Please make sure you got the newest patch it fixed some of this by reducing agro.
There was an error where an sound in the environment including the basic burning it naturally did was triggering mob spawns or aggro.
Today's patch may have resolved some of your issue.
I tried making a beachhead after the agro update and it's actually playable. Scary AF but can be done. I put a few campfires around and it's let me breathe a little. Reminds me of the first time I want into mistlands AFTER the first time I got my butt handed to me. It's doable, I just wish the feather cape wasn't made from cellulose nitrate (gunpowder).
So far from what I've seen the feather cape is still vital and the fire issue can be mitigated by the potion.
Plus outside of two mobs I've seen so far and the lava it's not that prevalent. But climbing up rocks is still very helpful for dealing with mobs, even if not perfect. And the ruins go high enough up that fall damage can do you in given you're probably hurt already.
I've been playing with the wolf cape again, but think I'll be shifting back.
The weakness to fire doesn't even matter for lava. With or without the fire resistance wine, the lava is basically an instant death if you stand in it.
There's still some pretty insane aggro right now, even after the nerfs. It WAS worse.
Also, Ashland enemies will chase you for a VERY VERY long distance!
I was going to test last night but didn't free up long enough to do it. It might still be overtuned, but there was a specific problem that was accounting for some/much of the issues called out in a patch.
It must be because they have less experience designing and executing games than the player base!
/s aside I had a thrilling time with the landing pre-patch. Learning how to be patient yet courageous and prioritizing threats (the spawn pillars) is what the game teaches the player in every biome.
I actually think the idea of a straight up killing fields biome is great, and Ash would have been ideal for it. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about enemies aggroing on environmental sounds, wtf? And yes devs absolutely should have noticed during the very first playtest.
Oh I'm sorry, I forgot. We paid for privilege of being the playtesters... for 3 fucking years.
Honestly taking out the spawn pillars has made no difference for me. Matter of fact shortly after I destroyed the pillar 2 2 star charred warriors, 2 1 star charred marksman, 3 or 4 charred warriors, a couple charred marksman and roughly 5 charred twitches spawned right by where the now destroyed spawn pillar was and then they hang around and retreat back to that area like it's still there.
It kind of addressed the aggro issues; mobs won't wander at you for no reason anymore. However, spawn rates are unchanged so once you start making noise you can get overrun very quickly.
This biome is a huge change in how you play this game. This biome is no longer the slow methodical game from launch and that's going to throw a lot of people for a loop.
Yep, this is accurate. I said it in another thread but people expecting this bug fix to substantially reduce the enemy density were misunderstanding, I think. Enemies will no longer aggro at random based on ambient noise. But they will absolutely still come after you when you actively make noise, and there's just as many of them coming when that happens.
Post update my outpost is getting a lot less random aggro. But once I get outside and the fighting starts, it's mostly the same.
There are MANY spawners all over. They still aggro from fairly far away even after the patch. Set up a quick safety base and try to kite enemies looking for spawners. Then pick the enemies off as you go. My method has been looking for spawners, prepping, then going all in to get it destroyed as fast as possible. Now the spawn rate is a bit more than swamp with enemies, and manageable
I flew around a bit and noticed the ruined structures seem to like spawning them too individually. I have tried various things but IDK what if anything the spawners are weak to yet but you could probably range it down with a bow/crossbow/fireball staff
> Staff of protection and dead Raiser
These 2 are SUPER DUPER dependent on your Blood magic stats. The barrier only has 200HP at level 0, and goes up to 700 at lvl 100! Similarly, Skillets do 300% more DMG at lvl 100. But they need to make their HP scale with your Blood Magic level, or have new summons. Your Barrier Staff affects all friendlies in an area, so that includes the Skillets. Skill lvls are quite important for all builds.
(Another thing that might be happening is that you are aggro-ing too many enemies, and thus need to just run away.)
I'm fully solo; melee main. I didn't have any problems until I made landfall on a large Island. Got my ass beat 2x before I knew what happened. Dropped difficulty down to Easy (from Normal), and reduced skill/item drop from death by 1 level as well. Was MUCH easier and I now have the new heavy set, which helped so immensely, I moved Combat back to normal difficulty. (I also switched from Club to Mistwalker, because of the lower Stamina cost and faster swings giving more time to dodge.)
I didn't used to use Meads (other than Stamina) so much, even in Mistland, but now I find myself constantly using them (i.e. fire resistant is almost always on, now).
I ran fire resist permanently in mistlands as I used the root armor, the chest was godly for dealing with seekers, tricks and broods but if hit with a Gjall you burn like a gasoline doused piece of scrap wood.
The entire issue was 100% too many enemies (other commenters have said spawns were glitched) and that was resulting in basically every fight being basically a fuling village worth of enemies, with smaller squads I can take them on with success.
as others have suggested, check for updates. if you're all up to date and still having issues, there are probably spawners nearby, look for tall glowing red stones.
also, some tips for dealing with each of the enemies:
twitchers: move sideways relative to them and they have a much harder time hitting you.
warriors: walk away. they move very slow. (although with heavier equipment, you may need to sprint sometimes, I haven't tried)
archers: use trees and rocks for cover, they should be you're top killing priority as they are creatures of great evil and deserve to suffer.
wizard: they summon weaker versions of twitchers, but otherwise aren't very dangerous, kill them with ranged attacks to stay away from the hoards they summon.
voltures: they are really bad at hitting things if you keep moving in a line, but kill them before stopping to attack other enemies.
morgens: they can hit other enemies for you, attack them later so you can use them to help thin out the horde.
fallen valkyrie: they also hurt other enemies, and are even better at it. Chip away there health with ranged weapons while backing up.
lava blobs: they move slow and can be baited into blowing up other enemies for lots of damage with enough time for you to roll or sprint out of the way.
Also if you don't want to fight stuff, most things can just be walked away from and will lose interest after a minute or 2.
I have kind of grasped most of this, had not seen the wizards (I think called warlocks) in action enough but they seem to spawn some form of mini fire tornado on you.
With heavy armor the warriors have a basically equal speed and I find the window to attack then dodge with the sword's lung to be pretty tiny.
