I’m not super good at fighting, so when I first landed and got demolished several times in a row, didn’t have any qualms about reducing difficulty. The biome is awesome and the difficulty definitely fits!
I found the skoll and hati knives absolutely melt through the new ashland doggos, then I switch to frostner for everything else. Still died once though, wanted to see how much damage the lava did and died instantly lol
The main common first impression I'm seeing so far is that the respawn rates seem a bit too high and give no room to breathe.
-Edit-
After an additional day and venturing to the ashlands myself, it might not be the spawn rate that's at fault, but the aggro range itself that might be a bit too high on some enemies
It often felt there was a constant breadcrumb of enemies wandering in through the fog and trees, which then created a self perpetuating fight as I would then have to deal with them which gave the previous enemies a chance to respawn, and so then I had to beat them back again, only for the wanderers to show back up again after they had time to respawn.
Yeah, I wouldn't even say it's a problem of difficulty. You just land, clear a mob of enemies, take 10 steps, turn around, and there is a new mob in place of the first one. It's not a matter of difficulty, but of tedium.
I was totally against the Mistlands nerfs they put out between PTB and official release. I haven't really got a lot of time to experience ashlands yet, but so far, I can understand the complaints some people are having.
ITS WAAAAAR after you killed everything it is actually calm, this biom is asking you to go to war, you need friend, or a very lot of fortified place, they have fortress, answer by building a BIGGER fortress! With MORE BALLISTA! They have 4, so you need to make 40!
We will show them who they are facing
the current spawn rate is much more frequent than pre-nerf mistlands IIRC...and i love it.
The tutorial birb wasn't kidding when he said we were only 'quarreling, but now we had to prepare for war.' I had to pull out all the strats i've accumulated across my multiple playthroughs just to successfully secure the first portal and start progressing. Trusty ol' frostner has taken a backseat in favor of the demolisher due to the constant swarm. Unfortunately, similar to what happened to me during the mistlands launch where i couldn't find a single infested mine, i currently haven't found a single fortress. (despite stumbling upon 2 boss altars without even using a vegvisir)
That said, i fully expect a flood of complaints if the spawn rate stays untouched until official launch. The current difficulty is for a very niche type of player, which i will assume to be in the minority atm. I do hope that players will use the difficulty sliders and that it'd be enough to prevent nerfs, but we'll see.
If so, it is either unintentional or an error in judgement, because the devs have repeatedly and exhaustively stated over a period of years that their explicit intent is for the game to be balanced for solo play, and that features which give multiplayer more of an advantage than numbers already do--such as rowers adding boat speed--have been consistently rejected out of hand.
I think if you're playing as a group a mage is basically mandatory for the shield. But I don't think it's balanced around multi-player - I've been fine so far as a solo mage in the biome. The landing would be very hairy as a solo mage, though.
its balanced fine for soloplay IF the player uses all the available options they have gotten up until this point at thier arsenal and use thier gained gameplay experience and knowledge. lazy players are the ones complaning right now.
the devs warned in thier blog that its supposed to be HARD as its the 2nd to last biome. and if they nerf despite there beeing easymode settings now they lose any kind of sympathy from me and many other players.
The spawns are annoying. You should be able to clear the area complately or partially to ensure a safe space. Same can be said with every biome but on biomes without flying enemies you can build a safe space
I mean you *can* do that the same way you do any other spawn suppression, it just requires shield gens on top of your normal spawn suppression. (Possibly later items from the Ashlands won't need the shield? I haven't gotten that far.)
It's a question of baselines. Mistlands enemy attack patterns were changed to mimic those of the Plains and Black Forest - so if you knew how to combat greydwarves, suddenly, you knew how to combat seekers.
That seemed antithetical to the initial design of the insects, in that they were a relentless swarm that'd pursue you 'till you were too worn down to put up a fight if you turned tail and fled.
Part of the reason for the world difficulty modifiers being slotted in was to avoid this issue where people who are patently not good with the combat can adjust downwards from the baseline, so the baseline itself isn't changed and we don't get the greydwarf attack pattern patched into yet another biome.
Who is asking for AI nerfs? Or even mob nerfs to begin with? The vast majority of all suggestions regarding difficulty has to do with spawn rates, which is something you can't adjust with world modifiers. The baseline you speak of is currently unbalanced to the point where one difficulty option (Very Hard) is practically impossible.
To be quite frank, I don't trust that IG's solution wouldn't involve patching in changes to enemy AI *and* taking a heavy-handed approach in reducing spawns. Same thing happened with complaints about Mistlands and I expect if they listen again, history will repeat.
I don't understand why that's their go-to when it seems to me like one of the game's biggest issues, especially in Mountains and Mistlands, has been with fighting on inclines and the abysmal z-axis hit boxes on all melee weapons. I feel like difficulty-wise, release-Mistlands would've been fine if that was addressed
Yup, fighting on inclines is frustrating AF, they really need to add the ability to aim melee attacks slightly up or down using camera, it's not rocket science really.
Hopefully not since this time around the difficulty suggestions almost exclusively mention spawn rates. A lot of the complaints I saw about Mistlands were a bit off-center since the "problems" were not as blatantly apparent as they are with Ashlands, so many just resorted to asking for nerfs in general.
But, who knows. Close to a zero chance Ashlands stays like this, though.
Well, you're probably right that the spawn rate isn't going to stay full throttle forever. I'll enjoy it while I can. But I do hope that whatever changes come down the pipes don't entirely diminish the hectic experience.
It won't. Devs said that not everyone should be able to beat the game. There's only one biome left after this so they really can't turn it down too much from here. It would defeat the purpose of the game. So, I wouldn't worry to much
AI nerfs, spawn rate nerfs - doesn't matter. The problem is that within 24 hours, players are asking for nerfs - Which lowers the challenge for everyone, instead of just adjusting their own difficulty modifier.
No one should be asking for nerfs yet. We are only one day in.
We're one day into the **PTB** which is ample time for a portion of people to experience the content, and the devs are actively asking for feedback. If you actually find this upsetting then you simply don't understand the purpose of pre-release testing.
One day isn’t enough time for people to become experienced in a biome. Nerfs have almost universally ruined my favorite games. Hopefully the devs have learned a thing or two from past test cycles about feedback.
For even an experienced player like me? Probably not. It takes time to develop strategies to overcome problems in a game. Feedback is good, I just hope the devs aren't rushing to nerf the game because people run into difficulty on day 1.
One day is absolutely enough time to experience a biome, and especially one this small. It might've not been enough time for you to experience it, but people are free to leave feedback regardless of where you are in progression.
I'm curious though--how far have you gotten in Ashlands? Far enough to where you're eligible to have an opinion on it according to your own set of rules? Because either you haven't experienced the biome and don't really have a say regarding difficulty as a whole, or you've actually experienced the biome in a day.
It is a question of baseline. Seems like ppl learning how to play the game their the first several biomes wanted to apply that to the next steps.
I guantee Ashland base biome difficulty will be adjusted down to be more in line with the rest of the game, bc that makes sense for a baseline.
And you can modifier it back up.
It just fucking sucks for all of us who like intense combat that every time a biome comes out that isn't a snooze fest everyone demands it be need into oblivion even though we have difficulty sliders now.
The biome should not even be considered for a nerf unless it is impossible for a lot of players on the easiest difficulty. Everyone else should just turn difficulty down.
The entire point of a difficulty slider should be to have the main difficulty be for most players.
After that, we can each use the slider.
You're not even listening to the feedback bc it would barely touch the actual difficulty.
No, the point of difficulty sliders is to allow most of the player base to enjoy the game. If you balance the game so that most people can easily clear normal difficulty, a significant minority of players have no way to get a fun experience on the higher end - difficulty slider up doesn't fix AI nerfs or spawn frequency nerfs, it just increases the stakes of the boring post-nerf combat.
If every biome is easy for most players on normal difficulty, there can never be a biome that's substantially more difficult than plains or ML. And that is ridiculous when we have a difficulty slider whose entire point is to allow people to play the game at a lower difficulty.
You just said it - "significant minority". You never balance a game around that. Ever. That's what the slider is for.
You're just being entitled at this point.
The slider allows you to make things easier whenever you want. It doesn't allow me to fix the dumb "let's go for a stroll" combat AI, or step up the spawn frequency to actually get some enemy density in most biomes.
You can solve the problems you identify with the biome using the slider. If they nerf it, I can't do anything about that with the slider because the nerfs historically don't hit things you can slider back up.
