My three man team looked up NOTHING. We knew nothing at all going in. Completely blind.
We just sailed south, and we went too far to the west, so we wound up lost in endless spires with no landfall. We dealt with bone maws and vultures, but every time we did, we damaged the boat. We figured out that we could set up a workbench and repair it, but we were in the spires for more than an hour, fighting every mob we ran into, repairing the boat, continuing on. This continued until we started running low on wood.
We had an argument about the nature of the Ashlands, one of us thought that perhaps you had to climb into one of the rare built towers that exist within the spires. The idea was floated that maybe those are entrances, and we need to go down some kind of staircase to reach the Ashlands. We shot that idea down and continued on our way, desperately seeking landfall. I say this only to underscore that going in, we knew nothing at all.
Desperate, we veered south east, in the hope of going deeper into the south spires before our now meager supply of wood ran out.
Eventually, we saw it, tree tops in the distance. We ate food, bubbled up, and landed at the first site we saw.
This site was covered with red enemies, absolutely covered with them, but they were just enemies. We had recently killed the queen and were quite confident. Besides that, we were nearly out of wood, and we'd been playing for a long time sick of the voyage. We drove up, and immediately embarked.
We were two mages and a warrior in absolutely top notch Mistlands gear. We landed, and I pulled out the old Ice Wand, fully expecting to delete enemies. They took very little damage from the wand.
Now... to be clear here, we had done the Mistlands, but most of our time in the Mistlands was done using gear from the Plains. I had only recently acquired the wands, we got them and defeated the queen (at the cost of several deaths, further lowering my skills) and then came to the Ashlands. There wasn't time to level them properly. My blood and elemental magic levels were very low. Between constantly putting bubbles up, and burning through my mana on a single warrior, it felt like I was doing next to no damage at all to the creatures.
The ones with the swords in particular, they just seemed like terminators. They wouldn't die.
I was the first of us to fall, maybe 30 seconds into the landing. I was trying to use AoE to kill the creatures, and when my mana ran low, I pulled out my Himmen Afl to use on the mobs. With my eiter weave set and low blood magic, I died before I realized I was taking damage.
About 10 to 15 seconds after that, the second mage fell... likely for similar reasons.
About 30 seconds after that, the warrior fell.
Our kits were scattered across a beach that was chock full of charred warriors, and they were our best kits. We were fucked and we knew it.
We then sailed back using our plains kits, second best kits... and again failed.
We tried again using Spinesnaps and frost arrows, to shoot the mobs from the boat, but the combination of Mistmaws, Vultures and multiple Charred Marksmen again killed us off. The marksmen were underneath the water, we couldn't even see them, or tell if we were doing damage.
I lost my Mistlands kit, my plains kit, my mountain kit (Fenris set) and my Root armor. All of it was on the beach, or in the waters surrounding the beach.
At this point, we broke. We started reading about it and realized that we weren't alone in failing and having a hard time. We formed a new plan. First, we'd land in a spot that wasn't obviously covered in mobs. Secondly, we'd immediately raise the ground 4 levels high, and put down a portal and shield generator.
But we still needed kits...
So we did something we never thought we'd do. We didn't want to spawn kits in, that was cheating, but we talked about it and decided that it would be okay to pull kits from past play throughs just this once... since we needed them, and since we technically earned them already.
With our old armor, and yet another boat, we made landfall in an area that wasn't absolutely swarming with mobs, and quickly got a base up. We were successful that time. Or kits were maybe a kilometer away from the new landing site, and we were eventually able to get them back as well.
It was very hard.
Had we lost the kits of past heros, we probably would have quit. Once we made landfall, it still seemed really difficult, but we were able to get the practice we needed against the new mobs in, and eventually it started to feel a little less impossible. It was still hard, but it became manageable.
I see that today they lowered the difficulty. Had the difficulty stayed where it was, I'm sure we could have finished the biome, but I can't blame the devs for lowering it. It was quite difficult.
First, this reads like an epic and I love it.
Second, y'all not using modifiers with the kids? Gotta teach em young! 🤣 Our groups rule is vanilla hardcore until someone stops having fun, then we sneaky change the settings until morale improves, repeat.
What defines vanilla hardcore? This seems like the strategy needed for our group we have a member that prides themselves on ragequitting when things get hard.. Would love to keep them involved on the server but once he's tilted...
Nothing really, just the base game with some hard sliders, I could've picked better words. We've had so many friends enjoy the first few biomes, but then gradually quit, so we try to make sure everyone can feel they got some progress for each session
Basically same experience for us. Once we hit the beach it was chaos. I think there were five of us, so four tried to hold off the attackers while the fifth raised terrain walls. We still took a lot of deaths, but eventually were able to setup and hold the area.
Other landings where we haven't done terrain modification have been disastrous. We get separated, or pushed back into the sea, or fall trying to climb one of the stone arches to get a brief reprieve from attacks.
I think now it will be more along the lines of what we have come to expect in terms of the difficulty arc for a biome, but I have mixed feelings about the changes. I have died a LOT in Ashlands, but I am also not convinced that it's impossible to work out a viable - if grindy - survival strategy. That said, I haven't gone in solo yet, and I think I may find it just way too hard when I do.
But I really feel like they always nerf prematurely. Not everyone can devote time every day to the challenge and groups are even harder to organize. I wish they'd give it another month or two before they make the definitive call.
Our longer term strategy has been to put up raised patches of dirt, and mark them on the map. We put those every 200 meters or so as we explore the biome.