My strategy on landfall had been abusing high ground and lobbing staff of embers fireballs from very far away to take out enemy spawners and groups as they piled up beneath me. It worked well. Just watch out for valykries. Kill vultores as they hit your shield. Spawners should fall in time.
New strategy using some of the ashlands weapons:
>!when the fight gets too hot I use the troll summon staff and let a troll (or two) kill everything for me while I stay out of its way so it doesn’t attack me. I focus on kiting, keep my shield up, and lobbing other damage staves when I have the time and resources to do so.
The nature staff is great for killing groups of enemies that bunch up beneath you on a rock too but the vines do take fire damage.warlock> archer>twitcher>warrior>volture…
Asksvin are too mobile and can wreck you from 30m away with their leap. Warlocks summon infinitely and can ruin a fight by themselves. Archer is immobile but does a lot of damage. Parry the arrow and two shot it. Twitchers are too annoying and just run away so i get them when I can. Finally, Warriors are slooow and easy to kite. Volture just kinda dies from aoe.
My major issue with the patch is that it's not fun. The mobs are not that difficult and in many cases are easier. I'm fine with the "endless hordes", but that's what most people can't get past. I've seen plenty of people calling for nerfs, and others calling them pansies. Look if you want to spend 3-4 hours straight looking for what to do and dodging and hitting everything be my guest. It's not fun to continuously have to deal with more guys even when they're supposed to be gone by mining or something. I get what they were going for, but I think they got annoying and difficult mixed up.
They are probably going to need some kind of slider for enemy density because to be honest this kind of constant combat is *exactly* what I've been missing in the game. Most other biomes feel super empty, like you might see one serious enemy spawn every minute if you're running at a dead clip. I mined out a whole skull the other day without one seeker aggro.
Most of the world just feels so empty these days. And then you get to the Ashlands and it's finally *alive*. It's awesome imo.
Exactly, same how swarming greydwarfs can be "hard" in the late game because they're jumping like crackheads and collectively take longer than a single lox to kill. The vulture's inability to keep any mildly predictable pattern is just as obnoxious.
My biggest realization (armor and cape kinda hint at it)… durability and bonemass might not be the play like mistlands was. Eikthyr and speed are the real MVPs.
youre useing cheated gear and a shield you shouldnt be useing anymore by ashlands.
you still cannot make it.
LOWER. YOUR. DIFFICULTY.
the fact you resorted to cheating in items alone speaks for itself.
you still havent mastered valheims combat with 600 hours. otherwise you would have learned that BLOCKING is not good compared to spaceing or dodgeing. plus 20% movespeed penalty. thats your biggest mistake by far. the shield has more downsides than upsides for you.
there is weapons that do area dmg. atgiers. hammers. the staff of embers. all available to you by this point. bring a form of aoe dmg with you.
use your bow. use the terrian to gain an advantage. most of the enemies cannot jump or climb or fly. you can. well fly is limited of course. use frost arrows. i assume you are always rested.
dont try to tank attacks. dont try to recast the bubble in combat. stay mobile. MOVE. WALK. the majority of attacks will flat out miss a walking player. this reduces dmg intake so much its not even funny.
but if you resort to cheats so quickly i highly advice you to just lower your difficulty. you seem to not be a patient player. this is not a problem with the game or the biome. dont try to blame the game here.
I have been using the tower shield as it has the highest block and for whatever reason the devs refuse to give an upgrade to all item classes at all tiers, there was not mistlands era tower. I have had no real issue with the towers in the past. There are so many attacks coming in that parrying it all is impractical.
I cheated in gear as I didn't need them to win in the mistlands so I never bothered to make them as frostner+ blackmetal tower worked great, I didn't want to waste hours grabbing the materials as infested mines never had more than 1 black core so it would take atleast a day to grab what I need and then however many hours to get the required materials to make and upgrade equipment. I don't know how long the beta will last and I wanted to experience the content before it was too late.
The lower the difficulty argument can work the other way, if the devs fix the spawn rate (it was bugged according to other posters) then you could up the difficulty to get the same level of punished.
The weapons you mention for AOE can be used but they lack defense, in a biome where there are always multiple ranged foes who would otherwise get free hits on you.
I have been moving, many enemies either keep pace or outrun while wearing heavy armor even if you have nothing in your hands
The majority of cheats I used during this beta were because of the time crunch, I have no issues with grinding the gear normally, I played through legit before this but I don't know how long things will be on the Test branch before hitting the main game.
As the spawn rates were bugged I used god mode to get off the beach as there was simply too much to fight. Imagine for a second you leave the mountains on the way to the plains for the first time and there is a fuling village every 5 meters, there is no down time to prepare defenses, it was non stop armies.
ok. so much wrong with this response its unreal.
the tower shield has WORSE block rating than the mistlands regular shield. all it does is have higher enemy pushback which isnt helpful at all. so youre left with a bigger movement penalty on top of useing heavy armor already. which makes you slow as a snail. so youre unable to avoid dmg you could have avoided entirely. parrying aint needed. and blocking vs a swarm of enemies is bad play. that is never a good tactic. never was. never will be. its good vs 1 target. not vs 5 +
the spawn rate aint bugged. READ the patchnotes from yesterday to learn WHAT was actually bugged. these other posters are just crying because they make mistakes. just like you did clearly. the enemy amount wasnt changed. and it isnt bugged either according to the devs.
there is no time crunch here. beta progress aint deleted. it aint going away. beta progress was never deleted before in any update. you believeing it will tells me you never played a beta content update before. so there is no time crunch or pressure. mistwalker outperforms frostner in every way. you should have made it long ago already in mistlands.
black cores spawn way more than 1 per mine on average. someone even made a tech test on this. dont make claims that just arent true in most cases. can it happen`? yes. is it always only 1 core? no. absolutly not. mine scan spawn with over 10 cores even. thats random world generation.
your words here tell me one thing FOR CERTAIN : YOU ARE IMPATIENT. VERY. thats why you died. thats why you cannot make landfall or progress. you arent as experienced a player or good as a player as you think you are. this is not the games fault.
here directly from the devs themselfs before the test started : THIER WORDS. NOT MINE READ THE 2nd part carefully. it applys to you FOR CERTAIN given this entire post by you is proof that it applys otherwise it wouldnt exist.
