Valheim - Valhallall, Meadhallall, Shieldwallall

Haven't found the swamp yet, I assume that is a level up from the black forest? Certainly the plains and mountains area need much better equipment.

Bit of a love/hate relationship with this game overall, it punishes random wanderings and/or lack of preparation but despite rage quitting a few times I keep going back!

Generally Meadows -> Black Forest -> Swamp -> Mountains -> Plains.

Random wanderings are fine, as long as you stick to the level/area you have reached. While trying to push into swamp to reach the iron level, Black Forest should be mostly a safe area. Then Swamp becomes largely safe with better gear, food and potions made from swamp loot, but Mountains will still be dangerous, and so on

omni wrote:

Over in the EU, we found 4 Surtling spawners pretty much within visibility of each other in a swamp area, so cores are definitely no longer an issue

It should be noted, from the above convo about getting resources back - make sure what you're about to destroy is fully repaired (repairing is free anyway), we think there's a chance you dont get all materials back if the item is damaged in any way. For a while we thought that you didn't get both cores back from a portal destruction, but ever since, we have got both cores back - so we assume that the first time we did it, the portal was damaged.

Portals we've found even newly placed are prone to not give both cores back. So you need to bring extra or be very careful where you place one

Died the other night and there was no grave marker when I returned to my corpse, apparently I'm not the only one to suffer this. Oh well, maybe 60-80 bronze worth of stuff lost could have been worse I guess. Strip mined a hill and gathered up 100 copper ore, so I'll be back to where I was pretty quickly.

On a separate note, I found a draugr village in the meadows on an island. It's pretty nice, a large hall, several out buildings, a fence, watch towers, etc. the island is crawling with pigs so I could make it a hog farm with minimal effort. I'm thinking I want to take it over, repair stuff and make it a base of operations or perhaps my main home. Question - do the draugr respawn there or once killed off they will be gone for good.

ranalin wrote:

Portals we've found even newly placed are prone to not give both cores back. So you need to bring extra or be very careful where you place one

Odd. I'll do more testing now that we have essentially infinite cores - but I've built, broken and relocated numerous portals now, and always got 2 back... apart from that first, damaged one.

Are there any servers where people are starting out early like Black Forest area still? I would prefer a lower level server than join one and get equipped with stuff well above where I am in the game after just beating the first boss. Very cool game and I am ready to join my companions in chopping wood and heads!

whispa wrote:

Are there any servers where people are starting out early like Black Forest area still? I would prefer a lower level server than join one and get equipped with stuff well above where I am in the game after just beating the first boss. Very cool game and I am ready to join my companions in chopping wood and heads!

Any server can handle that for you. When you're on a server there's nothing forcing you to be given or advanced farther along than you want.

In fact we're all in a position to set up portals to pristine meadows/black forests then remove them once you're over and let you fend for yourself if you want.

omni wrote:
ranalin wrote:

Portals we've found even newly placed are prone to not give both cores back. So you need to bring extra or be very careful where you place one

Odd. I'll do more testing now that we have essentially infinite cores - but I've built, broken and relocated numerous portals now, and always got 2 back... apart from that first, damaged one.

Yea Kazar and I almost got stranded because of that and had to go farming for pieces on different islands. It's happened multiple times, but we were caught off guard the first time it happened.

ranalin wrote:
whispa wrote:

Are there any servers where people are starting out early like Black Forest area still? I would prefer a lower level server than join one and get equipped with stuff well above where I am in the game after just beating the first boss. Very cool game and I am ready to join my companions in chopping wood and heads!

Any server can handle that for you. When you're on a server there's nothing forcing you to be given or advanced farther along than you want.

In fact we're all in a position to set up portals to pristine meadows/black forests then remove them once you're over and let you fend for yourself if you want.

Cool, thanks! Was thinking it would be like giving a toddler a great hammer and sending them off to fight a dragon heh

Clumber wrote:

Question - do the draugr respawn there or once killed off they will be gone for good.

They'll be gone for good! Make sure you get all the spawners.

We call our home New Draugrsville. Its a ruined village like you describe. Clearing it was a great challenge at the time, lots of fun, felt very Viking. We've repaired some of the buildings, torn others down, built a wall and new tower, and made a great hall and apiary. We've lived there for over 100 days now.

whispa wrote:
ranalin wrote:
whispa wrote:

Are there any servers where people are starting out early like Black Forest area still? I would prefer a lower level server than join one and get equipped with stuff well above where I am in the game after just beating the first boss. Very cool game and I am ready to join my companions in chopping wood and heads!

Any server can handle that for you. When you're on a server there's nothing forcing you to be given or advanced farther along than you want.

In fact we're all in a position to set up portals to pristine meadows/black forests then remove them once you're over and let you fend for yourself if you want.

Cool, thanks! Was thinking it would be like giving a toddler a great hammer and sending them off to fight a dragon heh

Yeah, on server 1 we keep batting around the idea of finding a new "starter island", setting up a portal to it and telling new players who want the "no spoilers" experience to just jump in there. We have free stuff in our community center, but you have to actively take it.

Tip for the swamp: You can build on top of sunken crypts. I like putting a portal and a chest up there. The chest gives me somewhere to store the ore until the place is picked clean and I'm ready to run it to my boat. The portal makes repairs and gathering the rest of the treasures easy.

Can you carry a fully loaded chest? Or do you ferry stuff from one location to another on your back?

Robear wrote:

Can you carry a fully loaded chest? Or do you ferry stuff from one location to another on your back?

Cart is a great option for hauling a lot of heavy ores.