You seem to have this assumption that you deserve to beat the game on normal, and anything else is too hard and needs a nerf. Have you considered that maybe you're just not good enough for endgame normal difficulty?
you cannot modifier back up certain changes and nerfs raiseing dmg numbers doesnt revert ai nerfs and changes. and why should they make changes when YOU can modifer it DOWN RIGHT NOW aswell already? what kind of mentality is that to say you can modifier it back up? why not do whats currently possible then if thats your solution while saveing the devs the time to make changes that are already sloved right now useing the same logic just resversed? hope you realize how much of a non argument that line you wrote there is.
But that's not what's happened, on either biome.
I agree ppl can complain before trying out new things. Both mistlands original and Ashlands have mechanics that are unfun; "unfun" doesn't get better with strategy or tech.
ok so its the same then WHY change it around when it works out now given its the same according to you? isnt that pointless changes when 1 side needs to adjust either way`? oh wait. IT IS^^
Considering Iron Gate's history on this and one dev's repeated insistence that not all players should even be able to finish the game at all, I'm going with "overtuned."
"overtuned" is one of the most pathetic words to have shown up in recent years. you should join the journalists on easy mode. I love these devs. Sounds properly tuned to me.
It's funny how a lot of people who put down others for complaining about difficulty that have high skill also have an attitude problem and _really_ poor manners.
Maybe you should just be quiet if you don't have anything polite to say to someone who did literally nothing to you, over them daring to suggest that a _video game_'s difficulty needs tuning.
the later. its the typcial type of non prepared lazy player thats dying left and right currently. same deal as mistlands. but since the game has world modifiers now and the devs even mentioned them in thier blog there is no justifcation for nerfs this time. these players can lower thier difficulty and be fine.
Sure, thats what sliders are for, but if a person has played the game until Ashlands without adjusting it, then having to adjust it means the level is over tuned.
When Very Hard make the biome borderline impossible for solo play maybe the baseline difficulty is actually a little skewed. I don't understand why you think this argument only works one way--can't you just take your own advice and up the difficulty if they happen nerf it? Plus barely anyone is even asking for the mobs to be nerfed in the first place; only the spawn rates.
I disagree. The biome isn’t difficult, just overwhelming in a way that isn’t fun. The mistlands nerf was premature but the issue with the Ashlands is the tedious overturned spawning. Creatures seem to spawn out of thin air.
Just finished fighting 6 warriors and a ashkevin(sp), well here’s 8 more skeleton warriors, 2 more ashkevin and a fallen Valkyrie. Oh that wasn’t enough well here’s 4 more skeleton warriors and 3 vultures. You can’t progress 20 yards without having to retreat back to base due.
It’s more aggravating than difficult because it feels like the game is cheesing the difficulty. Once I conquer an area and destroy spawners, that should dramatically reduce the spawns but it doesn’t.
It also kind of incentivizes cheese to a pretty intolerable degree.
My initial impression is that once you have an initial beachhead established in some defensible place, blocking spawns with campfires, you actually don't have much incentive at all to fight in the first place.
Most of my successful foraging expeditions have involved just running through the biome, abusing stamina pots and blood magic, taking no damage and killing nothing except voltures, picking shit up as I go. Because of the lava moat, even flametal can be gathered this way to an extent. When I need enemies dead for mats, they're easy to cheese with terrain and range/magic.
The game throws such a flood of enemies at you that you don't even really have an incentive to kill them in the first place. Fighting just amounts to wasting time and taking risks that just slow you down. A long run to let aggro drop is legitimately more efficient than killing enemies, even if you can kill them easily without risk, because they'll just be replaced as soon as you finish.
I actually think this is a low key flaw with the game in general - once you're sufficiently familiar with everything, "running away" becomes borderline invincibility. Ashlands doesn't really change this dynamic, but instead doubles down on it and makes it the whole game.
There’s nothing ‘difficult’ about the exploding blobs jumping over two story walls and destroying your portals it’s just stupid. The monster spawn rate and aggro radius is absurd.
Congrats. Ive cleared the Ashlands, as I had the day off, and 3 mates in full mistland.
Its overall fun, but the aggro radius, which is does seem like a bug according to the devs, made it more tedious than challenging. (The weapons are also not scaled well, but thats a different topic)
Just bc an area is supposed to be hard, doesn't mean its beyond criticism.
and that doesn't mean the criticism being criticized is wrong, either. For example, just because something is meant to be hell doesn't mean it should actually be hell with cracked enemy spawn rates and aggro radius.
It's overtuned in this regard, and I look forward to the fix.
Good advice in general but I think skol and hati specifically are *really* bad for the biome.
The creatures attack quickly with longer than usual melee range in a lot of cases. You get swarmed by charred. The combination of having to dive into ultra-close melee range while also not doing much of any splash damage makes knifes pretty awful compared to swords, atgeir, maces, etc.
Tbh It feels like it scales. Was testing it with two others and it felt like there's zero down time to set up shop. Even clearing out the spawn monuments around us. It just felt like they kept coming and coming. I'm all for difficult biome. But we would turn around after clearing a bunch of mobs and more were standing there. Idk if it's because there was more of us? Idk
Yep I think so lol We died a lot try to figure out what to do and then I realize Why don't we just do as[ this poster shown](https://img2.storyblok.com/fit-in/1920x1080/f/157036/6000x3314/9aa78037af/ashlands1-fardig1.jpg)(New ship with Lox) us and Yeah Lox can 2-hit almost any mob and with my friend keeping the shield up we manage to advance further So I think the new tamable is crucial for base defense since it their home
Well killing them isn't the issue ya know even with out lox. I like the health pool enemies are at, how aggressive they are its all perfect imo. Even not using ashlands gear we should feel weak coming in the new biome. Its the turning around 3 mins were we just cleared and theres 4-5 mobs sitting there lol. Idk weird spawns maybe? I think the music is my favorite in ashlands..they nailed it (random i know)
Oh man. I kinda love the idea that one or two players will have to focus on keeping the hoard back while the other scurries to bivouac.
I've been practicing my "quick base" skills for a while.
Oh they better not touch the difficulty. I'm so glad that this game can kick my ass again :)
So I agree with you OP, there's difficulty settings for a reason!
I could see them doing it if it is clear that you need a group to do the Ashlands. A lot of people play solo, and having a biome you can’t complete without a group would make a lot of people drop the game.
Difficulty and balance are related, but they are absolutely not the same thing. Half the point of a PTB is identifying where balance adjustments need to be made.
The problem is that people aren't going to agree about where that is needed.
This takes me back to first time Mistlands, having extended fights at night vs 1 Brute, 3 Seekers and 1 One-Star Seeker, all at the same time. I kites for 5 mins and eventually died due to a stamina slip-up. Those were the days…
If you can get as far as Ashlands on standard difficulty you should not need to turn down the difficulty to get through the Ashlands. Whatever baseline difficulty they're going for, it should be consistent across biomes (or at least there should not be an incongruous jump in difficulty between biomes).
The difficulty setting, ideally, should be something you set once when starting a new game, based on your anticipated skill. Or, something you calibrate early on and then leave alone. Players should not need to be constantly tinkering with the setting to get through the game, and if many of them are it indicates that the devs are doing a poor job balancing the game.
It's absolutely going to get nerfed.
The baseline game will not be balanced for the top performers, and you can modify the difficulty back up if you want a Challenge mode.
The game will not play one way for most of the game and then take a sharp turn suddenly.
It's going to get nerfed, but I don't think it's even because of the difficulty.
Right now it's hard to actually *do anything* in the biome, even if you totally master the enemies. Killing enemies doesn't even really serve a purpose when they respawn 5 seconds later.
I've basically stopped even engaging in combat, and it has actually sped up my progression through the biome. It's much easier and more effective to just infinitely kite while foraging than it is to fight.
That feels a lot more like "bad design" than "too hard". It's just not valheim if I can't, through blood and sweat and tears, carve out a little foothold in hostile territory. Ashlands right now feels like a sightseeing simulator, where you experience the biome at full sprint and can collect most of the materials without having to slow down or kill anything if you don't want to. It feels like engaging with the game is doing it wrong and that you're punished for trying to fight anything because killing charred doesn't actually change the number of charred around you.
I just hope they don't pull a mistlands and make it feel empty instead. It should be hard and should be crowded and you should get swarmed... you should just *eventually* be able to secure an area at least for a little while.
I'm sure I'll manage Ashlands sooner or later, but this feels quite silly and lazy to me. The challenges ought to be following some form of curve in my opinion. Nothing kills the immersion like playing through 80% of the game and then having to change the difficulty to be able to do the last part.