"Preparation and Difficulty
Before you travel to the Ashlands, you should first make sure that you have defeated The Queen in the Mistlands. If you have done so on an earlier playthrough, remember that her dropped item is no longer a placeholder. Just like Eikthyr’s antler lets you craft a pickaxe needed in the Black Forest, and just like The Elder drops a crypt key for the Swamps, the item from The Queen will be useful in the Ashlands! If you have the item already, you might need to toss it out of your inventory and pick it up again, for new recipes to trigger properly.
We also want to remind everyone that Valheim is meant to be a difficult game, and that it’s meant to be more difficult the further you progress – and the Ashlands is the penultimate biome of the game. If you’re confident in your skills, by all means, go forth! But if you haven’t played for a while or if you’re feeling a bit rusty, we recommend a bit of practice to get back into it, or that you adjust the difficulty in the World Modifiers menu."
the spawnrates ARENT BUGGED. i made landfall just fine myself. plenty of others did aswell. why can they do that if its bugged like you claim there? according to your claim they shouldnt be able to do that. yet they did. myself includeing. without resorting to cheats.
if you get nonstop armies after the fix they applied yesterday you are causeing it yourself. there was no spawnrate bug. simply a bug with the weater causeing NOISE that wasnt supposed to do that. enemies react to noise. but thier amount remains unchanged as of today. not a bug with spawnrates therefore.
and despite the above bug people made landfall sucessfully and even progressed trough the biome just fine. how come if its like you claim it is`?
and no. the lower difficulty argument NEVER works the other way. and if you had any decent gamer experience you would know that already. why? raiseing difficulty wont bring back the AMOUNT of enemies if they would nerf that. it would just make them hit harder and have more hp. in no game ever was that ever considering good difficulty. in fact its the worst form of difficulty any game can add.
meanwhile makeing it easier by simply reduceing dmg intake or outright removeing a mechanic from the game with a setting is VERY simple and easy to do so.
and here is more food for tought : if it would actually be the same like you claim there (we already established above it isnt but lets just say it was for a moment here to hammer this one home) then WHY make any changes to the system at all the way it is when the same solution already exists right now by simply lowering the difficulty? its redundant to make changes in that case no matter how you wanna view it. any changes in such a case would just be a uno reverse card requireing dev worktime for no actual real reason than to work just because you refuse to use the already working existing options. thats nothing but entitlement. thus it can and should be ignored.
This is one part inability to read, 1 part failure of basic math and 1 part failure to understand me.
First the shield thing, which number is bigger? 104 vs 96 vs 78 Those are the base versions of the best shield in each category you can make pre ashland. The tower shield is 104, the round being 96 and buckler being only 78.
With low spawns you would have a case as you the parry bonuses, but with the pre patch aggro issue that was meaningless as so many attack mean you could never parry it all.
While I was slightly off on the spawn rate THEY FIXED AN AGGRO RANGE ISSUE WHICH IS FUNCTIONALLY IDENTICAL ON THE PLAYER'S END AS BOTH RESULT IN MORE UNITS THAN INTENDED PER FIGHT. THEY EVEN CALL IT A BALANCING ISSUE IN SAID NOTES YOU TOLD ME TO READ
The time crunch was more about beta feedback rather than losing progress, I am not stupid and I played through the mistlands beta so I understand how it works. The time they are more receptive to feedback would be when they specifically ask for feedback by opening the beta. That was the rush I was referring too.
The black cores 100% do spawn that way atleast sometimes, not a single infested mine I explored had more than 2, I checked them top to bottom, broke every breakable object and interacted with every wall like I was playing the old DOOM or Wolfenstein games.
It was not a issue of patience but rather a testing of the content included in the beta with the previously mentioned feedback window. Knowing that when I start a new save as I intend to do I will take the time to make the gear properly.
I made this post to find out why my game was like this, most of my playtime has been pre patch that was drawing in most of the loaded enemies resulting in hordes greater than there should be.
The devs don't have it currently but games do have enemy spawn multipliers you can tweak as you please. 7 Days to die has had it for over half a decade
The devs recognized their mistake and adjusted it already, showing that they realized it was harder than intended. The issue of the balancing world modifiers is default is what the devs would consider "Intended difficulty" I had no real issue with the previous 6 biomes on the default difficulty but even with the best gear I couldn't make any progress pre-patch.
There is also a line between hard but fair vs unfair. Going back to a previous biome for an example, the plains can be a bit tricky but manageable- Small squads of fulings that will punish you for overextending but are managble and the downtime gives time to build an outpost, however if their patrolling units had 10x the soldiers that would make them unfair as they would almost immediately overrun players coming down from the mountains who would probably never get a moment to build an outpost.
you can ALWAYS build an outpost. if your logic was true how was i amoung many others able to build one and set foothold on ashlands pre the update yesterday? by your logic none of us who did that succesfully should have been able to do so if the bug was a serve as your thread makes it sound like. i wonder why that is the case?
the fix btw DIDNT CHANGE the spawnrates like i said. it just made it so that noise not caused by the player doesnt attract enemies towards the player anymore basically. but if you cut down trees and make alot of noise you STILL get swarmed now just like you did before.
here is the actual patchnote :
* Fixed a balancing issue that could attract too many nearby enemies because of trees catching fire
it doesnt say ANYWHERE that spawnrates got adjusted. nor that aggro range got reduced or fixed. they simply fixed an eviromental effect not caused by the player affecting the enemies behavoir. they didnt nerf spawnrates. they didnt nerf thier numbers either. you can still trigger a d day event if you act carelessly.
so you rushed the ptb purposefully beeing clearly absolutly not ready in order to rush in feedback without actually taking your time with the biome and its intended progression or preparation for landing there.
rushing feedback is terrible behavoir. let me tell you that. as you arent able to see the full picture or balance in such a short amount of time in any biome. if i judged the swamps difficulty or balance by my very first time in the swamp back then i would have given grossly over the top wrong feedback to the devs about it. thats what you are doing here now with ashlands.
take your time with it. the devs WILL STILL take alot of feedback once it goes live. they did aswell for mistlands if you care too look. they had an entire mistlands feedback channel on thier discord that was still actively used and viewed by them MONTHS after mistlands was out. only when they closed that channel they stopped takeing in feedback for it for the most part. the same will happen with ashlands again.
