Valheim & Adventure ("Not-A-Review" 2022)
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- Valheim's a smaller crafting survival game aiming to pull off what the big guys have been failing to do: giving us real adventures.
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Music used is from the Valheim soundtrack.
#privatesessions #analysis #review
Nothing has felt better than creeping my boat slowly through a bending river as fog blankets the land far from home and loaded with loot. This is where Valheim is best.
Sailing home with my first hold full of Iron when a sudden thunderstorm blew in. Huge waves, can barely see past my prow. And then, the lightning illuminates the dreaded silhouette of the baleful Serpent breaching a wave 10 yards to starboard.
One of the most memorable gaming moments I've had in almost a decade.
One comment about the ores: veins are much larger than you think. 75% of the vein volume is underground. When you dig the upper layer, you uncover the ground surface that may indicate that there is nothing left... Until you dig a few feed deeper and find much, much larger vein.
There are also much more scrap iron in the crypts, hidden away in the blocked corridors you have to dig your way into.
A happy average of most crypts is ~60 bars of iron per crypt. Sometimes you can't even break 20 ingots, and some other times you can get loaded with more than 120. Issue is, not all swamps have enough crypts in them, and you need a ludicrous amount of iron to get equipment made and upgraded. Not to mention if you're playing multiplayer with some friends and they decide to make lvl 4 iron armor with the little iron available, only to then discover they need iron again for equipment in the plains(probably as a punishing feature for people who like to overprepare for bosses, as bonemass can easily be killed with just an upgraded iron shield and mace + troll/root armor).
@@vartosu11 Tbf the biggest problem with iron is just the swamp itself. Even when you are already past the point where anything there would be a threat, being constantly wet, the weight of scrap iron and the inability to use carts effectively make any trip to the swamps the most dreadful experience possible. At the very least there should be something in the plains to easily allow players to transport resources through portals. It's not surprising that plenty of people complain about how their runs tend to die out around the plains.
I bought this game but never actually played it, I guess I got my fill of such games from Terraria.
I suppose I'll play it someday... I guess.
*There's too many games hel-*
Ah, Valheim. I tried free demo for a couple of hours few months back and decided I want to sink into it when it's ready. Didn't know it was made by 5 people. Outstanding.
I'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts on Outward. It's the game that was what I wanted Skyrim to be, from an exploration and adventure perspective, and based on your videos I think you might get something out of it. It's pretty much the definition of "not for everyone", though - about two-thirds of the negative reviews are about design choices that I personally like - so maybe Skyrim has the right of it, given its popularity.
This is a game I've had to pry myself away from for similar reasons to Minecraft. I normally avoid early access open world survival crafting games like the plauge, but valheim seems to have taken all the lessons from previous attempts at the format and just done a really competent job. In fact, I'd say that it feels like the spiritual successor to the early builds of Minecraft, in that it scratches the same survival crafting itch in a way that modern MC doesn't.
Minecraft is not a survival crafting game, it is a sandbox game with survival elements. I think this misunderstanding is what leads many people to move away from it without finding the actual enjoyment of the game.
6:34 Sixteen times the detail!
I never had an issue with the portals, and I not once had to commute despite playing this thing for about 50 hours with friends. The portal thing would force us to build new bases in each new biome, and by the end of the game we had a sprawling network of bases, shacks, armouries, forts, etc. Now that I think about it, I really like the portal restriction.
This game is simply amazing i was never the fan of Games like Minecraft etc because i was missing a purpuse but with Valheim just simply Sailing my boat in too the sunset of Building my 5th Base on top of a Mountain is the best relaxiation time i need
Technically the purpose of Minecraft was to beat the Ender Dragon and/or Wither... At the same time I have to ask, did you play Terraria? I never did, but as far as I know, you have a very long list of bosses which you can go through.
Humans will always find a way to make a commute, and in turn, a rush hour.
Valheim is a really good experience, even in it's current state. While transporting minerals is a big chore, I personally like it because some of the best moments in this game appear when you are trying to move tons of material half-across the world on a boat. The game is clearly made with multiplayer in mind, so just being able to pop portals to transport stuff would trivialize half of the actual game.
Having multiple bases seems to be the intent design, given how farming works, but at least in my experience it just creates these several leftover bases no one uses and one central hub.
What I think could actually solve this is just adding an improved portal with something like black metal, or a boss power, or wearable item, that allows you to bypass that restriction around the plains tier. Once you reach the plains and start farming and processing the resources there most of the game gets a bit trivialized, so turning it into a point where you can start to just gather resources and teleport helps with reducing the grind/chore-ish aspects of the game. Specifically it would help with the Swamps because farming iron never stops not being complete ass.