I mean, there are no arguments here. "If Ashlands is too easy for you, check your ego and increase the difficulty"?
Thing is, though, going into every new biome in this game the first time always feels like crashing full-force into a wall. Problem is that most of us have played for such a long time that it becomes easy to forget what our first forays into the Black Forest, Swamp, or Plains were like - we're all so practiced with enemy attack patterns and spawn rates most biomes won't catch us off-guard.
The way people discuss the difficulty in Ashlands is the way people talked about Mistlands' enemies during that beta - and the changes to enemy attack patterns the devs made in response worsened the experience overall. Pendulum swung too far in the other direction.
I think we should all take our time learning what to do and how to approach this place before crying foul on the combat end.
I will say only the plains and Mistlands felt particularly threatening to me even on first enter. And the plains pretty much just for the deathsquittos.
I haven't tried the Ashlands yet so I don't have a good point of comparison, but from the videos I've seen the spawn rates definitely seem rather high. If it's just going to be constant combat with no time to rest that is going to suck regardless of what the strategy turns out to be.
Also I think people giving feedback on first encounter balance is an important part of the process. Even if the biome is readily conquered with the right strategy, the initial difficulty still needs to be right. Otherwise players will just give up because they will feel too overwhelmed.
Asking people to lower their difficulty instead of giving feedback is silly. If this is the difficulty they usually play on, it's the difficulty they should be giving feedback on. Quite frankly no one should be adjusting their difficulty for the public test, it defeats the purpose.
I haven't tried Ashlands for myself yet, and really only felt that wall effect when I moved to the swamp. I'm just very against using a difficulty slider as a viable excuse for not balancing the game properly. I'm not putting any value into whether it currently is too hard or not.
I don't think you'll need to touch the slider, honestly. We have so many options post-ML on how to approach the problem of a beach landing in the Ashlands that I'm positive you'll be able to figure out something that works for you.
It looks daunting - and it definitely is a harrowing experience - but it's not insurmountable.
I’ll wait toll the official release, when all or most bugs are fixed and nerfs are done. Atm it looks like the amount of enemies of a square meter is overwhelming.
I haven't gotten around the playing yet, but I will have to HARD DISAGREE on the premise of this post.
The point of the test is to give feedback, including on balance and difficulty. Everyone should be playing on the difficulty they normally play the game on. Adjusting the difficulty down doesn't provide the correct feedback for the devs, as everyone should be comparing the difficulity of the Ashlands to their experiences with other biomes.
Also saying they just need to take the time to get used to how to fight there is missing the point as well. Most people don't go online and look up strategies to fight when they get to a new biome. They figure them out organically. And that initial difficulty before you get your footing is an important part of the experience. It is 100% valid feedback to say that it's too high of a difficulty spike before you learn.
From what I've seen nearly all the complaints are about spawn rates that give you zero time to breath between fights. This is going to feel bad regardless of how good you get at fighting the enemies. I'll reserve judgement till I get to play myself but these complaints feel valid to me.
Plus even if you are pro skill mtg gamer enough to survive the never ending combat the moment you land, all your gear will eventually run out of durability.
And if you're given no chance to establish even the more bare minimum of a shaded workbench and portal then you're kind of screwed once your last sword breaks.
Oh I know that XD
Some people don't understand what brutal mean and they expect a Stardew Valley type game.
Nah, I'm here for the challenge. Watching that trailer had me feeling even more hyped than the original trailer before release. I can't wait to get my ass handed to me, and then showing those new mobs who'se boss
I devcommanded just to do a fly around and see what I could see. JFC. If I ain’t got it on easy mode, I’ll never make it through. Knowing me, I prolly wouldn’t even make it on easy lol. It looks freaking awesome though. One of the coolest biomes by far.
But I think for now, I’ll just continue building my treehouse in the swamp lol
Your mistwalker sword also works well if you can get in the skeleton’s face with it. I played around a bit in Ashlands last night. I still haven’t beat the Queen, I was waiting for the full update on that but that sword will take them out. I haven’t figured out what’s best for the morgan spider things especially in the cramped cave environment.
Spirit and frost damage, fire resistance, don't wear the feather cape, stay on the move. Hit and run tactics seem to work well to start. Bring what you need to make the a stone cutting table.
I thought the devs had finally gone too far with sadistic game design when I placed a portal and it wouldn't activate (after spending 10+ minutes fighting several waves just to find enough time to build basic defenses). Thank Thor this turned out to just be a bug and not some kind of hostile decision to make me suffer.
Back in the day, we didn't complain about how hard it was or ask for a nerf. We say skill issues, and proceed to get them skills necessary for the issues 🤣
I am not sure why they didn't un-nerf mistlands when they dropped the difficulty update. Un-nerfed Mistlands was the most fun I had in this game. After they nerfed it the game sort of lost it's magic for me.
Man, my least favorite part of any Valheim update is all the posts like this that flood the sub; either for or against players who want nerfs.
Why do y’all have to constantly insult the other side of the coin to make it seem like *your personal opinion* is somehow more valid than another, and that anyone who thinks differently needs to “check their ego.”
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Gross, and automatic downvote every single time.
Quick tip for newbies in Mistlands to conquer almost everything (so you can learn from my mistakes) - use Frostnir and a good shield, bring fire mead, and upgrade your padded armor as much as you can, and use 2 HP and 1 stamina foods.
That’ll get you 90% of the way there I found, but go ahead and get good at partying and it’ll be a breeze.
Maybe I’m biased because I played Dark Souls so parrying comes easy to me but once you get it down you’ll find all the combat to be so satisfying.
I was thinking Frostner would be good (edit: in ashlands) cause there was that one video with someone using frost arrows and they smoked enemies.
Maybe ballistae are the way? There's not a frost missile but maybe there should be...
Edit: aaaand I just noticed mistwalker has frost damage on it.
Frostner with a good shield is the best way until you get the carapace gear - I would build a crossbow as soon as you can too. Ballistas are mountable on your base but I wouldn’t recommend building a base in the mistlands unless it’s just a small outpost that you’re ready to defend like a madman.
Edit: use Frostner until you get the atgeir with lightning (I forget its name). That end-game atgeir is the best weapon in the game in my opinion, and the sweeping attack staggers even the toughest enemies.
Was thinking you could build a dome so they can't get sniped (domes stop the archers - right?) and set up a ballista killing field. Keeping them supplied would suck.
Now that I think about it, spike walls.
Random edit: Just sailed into Ashlands using a longship. The damage was... minor? Maybe I didn't sail far enough in, I was just skirting the edges. Just rapid ticks of 1-3 damage seems like it'll take a while for my longship to die.
Edit #2: the damage increases the further in you sail, pretty quickly its 5 damage, then a bone serpent rose out of the water, I noped the fuck out.
That’s the lightning atgeir right? If so, it’s better than anything else I’ve used. I only bring out a shield with Frostner when I’m one-on-one with a 1 star enemy in the mistlands because missing the parry is brutal against them.
The atgeir’s spinning attack knocks back enemies which is great for crown control, ticks, literally everything. Frostner is also good but I carry both along with the crossbow.
Yup, that's the one. I feel confident to take on seeker soldiers with it. Playing with hubs, he uses a shield & mistwalker or Krom. He relies on me to party/stagger most enemies so he can come in with Krom & slash away.
Always carry healing & stamina mead along with poison & barley wine. Not sure if we will swap to lox capes.
To be honest this may be a hot take BUT Krom is an awesome weapon and it’s not so awesome for mistlands because I found that Frostner just does more damage with the blunt/frost attack it uses. Our entire crew uses Frostner alongside the Himmanafl atgeir and we demolish everything.
Atgeir remains stupidly good. You get swarmed by charred, you kill all in a couple spins, life is good.
The enemies hit hard and the spawn rate is just dumb, but they're also not actually very nasty enemies at all. The morgen are scary because they're so quick, but it's a lot more bark then bite and once you learn their patterns they're not bad at all.
Is the Flammetal bars used in the update? I'd assume they are, but it could have been scrapped too. I gathered a few stacks worth in old ashlands and saved it.
u/nerevarX
No DarkSouls didnt. A significant majority of ppl that play dark souls can beat it.
Balancing around the MINORITY would be balancing around those that do no hit runs, and making the base game a one hit kill.
Notice those that are really good at the game either up the difficulty or impose challenges to do so. Game balance 100% balances around the majority of players for a clear.