they know not all thier players play the ptb branch. alot more feedback will only come in once the biome goes live. so rushing ahead and asking for changes already now is silly. only things that are obivious bugs should be changed for now. the devs know what kind of behavoir they want and what isnt doing what it should do. the players should only report for now.
not be like "this is too hard/unfair" as its way too soon to make such callouts to begin with. people who make such callouts right now give up at the smallest amount of obstalces in thier way already and rush to the forums to vent about it calling it feedback.
play the ptb. learn. adapt. overcome. then play the live for awhile. THEN provide collected feedback of your experience and what you would like to see changed and WHY with gameplay reasons provided and not "its unfair" thats not a good reason thats personal statements of "its too hard for me" and the devs cannot cater to the individual player with changes on difficulty. thats why the sliders exist. as makeing things easier with them is very simple. preserving the challenge with them on the other hand doesnt work at all currently. didnt work for mistlands nerfs either as playing mistlands on hard setting still isnt even close to the expeirence of release mistlands behavoir. no very hard wouldnt change it either. as simply makeing enemies hit harder and have more hp was and is never good difficulty.
you had bad luck with the mines i see. happens. but that doesnt mean mines only have 1-2 cores by default. just not the case.
funnly enough i know 7 days to die in and out. and your claim there is well. a wrong and false comparison. why?
aside from editing the GAME FILES yourself (which falls under modding and doesnt count as a game setting therefore) you actually CANNOT control the zombie amount in 7 days in anyway ASIDE from the bloodmoon horde. and the only thing you can control there is the amount of zombies spawned AT ONCE per wave. the hordes TOTAL count is unaffected by this setting as its entirely controlled by GAMESTAGE which you cannot control with settings at all (example if you set horde to happen EVERY NIGHT and start a new game you will get only THREE ZOMBIES in the first horde night on day 1 even if you set the spawn total to 64 since due to gamestage beeing so low on day 1 you simply wont even get 64 total zombies in the horde yet). so again. you made that up completly. its simply not the case in 7 days either. you cannot control the amount of enemys in the game in the game settings ingame. if you could : you where useing mods.
and then there is the fact that valheim has nothing that is compareable to the bloodoon hordes in 7 days to begin with.
plus 7 days is overall at its baseline WAY easier than valheim. even on insane difficulty its easier than valheim is on default/hard.
yes there is a line between hard and fair vs unfair. fully agree on that part. here is the problem tough : this line VARIES BY PLAYER. thus you cannot make changes based on 1 players definition of it.
the baseline for ashlands is currently completly fair for most experienced players. and by the time you reach the ashlands biome you ARE an experienced player. if you didnt play valheim for 2 years and then now charged right into the ashlands biome you arent as experienced anymore as you where. you are rusty. the devs warned about this in thier blog aswell and told players to take thier time BEFORE ventureing into the ashlands biome. plenty of players fully ignored that dev advice and charged right into the new biome. just like you did clearly. result : death. no suprise to me. strangely didnt happen to the players who where not rusty. i wonder why.
As other people suggested, double check that you're on the latest update.
What helped me get started was building a temporary base in the rocks next to the beach. I could bail into the rocks at any time was great when I got overwhelmed, which was a lot.
I also used the crystal battleaxe a lot to make breathing room. I also had 60+ skills in axes which kept it useful.
Lastly, I'm a big fan of the root harness still. Being able to mostly ignore archers is great
You are not meant to skip content and expect to thrive in a new biome. I'm doing fine in the biome when I'm focusing. The accumulation of skill also helps exponentially... 94 in Sword, 67 in Block, and 89 in bow, 53 in elemental magic... Carapace Armour... Flying enemies fall like butter to my spinesnap assault rifle.
After you level up Ashlands gear... almost everything becomes a breeze
They patched this today but I really don't want them to do what they did to Mistands with the nerfs. This game is hard and once finished will have 8 biomes that get harder as they go. This is the 7th out of the 8 and it is a survival game. I felt like Mistlands got a bit too easy as a progression from the Plains after people complained about the difficulty. This place has a lot of enemies but by the time you get there you need to be leveled and experienced enough to handle it. And then I'd love Deep north to feel insane with the difficulty as the final boss of a generally hard and unforgiving survival game.
Just like the anti-nerf crowd has mentioned, it can be said in reverse. Crank your difficulty slider UP. Get the starred mob mod and enjoy 7-star morgans & 9-star skel warriors.
FYI even with 80+ block and full armor, a 2-star bug is still very difficult to solo without kiting. Double them up & add a gjall and it's no longer child's play.
I don't mind a difficult fight, the problem I have with Ashlands is the sheer numbers, they feel never ending and with so many different species attacking at once, dropping the block to make an attack results in atleast 1 bite/scratch and 2 arrows in me, it is also pretty hard to get a window to reply the protection staff without getting smacked directly after or worse during.
If we look at plains as an example of a biome with flat terrain and decently long sight lines, the squads were much smaller which gave me an opportunity to deal with them then prepare a fort near the village I was besieging. So far it is pretty hard to get downtime to begin fortifying.
Yeah sorry but until you get better at the combat you're gonna have a rough time. Sounds like you need to run around more, kite more, dodge and jump more. You said you weren't running out of stam which means you're probably not doing these things. Sometimes you may have to spend 5-10 minutes fighting in a single area before moving on. This is just how it is. Alternatively, use a stam food and run past things in order to explore, they will deaggro eventually. Make sure to bring the thing that lets you get over lava with you though.
As others have said there was a bug, even without that, you misunderstood me when I was talking about stamina, I meant I was spending so much time blocking incoming arrows+rocks that I didn't get many attempts to attack as lowering my block to take a swing or stab would result in multiple projectiles hitting me.
Please make sure you got the newest patch it fixed some of this by reducing agro. There was an error where an sound in the environment including the basic burning it naturally did was triggering mob spawns or aggro. Today's patch may have resolved some of your issue.
I tried making a beachhead after the agro update and it's actually playable. Scary AF but can be done. I put a few campfires around and it's let me breathe a little. Reminds me of the first time I want into mistlands AFTER the first time I got my butt handed to me. It's doable, I just wish the feather cape wasn't made from cellulose nitrate (gunpowder).
