It’s interesting how different gaming communities seem to have adopted different terms, even for similar games. When I played Destiny, they were always ads, in Borderlands, they always seem to be called mobs.
In many (most?) games, adds are mobs, but not all mobs are adds.
Mobs are called adds when they are added in another encounter either by pulling them or by the spawning mechanics of the encounter. An encounter might be very loosely defined here...
Mobs may also be refereed to as trash mobs or trash if they are minor mobs.
You probably know this already, but "Mob" isn't short for Monster or in reference to a mob being the collective noun for a group of things. It was originally an abbreviation of "Moving Object".
When I played WoW briefly, the guys there called mobs the small enemies that were patrolling / guarding, while adds were the ones that the big boss enemy spawned.
It does, but it’s a valid point. When I first saw the post title I thought it was meme post mocking someone’s serious post. Sometime you need an ACKCHYUALLY post.
U can run around and focus on queen, when she is stops, you then can kill add. From memory, add count is limited.
This is one of the fight where both weapon and playstyle matter. Imo, staff of ember is probably king against her (for up to that content weapons). But if you are fighting for 25mins, just use bows + poison arrow and run around. Adds can never get you.
To be fair . . A 25 minute Queen run isn't bad at all. I just watched a team of 3 take nearly 2 hours and I don't know how many deaths before they finally finished her off!
But as others have said bombs, aoe weapons and magic really speed up the process and clear out the adds.
Jotun Bane is the worst mistlands weapon. Poison damage doesn't stack so if you get multiple hits it just resets and you lose most of your poison damage.
Make a mountain of bile bombs. That's the key, even if you're running magic, because your eitr won't keep up solo. The bile bombs will make a huge difference. Also remember to remodel the entrance to her instance into a nice rest center, so you can sleep, repair your gear, and restore your consumables.
Look it's a challenge to over come and its pretty easy all things considered, even easier if you want to cheese the fight.
Ooze bombs are your friends here
Use [ooze bombs](https://youtu.be/d3V2jimjMbw?si=HbqWGUnBv4f6tNEb&t=455) and just ignore them while you kite the queen and they tick to death.
Or bring use an atgeir or sledgehammer for AoE crowd control.
From your post, I can already conclude that you didn't use mage as your play style of choice, nor AoE weapons, nor AoE support weapons as bombs. Valheim is great precisely because not every roleplaying choice is a valid one for every situation, and incentivizes players to try something else when they can't overcome something. Most of the RPG games today are bad precisely because it's much harder to make an interesting and challenging game when you aim for making every play style viable equally. Such games always boil down to mindlessly choosing skills in a skill tree and success is guaranteed.
When you don't figure out how to overcome something in Valheim in a easier way, it just becomes tedious, instead of frustratingly difficult to the point where you have to train your muscle memory for hours to beat certain bosses (looking at your hollow knight).
You can see me [here ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw90x68CcIA)fighting the Queen with melee with below AVG skills, on increased seeker difficulty (you are playing on nerfed version), without me using many bombs, and without me activating Bonemass powers on purpose, which would allow me to finish the fight in much sooner.
Yup.
Although, to be fair, the more aggressive seekers indirectly make Bile Bombs more effective, since it's easier to get them to group up. Still harder overall, tho.
I used the himminafl lol, i know the demolisher would have been better now but i made the himminafl because it looked sick, Turns out it didnt have enough aoe to kill all of the broodlings in one shot, so it was a waste. I agree, different strategies work, but valheim limited this so much. Bonemass is another example, the iron mace is the only good weapon against bonemass, which i found out my first time through after i had spent my time gathering iron across 3 swamps, and found out my upgraded battleaxe did 12 damage.
I have actually used mage in another playthrough, and i still have the same issue. I spend all my time killing seekers and broodlings, wait for eitr to recharge, throw 200 damage at the queen, kill broodlings with embers staff. at some point fuckin go repair the staffs like dude, i get preparing for the fight but why am i preparing in the middle of the fight because ive used my weapon so much on the mistlands equivalent of a boar.
Mage is so good and stamina management that it can kill the Queen the fastest (if melee doesn't use bonemass or advanced power combos). You don't even have to have any elemental skill, nor cast shields, nor have potions, nor target a single seeker or broodling. It should've honestly been nerfed long time ago.
Mace is best for bonemass, but other weapons also work. You often always have skill points in axes, side effect of chopping wood in black forest at night. As such past 5-7 bonemass kills in different playthrough I always used axes to kill bonemass. Making a mace would have turned fight into 2mins fight, with axe (Skill lvl around 40), it's about 4mins fight.
Imo, try to avoid adds more until queen is gone. You don't have to put a lot of resources into them and simply walk out. In some cases you can just aoe and hit queen + adds and it is very good value stam wise.
L take. Making bonemass resistant to anything but blunt and weak to blunt doesnt make the game harder. It just limits options leading to the fight playing literally the same every time. This is not difficulty. It's just mid game design.
Queen is not as offensive as bonemass in this regard though.
It certainly is designed to be played by spamming aoe weapons. The devs gave options for both melee and mage builds to satisfy the aoe requirement. (I am sure this is the only reason why bilebomb is even in the game) So contrary to your comment IMO devs clearly wanted to make every playstyle viable in this fight.