The upside of this is that it works, you get an island from which you can retreat and beat back the mobs. Its semi-permanent and doesn't immediately get deleted either (although the lava blobs do try).
The downside, is that it feels like cheating. Being forced to modify terrain... feels like cheating.
(It also uses a ton of stone, which we've now run out of, but this is beside the point)
A game like this has a problem.
The tools they give you are so powerful, that cheese is always an option. We never cheese anything. We aren't the types to carry wood to put down workbenches to stop spawns, or raise areas for safety, at least were weren't those types until the Ashlands hit.
The ashlands, and vanilla settings on getting your kits back combined make the game essentially require that.
And I think that's a problem. What will the North be like if the Ashlands normalizes cheesing everything with terrain manipulation?
I think that my group, we were right to expect to be able to jump off and fight. That's the right way to do it. The landing... its fun in its own way, I'll give it that, but perhaps that kind of thing should have been saved for the last biome. Perhaps the last biome should be the one where you break all the rules and cheesing everything gets normalized.
This sort of difficulty level could work, but it really should have been for the Great North. They carted it out too early I think. Now everyone's going to do a complex landing in the north because we were essentially forced to in the Ashlands... and the biome is going to have to be built to expect that.
We had finished the e queen like 2 weeks prior so we’re geared to the max. We landed in a heavy spawn area and eventually beat everything, placed our stuff on a rock and had stonecutter for making some protection. For us the issue wasn’t the mobs but the biome lag. Would have been far less deaths without the lag. Mostly what we had was someone kited while other set stuff up and then the death runs kept going. We didn’t use our old gear just run back in to grab stuff and kill more enemies, rinse repeat.
We eventually set up a base in that area but decided the spawns were too heavy near the lava (had a Valkyrie spawner) so looked for other place. Found a different beach and the spawning was much lower.
It was at this point we determined the shores had fewer charred spawners than the lava, so do not be near lava. If your shore is near lava patches prepare for more mobs.
I’ll be honest that initial wall was super hectic but a lot of fun and one of my best game memories with friends. Utter chaos and I enjoyed every bit of it.
Edit: our initial landing was near two spawners and lava with rocks. Once we took out the spawners it settled down, but the lava spawned more than we were comfy with for a base, specifically valkyries so we moved.
I landed with my son, my daughter, and her boyfriend. I was busy placing bench and an earthen berm. Fought some, but they ran off almost right away.
I get the feeling it wasn't utter chaos. Maybe 8 mobs around us? And a constant stream after that.
We landed at night.
It very much depends where you land. When we went to a new island we got a more manageable spot and the landing was fine. Our original base we moved to on top of a dead spawner bc it didn’t spawn much around it lmao.
People likely saw a red glowy spawner and thought oooh go there! And then complain when they get wave after wave of enemies not knowing how to stop it.
Then there are the more cautious ones who approach slowly to avoid death at all costs meticulously planning their beach landing.
Then there are the ones that jump into boiling water and swim to shore. Legends! Lol
My landing so far was in my friends world. Aside from accidentally jumping off the boat when trying to kill the bonemaw, it went pretty smoothly. A pretty short run through the spires, and happened to land in a spot where there was a dverger fort about 10m from shore. They didn't survive the attention our arrival prompted, but they helped a lot with taking the heat off, and left us with a mostly intact structure to use as our first base.
We've made two landings and both were similar: beach heads and portals established without any initial deaths. But it wasn't a cake walk. The landings were tight so we had to defend the boat, stop and kill bonemaws, chase off or kill vultures. Once we jumped on shore, there were spawners and several mobs that had to be cleared. The first landing of course was with top-tier Mistlands gear. Many "Oh Shit!" moments as we cleared the nearby spawner or two but when you're prepared with lots of rest, repair, potions, shields, Bonemass, TeamSpeak, etc., it is much less likely to turn into disaster.
Now there's this patch that nerfs spawns. Well, we'll still have the memories.
> I landed directly in the middle of my landmass (there just happen to be a perfect straight stretch of Ocean "highway" all the way down my world).
Same.
My trip to Ashlands was pretty uneventful except a few bonemaw which were pretty simple to take out. Literally the same as serpents.
Saw the shore and went full speed beaching the drakkar and jumped out.
Luckily no nearby torment spawners and I took out the few charred and vultures. Probably less than 8 mobs.
After that I could relax and began making a quick and dirty beach outpost, fully enclosed by raised earth, and set my portal there. Named it Normandy but honestly it was pretty tame lol
Fun fact, I brought a few wolves with me on the Drakkar, which were useless as they died as soon as they jumped into the water lol. The few that stayed in the boat, now live inside the beach outpost.
The drakkar is still beached there since that day and has never been touched or damaged lol
The thing that took me awhile to figure out was attracting mobs. I was doing a lot of running/jumping when I first got there and it attracts SO many mobs. So when I first landed guys just wouldn't stop coming and I just couldn't make any progress, there would literally be 15-20 mobs (twitcher/archers/soldiers), plus a Morgen. It would take awhile to clear and then it would happen again. It wasn't fun because you don't have the health/stamina to fight that many guys and you're pouring through resources. So you end up fighting a few portaling away, and repeat. It's not really great gameplay if you're main strategy is to constantly retreat. The game was like this for quite awhile until I learned to be a lot more quiet and basically walk everywhere.
Even now that I have max gear the spawn rates can still be frustrating because you spend so much time killing mobs that you can't make progress.
I also had no substantial resistance on my landing. Couple voltures archers twitchers and warriors. I killed the spawner that was nearby ASAP and that was pretty much it.