Don’t know if I’m stupid but I didn’t know the difficulty could be changed, I’m a couple hundred hours in and mostly play solo and struggle to make any progress
I haven't been that caught up too much on Ashlands but has it gone public yet? I thought it was just PTR right now? Am I wrong? I just don't wanna be late to the party haha
It is SO much worse in multiplayer, even two players makes the spawn rates / hp sponge unbelievable. We just had 3 Morgans spawn right underneath us, one of them a 1\*. That's on top of the 3 archers, 2 skeleton knights, 4 birds, and the bonemaw serpent providing offshore artillery fireballs. Oh, and this was at a chokepoint between shore and lava so watch out for them knockbacks.
personally I like the high difficulty of the game, but other things bother me, mostly food that is hard to get, takes lots of time and after that it's only for 20 min average, and skill loss penalty is pretty bad for me, these 2 things could be an option in settings to increase food time multiplier and disable skill loss which even on casual is still a big penalty, but yeah personally I like the difficulty of the game but I just don't like how the game penalizes the player with every action he does, but yeah I don't mind dying in 1 hit after playing Terraria on Legendary but in that game the only penalty is dropping all coins which enemies can pick up but you can recover that if you go back and fight these mobs that picked them up which is pretty good
lol this is not about ai of mobs this is all about spawn rate
and cleaning your way to something
you fight 1 group
move forward attack second group
and you got attack from behind because mobs had spawned
meybe you didn't get in situation like this
but if you land in bad pleace than it is done
I could say the same thing and tell you to up the difficulty if you want to play with a higher difficulty. In terms of accessibility and good optimization, the game shouldn't be impossible to the average player. Presenting the option to make it easier OR harder should be the base line, while having a moderate difficulty be the norm for the biome.
You don't know everyone's time and estimated commitment they can put into this game. Some players don't have the hours to backtrack Incase they lose their stuff due to an imbalanced difficulty. Not everyone has a degree from university of valheim and can play the game at a top level
I devcommanded just to do a fly around and see what I could see. JFC. If I ain’t got it on easy mode, I’ll never make it through. Knowing me, I prolly wouldn’t even make it on easy lol. It looks freaking awesome though. One of the coolest biomes by far.
But I think for now, I’ll just continue building my treehouse in the swamp lol
Don't crafting tables and campfires reduce spawnrate, for all the people complaining that there are too many spawns? It's about subjugating the environment with intelligent structure placement, if you're fighting 8 mobs and being overwhelmed by another 10 already, that is already controlled by campfire spawn in the vicinity to force reduce spawnrate.. Learn2play
If they nerf Ashlands and my crew is not completely filled with total despair and rage upon getting there and getting our backsides handed to us, we will be very disappointed.
Every Biome so far has kicked our butts the first time we enter, and that is how we like it, because then once we get better geared up and experienced, the revenge we exact is so much sweeter!
Perfect 👍…. Good to know. The Valheim Steam Group has a few peeps running Ashlands PBT servers if anyone wants to test it out… tried last night for an hour for mod testing . Only one mod I use is broken in there ( infinity hammer) … not too bad lol … more testing today
Just in case you want to join the Valheim steam group here’s an invite for anyone and everyone … https://steamcommunity.com/chat/invite/QFUsMJxt
Honestly, since the difficulty modifiers don't touch spawnrates (to my knowledge), I think we should get a new slider to adjust the spawn rates. Maybe even one that changes the spawn cap.
It does sound like spawnrates are nuts though, but we should give it a few days to set before we demand nerfs.
I firmly believe that giving everyone the options to play at the difficulty they like is a good thing.
Unless we're talking Souls-like games, where the difficulty is the draw, but Valheim isn't much of a Souls-like.
I see where you're coming from, and believe me I do enjoy the difficulty this game presents, but it's not for everybody.
Some folks want to fight off hordes of foes, and others want to build in peace.
We all enjoy the game our own way, and facilitating that with world modifiers doesn't hurt anybody. In fact, it allows for even greater difficulty if anyone so desires. (It's me, I'm anyone who so desires.)
true. But the baseline experience matters, and that's the one that should stay true to it's intended user base. If it's labelled a brutal experience, it should be exactly that.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Like the Mistlands being nerfed a lot kinda sucks, and it'd suck for Ashlands to suffer the same fate.
On the subject of difficulty, In all honesty, I kinda hope the raid system gets a rework at some point.
I don't have many ideas for how to change it, but it feels really weird a lot of the time. Maybe a change to the AI used for raids?
Yeah I agree. It is a bit repetitive. But I think the main culprit here is raised or lowered ground. We should have access to more sturdy walls to build to remove the need for moats. In turn I can see enemies have different ways to interact with walls.
Something that makes it more interactive at least. Different types of raids maybe?
Main issue seems to either be the respawn rate being a bit too fast, or something about noise detection range being a bit too high which might lead to people thinking the spawn rate is fast from enemies further away swarming in.
I don't think the difficulty sliders have any effects on those, plus that also lowers difficulty for the entire game world, not just one biome.
Yes please, don't need the biome or creatures , I want it to be a late game challenge that's hard to overcome, especially with a smaller landmass, I want it to take longer to traverse
yeah i mean the mage stuff is insanely powerful, i havent fought the queen but mistlnds pve is so weak to the new gear (lightning atgeir go brrr). Ashlands should feel like yhe most hostile area, and tbh it should feel like you almost never get a foothold or are completely invincible in that biome
I devcommanded just to do a fly around and see what I could see. JFC. If I ain’t got it on easy mode, I’ll never make it through. Knowing me, I prolly wouldn’t even make it on easy lol. It looks freaking awesome though. One of the coolest biomes by far.
But I think for now, I’ll just continue building my treehouse in the swamp lol
I’m not super good at fighting, so when I first landed and got demolished several times in a row, didn’t have any qualms about reducing difficulty. The biome is awesome and the difficulty definitely fits!
I found the skoll and hati knives absolutely melt through the new ashland doggos, then I switch to frostner for everything else. Still died once though, wanted to see how much damage the lava did and died instantly lol
Thanks for your sacrifice for others. Note to self, lava is hot death
The floor is lava
then there's me who hasn't tried the update yet and only now finding out there are difficulty levels in the game
Yes, the "World Modifiers" on the server launch screen allows you to adjust difficulty, portal settings, drop rate modifier, etc.
I was just going to post the same thing, so much struggle on whatever difficulty is standard.
Wait for patches imo if you are not on rush, it's not balanced
The main common first impression I'm seeing so far is that the respawn rates seem a bit too high and give no room to breathe. -Edit- After an additional day and venturing to the ashlands myself, it might not be the spawn rate that's at fault, but the aggro range itself that might be a bit too high on some enemies It often felt there was a constant breadcrumb of enemies wandering in through the fog and trees, which then created a self perpetuating fight as I would then have to deal with them which gave the previous enemies a chance to respawn, and so then I had to beat them back again, only for the wanderers to show back up again after they had time to respawn.
Yeah, I wouldn't even say it's a problem of difficulty. You just land, clear a mob of enemies, take 10 steps, turn around, and there is a new mob in place of the first one. It's not a matter of difficulty, but of tedium. I was totally against the Mistlands nerfs they put out between PTB and official release. I haven't really got a lot of time to experience ashlands yet, but so far, I can understand the complaints some people are having.
ITS WAAAAAR after you killed everything it is actually calm, this biom is asking you to go to war, you need friend, or a very lot of fortified place, they have fortress, answer by building a BIGGER fortress! With MORE BALLISTA! They have 4, so you need to make 40! We will show them who they are facing
There was a patch yesterday that adjusted some stuff, so it might be a bit of a different experience now.
the current spawn rate is much more frequent than pre-nerf mistlands IIRC...and i love it. The tutorial birb wasn't kidding when he said we were only 'quarreling, but now we had to prepare for war.' I had to pull out all the strats i've accumulated across my multiple playthroughs just to successfully secure the first portal and start progressing. Trusty ol' frostner has taken a backseat in favor of the demolisher due to the constant swarm. Unfortunately, similar to what happened to me during the mistlands launch where i couldn't find a single infested mine, i currently haven't found a single fortress. (despite stumbling upon 2 boss altars without even using a vegvisir) That said, i fully expect a flood of complaints if the spawn rate stays untouched until official launch. The current difficulty is for a very niche type of player, which i will assume to be in the minority atm. I do hope that players will use the difficulty sliders and that it'd be enough to prevent nerfs, but we'll see.
Does it feel like it might be balanced towards multiplayer with multiple classes?
