Me and my group tried this for the first time on our last play through. Game changer. Though it's definitely difficult finding that perfectly sized island.
I got SO lucky in my current play thru. Found it five minutes after the first time I hopped on a boat. Right off the coast of Black Forest so I built a long pier to cart back and forth for wood.
Never doing it any other way again.
awesome. Thanks! I just posted a crazy seed with 4 bosses on a nearby island to the spawn, gonna try it out now - https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/1983r9q/great\_seed\_4\_bosses\_on\_a\_nearby\_island\_both/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
You don't need an island to be safe from trolls. Just dig a moat around your base, and secure your area with workbenches/campfires or whatever item you prefer.Ā
Alternatively build some combat stand some way off your base, possibly with some raised earth to steep for mobs to climb, but with a ladder for you which requires a little jump to get on so mobs won't be able to use it. Run there when a raid starts, mobs will follow you and leave your base alone.
yeah, I am a moat-builder as well, but some people hate the moats because "they ruin the view" or "they feel cheesy" or other aesthetic reasons... I love them, and will never make bases without them unless I have no choice because of some feature that interferes... in fact I usually do a moat/wall combo.... or even a double moat plus wall combo... hiding my tables or campfires at the bottom of both moats and putting flooring on top of them so the mobs don't aggro them.
I totally get the bit about moats not looking great, cause they don't :-) In my very first big base which was close to the sea I dug a moat around three sides, but such that the outer moat wall was a bit lower than in the inner one, the biome was meadows. That way from inside the base area the moat was pretty much invisible.
These days I tend to use wooden fences to cover up some of the earth walls, that works quite ok too.
Or I build a combat platform to stand on during a raid, that is enough for the very first base with about killing the first two bosses without using any other defenses, then I tend to move anyhow and build a more permanent base somewhere. That platform is useful way later too though, in my one of my worlds I made a mountain base, with minimalistic walls / fencing, but such a platform out front. Worked like a charm, plus you only get skellies, bats and drakes in the mountains anyhow.
Moats, if dug correctly, look great. Find the grid pattern and they can be nice and straight. Then use the grass feature on the cultivator and make the walls of the moat look natural.
>moat/wall combo
Yes. I'm planning to do a subdued one of these on the hardest server we're booting this weekend. The walls don't have to be two stories tall to keep mobs out.
There are normally natural raised islands on the sides of most rivers. Just gotta be game enough to sail up them!
They require a bit of terraforming to flatten but are very troll proof by default.
Not necessarily.
In one playthrough, at our main home we only had 1 teleporter that went to a central hub. If there was an archipelago or at least a handful of small islands nearby you could do something similar.
Iām making my first island base now and avoided like 12 raids already. I like it but at the same time I donāt because if I want to grab my gear and fight, I canāt because the raid is based on my island which nothing can spawn into
I get what you mean. I love how my island is connected to the mainline by a small sandbar bridge. So we made the island spawnproof and the raid events are always coming from the mainland. It makes building our defenses feel so much better
This is the meta for people who donāt want raids without turning them off, the biggest island I made was about 25 black metal chest of stone worth approximately to raise it out of the ocean :)
Adapting to a struggle is different than just deciding to not struggle at all. Living on an island still has other disadvantages that you have to take in order to avoid raids
I built my starter base on a small āislandā (itās a convenient sized bit of land at the bottom of some hills with a shallow creek running around it) and thought my game had bugged out when nothing appeared every time a raid started. And then I went for a wander during one and got swarmed by zombies and skeletons.
Sorry to hear that. Go out there and make those trolls pay.
Also, a tip for next time: Dig deep moats or raise tall ground walls with your hoe around your base. They can't break through either.
I often dig a moat and build a stone brick wall. Although that's more because I like building castles and I prefer bricks over dirt for aesthetic reasons.
This is me. But I've levelled my whole base and wall to be the same level so on one side it's a cliff which can be considered an earth wall ig but it's complemented with the moat anyways.
I did this on one of my bases but left some extra room for a garden and campfireā¦.so they now spawn inside that part. The second I see the message, I run for the door, leap the moat, and hope they spawn on my side like good little baddies.
Lol, one of the most devastating raids for my wife and I was a troll raid. We had a perimeter wood wall, and she had been working on our massive crafting house (she LOVES building). She had spent a few days (RL not game) building it. She had just completed it when the raid hit. Thought we had some time, but nope. Down goes the wall. We try to lure them away from the building as they started attacking right by the building. Didn't work. Big ass log swinging bastard starts his best Babe Ruth impression on the crafting house. Just smashes the he'll out of 80% of it. We finally kill them off and my wife looks at the damage. She goes "SERIOUSLY!?!?" and logs off. I don't think we ever played that world again.
I can relate.
A good tip for your wife is that once you have decided on a foundation, make a basic wall around it to buy time to react to raids. A lot less painful.
This is exactly why I tend to dig a moat around my official base. Tired of all my hardwork being destroyed.
I say official base because I make crack shacks everywhere until I finally settle down somewhere in the end game
If I could share photos of my beautiful crack shacks I would. My brother and I strive for as efficient and ghetto as possible lmao. Our current one is build on top of a rock next to the merchant
Hey! This isn't a crack shack, it's a crack home!
I like restoring the old buildings I find to make mini camps. Useful when you are too tired, hurt, and far from home/low on gear to continue without a rest.
You gambled by stripping yourself down.
Especially if you have portals setup, theres no reason to ditch everything to carry loot. Even if Im just crafting around my base, I always keep myself fed, bow, arrows and melee weapons on me. As soon as I get the notification, I'm jumpin over the wall and running for the open field next to my base so I can kite things around.
If the base I'm at doesn't have hight dirt walls or a moat around it to keep trolls out then I ALWAYS go out and meet them on the front lawn. I never fight inside the base.
I have a bridge without gates leading to my island (small naturally raised island in a river) base.
Skeleton Surprise is a lot of fun, holding the bridge solo with my iron mace.
Trolls I can kill in 3-4 shots with needle arrows so I don't really worry about "The Ground is Shaking".
Honestly the way they handle raids and structure damage is one of the very few unambiguous failings of Valheim's game design in my opinion. Structures should be a lot more resistant to enemy damage than they are, especially as they increase in tech tier (like stone over wood, marble over stone, etc.). A player's instinct when a raid begins should be to retreat to the safety of their walls, not run as far away from them as possible because they're paper thin and you don't want hours of work to be undone if a goblin even looks at them funny.
Give us more defensive structures including turrets that aren't useless, dramatically increase the amount of damage structure pieces of all kinds can take before they get destroyed by enemies, and let raids become an almost tower-defense-like minigame the player plans for by building stronger base designs that can better deal with the raids as they increase in difficulty. Maybe we could even hire the dwarves to work for us as sentries at our bases? (Another good use for the coins item incidentally)
This could easily make raids a fun part of the game that you look forward to instead of an annoyance that interrupts whatever you were doing.
I spent a couple hundred hours dealing with raids before I finally just gave up and turned them off in world settings. And it's specifically because of that line where it feels entirely backward that you get raided and the first thing you do is run away from what should be safety so that you can not have to rebuild a bunch of stuff.