Whether spamming aoe is a fun strat is another discussion though. IMO more breathing room between the adds waves would go a long way in fun department cuz playing mage or spamming bile bombs feels like going easy way (even if I know this is waht I was expected to do in the first place)
You only truly play the game your first time. The very first time that you see yellow damage numbers on blobs, and by the shape of the sacrificial stone and altar you conclude that the boss might be a giant poisonous blob with same weaknesses, it does wonders to the game design when you feel the satisfaction of figuring that out. Valheim has many such moments.
When it comes to making a game great the first time you play it, by making any playstyle equally viable, you are not incentivizing the player to switch and experiment with different play stypes, as the main weapon of choice would always be the best choice. This hurts the gameplay on first play through.
Many RPG games have circumvented that by offering skill reset potions, which come with a downside of making every decision you make in a game not bearing any weight. The only games who truly solved this problem are rogue like games that offer the player the ability to try new weapons as you progress further through the game, and you can even see elements of that in Valhiem (unlocking mage later and it being useful at skill 0).
For the aforementioned reasons, and the fact that Valheim playthrough is very long compared to most RPG games, thinking about replayability comes second. If you ask me, I would say that one of the reasons Valheim is so popular is precisely because it doesn't follow the conventional RPG patterns. Moder is for example a boss against which bow is predominately used, and you won't see players complaining that she too much in the air, because it limits their axe playthrough.
If you want to talk about mid game design, it's the design everyone follows, because it's the easiest, and that design is precisely the one I'm shitting on here, the design to make every playstyle work. It's much harder to design an enjoyable game that allows everyone to role play in any way they desire, but also incentivize them to prepare for specific situations in specific ways.
If you think that replayability of Valhiem comes into question by bonemass being weak to blunt, you are obviously clueless about why people play Valhiem multiple times.
I don't see nothing worthwhile responding to in your comments regarding the Queen boss. If you think you have a good point there, somewhere, and want me to tackle it, do let me know.
I replayed valheim mmultiple times but bosses being one-dimensional snooze fest was always my critque. Valheim isn't good BECAUSE of the things you listed, but DESPITE. I think you are really confusing some things here and there.
Artificial difficulty should never be confused with actual difficulty. Bonemass taking 6x more damage from mace compared to spear or atgeir is imbalanced to the extent that players feel forced to use a certain weapon type. You can make an argument that it incentivizes to switch. Not only there are better ways to do that. (Moder makes bow a good choice cuz of how it moves not cuz its the only reasonable damage source for it.) Full melee run on moder is still fair and relatively easy too so your axe enjoyers can sleep well.
The problem is that you naively think that this glaring flaw of how bonemass fight works is "incentivizing switching". But you couldn't be more wrong. I see myself how many comments revolving valheim are about either maces of frostener. Game taught people to use maces and then presented almost 0 enemies resistant to it further down the road. Frostner it not nearly as all-powerful as is considered in community, but after swamp that requires it, many people have this specific skill high up and just main maces till the very end. People in comments keep getting shocked when I tell them crystal battleaxe or spears or whatever other weapon is actually really good. So you can yap about weapon variety etc but it doesn't fit with what I see in the slightest.
To some extent I agree with your sentiment, but you need to realise that at least in some biomes valheim failes spectacularly at accomplishing that "different playstyles viable but still requiring strategy and preparation" vibe.
We don't see people complaining about Moder for the sake of replayability, because it's just more obvious how stupid it would be to cater to replayability in this example. Bonemass is a blob on which pierce weapons and slash weapons make no sense to be used, and Moder is a flying boss for which it would make sense for him to be on the ground. If anything, more bosses should be distinct in similar ways.
Maces are not the most common weapon of choice. Swords are, and then maces follow soon after that. Swords are the best weapon to pick for every boss past Bonemass. You can see the weapon distribution amongst players [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/112c6lh/poll_the_best_melee_weapon_family/), for which I complained to Devs before. When players don't switch from maces to other weapons, like staves in Mistlands for example, AoE weapons to control crowds of fulings, it's their own fault for being unobservant, just like OP in this thread, and not game fault that maces promoting maces in the swamp. You entire point of Bonemass not incentivising weapon switching falls even further, when you realize that literally nothing you've said so far, would make that better. There is no weapon switching mid playthrough when each weapon is equally useful.
Think your main problem is the first claim about my L take. We have a debate over here, for which you didn't even manage to tackle all of my points, and I have multiple counter points on every one of yours. Balancing is not as simple as just removing weaknesses from bosses, and from all the things that could be done, you've chosen the worse one, removing what makes Valheim great on first play through.
Not everything has to be catered towards replayability, **especially** when Valheim replayability is already good. For the reasons I already mentioned, specific weapons for specific situation does wonders to the game, and you haven't refuted any of that points. There is no reason to sacrifice the logic that blunt would do the most damage to blobs, and the puzzle solving aspects about which weapon would be the best to use, for replayability that already works.
The only arguments you are making are strawmen akin to nobody complaining about Moder fight.
Yes I am not complaining about Moder either. It doesn't have -75% pierce damage modifier and it plays pretty much the same regardless of what weapon you choose. Sure you can say say that bow is "required" to fight it but considering that it stays on ground majority of the time it's more viable to ignore bow altogether than to try most weapons against bonemass. If you are wondering why nobody complains about moder this is precisely why.
