Black Forest Outskirts

Yesterday I played an excessive amount of Valheim. I am still not entirely certain what it is about this game that ticks the right boxes for me, but suffice to say it does. After yesterdays post I did a bit of research and I now understand how one summons the bosses in this game. Essentially in each new area you are going to find an altar that allows you to sacrifice items to it. I didn’t fully grok how exactly this worked or what the game was trying to tell me. However near each altar will be a runestone that gives you a clue as to where to find the items needed for sacrificing. So for example the first boss in Valheim is a giant lightning deer and the clue that is given is “Hunt His Kin”.

Turns out the Deer Trophies that I had been collecting from sneaking up and “murderating” them with a knife… is the key to summoning the boss. I needed two of these and this summoned the angry stag god Eikthyr. Now the guides that I had read talked about needing a specific level of bow with specific arrows, but I opted for a more Belghast solution. I fought it with a Flint Axe and a Shield and this allowed me to block pretty much all of the incoming damage and time my attacks between blocks. It seemed way easier than I was expecting. Over lunch break yesterday I finished the first boss and moved on to the Black Forest.

This has also led me to build a brand new Chateau in a big open field near the entrance to the Black Forest. This became a necessity given that it was over a days walk between my original home and where my new hunting grounds would be for the next segment of the game. I opted for a completely different design this time, but so far my fortifications have not been needed. For whatever reason none of the hostile monsters seem to be screwing with my domicile this time. I do think I am going to make a jaunt over to the original home base and collect my bee hives because I have not had much luck in finding replacement Queen Bees to build new ones.

Truth is my second time around I made a much better home, minus the bit of floor missing… which worked out fine in the end because that is where I have my camp fires set up. I find it annoying that I now have to manage two fires given that I need one for the meat rack and the other for the cauldron. I however have so much more “room for activities” with this design as opposed to the more longhouse thing I had going on previously. Now I am very much in the mode of collect raw metal and create charcoal… which is why I left the meat on too long as an extra easy source of it. I can craft bronze which opens up a whole new world of gear that I can equip.

The one word of warning that I have is the Black Forest is a whole new world of challenge, and all of those things that you fought regularly in the lowlands seem to have a version that is much much harder to kill and attacks in packs. Gone are the Greylings that haphazardly roam into you and may or may not attack… and replaced are Grey Dwarves that attack in packs of five or six and have specialization with casters. The dungeons have been specifically challenging filled with Skeletons so I am getting much use out of my tier 3 gear and more specifically my shield.

The king of the “programmer art” creatures in this game though has to be the Troll, which looks like a giant doofy blob of humanoid playdough. They are however extremely challenging and while I have killed a few… they have taken me down to almost dead each time. Blocking helps quite a bit… but also does knocking them down which I am not entirely certain if it happens because I hit them in the junk or in the leg. When I am swinging my axe it sort of hits both at the same time. However while knocked down they seem to take considerably more damage which allows you to sorta power through with the kill.

I’ve found the altar for the next boss, and I am guessing that since I have killed a Troll I am likely ready to actually take it on. On the other hand I kinda want to finish crafting and upgrading my gear at this step in the game before moving to the next. Having a lot of fun with this game.