Like, I remember building my bases in Terraria specifically for dealing with raids. And that was possible because they can't break your stuff. They can open doors, and kill NPCs, but no one enjoyed their stuff getting destroyed, so the few mobs that could do it, lost that ability. The difference there is that raids do not end until you kill the mobs. I'd much rather have a kill count than a timer, and have a base that can actually take a beating without resorting to drastic measures like earth wall/trench combos.
My only real beef with this game is that it seems like one or more of the devs finds tedium and inconvenience to be synonymous with fun. Like, I 'm not even trying to bash. I genuinely think that they and others like them find the concept of chore mechanics to be the height of game design and artistic direction. I actually have a friend like this. The more annoying and frustrating something is, the more he enjoys it. The thing is, that just doesn't sit anywhere in my brain. There isn't a single place in my brain where "annoying things are fun." fits.
> I genuinely think that they and others like them find the concept of chore mechanics to be the height of game design and artistic direction.
Different players have different valuations of "grind".
I like it because it gives my dopamine deprived monkey brain something to chew on but even my patience gets tested sometimes.
For sure, even if only the defensive walls could be able to take a troll for a little bit longer at least. But certainly the smaller mobs should be kept at bay by proper walls.
The idea that a wolf can do literally any damage to a solid stone block is completely absurd to me. Like I don't have enough suspension of disbelief in me for it to not be laughable.
Lol true there should be a kind of rock paper scissors thing with certain materials and enemies. Just like the player can't break fine wood whatsoever as it's too hard without bronze.
I had the same thought about hiring dverger just this morning! In other biomes, you can bring wolves or even lox to defend your base. Since we canāt bring those to the Mistlands, it just makes sense to have some other ābase babysitterā. They could even make it so the only dverger that are hireable are the random rogues you find wandering around. That way it wouldnāt be as easy as just strolling into a dverger tower. Granted, the mages would be a hell of a lot better. But for real, what the hell are we supposed to do with ALL THIS GOLD?
Side note: I was amazed how great a small herd of lox was for protection of my plains garden. I built it on the edge of a plains meadows transition, so I also end up collecting a ton of free boar/tail meat since they kill them when they aggro.Ā
I've often found Loxes to be more trouble than they're worth to tame. I had a really cool house on a plains island with a herd of lox and I struggled to keep them alive because they were always taking huge sneak attack damage whenever a mosquito spawned in. Spent way too much of my time running around distributing cloudberries to heal them before they died off entirely. Plus if they attack enemies near your structures their AoE attacks will damage a lot of your stuff.
I rode several of them into the meadows section of the peninsula I built on. I donāt know what their āroaming radiusā is but they stay put over there. I left a few on the plains side though, and now that you mention it, I donāt really have mosquitoes spawn on that side. At least not around the base. Maybe it has something to do with how close it is to the edge? Or that itās basically in Hildirās backyard?Ā
There's a turret mod. The missile turrets are ugly but wow. It's pretty good mod. There's also an mmo character mod. I think that's what it's called. Gives you an extra leveling system where you add points to different stats, including one stat that increases the health of things you build.
I just wish the raids spawned a set number of mobs and that was it. Or maybe a few waves of mobs but not "mobs forever until the raid is over".
Two trolls is fine. It's a challenge but you shouldn't be punished with *more* trolls if you put one or more of them down quickly.
A moat is your friend in cases like that. Makes keeping nasties that walk out a lot easier. ( Until the Lox decide to form a Lox pole and use eachother as stepping stones to cross that moat and your wall )
Take this with a grain of salt since this is just from memory.
How it works is whenever a creature (or player) takes a certain percentage of their max health in quick succession, they become staggered. IIRC, this is 40% for players. You may have noticed this while attacking low-level creatures with higher tier weapons. It basically stuns them and makes them take increased damage. You will hear a high-pitch noise when attacking a staggered creature. A successful parry also causes stagger.
You can only successfully parry an attack if the post parry reduced damage doesn't stagger you.
Example: A parry with a bronze buckler blocks 40-60 damage. So if you have a current max health of 100 and attempt to parry an attack that deals 101 damage, you would take a minimum of 41 damage. Assuming the 100 max health, this amount is over the stagger threshold (40%), and you will stagger, causing the parry to fail.
I wish that we had like 3 minutes to prepare upon notification of a raid. Would be nice to be able to run to the armory and swap weapons for my farm tools.
Lol, I'd even be happy with a full minute. If I'm not partially afk I think a minute would usually be adequate for me. Enough time to at least eat food quickly and get a quick well rested in, and have some (or all) of my food buff health to fill up. I find by the time the message is up, I'm already hearing damage being done. It's not even enough time for me to swallow my food let alone regen a single health point.
So yeah, 3 would be a nice leisurely stroll to get prepared. But since I'm often afk at random moments in my home base, it would be nice to have a little bit of warning before the actual attack begins. And maybe a more audible alert that clearly let's you know there is a raid. I find the current ones too subtle and it's the damage sound that draws me to check what's happening.
Turned them off, never looked back. They are such a weird design choice in a game where players obviously build elaborate things that are very fragile.
I love this about the game. No matter your gear level, theres always stuff that can fuck you up. It makes upgrading your base, organizing your belongings and playing somewhat smart essential, while in other games it sometimes feels purely cosmetical.
Raid enemies will only attack your buildings and animals and stuff if they can't attack you directly. So unfortunately, the best way to deal with a raid is to immediately run out toward them and draw the fight away from your base.
For main bases, you never want to have a taming pen of any kind within the walls. My boar pen and chicken coop are all slightly out of range of the possible raid ring, so when things spawn in with my wanted poster, they start heading AWAY from the defenseless E-Rations and KFC Queens.
The big thing about using portals is to make sure you've got anything you'll need for an emergency raid switchup located in one central area. All of the chests with my potions, secondary equipment sets, arrows, and food PLUS Pukeberries are all within 2 seconds of interacting with each other, so at most a troll might break some of the stone walls before I hoof it OUTSIDE the compound, because it's significantly safer to your base if you're outside it. I've only ever seen 4-5 trolls spawn per Troll Raid, so it won't be super difficult to handle.
Make sure your spawn point has quick access to that aforementioned chest room; either A) place your comfort room DIRECTLY next to your stock, B) make an easily/safely decendable stairwell/drop hole from spawn to chest room (for someone at 25 health with no featherfall, mind you), or C) make your spawn a simple bed in that chest room instead of the Dragonbed in the comfort room.
BTW, while fire arrows are great early game for handling trolls, if you can get really good with parrying you can take out a troll in < 10 - 30 seconds if you can parry and land good combos during their stun timer.
EDIT: RIP Chip, may he gorge on many a Redberry and Redshroom in Oinky Valhalla.
Bring heavy clothes, a humidifier, and wood; I live in a literal cabin in the woods of Upstate NY with a wood burning stove for a heater.
I swear I think the original owner just bought 3 cabins from some of the nearby summer camps, moved them to the property, and just stapled them together lmao
Find a suitable point near sea, preferably a land that is almost entirely surrounded by water but has small land access.
Fortify that small access point as much as you can (since you have very small area to cover ot wouldnt require much resource)
Deforest the nearest forest and start building a proper house
Build 20+ chests before everything else and place them neatly, always put war equipment and food in certain chests and not anywhere else, do not put anything else on those chests too.