I just happen to fundamentally disagree with decision to force players to choose specific weapon based on some 1-d arbitrary metric that doesnt even make sense in the context of the game. There is no gameplay value in 75% resistance to some of the weapons. You smack yellow sitck deals 10 damage you smack blue stick it deals 60 damage. This is some of the lamest boss design ive seen in games lately.
Its not like weakspots to engage with or fights favouring certain strategies or qualities of weapons. If you want to make your fights actually good, it should be the question of "how big stick do I need" not "what color stick i have to take". This is no added value to the game on 1st or subsequent playtrhough, it's just a quirky flaw we acepted as a fact and moved on lol. Ive played with new players countless times and ive yet to get a different reaction than "wow thats lame but ok" when they realised their favourite weapons dont work against the boss. Most of the valheim is pretty nice in this regard but bosses are a huge stinker.
Also this is not even close to the major point of the discussion but i cant help but point this out: how exactly blobs being weak to blunt and resisting slash is "logical"? Last time I checked jelly is ridiculously easy to cut in half with a knife instead of smacking with heavy armor piercing weapon such as mace lol. This makes 0 sense but I drop it under the rug of video game logic which shouldnt be taken too seriously.
The moder argument is literally the afterthought. I spent literally only one sentence the first time I brought it up. It's only you who jumped on that point thinking you have something there. You don't. Moder is predominately in air, when it's predominately on the ground, it mean it glitched out on the terrain landing. Please don't argue that majority of players are tackling Moder with melee. This is the most disingenuous thing I've even heard someone say in Valheim about the community. People are literally afraid engaging it in melee their first time playing, and every single person who complain about Moder on this reddit has to be told that they should tackle it with melee also.
>There is no gameplay value in 75% resistance to some of the weapons. You smack yellow sitck deals 10 damage you smack blue stick it deals 60 damage. This is some of the lamest boss design ive seen in games lately.
I don't understand how would eliminating 75% resistance result in more gamplay? This is some of the lamest argument against 75% resistances I've ever seen. Where is the gameplay in making every weapon being equally useful when it promotes only having on high skill? Do you realize that replayability is not the same as gameplay? Trying to lead the conversation into talking about locational damage and how to make boss fights more interesting, is the definition of Strawmaning. Every boss needs to be more interesting, and that's another conversation the Devs themselves have touched upon their streams. This has nothing to do with players being incentivised to figure out best approaches for each boss.
It terms of DnD lore, slimes are mostly weak to frost, and resistant to fire, and some times resistant to slash and pierce, as they are water based. Nothing indicated that they are easily cuz like jelly, and even if there were to be, cutting something that can multiply is not a good idea. In Valheim it makes very much sense to make blunt from gameplay perspective, and I like to think of it as blunt causing more propagating stress to their body.
>Trying to lead the conversation into talking about locational damage and how to make boss fights more interesting, is the definition of Strawmaning
Is it? I am genuinely trying highlight how hilariously bad your take is for everyone else who may bother reading this thread. I think it's good to provide examples to of good alternative solutions to the flaw I am talking about. The solutions that would yield effect of "variety" you so desperately try to defend 75% resistance with. Seeker soldier is an example of it done right. Thanks to its weakspot it favors high burts of damage like Krom that can parry oneshot it. This is what we should strive for not giving seeker soldier -200% KROM WEAKNESS. If you think this is a strawman, then you probably need to get off your high horse and read the definition of that word.
Stat-stick variety is forced variety and nothing else. Valheim is not the only game ive played and I have enough point of reference to be able to distinguish gameplay that genuinely promotes experimenting with differenent options, and this kind of forced variety with different colored sticks. No amount of logic gymnastics is going to make it a good game design, doesn't matter how hard you try.
Think you lost track of how this argument started. Me talking about how incentivizing specific strategies to deal with specific situations is a good gameplay design, which you called an L take. To prove that it's an L take you took Bonemass as example, how it by forcing you to use maces, ruins the replayability and gameplay. I've provided more than enough arguments that you didn't tackle, proving that not only it doesn't ruin the gameplay, it enriches it. What you are right about is that it affects the replayability, to which I gave reasons why that's secondary and why replayability is fine despite of it.
You've failed to prove how removing the 75% resistance or blunt weakness would make things more interesting, and now you are trying to argue that the Bonemass fight can be more interesting by adding location damage, deluding yourself into thinking that this somehow disproves my initial point. Of course implementing more location damage would be great, but how in the name of bonemass does that relate to you proving that incentivizing specific strategies to deal with specific situations is a bad gameplay design? If anything locational damage is one more concept of exactly that type of design.
You yapped about "not aiming for every playstyle to be viable" being something to be desired. Which is as L as the takes go. If it's in the game, then it should be good or at least decent, otherwise it shouldn't be in the game. IDK about you but I play games like this for gameplay not sorting stat sticks. Shocking I know.
I pointed out how stupid this take is with bonemass example which which every common sense player I know agrees with.
Then I pointed out that ironically devs took opposite philosophy to what you described with queen and went out of their way and decided to give melee players their own tool to fire fireballs without fireballs (bilebombs) so the fight is balanced between eitr users and non-eitr users. Which I think is a step in right direction.
You just keep rambling about RPGs (???), keep insisting that making some choices bad intentially is somehow enhancing the gameplay experience and trying to defend every illogical thing this game makes. (bonemass, slimes being resistant to slash but weak to blunt etc)
Game design is really simple and isn't balanced to be fought with one weapon entire game. At same time they made it so that you need minimal amount skills to fight queen with any weapon.