I love Valheim. I like to call it a Yak shaving simulator.
Having to go on a viking, a sailing raid, to get metal instead of loading screen simulator always using portals, is one of the best parts of the game imo. It's a shame that you don't like it so much. You only really need to make 1 base and sail to a new biome and back once per boss.
The music in this game is great, played the game when it came out a year ago with friends for 120hrs. good times
I played the game first 4 years ago. It was on ich.io in Alpha and there where only one boss (Elder) but the core mechanic was there already and i was hooked and waited for more.
Love seeing people ask for a new portal that lets you teleport materials, cause the devs listened
Recent update added that portal, though it's very end-game.
i play the test version of valheim and the game mode adjustments that it has? that i think are going to be patched in will solve like 90% of your issues. i play with 2 others and it sounds like you have had just the worst luck with the swamp biomes. but with the game mode adjustments you can up the amount of resources drop though we never needed to up that ever in our play through. we have hit a road block at the mist biome tho, its not that fun.
I dont understand why people hate the thing that u cant bring ore truth portals i play valheim for the adventure and atmosphere and sailing back and forth is really nice
Picked this up last year, and though I didn't get hooked, the general atmosphere and Norse setting pulled me in. I agree that it's surprisingly stable and polished for an EA title. Looking forward to getting back into it.
This shirt video format would be great for Palworld
Best line that encapsulates the only problem I have with the game. Thank you!... "Traveling is fun. Commuting is not" Perfect!
Some great memories playing this game with my friends first and then little brothers after. Thanks for the great content as always!
Valheim is a fascinating game to me, because it has three parts, which mold perfectly onto the framework of Good, Bad and Ugly.
The Good part of Valheim is the Meadows, the Dark Forest, and the Swamp. There is a general progression in evilness and corruption - from an eerie grassland with occasional trees, you travel into an oppressive forest, and finally into a damp, dingy swamp. The bosses also progress and degrade - the Meadows boss is a powerful elk monster, then the dark forest creature is an evil Ent, and finally the Bonemass is just a clump of swamp muck and rotten skeletons come to terrible life.
The Bad part of Valheim are the Mountains and the Plains. This is where the game's theme begins to disintegrate. The enemies cease to make sense, there are no more functional dungeons, and the vibes are completely thrown off. The Plains just accentuate this with weird goblin things that are somehow 10x more dangerous than literal flame demons.
The Ugly part of Valheim are the Mistlands. This is where the game betrays itself. The player is granted the ability to effortlessly use magic, throw fireballs and other nonsense. There are friendly NPCs. The Mistlands are whimsical and lofty, so very far from how oppressive the Swamp and Dark Forest were.
Its supposed to be different. Every biome cant be just a darker, muggier forest. I think the mistlands look really cool. Kinda gives me telvanni vibes. I like that every biome has a unique feel and challenge.
@@dickyboi4956 The aesthetics of the mistlands are great, but I just didn't find them thematically appropriate. Would've loved if they were idk spider themed maybe, with giant cobwebs spun between spindly trees, the threads melding into an everpresent fog.
As for the mountains, I'm not saying they shouldn't exist - I'm saying that their thematic style is incomprehensible. What are the mountains _about?_ Maybe Dragons, but then there are cliff racers and wolves and weird rock golems. Maybe werewolves, but then there are cliff racers and rock golems and the boss is a dragon. Not to mention that the progression from copper -> bronze -> iron has roots in history, but then silver is suddenly better than actual iron? Do you know how easy it is to bend silver? A knife made of iron can be used to peel a silver one.
For the mountains, they should've gone all in with their inhospitable nature. Make the mountains essentially impassable save for with frost protection mead or advanced armor, and place its main content *beneath* - ancient dwarven fortresses carved into the rock, haunted by swartalfr specters, strange machinery come to life and other ghostly horrors. The mountain metal should be a mithril-like substance harvested from their deepest, darkest vaults in the form of coins and other treasure, which we can melt down into bars and then forge into equipment. These ancient tunnels should be labyrinthine, filled with traps and treasure. Rotten halls, crumbling smelteries, ancient armories, fetid mead halls, etc.
The boss of the Mountains is the corpse of an ancient dwarven king, which is animated by the collective hatred of his former people towards us, an outsider, a thief and a plunderer.
I played this a few months ago when I saw it on gamepass for the Xbox. I had seen Neebsgaming play it and gave it a run. I had some fun as well as broke a controller(if you have played you understand) and I enjoyed it except for a few personal issues. The building interface is the worse I’ve ever used but it’s a small company so not to big a deal. After dominating the swamp I just got bored. I had soooo many bases stocked with materials and gear. But I’ll definitely go back after the game is done.