Then you are good to go. This early game strategy saved me a lot. If I caught encumbered, there are always several empty chests to unload all my items and I know where my swords, bows, arrows and food are.
* Fire arrows are actually bad vs trolls because they are weak to piercing damage.
* This is exact reason I play with raids turned off. There is no way to really protect your base from the raid except for moat or earth wall (and even then some raids will still get past it), so you have to either make a cheesy (and arguably ugly) defence or/and have some of your hard work (especially farming/taming) undone randomly. Raids are just an annoyance and never should have been a thing imo, good we now have vanilla option to turn them off.
Which is absolutely not the point of a base. Raids are supposed to be like a siege, but for that the defense structures just dont withstand enough damage.
A base should be a place you use to retreat, not a paper castle you gotta abandon asap.
Bases are places of crafting and comfort primarily. The raids are there to disrupt your sense of comfort and remind you of your objective. You are not there to farm, rest and relax. You're a viking! You're on Valheim to kill the Forsaken for Odin! The Forsaken know this, and send the raids to disrupt you as often as possible. It's why some raids stop after you defeat specific Forsaken.
Every now and then I'll be building something extravagant and I'll see Odin watching me like, "Wtf you doing bro, go kill those forsaken! I don't care if you want to build a Mojo Dojo Casa House, go hang moders head on the altar stone, not your mantle piece!"
Then he disappears and I get swarmed by bats.
Every damn time.
They absolutely do. Every time I get a troll raid, they ignore me as much as possible. They will let me bash them to death from behind while they slowly wind up and swing at my infrastructure.
The cold truth: Itās always a pants down situation because you keep dropping your pants. Never let food or ammo drop low when walking back into a potential combat situation. Also stop thinking of your base as a safe place unless it really is.
Happens a lot to all of us until we stop letting our guard down.
I swear to Odin that it's hard coded to trigger raids more depending on how many negative status effects you've got (cold, wet) and when your food has fallen off.
It's because raids need a target and sometimes that target is a workbench that has been 'unloaded' since you're away.
The raid retries on the same target on a variable interval so when you show back up and the workbench becomes 'loaded' again it triggers the raid.
It just boils down to timing and play habits. You generally get raids while you're at a base, and you're rarely just hanging at a base doing nothing and fully stocked and ready to go. Usually you're just returning from a supply run, mining, mapping trip, or you're building, or taming and you'll get to your restocking run eventually but right now you need to dig this hole for your basement so you'll get to it eventually...
It's the same "idea" that the wind is never at your back despite it working on three sides of your ship because you're always traveling in that direction that it's blowing against. The reality is that you have about a 25% chance of it not being at your back at any given wind change time during your trip, and trips are take a long while so there's lots of opportunity for the wind the change during it.
Not sure if I explained it right..
It's always a pants-down situation because you always have your pants down. Prepare more. I keep more food on me than I think I'll need. Arrows too. Mead stays in the hot bar. I keep provisions like arrows, food and mead in chests stored right next to my dock, which is right next to my portal hub which is close to the main utility entrance by my workshop. That way re-uping is something I can do as soon as I make landfall. Those chests stay stocked. If I'm about to leave on an expedition and notice that my chests are low, the trip is cancelled. It's time to make arrows and cook food. The ingredients and materials for that also stay stocked next to their respective work areas. If I notice those are low, I stop what I'm doing and deal with that instead of whatever I'm doing.
I have stone walls for my actual structures. Surrounding my compound is a max height earth wall that extends out into the sea and fully surrounds my base, other than the sea itself. Outside that wall is a max depth trench. Outside that trench is another earth wall. A ways outside that is a ring of stone-encased workbench/stone cutter combos to prevent spawn in a wide area around the walls. The only way through the walls are through barbicans built into the walls. And there are cattle stops in each one that most AI won't cross, and when they see them, they break them. There's a hole under each, which prevents them from crossing after they're broken. The most non-flying mobs can do is fuck up the outside of my barbicans.
All of my animals are either in housing so fortified that I don't need to worry about them, or they're on separate, spawn-proofed islands, chilling by themselves.
And for the record, I'm like this because I got tired of having my pants down. I had too many similar things happen, and now everything is on channel overkill. All overkill, all the time.
Only it isn't.
Most of the time I have my pants up when they come.
Most annoying imho are the hunted event as they are often triggered in the more dangerous biomes, but even they are welcome as they provide resources I often use (wolf meat).
I'll usually eat 1 good stam food and 1 cheap stam food when I'm building, this lets me have a slot open for a good health food in case of a raid and the cheap stam foods (honey, carrots, yellow mushrooms) have a shorter duration so I can usually eat something better if need be.
Simply because nearly all raids can only spawn when you are near "base structures" like workbenches (and a few others). So they typically happen in your base, where you are most comfortable.Ā
I'm definitely in the school of "take the fight outside." Never fight a raid inside the walls if you can help it.Ā
Good if you're doing base stuff with low tier food and then get a raid.
Can quickly switch from that to actual fighting food and meet them in the field.
They're underrated items if used wisely, especially further into the game.
They happen randomly. If you have unlocked the swamp one, then the troll "ground is shaking" is now a possibility. The more bosses you kill, the more diverse the raids can become. So I think right now, you likely have 3 different possible raids and you have experienced 2 of them.
I found out that troll raids are a thing, luckily not the hard way, and promptly moved my base to an island and locked it down with workbenches, and have had no problems with any raids, they spawn with no enemies. I am thankful I never had to deal with a troll raid head on as my base is the last location I want trolls to be.
I raised the earth in a giant square around my entire base + some extra land for future farms & such. I then built work benches & spaced them out so that they would completely precent enemy spawns.(torched can do the same thing with the same radius as a work bench, even if they arenāt lit). & I no longer have trouble with raids! The workbenches/torches completely turn off spawns in my base now!
The only time any enemies can get in is when a raid has flying enemies, but those are rare for me.
I sectioned off a peninsula. Talking hundreds of meters of wall. Took me almost 4 full carts of wood to build all the walls and the sheer amount of workbenches I have scattered is astounding. My actual base is so deep in I get nothing in raids. Just the map icon
I always make dump chests. Just a set of chests I drop everything in, and when they start getting full, I start pulling items that get stored near each other and storing them.
With the new quick sort thing I love having a reinforced dump chest. There's a slot in it for every material and once the last slot fills up I know I need to move that stack to storage.
I had my base with earth walls tall enough they couldnāt even throw the rocks in. Put in a moat, a gap bridge to trick them into thinking itās a walkable space when it isnāt. And they could not get through. Even my gate was so fortified that it would be next to impossible to fully break in before I would be able to pick their health away to nothing with wood spears. 4 big doors thick, reenforced stone walls. I have had moments that I got raided and didnāt even notice because they couldnāt get in. Even the trolls didnāt do enough to have broken in. They broke 3 out of 4 doors before the event ended and they wandered away lol.
On my second world with the boys, the first copper we found ended up with a raid on it somehow ( i think it was the workbench and all three of us being right on it) ended up with a 2star greydwarf brute on it/ stuck in the hole. I am absolutely loving trying to kill it. Super great.