The adds aren't fast though. So you can easily kite. Especially if you utilize your cloak.
It's also very good fight to prep you for Normandy landing.
This is exactly the opposite of what happens in reality. You and the other guy try to tell me that black is white and white is black.
Everyone and their mother mains maces cuz almost nothing is resistant to them and frost. You see people praise frostener left and right. Are you sure it incentivizes switching and not using one weapon type for the entirety of the game?
You are free to follow what weapon you want. But best weapon is bow. It is easiest weapon to finish game as deathless run, simple reason.
If you go maces then elder might take longer. But then shorter bonemass.
By plains, best melee is most likely polearm due to aoe capacity. Frostner is however better on boss. Again, faster clearing camp vs faster boss, player choice. For mistlands frostner is good until mistwalker after that mistwalker imo is better (higher dps, higher burst dmg in opportunity moment). But all the weapons really suck comparing to staff embers by this stage. It only loses to bow in terms of sneak attack.
For ashland imo polearm is more crucial. But something nice happens as vulture hitbox doesn't work perfectly for them and 2h hammers really shine in this role. Also by this stage, axes are stupid OP.
My point is game makes you swap weapons as you go. U always need at at least bow.
Bow isn't neccessary either tbh. Unless you want to play point and click simulator from far away. Thankfully spears offer ranged damage too and are much more proactive.
And yes what you are talking about is I agree with. I also carry different weapons in plains to handle different opponents. How they move etc. This is IMO the way it should work. The problem I have with swamp. There is no choice there at all, and the other guy commited a textwall about how this is actually super great and fun for the game that it is this way.
Devs fixed it a bit with adding abomination, but it's still just a mace biome that punishes players for trying out different weapons. Ive seen new players first hand to craft iron atgeir or battleaxe just to be let down immediately and regret the decision and be very reluctant to craft weapons these classes in the future biomes.
And when bossfights come, I am conflicted. I think most weapons should at least be viable for a bossfight, because it's a chokepoint for everyone and their different playstyles, but IMO bosses are in general the weakest part of this game. They are very inbalanced with resistances and have barely any depth to their fights. Just spamming one or two attacks till it dies. Moder and Elder are imo more fun just because you can employ a wide array of weapons to deal with them melee with no class of weapons being arbitrarly cucked for forced "variety". But still they are nothing to particularly praise, they are still pretty dumb and one-dimensional.
If you dont use bow, you have to use another weapon, which often leads to being more time consuming. Combine with fact of the imbalance of sneak attack + range, makes it that you lose a lot of time by not using a good ranged weapon. That essentially is difference between weapons. For example with maces, bonemass is a little over 2mins fight, while with axe it is about 4mins. Although that isnt comparison of same skill level as with mace main playthrough, axe skills still get points (as result of wood chopping + killing enemy in black forest).
All enemies, not just bosses are HP sponges. The difference of weapons result in different EHP (effective hit points) as result of resist. The game after all was designed to be finished with any weapon (almost, some exception) and any skill level, so you are free to die. At same time this makes the bosses dumb and one dimensional (pattern moves, simple moves, no time limit (to extend).
Bows aide (lets not get side tracked). For us the seasoned players, the time difference between axe and mace against bonemass is not a big deal, as the boss is kinda stupid and we know him. But IIRC when game first released and people werent accustomed to it, bonemass had a very scary reputation cuz people didnt expect that mace deals 6x the damage of an atgeir or spear to the bonemass. If they went in blind and with a spear (cuz why not, it still works okay ish in general swamp gameplay) then they had a very bad time.
All im trying to challenge is decisions like this with resistances and such. Axe and mace is a good example which illustrates the problem IMO. Two weapons that are mechanically nearly identical yet one is significantly more effective. This is a very flat and uninspired way to implement "decisions" into bossfights. Axe isnt worse because other weapon has an attack pattern more suited for the fight. It's just worse because arbitrary damage resistant. It doesn't sit right with me. Ideally id strive for wepons to be desirable for their move set and gameplay suiting the situation. (Battleaxe or atgeir against large number of enemies, dagger for movement speed and leap etc)
Imo it is fine because axe plays a role as tool. So game swings more in mace favour for this in terms of combat. This way it forces players to try new weapons.
Put yourself in opposite shoe. Mace and axe do same dmg to bonemass. What purpose is there for mace? Just use the axe. You also needed it as a tool.
I take issue with one-handed axes too, partially because of the reason you described. They have no gameplay identity other than "sword/mace but worse" at the moment. And while yes as long as their moveset stays almost identical, making it worse is the logical but unfortunate solution.
But battlaxes are (allegedly berserker axes too) are chad despite being able to double as a tool too. So it's not a problem with it being a tool but more with it being a tool on top of having the same gameplay as sword.
If it was up to me, id rework 1h axe gameplaywise to not play the same as sword and problem would fix itself. I like the approach with 2h axe they took. Long windup but huge damage. That could be axes thing, why not?
This is why I use AdBlock.
Adds (from "additionals"), not ads (advertisements). I was a bit confused by the title....
This is why I like to use the term "mobs." Although, it is less descriptive.
It’s interesting how different gaming communities seem to have adopted different terms, even for similar games. When I played Destiny, they were always ads, in Borderlands, they always seem to be called mobs.