I've been looking at Valheim for some time now, waiting for it to go on sale. It seems to solve my main gripe with Minecraft which is the severe lack of challenge and the sheer amount of grind. Surviving in Minecraft is not difficult because the combat is easy and food is plentiful (obscenely so, if redstone is involved). Now, to beat the Ender Dragon and/or Wither specifically, it doesn't take a lot of time to get to them and to beat them, but you can prep more to make the fights easier. My gripe with the grinding isn't the progression itself or the goals, it's the fact that all the necessary items can be found in a somewhat small radius around the initial spawn (considering the size of the world) and how many you need (iron specifically) to do just about anything useful. Exploring the various structures is worthless, they don't contain anything of value relative to the required amount. For being the most popular survival game out there, Minecraft seriously lacks in that aspect, it's shocking.
What about Conan: Exiles? This and Valheim look quite similar.
Not being able to take metal through portals is most annoying to me because it's not consistent, you cant take raw resources through but you can take the armor and tools you make with them. It's pretty immersion-breaking when you think about it.
I would be fine with it if only raw resources stopped you but processed metal bars stop you too and yet armor and tools don't.
I think it'd be cool if it was explained that smelting the bars allows the Ashlands boss to curse it with the flames you use being connected to it(a.k.a surtling energy) and that welding it and shaping it into tools and armour wears away at that curse. This could also mean that defeating the Ashlands boss (the second last probably) allows for that inital curse to be be completely negated and for the transferal of all items. You could even say that Moder's eggs have the same curse applied to them since they are so closely connected to the boss and even though these reasons are contrived I think it'd be better this way than not at all.
Absolutely loved the short form video. Great content as always. Also, long shot, but I'm working on a script for my first UA-cam video, about the metaphors and themes invoked by the Fallout NV DLC. I think you have the definitive video on the topic, so if you see this and want to tell me if a page from my script is terrible, I'd love that.
Send it to me on my discord or twitter, I'll take a look.
Ever played Gothic games ? 😉
Well there adding a casual mode where u don’t lose ur stuff when u die but I’m sure to balance it u would still drop stuff like metal
I'm so sick of crafting... Crafting has to be the most overrated, overused, rarely done well mechanic of the last decade. It feels like devs just use it as time sync/distraction, because they don't actually know how to make fun games anymore. Anyway really enjoying your videos, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Fantastic
The tedious aspects of the game such as the commute and the grind were (for my group) not at all an issue and actually a big upside!
The boat rides were just the four of us singing sea shanties over discord while traveling. We would distribute the tasks between us based on what we enjoy more and it worked out really well. World hopping was never needed.
Game can get super grindy however, and mods can help a lot. I don't blame you for the world hopping.
Valheim gave me a sense of adventure way better than Skyrim ever did, as long as I was open to "aimless" adventure. It is what you make it out to be, something Skyrim's "Do whatever you want, go anywhere" doesn't come close to.
Great video! The "short form" works just as well.
I'm happy to hear that my friend and I aren't the only ones singing suitable songs while playing this together 😄
I'm glad I'm not the only one who disliked the whole "you cant bring metal through portals" thing. What precisely makes the ore and ingots I have any different from the armor and weapons? I ended up building a fort, a wall, a road back to my main settlement, and then a Athenian style wall-to-the-sea boat dock at a close pair of copper deposits. Then I figured out that bronze is really fucking expensive and I got bored. Then I made a second character that I play on "Creative Mode".
@privatesessions if you havent already, you should check out state of decay 2. Its had an incredible amount of support since release a ton of new contrnt and is actually quite complex and rewarding. I would love to hear your thoughts on this title as its right up your alley as a adventure crafting survival game with unique and well fleshed out concepts like community members permadeath and branching skill trees for skills that play into the quality of the run like having a member with a background in chemistry then spec'ing to munitions to make better ordinance or pharmacology to make better meds for instance, base building that makes you think carefully about where to allocate resources even how much certain facilitys like having power and lights will draw more zombies due to noise. Its just a grwat expierience and im really shocked its not more popular
Comparing Skyrim and Valheim is meme worthy. Skyrim's a story driven RPG, Valheim is not. No further comparison needed because they are not even in the same sub genre
Your comment is meme worthy. He is comparing and contrasting the adventuring aspects of those two games. Just because they aren't exactly the same genre doesn't mean a comparison is impossible.
Games can borrow elements from different genres and tread new ground as a result. If we followed your pathetic excuse for logic and only made comparisons to games that ticked the same box beat for beat, there'd be no innovation at all.