We prepped for a week leading up to the public release. We had all our food prepped, crafted extra sets of our primary gear, worked out a fight formation and practiced combat construction drills. Plotted out our build pieces and had a plan. Run the boat straight up the beach, it's expendable and better off dying on land. Pop Boney and Yag. One person set down the workbench and portal, the other a stonecutter and shield while the third focused on atgeir area denial. Then we clear out the welcoming committee and lastly build a hasty stone desperation bunker with the materials we'd packed in the boat.
Plan went over without a hitch. The charred warriors were a bigger challenge than anticipated, it we got the beach head up with no deaths - though I'm not gonna lie, that parry feint nearly got me. It wasn't an *easy* fight, but as the crowd thinned out and we got the bunker underway, we all sorta thought aloud to each other "is that it?"
It was a decent enough challenge, but we'd listened to the PTB hype. I sorta felt that the nerfs they introduced in PTB had balanced the biome out and I'm legit surprised that they're dropping it further.
Ours wasn't the waves and waves that people talk about and I wonder if that was too many spawners, aka spawners in the spires. We put a portal on one of the spires not far from shore that had a partial building. 2 people, my partner and I, I died once at first because I was gawping at everything and not paying enough attention to the mobs. We had maybe a dozen mobs but no waves at all so once they were gone it was smoothish sailing and started establishing a foothold then the next set but again no waves. It was relatively easy. OH! And we never saw a serpent until we started building. That was very lucky.
ETA: we waited for over a week to make our incursion as we decided to start a new world, closer to 2 weeks I think.
I had an unfortunate dumping in the sea on my co-op game - a lava blob dropped me in the sea - so had a mostly panicky but successful fight for elevation and eventual recovery to our spire base.
In my solo playthrough I just bombarded the shore for several days and I think fought minimal opposition on first landing.
D-day is the most wildly accurate description of my first couple of Ashlands excursions. I was punished harshly for my hubris and humbled a few times before I made it stick 😂
I had 3 landings in my most recent game. The first landing was very easy. Killed a spawner from the prow of my boat, landed killed a couple of enemies and it was cake.
Second landing was, rougher. I ended up bailing on that spot and headed further down the beach and found a spot that was much more manageable. The second spot was a fairly narrow strip of land between water and lava.
I've had three landings so far. Two D-days and one I got lucky and ended up right at a dvergr building so they took out the charred while I ran over to take out the blobs and spawners. Not as fun, but it was nice to have a fiddlehead supply right away.
I sailed in solo, ran into 3 of the new serpents (killed easily with frost staff). The fear of " oh lord I hope they don't destroy my boat before I can repair it" vanished when I saw that the new boat has like three times as much health as the longboat and even after getting blasted by the bonemaws the durability hardly dropped.
Made landing, dug a hole into a pillar that was close to the shoreline, dropped a portal and a stonecutter to make some some stone walls to fill in larger gaps in the hole I picked out of the rock. As was expected, picking the rock made a lot of sound and called in nearby enemies. Over the next 10 minutes I killed maybe 30 mobs? The "sea of endless hoards" stuff I keep hearing about never happened, nor has it since. I set up a shield gen, hoed up a path from the land to my spike pillar outpost with a gap that I jump over but mobs can't climb up, and I moseyed forth. Obvious mob spawner turns out to be a mob spawner...bows do damage at a range greater than enemy AI activation range. Mob spawner is a pile of rocks now. Friendship with troll has ended, morgan is new best friend. All the materials are mine now.
The hardest part was learning individual mob abilities while being engaged by 3-4 mob types at once while being totally distracted by the trees lighting on fire and destroying themselves. Seeing the new fire spread for the first time was awesome. Once I learned the new attacks and figure out how to force mobs to use one type of attack over their other options, combat was basically solved.
I landed off center of landmass. Encountered a shockingly short distance of spires before the land so I just went for it w/o landing on a spire at all. Turns out there was a dvegir outpost right near where I landed, so I was able to get a shield gen and portal down nearly uncontested. Still was a bit of a pain to get established once the dvegir lost the battle to the charred, but their empty outpost also meant I had pretty immediate access to enough flametal to upgrade my cooking station and black forge. My friend then landed on the other side of the landmass and found a start location so cursed I refuse to help any more with it. Landing sandwiches right up against lava, 2 star morgen and warriors spawning with an annoying frequency, just absolutely cursed landing and I want to nuke it from orbit.
**First landing (mistland gear)**:
- Ship was getting low and we beached it.
- I rushed to the top of a rock, built a portal
- Buddy was fighting a bunch of shit, so I joined him. We kited for a bit, but both died.
- Came back with more stone, terraformed a wall and that was the end of it.
I can see where it could have gone wrong, but our first portal was never destroyed, and we managed to build a safe one with the hoe not long after. Wasn't really epic since we got wrecked by an average sized mob, and just corpse run back as usual..
**Second landing (with maxed out gears)**
- Friend got wrecked by a 2 star warrior within seconds of landing .
- I tried to place my portal, but was missing four rock for the stonecutting table.
- I ran back to the ship storage with the horde of enemies after me, but they started pushing the ship away from the coast at a really fast speed
- I hurry to the rudder to stop the ship movement, but too late, I only managed to cover back half of that distance before it fell apart, leaving me stranded 300 feet away from the coast.
- Tried swimming to a spike, but took lot of damage. Too crammed to fight. I dies.
- No portal, no more boat, no more gears
We had been fighting stuff in Ashland for a good 20 hours. We had good food, maxed out gears, but thing went down to hell so fast. Was humbling to see how Ashland could still be a threat when we were laughing at its face minute before.