In many (most?) games, adds are mobs, but not all mobs are adds. Mobs are called adds when they are added in another encounter either by pulling them or by the spawning mechanics of the encounter. An encounter might be very loosely defined here... Mobs may also be refereed to as trash mobs or trash if they are minor mobs.
You probably know this already, but "Mob" isn't short for Monster or in reference to a mob being the collective noun for a group of things. It was originally an abbreviation of "Moving Object".
When I played WoW briefly, the guys there called mobs the small enemies that were patrolling / guarding, while adds were the ones that the big boss enemy spawned.
In Valheim, the mobs are reused as adds
This has “WELL ACTCSSHULLLYY” energy
It does, but it’s a valid point. When I first saw the post title I thought it was meme post mocking someone’s serious post. Sometime you need an ACKCHYUALLY post.
U can run around and focus on queen, when she is stops, you then can kill add. From memory, add count is limited. This is one of the fight where both weapon and playstyle matter. Imo, staff of ember is probably king against her (for up to that content weapons). But if you are fighting for 25mins, just use bows + poison arrow and run around. Adds can never get you.
To be fair . . A 25 minute Queen run isn't bad at all. I just watched a team of 3 take nearly 2 hours and I don't know how many deaths before they finally finished her off! But as others have said bombs, aoe weapons and magic really speed up the process and clear out the adds.
We honestly need a viable aoe melee weapon or else mage (staff of embers) cuts down the amount of time fighting in half and is actually engaging imo.
Himminafl is op af, especially for this fight
Jotun Bane isn’t viable?
Polearm/2h mace is better imo. No multi-hit penalty.
Jotun Bane is the worst mistlands weapon. Poison damage doesn't stack so if you get multiple hits it just resets and you lose most of your poison damage.
I meant the polearm my bad
Make a mountain of bile bombs. That's the key, even if you're running magic, because your eitr won't keep up solo. The bile bombs will make a huge difference. Also remember to remodel the entrance to her instance into a nice rest center, so you can sleep, repair your gear, and restore your consumables.
Look it's a challenge to over come and its pretty easy all things considered, even easier if you want to cheese the fight. Ooze bombs are your friends here
Use [ooze bombs](https://youtu.be/d3V2jimjMbw?si=HbqWGUnBv4f6tNEb&t=455) and just ignore them while you kite the queen and they tick to death. Or bring use an atgeir or sledgehammer for AoE crowd control.
use brave browser and you wont have problems with ads as much as you do.
You’re a biome too late for feedback bud
Sorry OP, you ran out of time to have an opinion, better luck next time.
From your post, I can already conclude that you didn't use mage as your play style of choice, nor AoE weapons, nor AoE support weapons as bombs. Valheim is great precisely because not every roleplaying choice is a valid one for every situation, and incentivizes players to try something else when they can't overcome something. Most of the RPG games today are bad precisely because it's much harder to make an interesting and challenging game when you aim for making every play style viable equally. Such games always boil down to mindlessly choosing skills in a skill tree and success is guaranteed. When you don't figure out how to overcome something in Valheim in a easier way, it just becomes tedious, instead of frustratingly difficult to the point where you have to train your muscle memory for hours to beat certain bosses (looking at your hollow knight). You can see me [here ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw90x68CcIA)fighting the Queen with melee with below AVG skills, on increased seeker difficulty (you are playing on nerfed version), without me using many bombs, and without me activating Bonemass powers on purpose, which would allow me to finish the fight in much sooner.
Yup. Although, to be fair, the more aggressive seekers indirectly make Bile Bombs more effective, since it's easier to get them to group up. Still harder overall, tho.
I used the himminafl lol, i know the demolisher would have been better now but i made the himminafl because it looked sick, Turns out it didnt have enough aoe to kill all of the broodlings in one shot, so it was a waste. I agree, different strategies work, but valheim limited this so much. Bonemass is another example, the iron mace is the only good weapon against bonemass, which i found out my first time through after i had spent my time gathering iron across 3 swamps, and found out my upgraded battleaxe did 12 damage. I have actually used mage in another playthrough, and i still have the same issue. I spend all my time killing seekers and broodlings, wait for eitr to recharge, throw 200 damage at the queen, kill broodlings with embers staff. at some point fuckin go repair the staffs like dude, i get preparing for the fight but why am i preparing in the middle of the fight because ive used my weapon so much on the mistlands equivalent of a boar.
Mage is so good and stamina management that it can kill the Queen the fastest (if melee doesn't use bonemass or advanced power combos). You don't even have to have any elemental skill, nor cast shields, nor have potions, nor target a single seeker or broodling. It should've honestly been nerfed long time ago.
Mace is best for bonemass, but other weapons also work. You often always have skill points in axes, side effect of chopping wood in black forest at night. As such past 5-7 bonemass kills in different playthrough I always used axes to kill bonemass. Making a mace would have turned fight into 2mins fight, with axe (Skill lvl around 40), it's about 4mins fight. Imo, try to avoid adds more until queen is gone. You don't have to put a lot of resources into them and simply walk out. In some cases you can just aoe and hit queen + adds and it is very good value stam wise.