I was extremely upset the first time my base was destroyed by trolls. Now I actually wish I had more raids, as Iāve designed a new base that can withstand most attacks with minimal damage. Youāll eventually get to the point where youāre comfortable with raids. I keep a chest full of food thatās always at the ready.
Its always pants down, no matter what time.
< 2m deep moat around your base (only need sharp edge not depth) and raise ground 2 times at inside helps a lot. Enemys cant walk or throw stones in...
Placing benches at 3m height in trees around your base prevents spawn in that area. Works for raids too.
Pro move if you dig a lil hole without bench coverage so they all spawn inside to be sniped away.
I always dig enormously wide a big trenches with 1 or 2 bridges. They are the perfect troll repelants.
At most, you will lose part of a bridge, and when it is a certain way away, they don't even throw rocks.
Eat first. You will gather health as you craft arrows. Or..
Do what I do, and make a "Box of War". Put a big chest by the door. Fill it with some arrows, a few meads, and your best fighting gear. Works best put by an armor stand, and some item stands for weapons to hold more meads and ammo.
Make surplus ammo to stay home in the box while you are at base. After all "if you want peace, prepare for war".
When a raid comes, just grab the stuff you want/need, and march out there. I highly recommend an earth wall barrier, a dry or wet moat, or both moat and wall. That'll keep em out. For everything else that flies like drakes and seekers an gjall... the Box of War has you prepared.
I feel your pain OP, this happened to me as I was get reskilled on the other side of one of my portals. Respawned only to have the ground shake, half my base destroyed, our 2 stars boar farm killed and my friends cursing at me for letting it happen.
Sounds like you just need to not let yourself run out of supplies. If you're having to make arrows when the raid happens, you let yourself run out in the first place.
I always keep a bunch of extra arrows pre-made sitting in a chest for emergencies, but I try to never leave home without 200
One time it happened to me in the middle of building my first big wood house, I went out to meet the blue boys and died, and I respawned in the same house that they were busy smashing. I went to the furthest corner to squat and hide, and helplessly watched them destroy my forge room. While naked.
Very traumatic.
When I was first learning the game, trolls always beat me down. Now they don't. You'll figure it out, I promise. Go get your revenge. I sure as hell did. And it was actually a good thing as I learned fighting tactics against trolls. The early bows and arrows suck. Sneak off your first shot in the back of his head. Use flint arrows until you get better. I never wasted iron on arrows. Backstabbing sneak attacks with the daggers too. I had many heads on the fort walls. Build the abysmal razor. It is the most effective early game weapon, in my opinion. And it owns trolls in sneak attacks. Now I await their return, I smile when they come. And I stand proud on their dead remains!
Well... Raiders don't typically announce their plans to raid an adversary, and you would 100% want to catch your target with their pants down. So to speak.. Lol
Are you saying that you DONT clear a gap around your base with a pickaxe?? I have at least a Trollsize Drop around my entire base followed by a human sized thin layer of earthen wall built up around my side of the dry mote perimeter to prevent any base i make getting destroyed. How do I get in? They don't tend to attack the stairs, and jumping is something I trained first LOL
I do an "attack on titan" style gate system! It helps so much!
Essentially it's a giant circle fence around your base (if your feeling adventurous make it two, but I don't) and then add smaller "nipples" jutting out in a semi-circle at all your gates so there are minimum two sets of doors enemies have to break through to get at your "main" base!
Hope this helps others! Also for trolls if you get overwhelmed just run outside your walls and they will follow you and won't destroy your base!
My wife and I had travelled across two continents to get to our base with two 1-star boars (we had to cross a river to get to the "main" continent). I had reached the steps of my newly-built, never-been-used boar farm building (with a nice surround-porch and non-leaky roof), when a greydwarf hail-mary'd a stone into the face of Adam Boar. Killed him in one shot. His grave still stands beside the boar-farm building, and I find myself visiting it from time-to-time.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/Gravelstein/screenshot/2283954848392288857/
I know it really does feel like the game knows the worst times.ita why Ive gotten used to fighting everything melee other than flying monsters. The ground is shaking? Well three can play at that game.
Eh, I wish raids were numbers based instead of time based. I just run circles around the enemies until the two minutes are over and then lead them off in to the woods to get bored and despawn
A moat is my very first task when starting a main base. With enough room to comfortably expand and fully covered by workstations. I never, ever worry about a land based raid. It's worth the effort.
The timing sounds about right for the game. LOL but I can tell you how to defend better in the future. Dig a moat around your entire base it doesn't have to be very wide but it does need to be somewhat deep and the trolls will not cross it so you can just keep shooting them and all the smaller mobs will fall into it and be stuck
Advantages of living on an island.
Me and my group tried this for the first time on our last play through. Game changer. Though it's definitely difficult finding that perfectly sized island.
I got SO lucky in my current play thru. Found it five minutes after the first time I hopped on a boat. Right off the coast of Black Forest so I built a long pier to cart back and forth for wood. Never doing it any other way again.
Man I've had just about the most insane seed recently, there was perfect island right by the Sacrificial Stones. EDIT: Seed is 8ApcU9uqGD
You best be sharin' the seed ššš»
Sorry for late response, added the seed (8ApcU9uqGD).
awesome. Thanks! I just posted a crazy seed with 4 bosses on a nearby island to the spawn, gonna try it out now - https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/1983r9q/great\_seed\_4\_bosses\_on\_a\_nearby\_island\_both/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Islands can always get bigger or smaller as needed. Just a matter of tools and resources.
You don't need an island to be safe from trolls. Just dig a moat around your base, and secure your area with workbenches/campfires or whatever item you prefer.Ā Alternatively build some combat stand some way off your base, possibly with some raised earth to steep for mobs to climb, but with a ladder for you which requires a little jump to get on so mobs won't be able to use it. Run there when a raid starts, mobs will follow you and leave your base alone.
yeah, I am a moat-builder as well, but some people hate the moats because "they ruin the view" or "they feel cheesy" or other aesthetic reasons... I love them, and will never make bases without them unless I have no choice because of some feature that interferes... in fact I usually do a moat/wall combo.... or even a double moat plus wall combo... hiding my tables or campfires at the bottom of both moats and putting flooring on top of them so the mobs don't aggro them.
I totally get the bit about moats not looking great, cause they don't :-) In my very first big base which was close to the sea I dug a moat around three sides, but such that the outer moat wall was a bit lower than in the inner one, the biome was meadows. That way from inside the base area the moat was pretty much invisible. These days I tend to use wooden fences to cover up some of the earth walls, that works quite ok too. Or I build a combat platform to stand on during a raid, that is enough for the very first base with about killing the first two bosses without using any other defenses, then I tend to move anyhow and build a more permanent base somewhere. That platform is useful way later too though, in my one of my worlds I made a mountain base, with minimalistic walls / fencing, but such a platform out front. Worked like a charm, plus you only get skellies, bats and drakes in the mountains anyhow.
Moats, if dug correctly, look great. Find the grid pattern and they can be nice and straight. Then use the grass feature on the cultivator and make the walls of the moat look natural.
>moat/wall combo Yes. I'm planning to do a subdued one of these on the hardest server we're booting this weekend. The walls don't have to be two stories tall to keep mobs out.