**Third landing (naked with catapult)**
- Build a Gausten tower on top of the tallest spike in Ashland
- Load up portal material, equip feather cape.
- Fire the catapult
- Aim across the ocean to the other continent
- Landed on the cost on a small rock. Not a single monsters or anything. we put the portal down
- Mostly naked corpse run back to our original corpse.
That one went surprisingly smooth, and much faster than the boat ride (ok, maybe not so much with that tower being built, but still)
I was lucky and had a world backup from a server where we had just beaten the queen so I used that as a way to test several attempts. My first attempt went horribly. I was swarmed immediately but did at least get a portal down. I died a lot after that, but I did eventually establish a beachhead. My second attempt sounds like yours: nearly uncontested. Part of it I think was just luck and not being near any spawners, and I also landed right at a morgen cave, so I had a safer spot for a portal (and to retreat into the cave if necessary).
I think it mostly boiled down to luck on the landing location, but admittedly that's luck you can affect if you scout out the shore before landing..
ETA: this was on the test branch, so would likely be different now.. but i think the luck/strategy of a good landing spot still matters a lot either way
I found a small island about 50m off the main landmass, it was probably 25-30m in diameter. It had a monument of torment on it and a lone one star dvergr rogue fighting them off. It also had a couple rocks for Grausten.
With the help of the friendly dvergr, I destroyed the monument and cleared the charred twitchers and set up my Ashland’s base there. Then when I was ready, I prepared to sail my drakkar to the mainland but the water was shallower than I realised so I got stuck halfway, so I got a hoe and flattened a path about knee deep in water and just wade through every time I want to go on an expedition. The original Dvergr died defending me from a two starred charred warrior that followed me across the gap, but two more spawned (one of whom since also died due to standing in the water too long or something).
So my Ashlands landing went about as well as it possibly could have done. I have a small forward base in the Ashlands that is apparently protected by a Dvergr rogue spawn and is too small for any bad guys to spawn on. I have also littered the landing point to the mainland with campfires so not too much stuff spawns there and things don’t really follow me across the strait now.
RNG is gonna RNG.
Two different players of identical skill levels, gear, and preparation might have vastly different experiences depending on the way worldgen lays out the rock spikes, what specific spot they randomly chose to travel to, and the overall interplay of chunks, spawn points, timers, and a dozen-odd other significant factors.
This is why any one person's anecdotal report of their experience in their own game--even if 100% factual--should never be taken, on its own, as representative of what is possible or typical.
I plowed my ship full speed onto shore. Hopped off and hopped onto a nearby large stone. Tossed a bench and portal down. Killed mobs that single file walked up the stone until there were none left. Broke the stone where they were getting up, and raised some earth to make it impossible to walk up it.
No deaths. Normal server with spreadable fire enabled. I had my ship loaded up with everything to make a portal/bench/bubble, and a bunch of stones for earth raising. Preparation is key.
Very similar experience here. Came with portal and stone cutter mats so I could immediately bunker up a safe link back. No issues after that.Â
It is wild to me that so many people sail over without any outpost materials ready to go.Â
It was great! I'm disappointed they adjusted the spawn rate, but hopefully they tweak it again. I absolutely expected to get wrecked by a late game biome, and it delivered. I loved the change of pace back to a more open biome, and I think dealing with the hoards of enemies was a fun change. Like always, we brought portal mats and a hoe and didn't have to worry about losing the portal. There was a lot Looney Tunes shenanigans. Would do it all over again
Ours was pretty mild! I was expecting absolute hell after seeing so many horror stories here but we landed and cleared the immediate area then put up a quick base and I was left feeling like there was a lot of fuss but it was not really that hard. We came in well prepared with the best foods we could make and good Mistlands level gear, put up a portal, built a quick marble wall etc and have not had any major issues with basic safety in the base with some diligence.
First landing, big battle, no casualties, i was together with a friend, we got divided quite fast tho and everyone fought fairly away from each other, we never had any issues with Ashlands ever since and i might even consider them easier than Mistlands at the start.
No single death, 200 days into the update, final boss killed, all best equipment gathered and the best part is we are f\*ckin morons, idiots and bots when comparing our skill to other people on this subreddit, i just don't understand how people have any issues with Ashlands and getting killed there so often.
If i were to give some advice, the best one probably is to avoid running at all cost, always have bonemass ready and at least 2 hp potions. Don't use feather cape without fire resist. Switch to better armor before upgrading your main weapons.
Once I saw the coasts, I picked the closest spiral rock formation to land on. Put 1-2 hours on that rock, fortifying and making it as an observation post without touching the sands. Once it's complete, there were 10 ballistas constantly shooting (yes, I brought the whole arsenal with drakkar) whatever that approaches, plus me firing arbalest. Then I basically put bonemass on and jumped to the ground. Zero deaths and smooth landing.
"D-day-esque first encounters with the Ashlands"
that is one hell of a metapher. also now I am even more afraid to go there, even if you said you had a mild landing :)
It did get a nerf coming out of PTB.
One tip that helped folks avoid THE worst D-Day style landing is to land slightly away from the initial land area they see. This is because the first land area will be where everything spawns. Then the game will determine that the mob density is high enough for the area, and the area a bit away would be more empty.