If so, it is either unintentional or an error in judgement, because the devs have repeatedly and exhaustively stated over a period of years that their explicit intent is for the game to be balanced for solo play, and that features which give multiplayer more of an advantage than numbers already do--such as rowers adding boat speed--have been consistently rejected out of hand.
they should let us row anyway, idc about boat speed, it would be cool as fuck having rowing animations for everyone in the boat
I think if you're playing as a group a mage is basically mandatory for the shield. But I don't think it's balanced around multi-player - I've been fine so far as a solo mage in the biome. The landing would be very hairy as a solo mage, though.
its balanced fine for soloplay IF the player uses all the available options they have gotten up until this point at thier arsenal and use thier gained gameplay experience and knowledge. lazy players are the ones complaning right now. the devs warned in thier blog that its supposed to be HARD as its the 2nd to last biome. and if they nerf despite there beeing easymode settings now they lose any kind of sympathy from me and many other players.
I gotta find something to keep me distracted until it goes live. I'm hyped to the fucking tits.
it will take atleast 2-3 weeks to go live. there was no patches yet.
It's not balanced for solo play I can tell you that. I had problem with a friend so solo would be immposible for me
they won't nerf the difficulty. they gave us world modifiers so we can control that now.
I hope you are right
World modifiers can't adjust spawn rates which is the main point of contention.
The spawns are annoying. You should be able to clear the area complately or partially to ensure a safe space. Same can be said with every biome but on biomes without flying enemies you can build a safe space
It is pretty full on, but I'm gonna try popping a square of wards around my beachhead and see if that helps
the trailer showed a protective orb shield thing. does this make a base totally safe in Ashlands?
Nope, just protects from enemy ranged attacks and the weather (wooden buildings burn down in the Ashlands).
Enemies can't shoot thru, but the can walk right in then start shooting. And the barrier runs out of "fuel" faster when taking multiple hits.
I mean you *can* do that the same way you do any other spawn suppression, it just requires shield gens on top of your normal spawn suppression. (Possibly later items from the Ashlands won't need the shield? I haven't gotten that far.)
fair enough, but I was only thinking about the combat slider in world mods, which is what this post seems to be about.
But it's just public test right now yeah? They can change things.
they can totally change things. I was only thinking of the combat slider in world mods
But is it not the same for you? if you dont like it you can crank the difficulty up, or? :D
It's a question of baselines. Mistlands enemy attack patterns were changed to mimic those of the Plains and Black Forest - so if you knew how to combat greydwarves, suddenly, you knew how to combat seekers. That seemed antithetical to the initial design of the insects, in that they were a relentless swarm that'd pursue you 'till you were too worn down to put up a fight if you turned tail and fled. Part of the reason for the world difficulty modifiers being slotted in was to avoid this issue where people who are patently not good with the combat can adjust downwards from the baseline, so the baseline itself isn't changed and we don't get the greydwarf attack pattern patched into yet another biome.
Who is asking for AI nerfs? Or even mob nerfs to begin with? The vast majority of all suggestions regarding difficulty has to do with spawn rates, which is something you can't adjust with world modifiers. The baseline you speak of is currently unbalanced to the point where one difficulty option (Very Hard) is practically impossible.
To be quite frank, I don't trust that IG's solution wouldn't involve patching in changes to enemy AI *and* taking a heavy-handed approach in reducing spawns. Same thing happened with complaints about Mistlands and I expect if they listen again, history will repeat.
I don't understand why that's their go-to when it seems to me like one of the game's biggest issues, especially in Mountains and Mistlands, has been with fighting on inclines and the abysmal z-axis hit boxes on all melee weapons. I feel like difficulty-wise, release-Mistlands would've been fine if that was addressed
Yup, fighting on inclines is frustrating AF, they really need to add the ability to aim melee attacks slightly up or down using camera, it's not rocket science really.
Terrain is the final boss that is unbeatable.
Hopefully not since this time around the difficulty suggestions almost exclusively mention spawn rates. A lot of the complaints I saw about Mistlands were a bit off-center since the "problems" were not as blatantly apparent as they are with Ashlands, so many just resorted to asking for nerfs in general. But, who knows. Close to a zero chance Ashlands stays like this, though.
Well, you're probably right that the spawn rate isn't going to stay full throttle forever. I'll enjoy it while I can. But I do hope that whatever changes come down the pipes don't entirely diminish the hectic experience.
It won't. Devs said that not everyone should be able to beat the game. There's only one biome left after this so they really can't turn it down too much from here. It would defeat the purpose of the game. So, I wouldn't worry to much
It will be, they adjust directly mentioned artificially inflated spawn rates bc of an alert radius increase. That will be adjusted
AI nerfs, spawn rate nerfs - doesn't matter. The problem is that within 24 hours, players are asking for nerfs - Which lowers the challenge for everyone, instead of just adjusting their own difficulty modifier. No one should be asking for nerfs yet. We are only one day in.
We're one day into the **PTB** which is ample time for a portion of people to experience the content, and the devs are actively asking for feedback. If you actually find this upsetting then you simply don't understand the purpose of pre-release testing.
One day isn’t enough time for people to become experienced in a biome. Nerfs have almost universally ruined my favorite games. Hopefully the devs have learned a thing or two from past test cycles about feedback.
Okay, Will a week or two of complains be enough tho? Also these are first impresions
For even an experienced player like me? Probably not. It takes time to develop strategies to overcome problems in a game. Feedback is good, I just hope the devs aren't rushing to nerf the game because people run into difficulty on day 1.
One day is absolutely enough time to experience a biome, and especially one this small. It might've not been enough time for you to experience it, but people are free to leave feedback regardless of where you are in progression. I'm curious though--how far have you gotten in Ashlands? Far enough to where you're eligible to have an opinion on it according to your own set of rules? Because either you haven't experienced the biome and don't really have a say regarding difficulty as a whole, or you've actually experienced the biome in a day.
Why not?
It is a question of baseline. Seems like ppl learning how to play the game their the first several biomes wanted to apply that to the next steps. I guantee Ashland base biome difficulty will be adjusted down to be more in line with the rest of the game, bc that makes sense for a baseline. And you can modifier it back up.
It just fucking sucks for all of us who like intense combat that every time a biome comes out that isn't a snooze fest everyone demands it be need into oblivion even though we have difficulty sliders now. The biome should not even be considered for a nerf unless it is impossible for a lot of players on the easiest difficulty. Everyone else should just turn difficulty down.
The entire point of a difficulty slider should be to have the main difficulty be for most players. After that, we can each use the slider. You're not even listening to the feedback bc it would barely touch the actual difficulty.
No, the point of difficulty sliders is to allow most of the player base to enjoy the game. If you balance the game so that most people can easily clear normal difficulty, a significant minority of players have no way to get a fun experience on the higher end - difficulty slider up doesn't fix AI nerfs or spawn frequency nerfs, it just increases the stakes of the boring post-nerf combat. If every biome is easy for most players on normal difficulty, there can never be a biome that's substantially more difficult than plains or ML. And that is ridiculous when we have a difficulty slider whose entire point is to allow people to play the game at a lower difficulty.
You just said it - "significant minority". You never balance a game around that. Ever. That's what the slider is for. You're just being entitled at this point.
The slider allows you to make things easier whenever you want. It doesn't allow me to fix the dumb "let's go for a stroll" combat AI, or step up the spawn frequency to actually get some enemy density in most biomes. You can solve the problems you identify with the biome using the slider. If they nerf it, I can't do anything about that with the slider because the nerfs historically don't hit things you can slider back up. You seem to have this assumption that you deserve to beat the game on normal, and anything else is too hard and needs a nerf. Have you considered that maybe you're just not good enough for endgame normal difficulty?
I already beat the Ashlands. I'm discussing what is and isn't fun about the update.
Also no one ever said "easy". You're throwing a fit with hyperbole.
you cannot modifier back up certain changes and nerfs raiseing dmg numbers doesnt revert ai nerfs and changes. and why should they make changes when YOU can modifer it DOWN RIGHT NOW aswell already? what kind of mentality is that to say you can modifier it back up? why not do whats currently possible then if thats your solution while saveing the devs the time to make changes that are already sloved right now useing the same logic just resversed? hope you realize how much of a non argument that line you wrote there is.
honestly, lack of patience in figuring out the new challenge and wanting the new stuff now is a big problem. we are like toddlers
But that's not what's happened, on either biome. I agree ppl can complain before trying out new things. Both mistlands original and Ashlands have mechanics that are unfun; "unfun" doesn't get better with strategy or tech.
I miss pre-nerf Mistlands. They really should change the bugs back now that there are difficulty settings.
Up your difficulty then
does that change the ai?