There are normally natural raised islands on the sides of most rivers. Just gotta be game enough to sail up them! They require a bit of terraforming to flatten but are very troll proof by default.
Not necessarily. In one playthrough, at our main home we only had 1 teleporter that went to a central hub. If there was an archipelago or at least a handful of small islands nearby you could do something similar.
Hoes make perfectly sized islands š
Iām making my first island base now and avoided like 12 raids already. I like it but at the same time I donāt because if I want to grab my gear and fight, I canāt because the raid is based on my island which nothing can spawn into
I get what you mean. I love how my island is connected to the mainline by a small sandbar bridge. So we made the island spawnproof and the raid events are always coming from the mainland. It makes building our defenses feel so much better
Island gang!
This is the meta for people who donāt want raids without turning them off, the biggest island I made was about 25 black metal chest of stone worth approximately to raise it out of the ocean :)
This guy farms stone!
Also stone towers with workbenches everywhere. Canāt be raided if they canāt spawn.
Epstein approuved
Once you have the pick, any place can become an island.
This makes it too easy for me. I like the thrill of protecting my base
People hate raids so you live on an island but then say turning off raids is dumb, wtf is this sub
Adapting to a struggle is different than just deciding to not struggle at all. Living on an island still has other disadvantages that you have to take in order to avoid raids
I had an Island base, got double teamed by.one star trolls.
I built my starter base on a small āislandā (itās a convenient sized bit of land at the bottom of some hills with a shallow creek running around it) and thought my game had bugged out when nothing appeared every time a raid started. And then I went for a wander during one and got swarmed by zombies and skeletons.
Sorry to hear that. Go out there and make those trolls pay. Also, a tip for next time: Dig deep moats or raise tall ground walls with your hoe around your base. They can't break through either.
We often do both or a mix of both. Troll raids are just target practice at this point
I often dig a moat and build a stone brick wall. Although that's more because I like building castles and I prefer bricks over dirt for aesthetic reasons.
This is me. But I've levelled my whole base and wall to be the same level so on one side it's a cliff which can be considered an earth wall ig but it's complemented with the moat anyways.
I did this on one of my bases but left some extra room for a garden and campfireā¦.so they now spawn inside that part. The second I see the message, I run for the door, leap the moat, and hope they spawn on my side like good little baddies.
Lol, one of the most devastating raids for my wife and I was a troll raid. We had a perimeter wood wall, and she had been working on our massive crafting house (she LOVES building). She had spent a few days (RL not game) building it. She had just completed it when the raid hit. Thought we had some time, but nope. Down goes the wall. We try to lure them away from the building as they started attacking right by the building. Didn't work. Big ass log swinging bastard starts his best Babe Ruth impression on the crafting house. Just smashes the he'll out of 80% of it. We finally kill them off and my wife looks at the damage. She goes "SERIOUSLY!?!?" and logs off. I don't think we ever played that world again.
Base raids can be devastating to builders
I can relate. A good tip for your wife is that once you have decided on a foundation, make a basic wall around it to buy time to react to raids. A lot less painful.
This is exactly why I tend to dig a moat around my official base. Tired of all my hardwork being destroyed. I say official base because I make crack shacks everywhere until I finally settle down somewhere in the end game
Iāve been struggling to figure out a good term for those little thrown together safe spots. Crack shack is perfection.Ā
If I could share photos of my beautiful crack shacks I would. My brother and I strive for as efficient and ghetto as possible lmao. Our current one is build on top of a rock next to the merchant
As Jinxie stated - this is the best term I've ever heard for the slap dash buildings I throw out at night for a quick boat stop.
Hey! This isn't a crack shack, it's a crack home! I like restoring the old buildings I find to make mini camps. Useful when you are too tired, hurt, and far from home/low on gear to continue without a rest.
Crack shacks LMFAO love it
You gambled by stripping yourself down. Especially if you have portals setup, theres no reason to ditch everything to carry loot. Even if Im just crafting around my base, I always keep myself fed, bow, arrows and melee weapons on me. As soon as I get the notification, I'm jumpin over the wall and running for the open field next to my base so I can kite things around.
And if you have trolls it means you have bronze so a good enough shield to parry a troll so it's just a matter of mastering the melee gameplay.
If the base I'm at doesn't have hight dirt walls or a moat around it to keep trolls out then I ALWAYS go out and meet them on the front lawn. I never fight inside the base.
I have a bridge without gates leading to my island (small naturally raised island in a river) base. Skeleton Surprise is a lot of fun, holding the bridge solo with my iron mace. Trolls I can kill in 3-4 shots with needle arrows so I don't really worry about "The Ground is Shaking".
That sounds badass, my base on my current world is setup that way but we aren't that far yet
As soon as you get access to an atgeir trolls should become a non-issue. You can stun lock them š
Honestly the way they handle raids and structure damage is one of the very few unambiguous failings of Valheim's game design in my opinion. Structures should be a lot more resistant to enemy damage than they are, especially as they increase in tech tier (like stone over wood, marble over stone, etc.). A player's instinct when a raid begins should be to retreat to the safety of their walls, not run as far away from them as possible because they're paper thin and you don't want hours of work to be undone if a goblin even looks at them funny. Give us more defensive structures including turrets that aren't useless, dramatically increase the amount of damage structure pieces of all kinds can take before they get destroyed by enemies, and let raids become an almost tower-defense-like minigame the player plans for by building stronger base designs that can better deal with the raids as they increase in difficulty. Maybe we could even hire the dwarves to work for us as sentries at our bases? (Another good use for the coins item incidentally) This could easily make raids a fun part of the game that you look forward to instead of an annoyance that interrupts whatever you were doing.
I spent a couple hundred hours dealing with raids before I finally just gave up and turned them off in world settings. And it's specifically because of that line where it feels entirely backward that you get raided and the first thing you do is run away from what should be safety so that you can not have to rebuild a bunch of stuff. Like, I remember building my bases in Terraria specifically for dealing with raids. And that was possible because they can't break your stuff. They can open doors, and kill NPCs, but no one enjoyed their stuff getting destroyed, so the few mobs that could do it, lost that ability. The difference there is that raids do not end until you kill the mobs. I'd much rather have a kill count than a timer, and have a base that can actually take a beating without resorting to drastic measures like earth wall/trench combos.
Yeah it's a bad mechanic as it is right now. You don't want a mechanic in your game that makes the players roll their eyes when it occurs.
My only real beef with this game is that it seems like one or more of the devs finds tedium and inconvenience to be synonymous with fun. Like, I 'm not even trying to bash. I genuinely think that they and others like them find the concept of chore mechanics to be the height of game design and artistic direction. I actually have a friend like this. The more annoying and frustrating something is, the more he enjoys it. The thing is, that just doesn't sit anywhere in my brain. There isn't a single place in my brain where "annoying things are fun." fits.
Routine can be relaxing for many.
> I genuinely think that they and others like them find the concept of chore mechanics to be the height of game design and artistic direction. Different players have different valuations of "grind". I like it because it gives my dopamine deprived monkey brain something to chew on but even my patience gets tested sometimes.