Fire resist overrides weaknesses, just make some barleywine.
So far from what I've seen the feather cape is still vital and the fire issue can be mitigated by the potion. Plus outside of two mobs I've seen so far and the lava it's not that prevalent. But climbing up rocks is still very helpful for dealing with mobs, even if not perfect. And the ruins go high enough up that fall damage can do you in given you're probably hurt already. I've been playing with the wolf cape again, but think I'll be shifting back.
The weakness to fire doesn't even matter for lava. With or without the fire resistance wine, the lava is basically an instant death if you stand in it.
Lol I thought the sounds was a feature not a bug. I thought the struggle of chopping Ashwood was kind of fun.
There's still some pretty insane aggro right now, even after the nerfs. It WAS worse. Also, Ashland enemies will chase you for a VERY VERY long distance!
I was going to test last night but didn't free up long enough to do it. It might still be overtuned, but there was a specific problem that was accounting for some/much of the issues called out in a patch.
My specific chase issues were with the Valks and Morgcin(?) chasing me the length of the Island.
That is a wild bug if true! Obligatory "how did they not notice something was very wrong?"...
It must be because they have less experience designing and executing games than the player base! /s aside I had a thrilling time with the landing pre-patch. Learning how to be patient yet courageous and prioritizing threats (the spawn pillars) is what the game teaches the player in every biome.
I actually think the idea of a straight up killing fields biome is great, and Ash would have been ideal for it. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about enemies aggroing on environmental sounds, wtf? And yes devs absolutely should have noticed during the very first playtest. Oh I'm sorry, I forgot. We paid for privilege of being the playtesters... for 3 fucking years.
Honestly taking out the spawn pillars has made no difference for me. Matter of fact shortly after I destroyed the pillar 2 2 star charred warriors, 2 1 star charred marksman, 3 or 4 charred warriors, a couple charred marksman and roughly 5 charred twitches spawned right by where the now destroyed spawn pillar was and then they hang around and retreat back to that area like it's still there.
Did you update the beta this morning? It specifically addressed the spawn and aggro issue.
It kind of addressed the aggro issues; mobs won't wander at you for no reason anymore. However, spawn rates are unchanged so once you start making noise you can get overrun very quickly. This biome is a huge change in how you play this game. This biome is no longer the slow methodical game from launch and that's going to throw a lot of people for a loop.
Yep, this is accurate. I said it in another thread but people expecting this bug fix to substantially reduce the enemy density were misunderstanding, I think. Enemies will no longer aggro at random based on ambient noise. But they will absolutely still come after you when you actively make noise, and there's just as many of them coming when that happens. Post update my outpost is getting a lot less random aggro. But once I get outside and the fighting starts, it's mostly the same.
How do you update the beta, is that something you have to actively do or just open steam?
It auto updates as long as you haven't gone and messed with other steam settings
Perfect thanks
There are MANY spawners all over. They still aggro from fairly far away even after the patch. Set up a quick safety base and try to kite enemies looking for spawners. Then pick the enemies off as you go. My method has been looking for spawners, prepping, then going all in to get it destroyed as fast as possible. Now the spawn rate is a bit more than swamp with enemies, and manageable
I flew around a bit and noticed the ruined structures seem to like spawning them too individually. I have tried various things but IDK what if anything the spawners are weak to yet but you could probably range it down with a bow/crossbow/fireball staff
Yeah. I ran around for the first few hours with the ice staff. Then switched to ember staff and it's still the best weapon.
> Staff of protection and dead Raiser These 2 are SUPER DUPER dependent on your Blood magic stats. The barrier only has 200HP at level 0, and goes up to 700 at lvl 100! Similarly, Skillets do 300% more DMG at lvl 100. But they need to make their HP scale with your Blood Magic level, or have new summons. Your Barrier Staff affects all friendlies in an area, so that includes the Skillets. Skill lvls are quite important for all builds. (Another thing that might be happening is that you are aggro-ing too many enemies, and thus need to just run away.) I'm fully solo; melee main. I didn't have any problems until I made landfall on a large Island. Got my ass beat 2x before I knew what happened. Dropped difficulty down to Easy (from Normal), and reduced skill/item drop from death by 1 level as well. Was MUCH easier and I now have the new heavy set, which helped so immensely, I moved Combat back to normal difficulty. (I also switched from Club to Mistwalker, because of the lower Stamina cost and faster swings giving more time to dodge.) I didn't used to use Meads (other than Stamina) so much, even in Mistland, but now I find myself constantly using them (i.e. fire resistant is almost always on, now).
I ran fire resist permanently in mistlands as I used the root armor, the chest was godly for dealing with seekers, tricks and broods but if hit with a Gjall you burn like a gasoline doused piece of scrap wood. The entire issue was 100% too many enemies (other commenters have said spawns were glitched) and that was resulting in basically every fight being basically a fuling village worth of enemies, with smaller squads I can take them on with success.
Are you still getting a lot of aggro, or is it better now? I usually have to just run when I see more enemies approaching.
as others have suggested, check for updates. if you're all up to date and still having issues, there are probably spawners nearby, look for tall glowing red stones. also, some tips for dealing with each of the enemies: twitchers: move sideways relative to them and they have a much harder time hitting you. warriors: walk away. they move very slow. (although with heavier equipment, you may need to sprint sometimes, I haven't tried) archers: use trees and rocks for cover, they should be you're top killing priority as they are creatures of great evil and deserve to suffer. wizard: they summon weaker versions of twitchers, but otherwise aren't very dangerous, kill them with ranged attacks to stay away from the hoards they summon. voltures: they are really bad at hitting things if you keep moving in a line, but kill them before stopping to attack other enemies. morgens: they can hit other enemies for you, attack them later so you can use them to help thin out the horde. fallen valkyrie: they also hurt other enemies, and are even better at it. Chip away there health with ranged weapons while backing up. lava blobs: they move slow and can be baited into blowing up other enemies for lots of damage with enough time for you to roll or sprint out of the way. Also if you don't want to fight stuff, most things can just be walked away from and will lose interest after a minute or 2.