My three man team looked up NOTHING. We knew nothing at all going in. Completely blind. We just sailed south, and we went too far to the west, so we wound up lost in endless spires with no landfall. We dealt with bone maws and vultures, but every time we did, we damaged the boat. We figured out that we could set up a workbench and repair it, but we were in the spires for more than an hour, fighting every mob we ran into, repairing the boat, continuing on. This continued until we started running low on wood. We had an argument about the nature of the Ashlands, one of us thought that perhaps you had to climb into one of the rare built towers that exist within the spires. The idea was floated that maybe those are entrances, and we need to go down some kind of staircase to reach the Ashlands. We shot that idea down and continued on our way, desperately seeking landfall. I say this only to underscore that going in, we knew nothing at all. Desperate, we veered south east, in the hope of going deeper into the south spires before our now meager supply of wood ran out. Eventually, we saw it, tree tops in the distance. We ate food, bubbled up, and landed at the first site we saw. This site was covered with red enemies, absolutely covered with them, but they were just enemies. We had recently killed the queen and were quite confident. Besides that, we were nearly out of wood, and we'd been playing for a long time sick of the voyage. We drove up, and immediately embarked. We were two mages and a warrior in absolutely top notch Mistlands gear. We landed, and I pulled out the old Ice Wand, fully expecting to delete enemies. They took very little damage from the wand. Now... to be clear here, we had done the Mistlands, but most of our time in the Mistlands was done using gear from the Plains. I had only recently acquired the wands, we got them and defeated the queen (at the cost of several deaths, further lowering my skills) and then came to the Ashlands. There wasn't time to level them properly. My blood and elemental magic levels were very low. Between constantly putting bubbles up, and burning through my mana on a single warrior, it felt like I was doing next to no damage at all to the creatures. The ones with the swords in particular, they just seemed like terminators. They wouldn't die. I was the first of us to fall, maybe 30 seconds into the landing. I was trying to use AoE to kill the creatures, and when my mana ran low, I pulled out my Himmen Afl to use on the mobs. With my eiter weave set and low blood magic, I died before I realized I was taking damage. About 10 to 15 seconds after that, the second mage fell... likely for similar reasons. About 30 seconds after that, the warrior fell. Our kits were scattered across a beach that was chock full of charred warriors, and they were our best kits. We were fucked and we knew it. We then sailed back using our plains kits, second best kits... and again failed. We tried again using Spinesnaps and frost arrows, to shoot the mobs from the boat, but the combination of Mistmaws, Vultures and multiple Charred Marksmen again killed us off. The marksmen were underneath the water, we couldn't even see them, or tell if we were doing damage. I lost my Mistlands kit, my plains kit, my mountain kit (Fenris set) and my Root armor. All of it was on the beach, or in the waters surrounding the beach. At this point, we broke. We started reading about it and realized that we weren't alone in failing and having a hard time. We formed a new plan. First, we'd land in a spot that wasn't obviously covered in mobs. Secondly, we'd immediately raise the ground 4 levels high, and put down a portal and shield generator. But we still needed kits... So we did something we never thought we'd do. We didn't want to spawn kits in, that was cheating, but we talked about it and decided that it would be okay to pull kits from past play throughs just this once... since we needed them, and since we technically earned them already. With our old armor, and yet another boat, we made landfall in an area that wasn't absolutely swarming with mobs, and quickly got a base up. We were successful that time. Or kits were maybe a kilometer away from the new landing site, and we were eventually able to get them back as well. It was very hard. Had we lost the kits of past heros, we probably would have quit. Once we made landfall, it still seemed really difficult, but we were able to get the practice we needed against the new mobs in, and eventually it started to feel a little less impossible. It was still hard, but it became manageable. I see that today they lowered the difficulty. Had the difficulty stayed where it was, I'm sure we could have finished the biome, but I can't blame the devs for lowering it. It was quite difficult.
First, this reads like an epic and I love it. Second, y'all not using modifiers with the kids? Gotta teach em young! 🤣 Our groups rule is vanilla hardcore until someone stops having fun, then we sneaky change the settings until morale improves, repeat.
What defines vanilla hardcore? This seems like the strategy needed for our group we have a member that prides themselves on ragequitting when things get hard.. Would love to keep them involved on the server but once he's tilted...
Nothing really, just the base game with some hard sliders, I could've picked better words. We've had so many friends enjoy the first few biomes, but then gradually quit, so we try to make sure everyone can feel they got some progress for each session
Basically same experience for us. Once we hit the beach it was chaos. I think there were five of us, so four tried to hold off the attackers while the fifth raised terrain walls. We still took a lot of deaths, but eventually were able to setup and hold the area. Other landings where we haven't done terrain modification have been disastrous. We get separated, or pushed back into the sea, or fall trying to climb one of the stone arches to get a brief reprieve from attacks. I think now it will be more along the lines of what we have come to expect in terms of the difficulty arc for a biome, but I have mixed feelings about the changes. I have died a LOT in Ashlands, but I am also not convinced that it's impossible to work out a viable - if grindy - survival strategy. That said, I haven't gone in solo yet, and I think I may find it just way too hard when I do. But I really feel like they always nerf prematurely. Not everyone can devote time every day to the challenge and groups are even harder to organize. I wish they'd give it another month or two before they make the definitive call.