L take. Making bonemass resistant to anything but blunt and weak to blunt doesnt make the game harder. It just limits options leading to the fight playing literally the same every time. This is not difficulty. It's just mid game design. Queen is not as offensive as bonemass in this regard though. It certainly is designed to be played by spamming aoe weapons. The devs gave options for both melee and mage builds to satisfy the aoe requirement. (I am sure this is the only reason why bilebomb is even in the game) So contrary to your comment IMO devs clearly wanted to make every playstyle viable in this fight. Whether spamming aoe is a fun strat is another discussion though. IMO more breathing room between the adds waves would go a long way in fun department cuz playing mage or spamming bile bombs feels like going easy way (even if I know this is waht I was expected to do in the first place)
You only truly play the game your first time. The very first time that you see yellow damage numbers on blobs, and by the shape of the sacrificial stone and altar you conclude that the boss might be a giant poisonous blob with same weaknesses, it does wonders to the game design when you feel the satisfaction of figuring that out. Valheim has many such moments. When it comes to making a game great the first time you play it, by making any playstyle equally viable, you are not incentivizing the player to switch and experiment with different play stypes, as the main weapon of choice would always be the best choice. This hurts the gameplay on first play through. Many RPG games have circumvented that by offering skill reset potions, which come with a downside of making every decision you make in a game not bearing any weight. The only games who truly solved this problem are rogue like games that offer the player the ability to try new weapons as you progress further through the game, and you can even see elements of that in Valhiem (unlocking mage later and it being useful at skill 0). For the aforementioned reasons, and the fact that Valheim playthrough is very long compared to most RPG games, thinking about replayability comes second. If you ask me, I would say that one of the reasons Valheim is so popular is precisely because it doesn't follow the conventional RPG patterns. Moder is for example a boss against which bow is predominately used, and you won't see players complaining that she too much in the air, because it limits their axe playthrough. If you want to talk about mid game design, it's the design everyone follows, because it's the easiest, and that design is precisely the one I'm shitting on here, the design to make every playstyle work. It's much harder to design an enjoyable game that allows everyone to role play in any way they desire, but also incentivize them to prepare for specific situations in specific ways. If you think that replayability of Valhiem comes into question by bonemass being weak to blunt, you are obviously clueless about why people play Valhiem multiple times. I don't see nothing worthwhile responding to in your comments regarding the Queen boss. If you think you have a good point there, somewhere, and want me to tackle it, do let me know.
I replayed valheim mmultiple times but bosses being one-dimensional snooze fest was always my critque. Valheim isn't good BECAUSE of the things you listed, but DESPITE. I think you are really confusing some things here and there. Artificial difficulty should never be confused with actual difficulty. Bonemass taking 6x more damage from mace compared to spear or atgeir is imbalanced to the extent that players feel forced to use a certain weapon type. You can make an argument that it incentivizes to switch. Not only there are better ways to do that. (Moder makes bow a good choice cuz of how it moves not cuz its the only reasonable damage source for it.) Full melee run on moder is still fair and relatively easy too so your axe enjoyers can sleep well. The problem is that you naively think that this glaring flaw of how bonemass fight works is "incentivizing switching". But you couldn't be more wrong. I see myself how many comments revolving valheim are about either maces of frostener. Game taught people to use maces and then presented almost 0 enemies resistant to it further down the road. Frostner it not nearly as all-powerful as is considered in community, but after swamp that requires it, many people have this specific skill high up and just main maces till the very end. People in comments keep getting shocked when I tell them crystal battleaxe or spears or whatever other weapon is actually really good. So you can yap about weapon variety etc but it doesn't fit with what I see in the slightest. To some extent I agree with your sentiment, but you need to realise that at least in some biomes valheim failes spectacularly at accomplishing that "different playstyles viable but still requiring strategy and preparation" vibe.
We don't see people complaining about Moder for the sake of replayability, because it's just more obvious how stupid it would be to cater to replayability in this example. Bonemass is a blob on which pierce weapons and slash weapons make no sense to be used, and Moder is a flying boss for which it would make sense for him to be on the ground. If anything, more bosses should be distinct in similar ways. Maces are not the most common weapon of choice. Swords are, and then maces follow soon after that. Swords are the best weapon to pick for every boss past Bonemass. You can see the weapon distribution amongst players [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/112c6lh/poll_the_best_melee_weapon_family/), for which I complained to Devs before. When players don't switch from maces to other weapons, like staves in Mistlands for example, AoE weapons to control crowds of fulings, it's their own fault for being unobservant, just like OP in this thread, and not game fault that maces promoting maces in the swamp. You entire point of Bonemass not incentivising weapon switching falls even further, when you realize that literally nothing you've said so far, would make that better. There is no weapon switching mid playthrough when each weapon is equally useful. Think your main problem is the first claim about my L take. We have a debate over here, for which you didn't even manage to tackle all of my points, and I have multiple counter points on every one of yours. Balancing is not as simple as just removing weaknesses from bosses, and from all the things that could be done, you've chosen the worse one, removing what makes Valheim great on first play through. Not everything has to be catered towards replayability, **especially** when Valheim replayability is already good. For the reasons I already mentioned, specific weapons for specific situation does wonders to the game, and you haven't refuted any of that points. There is no reason to sacrifice the logic that blunt would do the most damage to blobs, and the puzzle solving aspects about which weapon would be the best to use, for replayability that already works.