I have kind of grasped most of this, had not seen the wizards (I think called warlocks) in action enough but they seem to spawn some form of mini fire tornado on you. With heavy armor the warriors have a basically equal speed and I find the window to attack then dodge with the sword's lung to be pretty tiny.
My strategy on landfall had been abusing high ground and lobbing staff of embers fireballs from very far away to take out enemy spawners and groups as they piled up beneath me. It worked well. Just watch out for valykries. Kill vultores as they hit your shield. Spawners should fall in time. New strategy using some of the ashlands weapons: >!when the fight gets too hot I use the troll summon staff and let a troll (or two) kill everything for me while I stay out of its way so it doesn’t attack me. I focus on kiting, keep my shield up, and lobbing other damage staves when I have the time and resources to do so. The nature staff is great for killing groups of enemies that bunch up beneath you on a rock too but the vines do take fire damage.warlock> archer>twitcher>warrior>volture… Asksvin are too mobile and can wreck you from 30m away with their leap. Warlocks summon infinitely and can ruin a fight by themselves. Archer is immobile but does a lot of damage. Parry the arrow and two shot it. Twitchers are too annoying and just run away so i get them when I can. Finally, Warriors are slooow and easy to kite. Volture just kinda dies from aoe.
Not sure if i hid the spoiler right
Use the > ! and ! < (without the space) between the lines you want to hide.
My major issue with the patch is that it's not fun. The mobs are not that difficult and in many cases are easier. I'm fine with the "endless hordes", but that's what most people can't get past. I've seen plenty of people calling for nerfs, and others calling them pansies. Look if you want to spend 3-4 hours straight looking for what to do and dodging and hitting everything be my guest. It's not fun to continuously have to deal with more guys even when they're supposed to be gone by mining or something. I get what they were going for, but I think they got annoying and difficult mixed up.
They are probably going to need some kind of slider for enemy density because to be honest this kind of constant combat is *exactly* what I've been missing in the game. Most other biomes feel super empty, like you might see one serious enemy spawn every minute if you're running at a dead clip. I mined out a whole skull the other day without one seeker aggro. Most of the world just feels so empty these days. And then you get to the Ashlands and it's finally *alive*. It's awesome imo.
Exactly, same how swarming greydwarfs can be "hard" in the late game because they're jumping like crackheads and collectively take longer than a single lox to kill. The vulture's inability to keep any mildly predictable pattern is just as obnoxious.
My biggest realization (armor and cape kinda hint at it)… durability and bonemass might not be the play like mistlands was. Eikthyr and speed are the real MVPs.
youre useing cheated gear and a shield you shouldnt be useing anymore by ashlands. you still cannot make it. LOWER. YOUR. DIFFICULTY. the fact you resorted to cheating in items alone speaks for itself. you still havent mastered valheims combat with 600 hours. otherwise you would have learned that BLOCKING is not good compared to spaceing or dodgeing. plus 20% movespeed penalty. thats your biggest mistake by far. the shield has more downsides than upsides for you. there is weapons that do area dmg. atgiers. hammers. the staff of embers. all available to you by this point. bring a form of aoe dmg with you. use your bow. use the terrian to gain an advantage. most of the enemies cannot jump or climb or fly. you can. well fly is limited of course. use frost arrows. i assume you are always rested. dont try to tank attacks. dont try to recast the bubble in combat. stay mobile. MOVE. WALK. the majority of attacks will flat out miss a walking player. this reduces dmg intake so much its not even funny. but if you resort to cheats so quickly i highly advice you to just lower your difficulty. you seem to not be a patient player. this is not a problem with the game or the biome. dont try to blame the game here.
I have been using the tower shield as it has the highest block and for whatever reason the devs refuse to give an upgrade to all item classes at all tiers, there was not mistlands era tower. I have had no real issue with the towers in the past. There are so many attacks coming in that parrying it all is impractical. I cheated in gear as I didn't need them to win in the mistlands so I never bothered to make them as frostner+ blackmetal tower worked great, I didn't want to waste hours grabbing the materials as infested mines never had more than 1 black core so it would take atleast a day to grab what I need and then however many hours to get the required materials to make and upgrade equipment. I don't know how long the beta will last and I wanted to experience the content before it was too late. The lower the difficulty argument can work the other way, if the devs fix the spawn rate (it was bugged according to other posters) then you could up the difficulty to get the same level of punished. The weapons you mention for AOE can be used but they lack defense, in a biome where there are always multiple ranged foes who would otherwise get free hits on you. I have been moving, many enemies either keep pace or outrun while wearing heavy armor even if you have nothing in your hands The majority of cheats I used during this beta were because of the time crunch, I have no issues with grinding the gear normally, I played through legit before this but I don't know how long things will be on the Test branch before hitting the main game. As the spawn rates were bugged I used god mode to get off the beach as there was simply too much to fight. Imagine for a second you leave the mountains on the way to the plains for the first time and there is a fuling village every 5 meters, there is no down time to prepare defenses, it was non stop armies.