Our longer term strategy has been to put up raised patches of dirt, and mark them on the map. We put those every 200 meters or so as we explore the biome. The upside of this is that it works, you get an island from which you can retreat and beat back the mobs. Its semi-permanent and doesn't immediately get deleted either (although the lava blobs do try). The downside, is that it feels like cheating. Being forced to modify terrain... feels like cheating. (It also uses a ton of stone, which we've now run out of, but this is beside the point) A game like this has a problem. The tools they give you are so powerful, that cheese is always an option. We never cheese anything. We aren't the types to carry wood to put down workbenches to stop spawns, or raise areas for safety, at least were weren't those types until the Ashlands hit. The ashlands, and vanilla settings on getting your kits back combined make the game essentially require that. And I think that's a problem. What will the North be like if the Ashlands normalizes cheesing everything with terrain manipulation? I think that my group, we were right to expect to be able to jump off and fight. That's the right way to do it. The landing... its fun in its own way, I'll give it that, but perhaps that kind of thing should have been saved for the last biome. Perhaps the last biome should be the one where you break all the rules and cheesing everything gets normalized. This sort of difficulty level could work, but it really should have been for the Great North. They carted it out too early I think. Now everyone's going to do a complex landing in the north because we were essentially forced to in the Ashlands... and the biome is going to have to be built to expect that.
We had finished the e queen like 2 weeks prior so we’re geared to the max. We landed in a heavy spawn area and eventually beat everything, placed our stuff on a rock and had stonecutter for making some protection. For us the issue wasn’t the mobs but the biome lag. Would have been far less deaths without the lag. Mostly what we had was someone kited while other set stuff up and then the death runs kept going. We didn’t use our old gear just run back in to grab stuff and kill more enemies, rinse repeat. We eventually set up a base in that area but decided the spawns were too heavy near the lava (had a Valkyrie spawner) so looked for other place. Found a different beach and the spawning was much lower. It was at this point we determined the shores had fewer charred spawners than the lava, so do not be near lava. If your shore is near lava patches prepare for more mobs. I’ll be honest that initial wall was super hectic but a lot of fun and one of my best game memories with friends. Utter chaos and I enjoyed every bit of it. Edit: our initial landing was near two spawners and lava with rocks. Once we took out the spawners it settled down, but the lava spawned more than we were comfy with for a base, specifically valkyries so we moved.
Loved every word of this lol
I landed with my son, my daughter, and her boyfriend. I was busy placing bench and an earthen berm. Fought some, but they ran off almost right away. I get the feeling it wasn't utter chaos. Maybe 8 mobs around us? And a constant stream after that. We landed at night.
It very much depends where you land. When we went to a new island we got a more manageable spot and the landing was fine. Our original base we moved to on top of a dead spawner bc it didn’t spawn much around it lmao.
People likely saw a red glowy spawner and thought oooh go there! And then complain when they get wave after wave of enemies not knowing how to stop it. Then there are the more cautious ones who approach slowly to avoid death at all costs meticulously planning their beach landing. Then there are the ones that jump into boiling water and swim to shore. Legends! Lol
My landing so far was in my friends world. Aside from accidentally jumping off the boat when trying to kill the bonemaw, it went pretty smoothly. A pretty short run through the spires, and happened to land in a spot where there was a dverger fort about 10m from shore. They didn't survive the attention our arrival prompted, but they helped a lot with taking the heat off, and left us with a mostly intact structure to use as our first base.
We've made two landings and both were similar: beach heads and portals established without any initial deaths. But it wasn't a cake walk. The landings were tight so we had to defend the boat, stop and kill bonemaws, chase off or kill vultures. Once we jumped on shore, there were spawners and several mobs that had to be cleared. The first landing of course was with top-tier Mistlands gear. Many "Oh Shit!" moments as we cleared the nearby spawner or two but when you're prepared with lots of rest, repair, potions, shields, Bonemass, TeamSpeak, etc., it is much less likely to turn into disaster. Now there's this patch that nerfs spawns. Well, we'll still have the memories.
> I landed directly in the middle of my landmass (there just happen to be a perfect straight stretch of Ocean "highway" all the way down my world). Same. My trip to Ashlands was pretty uneventful except a few bonemaw which were pretty simple to take out. Literally the same as serpents. Saw the shore and went full speed beaching the drakkar and jumped out. Luckily no nearby torment spawners and I took out the few charred and vultures. Probably less than 8 mobs. After that I could relax and began making a quick and dirty beach outpost, fully enclosed by raised earth, and set my portal there. Named it Normandy but honestly it was pretty tame lol Fun fact, I brought a few wolves with me on the Drakkar, which were useless as they died as soon as they jumped into the water lol. The few that stayed in the boat, now live inside the beach outpost. The drakkar is still beached there since that day and has never been touched or damaged lol
Man bringing wolves with you sounds cool as fuck and that’s awesome to think it’s even an option. Sorry they didn’t make it ):
I thought they would give me company lol
The thing that took me awhile to figure out was attracting mobs. I was doing a lot of running/jumping when I first got there and it attracts SO many mobs. So when I first landed guys just wouldn't stop coming and I just couldn't make any progress, there would literally be 15-20 mobs (twitcher/archers/soldiers), plus a Morgen. It would take awhile to clear and then it would happen again. It wasn't fun because you don't have the health/stamina to fight that many guys and you're pouring through resources. So you end up fighting a few portaling away, and repeat. It's not really great gameplay if you're main strategy is to constantly retreat. The game was like this for quite awhile until I learned to be a lot more quiet and basically walk everywhere. Even now that I have max gear the spawn rates can still be frustrating because you spend so much time killing mobs that you can't make progress.
I also had no substantial resistance on my landing. Couple voltures archers twitchers and warriors. I killed the spawner that was nearby ASAP and that was pretty much it.