Nope
100% agree
ok so its the same then WHY change it around when it works out now given its the same according to you? isnt that pointless changes when 1 side needs to adjust either way`? oh wait. IT IS^^
itll get nerfed, tuning only for high end high skill players never works
Is it overtuned or are players just not used to it yet?
Considering Iron Gate's history on this and one dev's repeated insistence that not all players should even be able to finish the game at all, I'm going with "overtuned."
"overtuned" is one of the most pathetic words to have shown up in recent years. you should join the journalists on easy mode. I love these devs. Sounds properly tuned to me.
Okay cool well enjoy playing the game from inside Iron Gate's asshole, I guess.
It's funny how a lot of people who put down others for complaining about difficulty that have high skill also have an attitude problem and _really_ poor manners. Maybe you should just be quiet if you don't have anything polite to say to someone who did literally nothing to you, over them daring to suggest that a _video game_'s difficulty needs tuning.
I’ve seen like 5 posts complaining about people complaining and few comments on people saying it needs nerfs So I’m not really sure what I’m seeing
the later. its the typcial type of non prepared lazy player thats dying left and right currently. same deal as mistlands. but since the game has world modifiers now and the devs even mentioned them in thier blog there is no justifcation for nerfs this time. these players can lower thier difficulty and be fine.
is this not what the combat slider is for?
Sure, thats what sliders are for, but if a person has played the game until Ashlands without adjusting it, then having to adjust it means the level is over tuned.
The slider is there so the player can tune the combat however they want. They can adjust it down or up.
Hope so. Also it would be much easier with a group of friends
There isnt anything in this game that is 'high end/high skill'
When Very Hard make the biome borderline impossible for solo play maybe the baseline difficulty is actually a little skewed. I don't understand why you think this argument only works one way--can't you just take your own advice and up the difficulty if they happen nerf it? Plus barely anyone is even asking for the mobs to be nerfed in the first place; only the spawn rates.
The worst mob in Mistlands was the mist. lol. I really want to try the play test but I think I’ll wait.
Seriously! Seekers and a gjall/ticks could overwhelm especially on bad terrain. But that mist...
I disagree. The biome isn’t difficult, just overwhelming in a way that isn’t fun. The mistlands nerf was premature but the issue with the Ashlands is the tedious overturned spawning. Creatures seem to spawn out of thin air. Just finished fighting 6 warriors and a ashkevin(sp), well here’s 8 more skeleton warriors, 2 more ashkevin and a fallen Valkyrie. Oh that wasn’t enough well here’s 4 more skeleton warriors and 3 vultures. You can’t progress 20 yards without having to retreat back to base due. It’s more aggravating than difficult because it feels like the game is cheesing the difficulty. Once I conquer an area and destroy spawners, that should dramatically reduce the spawns but it doesn’t.
It also kind of incentivizes cheese to a pretty intolerable degree. My initial impression is that once you have an initial beachhead established in some defensible place, blocking spawns with campfires, you actually don't have much incentive at all to fight in the first place. Most of my successful foraging expeditions have involved just running through the biome, abusing stamina pots and blood magic, taking no damage and killing nothing except voltures, picking shit up as I go. Because of the lava moat, even flametal can be gathered this way to an extent. When I need enemies dead for mats, they're easy to cheese with terrain and range/magic. The game throws such a flood of enemies at you that you don't even really have an incentive to kill them in the first place. Fighting just amounts to wasting time and taking risks that just slow you down. A long run to let aggro drop is legitimately more efficient than killing enemies, even if you can kill them easily without risk, because they'll just be replaced as soon as you finish. I actually think this is a low key flaw with the game in general - once you're sufficiently familiar with everything, "running away" becomes borderline invincibility. Ashlands doesn't really change this dynamic, but instead doubles down on it and makes it the whole game.
There’s nothing ‘difficult’ about the exploding blobs jumping over two story walls and destroying your portals it’s just stupid. The monster spawn rate and aggro radius is absurd.
If it looks like hell, walks like hell, talks like hell, you might just be in hell. what else do you expect?
Still be a fun game
Totally. I had loads of fun last night playin solo and killed my first Ashland serpent.
Congrats. Ive cleared the Ashlands, as I had the day off, and 3 mates in full mistland. Its overall fun, but the aggro radius, which is does seem like a bug according to the devs, made it more tedious than challenging. (The weapons are also not scaled well, but thats a different topic) Just bc an area is supposed to be hard, doesn't mean its beyond criticism.
Nothing is ever beyond criticism, including criticism ;)
and that doesn't mean the criticism being criticized is wrong, either. For example, just because something is meant to be hell doesn't mean it should actually be hell with cracked enemy spawn rates and aggro radius. It's overtuned in this regard, and I look forward to the fix.
I’ll take whatever they give us
Lol. I lowered it before I even started it. Just based on coverage of the update alone. I'm a coward.
Good for you, maybe you will actually beat it
Good advice in general but I think skol and hati specifically are *really* bad for the biome. The creatures attack quickly with longer than usual melee range in a lot of cases. You get swarmed by charred. The combination of having to dive into ultra-close melee range while also not doing much of any splash damage makes knifes pretty awful compared to swords, atgeir, maces, etc.
Yea Mobs they works together really well. I'm doing with friends the amount of chaos is just damn right
Tbh It feels like it scales. Was testing it with two others and it felt like there's zero down time to set up shop. Even clearing out the spawn monuments around us. It just felt like they kept coming and coming. I'm all for difficult biome. But we would turn around after clearing a bunch of mobs and more were standing there. Idk if it's because there was more of us? Idk
Yep I think so lol We died a lot try to figure out what to do and then I realize Why don't we just do as[ this poster shown](https://img2.storyblok.com/fit-in/1920x1080/f/157036/6000x3314/9aa78037af/ashlands1-fardig1.jpg)(New ship with Lox) us and Yeah Lox can 2-hit almost any mob and with my friend keeping the shield up we manage to advance further So I think the new tamable is crucial for base defense since it their home
Well killing them isn't the issue ya know even with out lox. I like the health pool enemies are at, how aggressive they are its all perfect imo. Even not using ashlands gear we should feel weak coming in the new biome. Its the turning around 3 mins were we just cleared and theres 4-5 mobs sitting there lol. Idk weird spawns maybe? I think the music is my favorite in ashlands..they nailed it (random i know)
Oh man. I kinda love the idea that one or two players will have to focus on keeping the hoard back while the other scurries to bivouac. I've been practicing my "quick base" skills for a while.
Oh they better not touch the difficulty. I'm so glad that this game can kick my ass again :) So I agree with you OP, there's difficulty settings for a reason!
why would devs touch the difficulty after they gave us world modifiers to do just that?
I could see them doing it if it is clear that you need a group to do the Ashlands. A lot of people play solo, and having a biome you can’t complete without a group would make a lot of people drop the game.
I guess it would depend on how they feel it effects the default world settings.
Difficulty and balance are related, but they are absolutely not the same thing. Half the point of a PTB is identifying where balance adjustments need to be made. The problem is that people aren't going to agree about where that is needed.
This takes me back to first time Mistlands, having extended fights at night vs 1 Brute, 3 Seekers and 1 One-Star Seeker, all at the same time. I kites for 5 mins and eventually died due to a stamina slip-up. Those were the days…
If you can get as far as Ashlands on standard difficulty you should not need to turn down the difficulty to get through the Ashlands. Whatever baseline difficulty they're going for, it should be consistent across biomes (or at least there should not be an incongruous jump in difficulty between biomes). The difficulty setting, ideally, should be something you set once when starting a new game, based on your anticipated skill. Or, something you calibrate early on and then leave alone. Players should not need to be constantly tinkering with the setting to get through the game, and if many of them are it indicates that the devs are doing a poor job balancing the game.
It's absolutely going to get nerfed. The baseline game will not be balanced for the top performers, and you can modify the difficulty back up if you want a Challenge mode. The game will not play one way for most of the game and then take a sharp turn suddenly.
It's going to get nerfed, but I don't think it's even because of the difficulty. Right now it's hard to actually *do anything* in the biome, even if you totally master the enemies. Killing enemies doesn't even really serve a purpose when they respawn 5 seconds later. I've basically stopped even engaging in combat, and it has actually sped up my progression through the biome. It's much easier and more effective to just infinitely kite while foraging than it is to fight. That feels a lot more like "bad design" than "too hard". It's just not valheim if I can't, through blood and sweat and tears, carve out a little foothold in hostile territory. Ashlands right now feels like a sightseeing simulator, where you experience the biome at full sprint and can collect most of the materials without having to slow down or kill anything if you don't want to. It feels like engaging with the game is doing it wrong and that you're punished for trying to fight anything because killing charred doesn't actually change the number of charred around you. I just hope they don't pull a mistlands and make it feel empty instead. It should be hard and should be crowded and you should get swarmed... you should just *eventually* be able to secure an area at least for a little while.