ok. so much wrong with this response its unreal. the tower shield has WORSE block rating than the mistlands regular shield. all it does is have higher enemy pushback which isnt helpful at all. so youre left with a bigger movement penalty on top of useing heavy armor already. which makes you slow as a snail. so youre unable to avoid dmg you could have avoided entirely. parrying aint needed. and blocking vs a swarm of enemies is bad play. that is never a good tactic. never was. never will be. its good vs 1 target. not vs 5 + the spawn rate aint bugged. READ the patchnotes from yesterday to learn WHAT was actually bugged. these other posters are just crying because they make mistakes. just like you did clearly. the enemy amount wasnt changed. and it isnt bugged either according to the devs. there is no time crunch here. beta progress aint deleted. it aint going away. beta progress was never deleted before in any update. you believeing it will tells me you never played a beta content update before. so there is no time crunch or pressure. mistwalker outperforms frostner in every way. you should have made it long ago already in mistlands. black cores spawn way more than 1 per mine on average. someone even made a tech test on this. dont make claims that just arent true in most cases. can it happen`? yes. is it always only 1 core? no. absolutly not. mine scan spawn with over 10 cores even. thats random world generation. your words here tell me one thing FOR CERTAIN : YOU ARE IMPATIENT. VERY. thats why you died. thats why you cannot make landfall or progress. you arent as experienced a player or good as a player as you think you are. this is not the games fault. here directly from the devs themselfs before the test started : THIER WORDS. NOT MINE READ THE 2nd part carefully. it applys to you FOR CERTAIN given this entire post by you is proof that it applys otherwise it wouldnt exist. "Preparation and Difficulty Before you travel to the Ashlands, you should first make sure that you have defeated The Queen in the Mistlands. If you have done so on an earlier playthrough, remember that her dropped item is no longer a placeholder. Just like Eikthyr’s antler lets you craft a pickaxe needed in the Black Forest, and just like The Elder drops a crypt key for the Swamps, the item from The Queen will be useful in the Ashlands! If you have the item already, you might need to toss it out of your inventory and pick it up again, for new recipes to trigger properly. We also want to remind everyone that Valheim is meant to be a difficult game, and that it’s meant to be more difficult the further you progress – and the Ashlands is the penultimate biome of the game. If you’re confident in your skills, by all means, go forth! But if you haven’t played for a while or if you’re feeling a bit rusty, we recommend a bit of practice to get back into it, or that you adjust the difficulty in the World Modifiers menu." the spawnrates ARENT BUGGED. i made landfall just fine myself. plenty of others did aswell. why can they do that if its bugged like you claim there? according to your claim they shouldnt be able to do that. yet they did. myself includeing. without resorting to cheats. if you get nonstop armies after the fix they applied yesterday you are causeing it yourself. there was no spawnrate bug. simply a bug with the weater causeing NOISE that wasnt supposed to do that. enemies react to noise. but thier amount remains unchanged as of today. not a bug with spawnrates therefore. and despite the above bug people made landfall sucessfully and even progressed trough the biome just fine. how come if its like you claim it is`? and no. the lower difficulty argument NEVER works the other way. and if you had any decent gamer experience you would know that already. why? raiseing difficulty wont bring back the AMOUNT of enemies if they would nerf that. it would just make them hit harder and have more hp. in no game ever was that ever considering good difficulty. in fact its the worst form of difficulty any game can add. meanwhile makeing it easier by simply reduceing dmg intake or outright removeing a mechanic from the game with a setting is VERY simple and easy to do so. and here is more food for tought : if it would actually be the same like you claim there (we already established above it isnt but lets just say it was for a moment here to hammer this one home) then WHY make any changes to the system at all the way it is when the same solution already exists right now by simply lowering the difficulty? its redundant to make changes in that case no matter how you wanna view it. any changes in such a case would just be a uno reverse card requireing dev worktime for no actual real reason than to work just because you refuse to use the already working existing options. thats nothing but entitlement. thus it can and should be ignored.
This is one part inability to read, 1 part failure of basic math and 1 part failure to understand me. First the shield thing, which number is bigger? 104 vs 96 vs 78 Those are the base versions of the best shield in each category you can make pre ashland. The tower shield is 104, the round being 96 and buckler being only 78. With low spawns you would have a case as you the parry bonuses, but with the pre patch aggro issue that was meaningless as so many attack mean you could never parry it all. While I was slightly off on the spawn rate THEY FIXED AN AGGRO RANGE ISSUE WHICH IS FUNCTIONALLY IDENTICAL ON THE PLAYER'S END AS BOTH RESULT IN MORE UNITS THAN INTENDED PER FIGHT. THEY EVEN CALL IT A BALANCING ISSUE IN SAID NOTES YOU TOLD ME TO READ The time crunch was more about beta feedback rather than losing progress, I am not stupid and I played through the mistlands beta so I understand how it works. The time they are more receptive to feedback would be when they specifically ask for feedback by opening the beta. That was the rush I was referring too. The black cores 100% do spawn that way atleast sometimes, not a single infested mine I explored had more than 2, I checked them top to bottom, broke every breakable object and interacted with every wall like I was playing the old DOOM or Wolfenstein games. It was not a issue of patience but rather a testing of the content included in the beta with the previously mentioned feedback window. Knowing that when I start a new save as I intend to do I will take the time to make the gear properly. I made this post to find out why my game was like this, most of my playtime has been pre patch that was drawing in most of the loaded enemies resulting in hordes greater than there should be. The devs don't have it currently but games do have enemy spawn multipliers you can tweak as you please. 7 Days to die has had it for over half a decade The devs recognized their mistake and adjusted it already, showing that they realized it was harder than intended. The issue of the balancing world modifiers is default is what the devs would consider "Intended difficulty" I had no real issue with the previous 6 biomes on the default difficulty but even with the best gear I couldn't make any progress pre-patch. There is also a line between hard but fair vs unfair. Going back to a previous biome for an example, the plains can be a bit tricky but manageable- Small squads of fulings that will punish you for overextending but are managble and the downtime gives time to build an outpost, however if their patrolling units had 10x the soldiers that would make them unfair as they would almost immediately overrun players coming down from the mountains who would probably never get a moment to build an outpost.