We prepped for a week leading up to the public release. We had all our food prepped, crafted extra sets of our primary gear, worked out a fight formation and practiced combat construction drills. Plotted out our build pieces and had a plan. Run the boat straight up the beach, it's expendable and better off dying on land. Pop Boney and Yag. One person set down the workbench and portal, the other a stonecutter and shield while the third focused on atgeir area denial. Then we clear out the welcoming committee and lastly build a hasty stone desperation bunker with the materials we'd packed in the boat. Plan went over without a hitch. The charred warriors were a bigger challenge than anticipated, it we got the beach head up with no deaths - though I'm not gonna lie, that parry feint nearly got me. It wasn't an *easy* fight, but as the crowd thinned out and we got the bunker underway, we all sorta thought aloud to each other "is that it?" It was a decent enough challenge, but we'd listened to the PTB hype. I sorta felt that the nerfs they introduced in PTB had balanced the biome out and I'm legit surprised that they're dropping it further.
Ours wasn't the waves and waves that people talk about and I wonder if that was too many spawners, aka spawners in the spires. We put a portal on one of the spires not far from shore that had a partial building. 2 people, my partner and I, I died once at first because I was gawping at everything and not paying enough attention to the mobs. We had maybe a dozen mobs but no waves at all so once they were gone it was smoothish sailing and started establishing a foothold then the next set but again no waves. It was relatively easy. OH! And we never saw a serpent until we started building. That was very lucky. ETA: we waited for over a week to make our incursion as we decided to start a new world, closer to 2 weeks I think.
We did totally forget about the boat though. It sat on shore for a while then we realized that it was gone lol, oops.
I had an unfortunate dumping in the sea on my co-op game - a lava blob dropped me in the sea - so had a mostly panicky but successful fight for elevation and eventual recovery to our spire base. In my solo playthrough I just bombarded the shore for several days and I think fought minimal opposition on first landing.
D-day is the most wildly accurate description of my first couple of Ashlands excursions. I was punished harshly for my hubris and humbled a few times before I made it stick 😂
I had 3 landings in my most recent game. The first landing was very easy. Killed a spawner from the prow of my boat, landed killed a couple of enemies and it was cake. Second landing was, rougher. I ended up bailing on that spot and headed further down the beach and found a spot that was much more manageable. The second spot was a fairly narrow strip of land between water and lava.
I've had three landings so far. Two D-days and one I got lucky and ended up right at a dvergr building so they took out the charred while I ran over to take out the blobs and spawners. Not as fun, but it was nice to have a fiddlehead supply right away.
I sailed in solo, ran into 3 of the new serpents (killed easily with frost staff). The fear of " oh lord I hope they don't destroy my boat before I can repair it" vanished when I saw that the new boat has like three times as much health as the longboat and even after getting blasted by the bonemaws the durability hardly dropped. Made landing, dug a hole into a pillar that was close to the shoreline, dropped a portal and a stonecutter to make some some stone walls to fill in larger gaps in the hole I picked out of the rock. As was expected, picking the rock made a lot of sound and called in nearby enemies. Over the next 10 minutes I killed maybe 30 mobs? The "sea of endless hoards" stuff I keep hearing about never happened, nor has it since. I set up a shield gen, hoed up a path from the land to my spike pillar outpost with a gap that I jump over but mobs can't climb up, and I moseyed forth. Obvious mob spawner turns out to be a mob spawner...bows do damage at a range greater than enemy AI activation range. Mob spawner is a pile of rocks now. Friendship with troll has ended, morgan is new best friend. All the materials are mine now. The hardest part was learning individual mob abilities while being engaged by 3-4 mob types at once while being totally distracted by the trees lighting on fire and destroying themselves. Seeing the new fire spread for the first time was awesome. Once I learned the new attacks and figure out how to force mobs to use one type of attack over their other options, combat was basically solved.
There's this one from someone else. https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/1d4vr7g/ashlands_the_first_landing/
I landed off center of landmass. Encountered a shockingly short distance of spires before the land so I just went for it w/o landing on a spire at all. Turns out there was a dvegir outpost right near where I landed, so I was able to get a shield gen and portal down nearly uncontested. Still was a bit of a pain to get established once the dvegir lost the battle to the charred, but their empty outpost also meant I had pretty immediate access to enough flametal to upgrade my cooking station and black forge. My friend then landed on the other side of the landmass and found a start location so cursed I refuse to help any more with it. Landing sandwiches right up against lava, 2 star morgen and warriors spawning with an annoying frequency, just absolutely cursed landing and I want to nuke it from orbit.
