Survival Games – Page 3 – Ms. Bella's World

4–7 minutes

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!

3–5 minutes

Last week we looked at exploration and why it’s a vital component of survival games. Today we’ll look at crafting and building and why these are important.

Crafting and building are core features of survival games, as well as the ability to gather and manage materials used for both. Valheim has well-balanced systems in place for players who enjoy some, or all, of these activities.

In order to start crafting the first bench or tool, the player has to gather the materials necessary. Valheim has made this initial gathering simple, easing the player into the world and helping them to get ready faster. Various small stones and sticks are scattered across the ground, ready to be picked up. Mushrooms and raspberries can also be found and eaten to improve health and stamina.

Once players have collected the basic resources they can carry without tools, they can find a spot to set up a small base. They start by building a workbench. With that, they can use the wood and stone to start making their own tools and weapons. An axe for chopping down beech trees, a club to deal with those pesky greylings, neck, and boar.

From the greylings players will get resin useful for making torches for their base. From the trees, they’ll gather wood, and occasionally resin and feathers. And from the boar, meat and hide scraps. Now the player can create armor, a bow and arrows, and cook meat for a better food source.

As the player progresses further into the game, they’ll find themselves unlocking more crafting, allowing them to gather unique materials in each biome. Killing the first boss gives them antlers that can be used to craft their first pickaxe. Find tin and copper in the black forest and bring it back to base to smelt into ingots, and then into bronze. Craft a better axe to gather fine wood and core wood. Craft better armor to survive further.

By now, you get the idea. Crafting advances gathering which, in turn, advances crafting. It’s a balancing act, one which Valheim does fairly well. Resources, aside from those at the beginning, are initially challenging to acquire, yet not so rare as to bottleneck the progression of the game. This gives players the satisfaction of collecting them and discovering what they can make with them.

As an extension of crafting, the player will grow and cook a variety of foods. They’ll want to keep fed at all times as it increases their health and stamina. Higher-quality food boosts the player’s health and stamina even more.

Hunting boar, deer, and neck, and fishing provides the meat early on. Gathering mushrooms and raspberries also provide food, as does shooting down beehives and gathering their honey. Venturing into the black forest, the player may find carrot seeds, the first of several seed crops they can plant and grow for a continued stream of vegetables to roast or cook into soups. And, like all materials, the foods vary by biome. This makes even the chore of cooking interesting and rewarding.

On top of crafting is Valheim’s building system. Similar to crafting, the building system evolves as players discover new materials. But more than that, Valheim allows for building anywhere in the world. This grants the player unlimited opportunities to choose the location of their base. They could have one huge, sprawling base in the middle of the meadow. Or, if they choose, they could have a chain of small bases in different zones to take advantage of that biome’s resources.

Building itself is very generous, allowing for a variety of structures to be built. Build a basic house, a fortress, a treehouse far up in the trees, a castle in the mountains. The only limits to building are the player’s imagination and a few physics rules thrown in.

Walls need to be anchored to the ground in some way. Interestingly, building a treehouse still counts as being anchored to the ground in Valheim. As the materials grow heavier, the player must plan their layout carefully. A large stone castle will need a lot more supports than a wood house of similar size. It allows for the freedom of building while also feeling grounded in some level of reality.

There’s much more that I could go over in crafting, but these are the general highlights. Did I miss anything vital? Let everyone know in the comments.

Next time we’ll talk about combat, mobs, and the boss fights that make Valheim challenging and exciting.

Until next time, bye for now!