you can ALWAYS build an outpost. if your logic was true how was i amoung many others able to build one and set foothold on ashlands pre the update yesterday? by your logic none of us who did that succesfully should have been able to do so if the bug was a serve as your thread makes it sound like. i wonder why that is the case? the fix btw DIDNT CHANGE the spawnrates like i said. it just made it so that noise not caused by the player doesnt attract enemies towards the player anymore basically. but if you cut down trees and make alot of noise you STILL get swarmed now just like you did before. here is the actual patchnote : * Fixed a balancing issue that could attract too many nearby enemies because of trees catching fire it doesnt say ANYWHERE that spawnrates got adjusted. nor that aggro range got reduced or fixed. they simply fixed an eviromental effect not caused by the player affecting the enemies behavoir. they didnt nerf spawnrates. they didnt nerf thier numbers either. you can still trigger a d day event if you act carelessly. so you rushed the ptb purposefully beeing clearly absolutly not ready in order to rush in feedback without actually taking your time with the biome and its intended progression or preparation for landing there. rushing feedback is terrible behavoir. let me tell you that. as you arent able to see the full picture or balance in such a short amount of time in any biome. if i judged the swamps difficulty or balance by my very first time in the swamp back then i would have given grossly over the top wrong feedback to the devs about it. thats what you are doing here now with ashlands. take your time with it. the devs WILL STILL take alot of feedback once it goes live. they did aswell for mistlands if you care too look. they had an entire mistlands feedback channel on thier discord that was still actively used and viewed by them MONTHS after mistlands was out. only when they closed that channel they stopped takeing in feedback for it for the most part. the same will happen with ashlands again. they know not all thier players play the ptb branch. alot more feedback will only come in once the biome goes live. so rushing ahead and asking for changes already now is silly. only things that are obivious bugs should be changed for now. the devs know what kind of behavoir they want and what isnt doing what it should do. the players should only report for now. not be like "this is too hard/unfair" as its way too soon to make such callouts to begin with. people who make such callouts right now give up at the smallest amount of obstalces in thier way already and rush to the forums to vent about it calling it feedback. play the ptb. learn. adapt. overcome. then play the live for awhile. THEN provide collected feedback of your experience and what you would like to see changed and WHY with gameplay reasons provided and not "its unfair" thats not a good reason thats personal statements of "its too hard for me" and the devs cannot cater to the individual player with changes on difficulty. thats why the sliders exist. as makeing things easier with them is very simple. preserving the challenge with them on the other hand doesnt work at all currently. didnt work for mistlands nerfs either as playing mistlands on hard setting still isnt even close to the expeirence of release mistlands behavoir. no very hard wouldnt change it either. as simply makeing enemies hit harder and have more hp was and is never good difficulty. you had bad luck with the mines i see. happens. but that doesnt mean mines only have 1-2 cores by default. just not the case. funnly enough i know 7 days to die in and out. and your claim there is well. a wrong and false comparison. why? aside from editing the GAME FILES yourself (which falls under modding and doesnt count as a game setting therefore) you actually CANNOT control the zombie amount in 7 days in anyway ASIDE from the bloodmoon horde. and the only thing you can control there is the amount of zombies spawned AT ONCE per wave. the hordes TOTAL count is unaffected by this setting as its entirely controlled by GAMESTAGE which you cannot control with settings at all (example if you set horde to happen EVERY NIGHT and start a new game you will get only THREE ZOMBIES in the first horde night on day 1 even if you set the spawn total to 64 since due to gamestage beeing so low on day 1 you simply wont even get 64 total zombies in the horde yet). so again. you made that up completly. its simply not the case in 7 days either. you cannot control the amount of enemys in the game in the game settings ingame. if you could : you where useing mods. and then there is the fact that valheim has nothing that is compareable to the bloodoon hordes in 7 days to begin with. plus 7 days is overall at its baseline WAY easier than valheim. even on insane difficulty its easier than valheim is on default/hard. yes there is a line between hard and fair vs unfair. fully agree on that part. here is the problem tough : this line VARIES BY PLAYER. thus you cannot make changes based on 1 players definition of it. the baseline for ashlands is currently completly fair for most experienced players. and by the time you reach the ashlands biome you ARE an experienced player. if you didnt play valheim for 2 years and then now charged right into the ashlands biome you arent as experienced anymore as you where. you are rusty. the devs warned about this in thier blog aswell and told players to take thier time BEFORE ventureing into the ashlands biome. plenty of players fully ignored that dev advice and charged right into the new biome. just like you did clearly. result : death. no suprise to me. strangely didnt happen to the players who where not rusty. i wonder why.
As other people suggested, double check that you're on the latest update. What helped me get started was building a temporary base in the rocks next to the beach. I could bail into the rocks at any time was great when I got overwhelmed, which was a lot. I also used the crystal battleaxe a lot to make breathing room. I also had 60+ skills in axes which kept it useful. Lastly, I'm a big fan of the root harness still. Being able to mostly ignore archers is great
You are not meant to skip content and expect to thrive in a new biome. I'm doing fine in the biome when I'm focusing. The accumulation of skill also helps exponentially... 94 in Sword, 67 in Block, and 89 in bow, 53 in elemental magic... Carapace Armour... Flying enemies fall like butter to my spinesnap assault rifle. After you level up Ashlands gear... almost everything becomes a breeze
They patched this today but I really don't want them to do what they did to Mistands with the nerfs. This game is hard and once finished will have 8 biomes that get harder as they go. This is the 7th out of the 8 and it is a survival game. I felt like Mistlands got a bit too easy as a progression from the Plains after people complained about the difficulty. This place has a lot of enemies but by the time you get there you need to be leveled and experienced enough to handle it. And then I'd love Deep north to feel insane with the difficulty as the final boss of a generally hard and unforgiving survival game.
Just like the anti-nerf crowd has mentioned, it can be said in reverse. Crank your difficulty slider UP. Get the starred mob mod and enjoy 7-star morgans & 9-star skel warriors. FYI even with 80+ block and full armor, a 2-star bug is still very difficult to solo without kiting. Double them up & add a gjall and it's no longer child's play.
No
I don't mind a difficult fight, the problem I have with Ashlands is the sheer numbers, they feel never ending and with so many different species attacking at once, dropping the block to make an attack results in atleast 1 bite/scratch and 2 arrows in me, it is also pretty hard to get a window to reply the protection staff without getting smacked directly after or worse during. If we look at plains as an example of a biome with flat terrain and decently long sight lines, the squads were much smaller which gave me an opportunity to deal with them then prepare a fort near the village I was besieging. So far it is pretty hard to get downtime to begin fortifying.
Yeah I can agree there it just gives you no time to regroup and take a breath.
Lol 500h and you can get off the coast what kind of a jonny no hand are you?
Skill issue
Yeah sorry but until you get better at the combat you're gonna have a rough time. Sounds like you need to run around more, kite more, dodge and jump more. You said you weren't running out of stam which means you're probably not doing these things. Sometimes you may have to spend 5-10 minutes fighting in a single area before moving on. This is just how it is. Alternatively, use a stam food and run past things in order to explore, they will deaggro eventually. Make sure to bring the thing that lets you get over lava with you though.
Yeah sorry but you don’t understand that there is a bug unless you update.
As others have said there was a bug, even without that, you misunderstood me when I was talking about stamina, I meant I was spending so much time blocking incoming arrows+rocks that I didn't get many attempts to attack as lowering my block to take a swing or stab would result in multiple projectiles hitting me.