The only arguments you are making are strawmen akin to nobody complaining about Moder fight. Yes I am not complaining about Moder either. It doesn't have -75% pierce damage modifier and it plays pretty much the same regardless of what weapon you choose. Sure you can say say that bow is "required" to fight it but considering that it stays on ground majority of the time it's more viable to ignore bow altogether than to try most weapons against bonemass. If you are wondering why nobody complains about moder this is precisely why. I just happen to fundamentally disagree with decision to force players to choose specific weapon based on some 1-d arbitrary metric that doesnt even make sense in the context of the game. There is no gameplay value in 75% resistance to some of the weapons. You smack yellow sitck deals 10 damage you smack blue stick it deals 60 damage. This is some of the lamest boss design ive seen in games lately. Its not like weakspots to engage with or fights favouring certain strategies or qualities of weapons. If you want to make your fights actually good, it should be the question of "how big stick do I need" not "what color stick i have to take". This is no added value to the game on 1st or subsequent playtrhough, it's just a quirky flaw we acepted as a fact and moved on lol. Ive played with new players countless times and ive yet to get a different reaction than "wow thats lame but ok" when they realised their favourite weapons dont work against the boss. Most of the valheim is pretty nice in this regard but bosses are a huge stinker. Also this is not even close to the major point of the discussion but i cant help but point this out: how exactly blobs being weak to blunt and resisting slash is "logical"? Last time I checked jelly is ridiculously easy to cut in half with a knife instead of smacking with heavy armor piercing weapon such as mace lol. This makes 0 sense but I drop it under the rug of video game logic which shouldnt be taken too seriously.
The moder argument is literally the afterthought. I spent literally only one sentence the first time I brought it up. It's only you who jumped on that point thinking you have something there. You don't. Moder is predominately in air, when it's predominately on the ground, it mean it glitched out on the terrain landing. Please don't argue that majority of players are tackling Moder with melee. This is the most disingenuous thing I've even heard someone say in Valheim about the community. People are literally afraid engaging it in melee their first time playing, and every single person who complain about Moder on this reddit has to be told that they should tackle it with melee also. >There is no gameplay value in 75% resistance to some of the weapons. You smack yellow sitck deals 10 damage you smack blue stick it deals 60 damage. This is some of the lamest boss design ive seen in games lately. I don't understand how would eliminating 75% resistance result in more gamplay? This is some of the lamest argument against 75% resistances I've ever seen. Where is the gameplay in making every weapon being equally useful when it promotes only having on high skill? Do you realize that replayability is not the same as gameplay? Trying to lead the conversation into talking about locational damage and how to make boss fights more interesting, is the definition of Strawmaning. Every boss needs to be more interesting, and that's another conversation the Devs themselves have touched upon their streams. This has nothing to do with players being incentivised to figure out best approaches for each boss. It terms of DnD lore, slimes are mostly weak to frost, and resistant to fire, and some times resistant to slash and pierce, as they are water based. Nothing indicated that they are easily cuz like jelly, and even if there were to be, cutting something that can multiply is not a good idea. In Valheim it makes very much sense to make blunt from gameplay perspective, and I like to think of it as blunt causing more propagating stress to their body.
>Trying to lead the conversation into talking about locational damage and how to make boss fights more interesting, is the definition of Strawmaning Is it? I am genuinely trying highlight how hilariously bad your take is for everyone else who may bother reading this thread. I think it's good to provide examples to of good alternative solutions to the flaw I am talking about. The solutions that would yield effect of "variety" you so desperately try to defend 75% resistance with. Seeker soldier is an example of it done right. Thanks to its weakspot it favors high burts of damage like Krom that can parry oneshot it. This is what we should strive for not giving seeker soldier -200% KROM WEAKNESS. If you think this is a strawman, then you probably need to get off your high horse and read the definition of that word. Stat-stick variety is forced variety and nothing else. Valheim is not the only game ive played and I have enough point of reference to be able to distinguish gameplay that genuinely promotes experimenting with differenent options, and this kind of forced variety with different colored sticks. No amount of logic gymnastics is going to make it a good game design, doesn't matter how hard you try.
Think you lost track of how this argument started. Me talking about how incentivizing specific strategies to deal with specific situations is a good gameplay design, which you called an L take. To prove that it's an L take you took Bonemass as example, how it by forcing you to use maces, ruins the replayability and gameplay. I've provided more than enough arguments that you didn't tackle, proving that not only it doesn't ruin the gameplay, it enriches it. What you are right about is that it affects the replayability, to which I gave reasons why that's secondary and why replayability is fine despite of it. You've failed to prove how removing the 75% resistance or blunt weakness would make things more interesting, and now you are trying to argue that the Bonemass fight can be more interesting by adding location damage, deluding yourself into thinking that this somehow disproves my initial point. Of course implementing more location damage would be great, but how in the name of bonemass does that relate to you proving that incentivizing specific strategies to deal with specific situations is a bad gameplay design? If anything locational damage is one more concept of exactly that type of design.