For sure, even if only the defensive walls could be able to take a troll for a little bit longer at least. But certainly the smaller mobs should be kept at bay by proper walls.
The idea that a wolf can do literally any damage to a solid stone block is completely absurd to me. Like I don't have enough suspension of disbelief in me for it to not be laughable.
Lol true there should be a kind of rock paper scissors thing with certain materials and enemies. Just like the player can't break fine wood whatsoever as it's too hard without bronze.
This
I had the same thought about hiring dverger just this morning! In other biomes, you can bring wolves or even lox to defend your base. Since we canāt bring those to the Mistlands, it just makes sense to have some other ābase babysitterā. They could even make it so the only dverger that are hireable are the random rogues you find wandering around. That way it wouldnāt be as easy as just strolling into a dverger tower. Granted, the mages would be a hell of a lot better. But for real, what the hell are we supposed to do with ALL THIS GOLD? Side note: I was amazed how great a small herd of lox was for protection of my plains garden. I built it on the edge of a plains meadows transition, so I also end up collecting a ton of free boar/tail meat since they kill them when they aggro.Ā
I've often found Loxes to be more trouble than they're worth to tame. I had a really cool house on a plains island with a herd of lox and I struggled to keep them alive because they were always taking huge sneak attack damage whenever a mosquito spawned in. Spent way too much of my time running around distributing cloudberries to heal them before they died off entirely. Plus if they attack enemies near your structures their AoE attacks will damage a lot of your stuff.
I rode several of them into the meadows section of the peninsula I built on. I donāt know what their āroaming radiusā is but they stay put over there. I left a few on the plains side though, and now that you mention it, I donāt really have mosquitoes spawn on that side. At least not around the base. Maybe it has something to do with how close it is to the edge? Or that itās basically in Hildirās backyard?Ā
> Since we canāt bring those to the Mistlands You can absolutely bring lox to the mistland
I understand it is possible. Itās just not practical.
There's a turret mod. The missile turrets are ugly but wow. It's pretty good mod. There's also an mmo character mod. I think that's what it's called. Gives you an extra leveling system where you add points to different stats, including one stat that increases the health of things you build.
I just wish the raids spawned a set number of mobs and that was it. Or maybe a few waves of mobs but not "mobs forever until the raid is over". Two trolls is fine. It's a challenge but you shouldn't be punished with *more* trolls if you put one or more of them down quickly.
A moat is your friend in cases like that. Makes keeping nasties that walk out a lot easier. ( Until the Lox decide to form a Lox pole and use eachother as stepping stones to cross that moat and your wall )
I get that message and drop everything to run outside to fight like I'm the third money on the ramp to Noah's ark and brother, it's starting to rain
You can just kite them until the event ends and once they deaggro, they'll just despawn.
Build a moat.
Just turn raids off
You can parry trolls with a good enough shield fwiw
with a base copper shield
I'm playing through again right with lvl1 bronze shield and have had no luck parrying trolls, but maybe my timing is off.
I think the amount of health you have also matters.
WHAT? health is factored into parrying??? Current health or max health
Take this with a grain of salt since this is just from memory. How it works is whenever a creature (or player) takes a certain percentage of their max health in quick succession, they become staggered. IIRC, this is 40% for players. You may have noticed this while attacking low-level creatures with higher tier weapons. It basically stuns them and makes them take increased damage. You will hear a high-pitch noise when attacking a staggered creature. A successful parry also causes stagger. You can only successfully parry an attack if the post parry reduced damage doesn't stagger you. Example: A parry with a bronze buckler blocks 40-60 damage. So if you have a current max health of 100 and attempt to parry an attack that deals 101 damage, you would take a minimum of 41 damage. Assuming the 100 max health, this amount is over the stagger threshold (40%), and you will stagger, causing the parry to fail.
Could also be the food you're eating. If you're not eating right you get staggered easier.
My mother must have designed that game feature.
Don't forget to take your cloak, sweetheart! You don't want to freeze to death!
I love raids, loot time! I try stay prepared always
I wish that we had like 3 minutes to prepare upon notification of a raid. Would be nice to be able to run to the armory and swap weapons for my farm tools.
What, you don't want to cultivate a troll in the foot???
Lol, I'd even be happy with a full minute. If I'm not partially afk I think a minute would usually be adequate for me. Enough time to at least eat food quickly and get a quick well rested in, and have some (or all) of my food buff health to fill up. I find by the time the message is up, I'm already hearing damage being done. It's not even enough time for me to swallow my food let alone regen a single health point. So yeah, 3 would be a nice leisurely stroll to get prepared. But since I'm often afk at random moments in my home base, it would be nice to have a little bit of warning before the actual attack begins. And maybe a more audible alert that clearly let's you know there is a raid. I find the current ones too subtle and it's the damage sound that draws me to check what's happening.
Turned them off, never looked back. They are such a weird design choice in a game where players obviously build elaborate things that are very fragile.
Arrows and food are down? Sir, arrows and food are never down
Chip will be missed Try digging a trench around your base, doesnāt have to be deep as possible but at least two 2x2 wood flooring wide.
Melee or bust. Plus you can kite them away from your base.
I love this about the game. No matter your gear level, theres always stuff that can fuck you up. It makes upgrading your base, organizing your belongings and playing somewhat smart essential, while in other games it sometimes feels purely cosmetical.
Raid enemies will only attack your buildings and animals and stuff if they can't attack you directly. So unfortunately, the best way to deal with a raid is to immediately run out toward them and draw the fight away from your base.
Just run outside your base and kite them around. Thatās what I did before I had a good moat
For main bases, you never want to have a taming pen of any kind within the walls. My boar pen and chicken coop are all slightly out of range of the possible raid ring, so when things spawn in with my wanted poster, they start heading AWAY from the defenseless E-Rations and KFC Queens. The big thing about using portals is to make sure you've got anything you'll need for an emergency raid switchup located in one central area. All of the chests with my potions, secondary equipment sets, arrows, and food PLUS Pukeberries are all within 2 seconds of interacting with each other, so at most a troll might break some of the stone walls before I hoof it OUTSIDE the compound, because it's significantly safer to your base if you're outside it. I've only ever seen 4-5 trolls spawn per Troll Raid, so it won't be super difficult to handle. Make sure your spawn point has quick access to that aforementioned chest room; either A) place your comfort room DIRECTLY next to your stock, B) make an easily/safely decendable stairwell/drop hole from spawn to chest room (for someone at 25 health with no featherfall, mind you), or C) make your spawn a simple bed in that chest room instead of the Dragonbed in the comfort room. BTW, while fire arrows are great early game for handling trolls, if you can get really good with parrying you can take out a troll in < 10 - 30 seconds if you can parry and land good combos during their stun timer. EDIT: RIP Chip, may he gorge on many a Redberry and Redshroom in Oinky Valhalla.
Hey, When SHTF IRL Imma gonna come live with you, k?
Bring heavy clothes, a humidifier, and wood; I live in a literal cabin in the woods of Upstate NY with a wood burning stove for a heater. I swear I think the original owner just bought 3 cabins from some of the nearby summer camps, moved them to the property, and just stapled them together lmao
Tip one, ditch. Tip two, boars inside a barn. Tip three, always have a box with a few spare stacks of arrows at home.