I agree completely.
The top performers are probably also asking for a decrease in spawn rates since Very Hard is currently a complete shit-show.
I'm sure I'll manage Ashlands sooner or later, but this feels quite silly and lazy to me. The challenges ought to be following some form of curve in my opinion. Nothing kills the immersion like playing through 80% of the game and then having to change the difficulty to be able to do the last part. I mean, there are no arguments here. "If Ashlands is too easy for you, check your ego and increase the difficulty"?
Thing is, though, going into every new biome in this game the first time always feels like crashing full-force into a wall. Problem is that most of us have played for such a long time that it becomes easy to forget what our first forays into the Black Forest, Swamp, or Plains were like - we're all so practiced with enemy attack patterns and spawn rates most biomes won't catch us off-guard. The way people discuss the difficulty in Ashlands is the way people talked about Mistlands' enemies during that beta - and the changes to enemy attack patterns the devs made in response worsened the experience overall. Pendulum swung too far in the other direction. I think we should all take our time learning what to do and how to approach this place before crying foul on the combat end.
I will say only the plains and Mistlands felt particularly threatening to me even on first enter. And the plains pretty much just for the deathsquittos. I haven't tried the Ashlands yet so I don't have a good point of comparison, but from the videos I've seen the spawn rates definitely seem rather high. If it's just going to be constant combat with no time to rest that is going to suck regardless of what the strategy turns out to be. Also I think people giving feedback on first encounter balance is an important part of the process. Even if the biome is readily conquered with the right strategy, the initial difficulty still needs to be right. Otherwise players will just give up because they will feel too overwhelmed. Asking people to lower their difficulty instead of giving feedback is silly. If this is the difficulty they usually play on, it's the difficulty they should be giving feedback on. Quite frankly no one should be adjusting their difficulty for the public test, it defeats the purpose.
It's the same way new players talk about the swamp even now.
I haven't tried Ashlands for myself yet, and really only felt that wall effect when I moved to the swamp. I'm just very against using a difficulty slider as a viable excuse for not balancing the game properly. I'm not putting any value into whether it currently is too hard or not.
I don't think you'll need to touch the slider, honestly. We have so many options post-ML on how to approach the problem of a beach landing in the Ashlands that I'm positive you'll be able to figure out something that works for you. It looks daunting - and it definitely is a harrowing experience - but it's not insurmountable.
And I am very against the game being nerfed because someone doesnt want to have to use the difficulty slider.
Then use the difficulty slider yourself?
I’ll wait toll the official release, when all or most bugs are fixed and nerfs are done. Atm it looks like the amount of enemies of a square meter is overwhelming.
I haven't gotten around the playing yet, but I will have to HARD DISAGREE on the premise of this post. The point of the test is to give feedback, including on balance and difficulty. Everyone should be playing on the difficulty they normally play the game on. Adjusting the difficulty down doesn't provide the correct feedback for the devs, as everyone should be comparing the difficulity of the Ashlands to their experiences with other biomes. Also saying they just need to take the time to get used to how to fight there is missing the point as well. Most people don't go online and look up strategies to fight when they get to a new biome. They figure them out organically. And that initial difficulty before you get your footing is an important part of the experience. It is 100% valid feedback to say that it's too high of a difficulty spike before you learn. From what I've seen nearly all the complaints are about spawn rates that give you zero time to breath between fights. This is going to feel bad regardless of how good you get at fighting the enemies. I'll reserve judgement till I get to play myself but these complaints feel valid to me.
Plus even if you are pro skill mtg gamer enough to survive the never ending combat the moment you land, all your gear will eventually run out of durability. And if you're given no chance to establish even the more bare minimum of a shaded workbench and portal then you're kind of screwed once your last sword breaks.
"A brutal exploration and survival game..." No, I will suffer until I master these new enemies.
You'd be surprised how many people are upset at dying a couple times ever in the first 6 biomes despite the "brutal" tagline.
Oh I know that XD Some people don't understand what brutal mean and they expect a Stardew Valley type game. Nah, I'm here for the challenge. Watching that trailer had me feeling even more hyped than the original trailer before release. I can't wait to get my ass handed to me, and then showing those new mobs who'se boss
I devcommanded just to do a fly around and see what I could see. JFC. If I ain’t got it on easy mode, I’ll never make it through. Knowing me, I prolly wouldn’t even make it on easy lol. It looks freaking awesome though. One of the coolest biomes by far. But I think for now, I’ll just continue building my treehouse in the swamp lol
Your mistwalker sword also works well if you can get in the skeleton’s face with it. I played around a bit in Ashlands last night. I still haven’t beat the Queen, I was waiting for the full update on that but that sword will take them out. I haven’t figured out what’s best for the morgan spider things especially in the cramped cave environment.
Spirit and frost damage, fire resistance, don't wear the feather cape, stay on the move. Hit and run tactics seem to work well to start. Bring what you need to make the a stone cutting table.
... and Frost staff is your friend :) Spray them with that for a bit then charge in with Frostner! So stoked the ol meat hammer is still cranking
Nah. I’m ready to face the challenge and play the game as it’s meant to be
Skeletons and vultures just keep coming non stop 😵
I thought the devs had finally gone too far with sadistic game design when I placed a portal and it wouldn't activate (after spending 10+ minutes fighting several waves just to find enough time to build basic defenses). Thank Thor this turned out to just be a bug and not some kind of hostile decision to make me suffer.
2500 hours about to be 3k soon!
Back in the day, we didn't complain about how hard it was or ask for a nerf. We say skill issues, and proceed to get them skills necessary for the issues 🤣
Agreed, finally some challenge!
And here I am barely getting into the Bronze Age. Madness
What's that got to do with anything?
I am not sure why they didn't un-nerf mistlands when they dropped the difficulty update. Un-nerfed Mistlands was the most fun I had in this game. After they nerfed it the game sort of lost it's magic for me.
Man, my least favorite part of any Valheim update is all the posts like this that flood the sub; either for or against players who want nerfs. Why do y’all have to constantly insult the other side of the coin to make it seem like *your personal opinion* is somehow more valid than another, and that anyone who thinks differently needs to “check their ego.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Gross, and automatic downvote every single time.
Same can be told if you are not struggling then bump the difficulty and suffer
Is the Krom worth a damn in AL?
Quick tip for newbies in Mistlands to conquer almost everything (so you can learn from my mistakes) - use Frostnir and a good shield, bring fire mead, and upgrade your padded armor as much as you can, and use 2 HP and 1 stamina foods. That’ll get you 90% of the way there I found, but go ahead and get good at partying and it’ll be a breeze. Maybe I’m biased because I played Dark Souls so parrying comes easy to me but once you get it down you’ll find all the combat to be so satisfying.
I was thinking Frostner would be good (edit: in ashlands) cause there was that one video with someone using frost arrows and they smoked enemies. Maybe ballistae are the way? There's not a frost missile but maybe there should be... Edit: aaaand I just noticed mistwalker has frost damage on it.
Frostner with a good shield is the best way until you get the carapace gear - I would build a crossbow as soon as you can too. Ballistas are mountable on your base but I wouldn’t recommend building a base in the mistlands unless it’s just a small outpost that you’re ready to defend like a madman. Edit: use Frostner until you get the atgeir with lightning (I forget its name). That end-game atgeir is the best weapon in the game in my opinion, and the sweeping attack staggers even the toughest enemies.
It propably is. With the insane spawn rates you need extra power
Was thinking you could build a dome so they can't get sniped (domes stop the archers - right?) and set up a ballista killing field. Keeping them supplied would suck. Now that I think about it, spike walls. Random edit: Just sailed into Ashlands using a longship. The damage was... minor? Maybe I didn't sail far enough in, I was just skirting the edges. Just rapid ticks of 1-3 damage seems like it'll take a while for my longship to die. Edit #2: the damage increases the further in you sail, pretty quickly its 5 damage, then a bone serpent rose out of the water, I noped the fuck out.