The only issue I can see with a secondary 'starter island' is that the enemy raids seem to be linked to the bosses that have been killed on the server, rather than the level of the player in the near vicinity? Could be wrong... But wouldn't it still be the case that new players get higher level raids, regardless of where they are?

omni wrote:

The only issue I can see with a secondary 'starter island' is that the enemy raids seem to be linked to the bosses that have been killed on the server, rather than the level of the player in the near vicinity? Could be wrong... But wouldn't it still be the case that new players get higher level raids, regardless of where they are?

Also I have noticed that ever since I killed the second boss, greydwarf brutes and shamans have been appearing in the meadows around my base without any events. That had never happened in the over 100 days beforehand. It's nowhere near any Black Forests.

Yep, they ramp up.

There is still a lot of copper in the starter areas on server 2
.

I found an embarrassment of riches (copper), when hopping on my longship, and headed to the Swamps in Server 2.

Robear wrote:

Can you carry a fully loaded chest? Or do you ferry stuff from one location to another on your back?

You can't. I fill it with ore from the sunken crypt (and the crypts surrounding it if there are more), then either run it to my boat one load at a time (portal back through the network) or use a cart if it's more than a couple trips. Megingjord really helps a lot if I'm going without the cart. I can carry ~40 iron ore at a time plus basic gear/food.

A little thing that Scrap Mechanic did that the rest of these games don't is letting you pick up a chest that's full. You can't do anything else with your hands while you're carrying it and you walk slower. The only action you can take is to place the chest somewhere. It's a brilliant little thing that makes inventory management nicer.

My answer to the inevitable "What bout 6 vikings on a raft with full chests hauling more than a longboat?!" is "So what? Have fun on your slow-ass raft and hope you dont run into anything bad out there on the sea!"

Hey Zeb, our boars didn't make it. When I logged in again they were gone or dead. Maybe because there's a ton of (invisible) people on server 2 now and they starved to death or were killed? Maybe I should've left them more mushrooms?

*Sigh* At least I didn't give them names.

If I understand what you mean by invisible people, they weren't there. They were a bug; the game wasn't decrementing the counter correctly when folks logged out, so the server looked very busy when it wasn't. It was fixed late last night.

Sorry about the boars. If they were in some kind of enclosure, people probably wouldn't kill them, so it could be a bug.

I do note that the skeletons that have started cropping up around my base are prone to hunting boar and deer.

My boars have stayed alive and they are right in front of the citadel in the same enclosure I started with. Skeletons do attempt to attack them, but the fences seem to keep them pretty well protected. That and the skellys don't care for dwarves and will attack them on sight, especially so since they are a much easier target.

ranalin wrote:
omni wrote:
ranalin wrote:

Portals we've found even newly placed are prone to not give both cores back. So you need to bring extra or be very careful where you place one

Odd. I'll do more testing now that we have essentially infinite cores - but I've built, broken and relocated numerous portals now, and always got 2 back... apart from that first, damaged one.

Yea Kazar and I almost got stranded because of that and had to go farming for pieces on different islands. It's happened multiple times, but we were caught off guard the first time it happened.

So according to the other guys on the server, if you destroy a portal (or anything) built by someone other than yourself, you only get one of each resource back. If you destroy your own, you should get it all. I didn't get a chance to test that exclusively, but that's what they have observed.

Wonder if that's a bug, or a design choice?

omni wrote:

So according to the other guys on the server, if you destroy a portal (or anything) built by someone other than yourself, you only get one of each resource back. If you destroy your own, you should get it all. I didn't get a chance to test that exclusively, but that's what they have observed.

The time Ranalin and I got stranded, Ranalin did create the portal and I destroyed it. But I am pretty certain following that it happened to me on solo adventures where I placed and removed the portal. I now travel with the resources to make three portals, just in case.

kazar wrote:
omni wrote:

So according to the other guys on the server, if you destroy a portal (or anything) built by someone other than yourself, you only get one of each resource back. If you destroy your own, you should get it all. I didn't get a chance to test that exclusively, but that's what they have observed.

The time Ranalin and I got stranded, Ranalin did create the portal and I destroyed it. But I am pretty certain following that it happened to me on solo adventures where I placed and removed the portal. I now travel with the resources to make three portals, just in case.

Also this was just the one core was missing. We got back all the eyes and fine wood.

ATTENTION ALL:

Due to multiple incidents of possible suspicious activity on the Valheim servers, we're changing the passwords to the server sometime on Saturday 27.

Until we can get whitelisting for the servers set up, we'll be asking folks to message myself (Amoebic#0951), ranalin#2258 and kazar#6688 on the gwj discord (fastest) or here (slower) first, or any of the other moderators for the password IF you are an established and identifiable GWJ member in good standing. If you are new and not recognizable from the GWJ community or site, you will need to wait to chat with myself or a mod before getting on the whitelist. I'll be putting an update in the Valheim text channels and forum thread noting this temporary precaution.

If a moderator is not able to get back to you with the info right away, they'll push it to me and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Sorry for the inconvenience. A lot of folks have put a lot of time and effort into these spaces, and we'd like to do what we can to protect that! Thanks in advance for your understanding.

Suspicious activity still includes things like strangers no one recognizes running into people's towns and houses and immediately logging out, large numbers of bosses spawned in the newbie starting areas. If there's a perfectly innocent and goofy reason for any of this that you may be involved in as a regular user, please speak up so we won't have to worry! No shame, sometimes we all get twitchy with the mouse clicks and it becomes a series of unfortunate events. Unrecognizable names could just be alt accounts. We've all been there, but we want to make sure we're protecting all the time and effort you've put into those servers.

Edit: For tracking reasons, please do not give out the password if you are not a moderator so our team can keep tabs. If you have done so already please let me know so I know who you told. Thank you!

Servers are now closed

Passwords updated to the new one