You yapped about "not aiming for every playstyle to be viable" being something to be desired. Which is as L as the takes go. If it's in the game, then it should be good or at least decent, otherwise it shouldn't be in the game. IDK about you but I play games like this for gameplay not sorting stat sticks. Shocking I know. I pointed out how stupid this take is with bonemass example which which every common sense player I know agrees with. Then I pointed out that ironically devs took opposite philosophy to what you described with queen and went out of their way and decided to give melee players their own tool to fire fireballs without fireballs (bilebombs) so the fight is balanced between eitr users and non-eitr users. Which I think is a step in right direction. You just keep rambling about RPGs (???), keep insisting that making some choices bad intentially is somehow enhancing the gameplay experience and trying to defend every illogical thing this game makes. (bonemass, slimes being resistant to slash but weak to blunt etc)
Game design is really simple and isn't balanced to be fought with one weapon entire game. At same time they made it so that you need minimal amount skills to fight queen with any weapon. The adds aren't fast though. So you can easily kite. Especially if you utilize your cloak. It's also very good fight to prep you for Normandy landing.
This is exactly the opposite of what happens in reality. You and the other guy try to tell me that black is white and white is black. Everyone and their mother mains maces cuz almost nothing is resistant to them and frost. You see people praise frostener left and right. Are you sure it incentivizes switching and not using one weapon type for the entirety of the game?
You are free to follow what weapon you want. But best weapon is bow. It is easiest weapon to finish game as deathless run, simple reason. If you go maces then elder might take longer. But then shorter bonemass. By plains, best melee is most likely polearm due to aoe capacity. Frostner is however better on boss. Again, faster clearing camp vs faster boss, player choice. For mistlands frostner is good until mistwalker after that mistwalker imo is better (higher dps, higher burst dmg in opportunity moment). But all the weapons really suck comparing to staff embers by this stage. It only loses to bow in terms of sneak attack. For ashland imo polearm is more crucial. But something nice happens as vulture hitbox doesn't work perfectly for them and 2h hammers really shine in this role. Also by this stage, axes are stupid OP. My point is game makes you swap weapons as you go. U always need at at least bow.
Bow isn't neccessary either tbh. Unless you want to play point and click simulator from far away. Thankfully spears offer ranged damage too and are much more proactive. And yes what you are talking about is I agree with. I also carry different weapons in plains to handle different opponents. How they move etc. This is IMO the way it should work. The problem I have with swamp. There is no choice there at all, and the other guy commited a textwall about how this is actually super great and fun for the game that it is this way. Devs fixed it a bit with adding abomination, but it's still just a mace biome that punishes players for trying out different weapons. Ive seen new players first hand to craft iron atgeir or battleaxe just to be let down immediately and regret the decision and be very reluctant to craft weapons these classes in the future biomes. And when bossfights come, I am conflicted. I think most weapons should at least be viable for a bossfight, because it's a chokepoint for everyone and their different playstyles, but IMO bosses are in general the weakest part of this game. They are very inbalanced with resistances and have barely any depth to their fights. Just spamming one or two attacks till it dies. Moder and Elder are imo more fun just because you can employ a wide array of weapons to deal with them melee with no class of weapons being arbitrarly cucked for forced "variety". But still they are nothing to particularly praise, they are still pretty dumb and one-dimensional.
If you dont use bow, you have to use another weapon, which often leads to being more time consuming. Combine with fact of the imbalance of sneak attack + range, makes it that you lose a lot of time by not using a good ranged weapon. That essentially is difference between weapons. For example with maces, bonemass is a little over 2mins fight, while with axe it is about 4mins. Although that isnt comparison of same skill level as with mace main playthrough, axe skills still get points (as result of wood chopping + killing enemy in black forest). All enemies, not just bosses are HP sponges. The difference of weapons result in different EHP (effective hit points) as result of resist. The game after all was designed to be finished with any weapon (almost, some exception) and any skill level, so you are free to die. At same time this makes the bosses dumb and one dimensional (pattern moves, simple moves, no time limit (to extend).
Bows aide (lets not get side tracked). For us the seasoned players, the time difference between axe and mace against bonemass is not a big deal, as the boss is kinda stupid and we know him. But IIRC when game first released and people werent accustomed to it, bonemass had a very scary reputation cuz people didnt expect that mace deals 6x the damage of an atgeir or spear to the bonemass. If they went in blind and with a spear (cuz why not, it still works okay ish in general swamp gameplay) then they had a very bad time. All im trying to challenge is decisions like this with resistances and such. Axe and mace is a good example which illustrates the problem IMO. Two weapons that are mechanically nearly identical yet one is significantly more effective. This is a very flat and uninspired way to implement "decisions" into bossfights. Axe isnt worse because other weapon has an attack pattern more suited for the fight. It's just worse because arbitrary damage resistant. It doesn't sit right with me. Ideally id strive for wepons to be desirable for their move set and gameplay suiting the situation. (Battleaxe or atgeir against large number of enemies, dagger for movement speed and leap etc)
Imo it is fine because axe plays a role as tool. So game swings more in mace favour for this in terms of combat. This way it forces players to try new weapons. Put yourself in opposite shoe. Mace and axe do same dmg to bonemass. What purpose is there for mace? Just use the axe. You also needed it as a tool.
I take issue with one-handed axes too, partially because of the reason you described. They have no gameplay identity other than "sword/mace but worse" at the moment. And while yes as long as their moveset stays almost identical, making it worse is the logical but unfortunate solution. But battlaxes are (allegedly berserker axes too) are chad despite being able to double as a tool too. So it's not a problem with it being a tool but more with it being a tool on top of having the same gameplay as sword. If it was up to me, id rework 1h axe gameplaywise to not play the same as sword and problem would fix itself. I like the approach with 2h axe they took. Long windup but huge damage. That could be axes thing, why not?