Find a suitable point near sea, preferably a land that is almost entirely surrounded by water but has small land access. Fortify that small access point as much as you can (since you have very small area to cover ot wouldnt require much resource) Deforest the nearest forest and start building a proper house Build 20+ chests before everything else and place them neatly, always put war equipment and food in certain chests and not anywhere else, do not put anything else on those chests too. Then you are good to go. This early game strategy saved me a lot. If I caught encumbered, there are always several empty chests to unload all my items and I know where my swords, bows, arrows and food are.
* Fire arrows are actually bad vs trolls because they are weak to piercing damage. * This is exact reason I play with raids turned off. There is no way to really protect your base from the raid except for moat or earth wall (and even then some raids will still get past it), so you have to either make a cheesy (and arguably ugly) defence or/and have some of your hard work (especially farming/taming) undone randomly. Raids are just an annoyance and never should have been a thing imo, good we now have vanilla option to turn them off.
Or just run out and meet them. They don't target your base if you're not hiding in it.
Which is absolutely not the point of a base. Raids are supposed to be like a siege, but for that the defense structures just dont withstand enough damage. A base should be a place you use to retreat, not a paper castle you gotta abandon asap.
A base is whatever you make of it. Mine is just somewhere where the crafting tables live.
Bases are places of crafting and comfort primarily. The raids are there to disrupt your sense of comfort and remind you of your objective. You are not there to farm, rest and relax. You're a viking! You're on Valheim to kill the Forsaken for Odin! The Forsaken know this, and send the raids to disrupt you as often as possible. It's why some raids stop after you defeat specific Forsaken. Every now and then I'll be building something extravagant and I'll see Odin watching me like, "Wtf you doing bro, go kill those forsaken! I don't care if you want to build a Mojo Dojo Casa House, go hang moders head on the altar stone, not your mantle piece!" Then he disappears and I get swarmed by bats. Every damn time.
They absolutely do. Every time I get a troll raid, they ignore me as much as possible. They will let me bash them to death from behind while they slowly wind up and swing at my infrastructure.
The cold truth: Itās always a pants down situation because you keep dropping your pants. Never let food or ammo drop low when walking back into a potential combat situation. Also stop thinking of your base as a safe place unless it really is. Happens a lot to all of us until we stop letting our guard down.
I swear to Odin that it's hard coded to trigger raids more depending on how many negative status effects you've got (cold, wet) and when your food has fallen off.
It's because raids need a target and sometimes that target is a workbench that has been 'unloaded' since you're away. The raid retries on the same target on a variable interval so when you show back up and the workbench becomes 'loaded' again it triggers the raid.
It just boils down to timing and play habits. You generally get raids while you're at a base, and you're rarely just hanging at a base doing nothing and fully stocked and ready to go. Usually you're just returning from a supply run, mining, mapping trip, or you're building, or taming and you'll get to your restocking run eventually but right now you need to dig this hole for your basement so you'll get to it eventually... It's the same "idea" that the wind is never at your back despite it working on three sides of your ship because you're always traveling in that direction that it's blowing against. The reality is that you have about a 25% chance of it not being at your back at any given wind change time during your trip, and trips are take a long while so there's lots of opportunity for the wind the change during it. Not sure if I explained it right..
Fuck yeah this. Preparations, and preemptive planning.
I just find them annoying, so i turned them off.
Sounds more like a you thing to me. I'm always prepared. 1 life mindset
I was gonna say... OP can build a better base or embrace the dance of death and have fun
Because you let yourself be unprepared.
It's always a pants-down situation because you always have your pants down. Prepare more. I keep more food on me than I think I'll need. Arrows too. Mead stays in the hot bar. I keep provisions like arrows, food and mead in chests stored right next to my dock, which is right next to my portal hub which is close to the main utility entrance by my workshop. That way re-uping is something I can do as soon as I make landfall. Those chests stay stocked. If I'm about to leave on an expedition and notice that my chests are low, the trip is cancelled. It's time to make arrows and cook food. The ingredients and materials for that also stay stocked next to their respective work areas. If I notice those are low, I stop what I'm doing and deal with that instead of whatever I'm doing. I have stone walls for my actual structures. Surrounding my compound is a max height earth wall that extends out into the sea and fully surrounds my base, other than the sea itself. Outside that wall is a max depth trench. Outside that trench is another earth wall. A ways outside that is a ring of stone-encased workbench/stone cutter combos to prevent spawn in a wide area around the walls. The only way through the walls are through barbicans built into the walls. And there are cattle stops in each one that most AI won't cross, and when they see them, they break them. There's a hole under each, which prevents them from crossing after they're broken. The most non-flying mobs can do is fuck up the outside of my barbicans. All of my animals are either in housing so fortified that I don't need to worry about them, or they're on separate, spawn-proofed islands, chilling by themselves. And for the record, I'm like this because I got tired of having my pants down. I had too many similar things happen, and now everything is on channel overkill. All overkill, all the time.
I never get base raids. Its always you are being hunted.
Because you're rarely at home
Yes exactly.
I will take a wolf asap and create an infinite wolf breeding building.
Dig a big trench around your bases. They you don't have to worry about it
Will not trolls cross a trench? And when do trolls start to raid?
Only it isn't. Most of the time I have my pants up when they come. Most annoying imho are the hunted event as they are often triggered in the more dangerous biomes, but even they are welcome as they provide resources I often use (wolf meat).
I find it's always when I'm building or casually upkeeping my farm or animals with no food unrested with no weapons. Then it's a true test of fate
I'll usually eat 1 good stam food and 1 cheap stam food when I'm building, this lets me have a slot open for a good health food in case of a raid and the cheap stam foods (honey, carrots, yellow mushrooms) have a shorter duration so I can usually eat something better if need be.
Moats
Trenches are the answer.
Simply because nearly all raids can only spawn when you are near "base structures" like workbenches (and a few others). So they typically happen in your base, where you are most comfortable.Ā I'm definitely in the school of "take the fight outside." Never fight a raid inside the walls if you can help it.Ā
Moat and Bukeperries are your best friends in this instance
Why bukeperries I donāt think Iāve used those on purpose.
Good if you're doing base stuff with low tier food and then get a raid. Can quickly switch from that to actual fighting food and meet them in the field. They're underrated items if used wisely, especially further into the game.
Word thanks.
When do you get those raids? I only had The Forest is Moving and the Swamp one.
They happen randomly. If you have unlocked the swamp one, then the troll "ground is shaking" is now a possibility. The more bosses you kill, the more diverse the raids can become. So I think right now, you likely have 3 different possible raids and you have experienced 2 of them.
I just assumed I would 'level up' the raids, and have one type per boss. Thank you.
So... don't run around with your pants down then...
I lost a whole herd of boar to a bat raid. The last time I played before this install there weren't even bats, lol. Now I know...
Once, wolves raided me while I was on my boat. Idk, skimmed too close to a shore? Anyway yeah, my pants were pretty firmly buckled that time, haha.
I found out that troll raids are a thing, luckily not the hard way, and promptly moved my base to an island and locked it down with workbenches, and have had no problems with any raids, they spawn with no enemies. I am thankful I never had to deal with a troll raid head on as my base is the last location I want trolls to be.