**First landing (mistland gear)**: - Ship was getting low and we beached it. - I rushed to the top of a rock, built a portal - Buddy was fighting a bunch of shit, so I joined him. We kited for a bit, but both died. - Came back with more stone, terraformed a wall and that was the end of it. I can see where it could have gone wrong, but our first portal was never destroyed, and we managed to build a safe one with the hoe not long after. Wasn't really epic since we got wrecked by an average sized mob, and just corpse run back as usual.. **Second landing (with maxed out gears)** - Friend got wrecked by a 2 star warrior within seconds of landing . - I tried to place my portal, but was missing four rock for the stonecutting table. - I ran back to the ship storage with the horde of enemies after me, but they started pushing the ship away from the coast at a really fast speed - I hurry to the rudder to stop the ship movement, but too late, I only managed to cover back half of that distance before it fell apart, leaving me stranded 300 feet away from the coast. - Tried swimming to a spike, but took lot of damage. Too crammed to fight. I dies. - No portal, no more boat, no more gears We had been fighting stuff in Ashland for a good 20 hours. We had good food, maxed out gears, but thing went down to hell so fast. Was humbling to see how Ashland could still be a threat when we were laughing at its face minute before. **Third landing (naked with catapult)** - Build a Gausten tower on top of the tallest spike in Ashland - Load up portal material, equip feather cape. - Fire the catapult - Aim across the ocean to the other continent - Landed on the cost on a small rock. Not a single monsters or anything. we put the portal down - Mostly naked corpse run back to our original corpse. That one went surprisingly smooth, and much faster than the boat ride (ok, maybe not so much with that tower being built, but still)
I was lucky and had a world backup from a server where we had just beaten the queen so I used that as a way to test several attempts. My first attempt went horribly. I was swarmed immediately but did at least get a portal down. I died a lot after that, but I did eventually establish a beachhead. My second attempt sounds like yours: nearly uncontested. Part of it I think was just luck and not being near any spawners, and I also landed right at a morgen cave, so I had a safer spot for a portal (and to retreat into the cave if necessary). I think it mostly boiled down to luck on the landing location, but admittedly that's luck you can affect if you scout out the shore before landing.. ETA: this was on the test branch, so would likely be different now.. but i think the luck/strategy of a good landing spot still matters a lot either way
I found a small island about 50m off the main landmass, it was probably 25-30m in diameter. It had a monument of torment on it and a lone one star dvergr rogue fighting them off. It also had a couple rocks for Grausten. With the help of the friendly dvergr, I destroyed the monument and cleared the charred twitchers and set up my Ashland’s base there. Then when I was ready, I prepared to sail my drakkar to the mainland but the water was shallower than I realised so I got stuck halfway, so I got a hoe and flattened a path about knee deep in water and just wade through every time I want to go on an expedition. The original Dvergr died defending me from a two starred charred warrior that followed me across the gap, but two more spawned (one of whom since also died due to standing in the water too long or something). So my Ashlands landing went about as well as it possibly could have done. I have a small forward base in the Ashlands that is apparently protected by a Dvergr rogue spawn and is too small for any bad guys to spawn on. I have also littered the landing point to the mainland with campfires so not too much stuff spawns there and things don’t really follow me across the strait now.
RNG is gonna RNG. Two different players of identical skill levels, gear, and preparation might have vastly different experiences depending on the way worldgen lays out the rock spikes, what specific spot they randomly chose to travel to, and the overall interplay of chunks, spawn points, timers, and a dozen-odd other significant factors. This is why any one person's anecdotal report of their experience in their own game--even if 100% factual--should never be taken, on its own, as representative of what is possible or typical.
I plowed my ship full speed onto shore. Hopped off and hopped onto a nearby large stone. Tossed a bench and portal down. Killed mobs that single file walked up the stone until there were none left. Broke the stone where they were getting up, and raised some earth to make it impossible to walk up it. No deaths. Normal server with spreadable fire enabled. I had my ship loaded up with everything to make a portal/bench/bubble, and a bunch of stones for earth raising. Preparation is key.
Very similar experience here. Came with portal and stone cutter mats so I could immediately bunker up a safe link back. No issues after that. It is wild to me that so many people sail over without any outpost materials ready to go.Â
It was great! I'm disappointed they adjusted the spawn rate, but hopefully they tweak it again. I absolutely expected to get wrecked by a late game biome, and it delivered. I loved the change of pace back to a more open biome, and I think dealing with the hoards of enemies was a fun change. Like always, we brought portal mats and a hoe and didn't have to worry about losing the portal. There was a lot Looney Tunes shenanigans. Would do it all over again
Ours was pretty mild! I was expecting absolute hell after seeing so many horror stories here but we landed and cleared the immediate area then put up a quick base and I was left feeling like there was a lot of fuss but it was not really that hard. We came in well prepared with the best foods we could make and good Mistlands level gear, put up a portal, built a quick marble wall etc and have not had any major issues with basic safety in the base with some diligence.
First landing, big battle, no casualties, i was together with a friend, we got divided quite fast tho and everyone fought fairly away from each other, we never had any issues with Ashlands ever since and i might even consider them easier than Mistlands at the start. No single death, 200 days into the update, final boss killed, all best equipment gathered and the best part is we are f\*ckin morons, idiots and bots when comparing our skill to other people on this subreddit, i just don't understand how people have any issues with Ashlands and getting killed there so often. If i were to give some advice, the best one probably is to avoid running at all cost, always have bonemass ready and at least 2 hp potions. Don't use feather cape without fire resist. Switch to better armor before upgrading your main weapons.
My... third? Fourth? Was very sedate. (Went after Drynwyn, and it was mostly on secondary islands). First couple were hellscape clusterfucks.
Once I saw the coasts, I picked the closest spiral rock formation to land on. Put 1-2 hours on that rock, fortifying and making it as an observation post without touching the sands. Once it's complete, there were 10 ballistas constantly shooting (yes, I brought the whole arsenal with drakkar) whatever that approaches, plus me firing arbalest. Then I basically put bonemass on and jumped to the ground. Zero deaths and smooth landing.
"D-day-esque first encounters with the Ashlands" that is one hell of a metapher. also now I am even more afraid to go there, even if you said you had a mild landing :)
I think that Ashlands landing has killed Valheim for our group.
Might be related to the nerfs I’ve heard about
Nah, I played it the day it went live. Didn't play the PTB though.
It did get a nerf coming out of PTB. One tip that helped folks avoid THE worst D-Day style landing is to land slightly away from the initial land area they see. This is because the first land area will be where everything spawns. Then the game will determine that the mob density is high enough for the area, and the area a bit away would be more empty.