 15 mines.
@@Ching91919 I’m going to dump this into a txt file. Thank you so much for that detailed list! One of the biggest challenges when modding a new game is where to start. This will save lots of time. I appreciate it!
I love the freedom it gives..
Yes! Choose your direction, choose your goals, choose your weapons, it is all up to you. So refreshing and easy to do whatever strikes your fancy without any pressure.
I love this game from the deep of my heart but I have an issue that makes me upset, whenever I try to join my friends server ( non-dedicated ) a Failed to connect appears every time even though I have tried every possible solution ( PC )
I am so sorry to hear that you’re having this issue. The game does indeed have some bizarre connection issues.
I’m sure you’ve tried common fixes like unchecking cross play and making sure that you’re both showing as online on Steam. Are they able to connect to you if you host? If you can’t connect to them but they can connect to you it would immediately eliminate a possible source and let you and your friend narrow down the root issue.
I hope that you’re able to solve the problem and venture together in the tenth realm in the near future!
Root issue is some pinging problem with the game, a VPN usually fixes it somehow, some friends had the same issue, once you start having connection issues your only way is to VPN somewhere
That’s really odd. That sounds like a port issue somewhere that the VPN is obscuring somehow.
@@athacusgaming likely is, but it seems it came with the Mistlands update from what sources you can find online, and VPN usually fixes the problem faster than waiting for a fix for this, sounds like an obscure bug and usually haunts lower end PCs more than higher end based on comments around online forums/helplines
@@Shelfen I had some issues getting my dedicated server going too. It seems like connectivity is one of the game’s big pain points.
Yes
Yes.
Tldr: yes!
Yeah, it’s a pretty easy recommendation!
Video still great tho! Never stop never stopping.
Roger that! More content coming while I’m still having fun. We took down the Elder and made our first foray into the swamp last night.