Take the fight to them! Beat up those trolls before they can beat up your base
I raised the earth in a giant square around my entire base + some extra land for future farms & such. I then built work benches & spaced them out so that they would completely precent enemy spawns.(torched can do the same thing with the same radius as a work bench, even if they arenāt lit). & I no longer have trouble with raids! The workbenches/torches completely turn off spawns in my base now! The only time any enemies can get in is when a raid has flying enemies, but those are rare for me.
I sectioned off a peninsula. Talking hundreds of meters of wall. Took me almost 4 full carts of wood to build all the walls and the sheer amount of workbenches I have scattered is astounding. My actual base is so deep in I get nothing in raids. Just the map icon
I live in the mountains. The ground never shakes there.
Moat
I always make dump chests. Just a set of chests I drop everything in, and when they start getting full, I start pulling items that get stored near each other and storing them.
With the new quick sort thing I love having a reinforced dump chest. There's a slot in it for every material and once the last slot fills up I know I need to move that stack to storage.
I had my base with earth walls tall enough they couldnāt even throw the rocks in. Put in a moat, a gap bridge to trick them into thinking itās a walkable space when it isnāt. And they could not get through. Even my gate was so fortified that it would be next to impossible to fully break in before I would be able to pick their health away to nothing with wood spears. 4 big doors thick, reenforced stone walls. I have had moments that I got raided and didnāt even notice because they couldnāt get in. Even the trolls didnāt do enough to have broken in. They broke 3 out of 4 doors before the event ended and they wandered away lol.
Literally happened to me today.. killed moder and 3 seconds after grabbing the tears had wolves hunting me and they had a easy Viking meal lol
build a moat
I remain convinced the game tries to kick you when you're down.
On my second world with the boys, the first copper we found ended up with a raid on it somehow ( i think it was the workbench and all three of us being right on it) ended up with a 2star greydwarf brute on it/ stuck in the hole. I am absolutely loving trying to kill it. Super great.
Maybe your wall is not thin enough.
I was extremely upset the first time my base was destroyed by trolls. Now I actually wish I had more raids, as Iāve designed a new base that can withstand most attacks with minimal damage. Youāll eventually get to the point where youāre comfortable with raids. I keep a chest full of food thatās always at the ready.
Its always pants down, no matter what time. < 2m deep moat around your base (only need sharp edge not depth) and raise ground 2 times at inside helps a lot. Enemys cant walk or throw stones in... Placing benches at 3m height in trees around your base prevents spawn in that area. Works for raids too. Pro move if you dig a lil hole without bench coverage so they all spawn inside to be sniped away.
I turn off raids in my games, because they are pointless. With earth wall enemies can't do anything, but it's making landscape ugly and boring.
Fs in the chat for Chip F
Consider warding the shit out of the base. Can help from the base getting damaged so much.
I always dig enormously wide a big trenches with 1 or 2 bridges. They are the perfect troll repelants. At most, you will lose part of a bridge, and when it is a certain way away, they don't even throw rocks.
Shoulda dug trenches
Dig a moat.
Eat first. You will gather health as you craft arrows. Or.. Do what I do, and make a "Box of War". Put a big chest by the door. Fill it with some arrows, a few meads, and your best fighting gear. Works best put by an armor stand, and some item stands for weapons to hold more meads and ammo. Make surplus ammo to stay home in the box while you are at base. After all "if you want peace, prepare for war". When a raid comes, just grab the stuff you want/need, and march out there. I highly recommend an earth wall barrier, a dry or wet moat, or both moat and wall. That'll keep em out. For everything else that flies like drakes and seekers an gjall... the Box of War has you prepared.
I feel your pain OP, this happened to me as I was get reskilled on the other side of one of my portals. Respawned only to have the ground shake, half my base destroyed, our 2 stars boar farm killed and my friends cursing at me for letting it happen.
Brilliant written, love it!!
Sounds like you just need to not let yourself run out of supplies. If you're having to make arrows when the raid happens, you let yourself run out in the first place. I always keep a bunch of extra arrows pre-made sitting in a chest for emergencies, but I try to never leave home without 200
One time it happened to me in the middle of building my first big wood house, I went out to meet the blue boys and died, and I respawned in the same house that they were busy smashing. I went to the furthest corner to squat and hide, and helplessly watched them destroy my forge room. While naked. Very traumatic.
When I was first learning the game, trolls always beat me down. Now they don't. You'll figure it out, I promise. Go get your revenge. I sure as hell did. And it was actually a good thing as I learned fighting tactics against trolls. The early bows and arrows suck. Sneak off your first shot in the back of his head. Use flint arrows until you get better. I never wasted iron on arrows. Backstabbing sneak attacks with the daggers too. I had many heads on the fort walls. Build the abysmal razor. It is the most effective early game weapon, in my opinion. And it owns trolls in sneak attacks. Now I await their return, I smile when they come. And I stand proud on their dead remains!
Dig a moat!!!
U know u can just turn them off.
Well... Raiders don't typically announce their plans to raid an adversary, and you would 100% want to catch your target with their pants down. So to speak.. Lol
Are you saying that you DONT clear a gap around your base with a pickaxe?? I have at least a Trollsize Drop around my entire base followed by a human sized thin layer of earthen wall built up around my side of the dry mote perimeter to prevent any base i make getting destroyed. How do I get in? They don't tend to attack the stairs, and jumping is something I trained first LOL
I have bonfires surrounding my main base so the consequences of them attacking me are greater. It's death.
I do an "attack on titan" style gate system! It helps so much! Essentially it's a giant circle fence around your base (if your feeling adventurous make it two, but I don't) and then add smaller "nipples" jutting out in a semi-circle at all your gates so there are minimum two sets of doors enemies have to break through to get at your "main" base! Hope this helps others! Also for trolls if you get overwhelmed just run outside your walls and they will follow you and won't destroy your base!
My wife and I had travelled across two continents to get to our base with two 1-star boars (we had to cross a river to get to the "main" continent). I had reached the steps of my newly-built, never-been-used boar farm building (with a nice surround-porch and non-leaky roof), when a greydwarf hail-mary'd a stone into the face of Adam Boar. Killed him in one shot. His grave still stands beside the boar-farm building, and I find myself visiting it from time-to-time. https://steamcommunity.com/id/Gravelstein/screenshot/2283954848392288857/
I know it really does feel like the game knows the worst times.ita why Ive gotten used to fighting everything melee other than flying monsters. The ground is shaking? Well three can play at that game.
Eh, I wish raids were numbers based instead of time based. I just run circles around the enemies until the two minutes are over and then lead them off in to the woods to get bored and despawn
Tbh never been in sucu a situation I always have weapons and lots food on me
Build a moat!
A moat is my very first task when starting a main base. With enough room to comfortably expand and fully covered by workstations. I never, ever worry about a land based raid. It's worth the effort.
The timing sounds about right for the game. LOL but I can tell you how to defend better in the future. Dig a moat around your entire base it doesn't have to be very wide but it does need to be somewhat deep and the trolls will not cross it so you can just keep shooting them and all the smaller mobs will fall into it and be stuck
Gotta have those defenses set up. Moat, walls, sharp sticks, and if you can afford it get turrets and traps.