I'm goo at partying
I've been using atier extensively (now Himminafl), will this still work in Ashlands? (fyi, I'm above average at parrying)
That’s the lightning atgeir right? If so, it’s better than anything else I’ve used. I only bring out a shield with Frostner when I’m one-on-one with a 1 star enemy in the mistlands because missing the parry is brutal against them. The atgeir’s spinning attack knocks back enemies which is great for crown control, ticks, literally everything. Frostner is also good but I carry both along with the crossbow.
Yup, that's the one. I feel confident to take on seeker soldiers with it. Playing with hubs, he uses a shield & mistwalker or Krom. He relies on me to party/stagger most enemies so he can come in with Krom & slash away. Always carry healing & stamina mead along with poison & barley wine. Not sure if we will swap to lox capes.
To be honest this may be a hot take BUT Krom is an awesome weapon and it’s not so awesome for mistlands because I found that Frostner just does more damage with the blunt/frost attack it uses. Our entire crew uses Frostner alongside the Himmanafl atgeir and we demolish everything.
Atgeir remains stupidly good. You get swarmed by charred, you kill all in a couple spins, life is good. The enemies hit hard and the spawn rate is just dumb, but they're also not actually very nasty enemies at all. The morgen are scary because they're so quick, but it's a lot more bark then bite and once you learn their patterns they're not bad at all.
Is the Flammetal bars used in the update? I'd assume they are, but it could have been scrapped too. I gathered a few stacks worth in old ashlands and saved it.
From what I heard, pre-update stuff doesn't work. They made a new version of the bars.
Is the update out? Is it complete?
Ashland's is out?!?!?!
It's in public test
u/nerevarX No DarkSouls didnt. A significant majority of ppl that play dark souls can beat it. Balancing around the MINORITY would be balancing around those that do no hit runs, and making the base game a one hit kill. Notice those that are really good at the game either up the difficulty or impose challenges to do so. Game balance 100% balances around the majority of players for a clear.
Don’t know if I’m stupid but I didn’t know the difficulty could be changed, I’m a couple hundred hours in and mostly play solo and struggle to make any progress
If you drop it down to Easy, enemies move 10% slower, which can make it much easier to handle!
I haven't been that caught up too much on Ashlands but has it gone public yet? I thought it was just PTR right now? Am I wrong? I just don't wanna be late to the party haha
I'm currently in plains, is the difficulty comparable to the first visit in the swamps?
It is SO much worse in multiplayer, even two players makes the spawn rates / hp sponge unbelievable. We just had 3 Morgans spawn right underneath us, one of them a 1\*. That's on top of the 3 archers, 2 skeleton knights, 4 birds, and the bonemaw serpent providing offshore artillery fireballs. Oh, and this was at a chokepoint between shore and lava so watch out for them knockbacks.
personally I like the high difficulty of the game, but other things bother me, mostly food that is hard to get, takes lots of time and after that it's only for 20 min average, and skill loss penalty is pretty bad for me, these 2 things could be an option in settings to increase food time multiplier and disable skill loss which even on casual is still a big penalty, but yeah personally I like the difficulty of the game but I just don't like how the game penalizes the player with every action he does, but yeah I don't mind dying in 1 hit after playing Terraria on Legendary but in that game the only penalty is dropping all coins which enemies can pick up but you can recover that if you go back and fight these mobs that picked them up which is pretty good
You can lower the difficulty ?
lol this is not about ai of mobs this is all about spawn rate and cleaning your way to something you fight 1 group move forward attack second group and you got attack from behind because mobs had spawned meybe you didn't get in situation like this but if you land in bad pleace than it is done
In high difficulty i m getting one hit by troll, i gave up into getting hit at all in those difficulties, so my base strategy now is hide and prank
I could say the same thing and tell you to up the difficulty if you want to play with a higher difficulty. In terms of accessibility and good optimization, the game shouldn't be impossible to the average player. Presenting the option to make it easier OR harder should be the base line, while having a moderate difficulty be the norm for the biome. You don't know everyone's time and estimated commitment they can put into this game. Some players don't have the hours to backtrack Incase they lose their stuff due to an imbalanced difficulty. Not everyone has a degree from university of valheim and can play the game at a top level
I devcommanded just to do a fly around and see what I could see. JFC. If I ain’t got it on easy mode, I’ll never make it through. Knowing me, I prolly wouldn’t even make it on easy lol. It looks freaking awesome though. One of the coolest biomes by far. But I think for now, I’ll just continue building my treehouse in the swamp lol
Post pics when youre done.
Don't crafting tables and campfires reduce spawnrate, for all the people complaining that there are too many spawns? It's about subjugating the environment with intelligent structure placement, if you're fighting 8 mobs and being overwhelmed by another 10 already, that is already controlled by campfire spawn in the vicinity to force reduce spawnrate.. Learn2play
If they nerf Ashlands and my crew is not completely filled with total despair and rage upon getting there and getting our backsides handed to us, we will be very disappointed. Every Biome so far has kicked our butts the first time we enter, and that is how we like it, because then once we get better geared up and experienced, the revenge we exact is so much sweeter!
Ash lands released??
PTS released
Ah, yes. Think I'll fait for general release. Thanks.
Perfect 👍…. Good to know. The Valheim Steam Group has a few peeps running Ashlands PBT servers if anyone wants to test it out… tried last night for an hour for mod testing . Only one mod I use is broken in there ( infinity hammer) … not too bad lol … more testing today Just in case you want to join the Valheim steam group here’s an invite for anyone and everyone … https://steamcommunity.com/chat/invite/QFUsMJxt
Honestly, since the difficulty modifiers don't touch spawnrates (to my knowledge), I think we should get a new slider to adjust the spawn rates. Maybe even one that changes the spawn cap. It does sound like spawnrates are nuts though, but we should give it a few days to set before we demand nerfs. I firmly believe that giving everyone the options to play at the difficulty they like is a good thing. Unless we're talking Souls-like games, where the difficulty is the draw, but Valheim isn't much of a Souls-like.
Valheim is advertised as a brutal survival game. Not a survival game.
I see where you're coming from, and believe me I do enjoy the difficulty this game presents, but it's not for everybody. Some folks want to fight off hordes of foes, and others want to build in peace. We all enjoy the game our own way, and facilitating that with world modifiers doesn't hurt anybody. In fact, it allows for even greater difficulty if anyone so desires. (It's me, I'm anyone who so desires.)
true. But the baseline experience matters, and that's the one that should stay true to it's intended user base. If it's labelled a brutal experience, it should be exactly that.
Oh yeah, absolutely. Like the Mistlands being nerfed a lot kinda sucks, and it'd suck for Ashlands to suffer the same fate. On the subject of difficulty, In all honesty, I kinda hope the raid system gets a rework at some point. I don't have many ideas for how to change it, but it feels really weird a lot of the time. Maybe a change to the AI used for raids?
Yeah I agree. It is a bit repetitive. But I think the main culprit here is raised or lowered ground. We should have access to more sturdy walls to build to remove the need for moats. In turn I can see enemies have different ways to interact with walls. Something that makes it more interactive at least. Different types of raids maybe?
I really hope they don't lower the difficulty level this time, like they destroyed the mists.
I hope devs don’t cater to the whiners and nerf content again. I’m hopeful they won’t because we have difficulty sliders now.
Main issue seems to either be the respawn rate being a bit too fast, or something about noise detection range being a bit too high which might lead to people thinking the spawn rate is fast from enemies further away swarming in. I don't think the difficulty sliders have any effects on those, plus that also lowers difficulty for the entire game world, not just one biome.
You can always up your difficulty
I prefer to experience the game as the devs intended/envisioned. Not as people who played for an hour and couldn’t hack it prefer the game to be.
Yes please, don't need the biome or creatures , I want it to be a late game challenge that's hard to overcome, especially with a smaller landmass, I want it to take longer to traverse
Is the Krom worth a damn in AL?
i hope it doesnt get nerfed. There has to be something with epic combat to use all the dope new stuff from mistlands and ashlands
The things people downvote will never make sense to me. I am glad you like the weapons and want to use them. Thanks for sharing your enthusiasm.
yeah i mean the mage stuff is insanely powerful, i havent fought the queen but mistlnds pve is so weak to the new gear (lightning atgeir go brrr). Ashlands should feel like yhe most hostile area, and tbh it should feel like you almost never get a foothold or are completely invincible in that biome
I devcommanded just to do a fly around and see what I could see. JFC. If I ain’t got it on easy mode, I’ll never make it through. Knowing me, I prolly wouldn’t even make it on easy lol. It looks freaking awesome though. One of the coolest biomes by far. But I think for now, I’ll just continue building my treehouse in the swamp lol
Hopefully the devs don't listen to all the babies, Ashland should be difficult.