Inside the Game: Becoming a Warrior

Well, good morning. I hope everyone’s doing well! Last time we looked crafting and building in Valheim. Today, we’ll look at an element of survival games considered a key feature – combat & boss battles.

The combat, to start, looks deceptively basic. You attack, block, or dodge. However, everything you do is tied to a stamina system. Your stamina is displayed as a green bar near your health on the screen. Each action uses stamina and how much you have is influenced by your food and its quality. Keep this in mind, as it can be crucial, especially when facing down trolls, where running out of stamina might leave you dead!

Your food and its quality impact your stamina and health. Different foods offer different benefits, with most leaning heavily to boosting one over the other. For example, the raspberry boosts health by 7 but stamina by 20, while mushrooms provide 15 to both. Grilled neck, an early staple, provides 25 to health and 8 to stamina and cooked deer meat, the best the Meadows offers, provides 35 to health and 12 to stamina. These benefits stack, allowing you to eat up to 3 meals. It’s wise to stay fed with the best possible foods for what you’re doing.

As you fight, you’ll begin to learn the attack patterns of different mobs. All of them telegraph their big attacks. The simple greyling will pause before raising their arm to swing at you. The boar and neck will run at you. Once you recognize their moves, you can time your dodges and counterattacks accordingly.

And, a quick side note, all of the early mobs appear to be quite fearful of fire. So, a firepit or torch will deter them, should you not wish to engage at the moment.

Advancing into the world, mobs become stronger with more attacks. Greydwarf shamans in the Black Forest have poison attacks, as do blobs and leeches in the Swamps. Surtlings, located in the Swamps, do fire damage. Drakes in the Mountains do ice damage. Deathsquitos are the bane of the Plains, being fast and doing massive pierce damage.

The mobs aren’t the only ones that can do unique damages however. The weapons you’ll craft provide different damage types as well. From the blunt damage of the club to the piercing damage of arrows and the slash damage of the axe, you’ll have a variety to choose from. The fun begins when you realize that certain mobs are less resistant to certain damage types. Skeletons in the Black Forest and Swamps are weak against blunt damage but resistant to piece damage, while trolls in the Black Forest are resistant to blunt damage and weak against pierce damage. It benefits you early on to pay attention when attacking a new mob to see what works and what doesn’t.

Later, you’ll be able to craft other weapons such as spears, one-handed swords, two-handed swords, hammers, and great axes. You’ll also be able to craft better arrows, some with their own damage types ranging from fire to poison or frost.

Don’t neglect your armor, for different armors also have different benefits and protections. Some, such as the Troll set, improve your ability to sneak, while the Fenris set improves your resistance to fire and the wolf armor provides protections against frost, important in the freezing Mountains. All will provide basic protections against attacks, though the heavier the armor, the slower you will be. The same holds true with shields – a round shield may provide less blocking but faster movement than a tower shield.

As you master each biome and the creatures within it, it’s time to face your greatest foe – the boss. Each is unique with a lot more morale and special attacks to learn. But you won’t simply find these leviathans wandering the world. Instead, you’ll have to hunt down their altars and summon them.

The location of the first boss, Eikthyr, is given to you by the game. You’ll likely find two of his Forsaken altars within the Meadows. Reading his altar will tell you to ‘Hunt his Kin’. If you’re new to the game, as I was, this may be confusing. But if you look at the Sacrificial Stones where you began your journey, you’ll see that the first stone bears the drawing of a deer and the inscription speaks of antlers and hooves.

Eikthyr is a great stag and his kin, of course, are the deer. You’ll likely have been killing them for the food and hides to survive. No doubt you now have several deer trophies. Bring two of them to his altar and place them. This will summon the mighty Eikthyr to you.

Be warned that he’s fast and his specials include a mighty antlers attack that can fell trees and two awe-inspiring ranged attacks that do lightning damage. If you’ve not yet learned to dodge, you will certainly do so by the time you’re finished. And if you weren’t good with the bow, you may find yourself much more proficient.

Defeating this majestic boss will take cunning, and a lot of arrows, but he is easily doable. Upon his defeat you’ll receive a trophy and hard antlers. The trophy is returned to the Sacrificial Stones, signaling to the world that you’ve completed your first task. The antlers you’ll take back to base and, with them, craft your first pickaxe.

Each boss altar afterwards you’ll need to find on your own. There will be clues in the form of runestones known as Vegvisirs. These are important to watch for as you explore. Some may only be bits of lore about the creatures in the world or funny tales from a mysterious Ulf who has come before you. Others will point you to the direction of the next boss altar. I’ll give you a hint here – the location of boss two can often be found in burial chambers or near ruined towers in the Black Forest. The rest, I’ll leave you to discover.

We’ve now looked at many aspects of survival games so far, through the lens of Valheim. Next week, we’ll look at one final piece of the puzzle – co-op play and how it enhances an already great game and genre.

Until next time, bye for now!