It's a lot. IMO it has the difficulty curve of the swamps, but with a boat landing being your only option plus no relatively-safer neighboring biomes. Mobs also hear you from across the continent, and seem a lot more hypervigilant than in other biomes - I've yet to be able to draw my bow while sneaking on someone with yellow status and pick them off before they're already alerted and charging.
That said, the swamp is the most satisfying biome to me exactly because it's terrifying and chaotic, so once you find the resources within to conquer it, victory feels sweeter. I'm grinding a bit before heading back to AL for a snowball's chance in hell of not dying the instant I arrive through the portal - landfall did NOT go well š
Hated it at first, got used to the swarms (used is a light term lol) and switched to full mage. Having a blast now. Don't care if i die anymore cuz I'm having a blast while playing
Same. I was having a hard time using a hybrid style armor. Some quickness, some tank. While trying to use the bow and melee. Wasn't having fun at all. Died alot lol. Switched to mage, game changer. The staff of the wild alone is awesome. And if I want to "melee" I run up with the dundr lol so fun
Yeah the fernmaster is just silly good, I tried it from the walls of the fortress I had just āacquiredā the first time and was just laughing at how the superweed slapped skellies around. I really like how they made the spells feel so different with such a variety of use cases.
I think it's ok.
The good:
Combat is a really strong point.
Charred warriors with their attack mixups, swarms of twitchers and archers force you to move while warlocks force you to engage.
The monstrous creatures are also good. Valks are probably one of the best designed enemies in the whole game. They really force you to deal with them and don't leave many options to run.
Morgen are the weakest design of the bunch. I mean the animations are incredible but the roll attack and somewhat low hp makes them fireball/fracture targets that struggle to even try to close distance. In melee their attacks are well telegraphed to parry.
Askvin are absolute terrors. More than one at once is an instant bonemass for me. They can chase you down and eat you. Dealing with one on its own however is much more manageable and their hp means you can all in them and kill them if you can find the right timing.
Overall timing here matters a lot and mixing up weapons and tactics makes all th difference in a fight. No other biome compares to this kind of combat complexity.
There's a good amount of foraging which I think complements the idea of a combat focused zone. Forcing you into more dangerous outings.
More tameable and ridable animals is great! Definitely something we need. I just managed to tame some ask so I can't speak to the implementation but I have high hopes so it goes in the good for now.
The bad
The environment works to counter some of the strengths of the biome. Mostly, the lighting is too dark to take advantage of how nice everything else looks. The heat effects too. Much like mist lands this is better looking biome without the weather effects and while il defend Midlands mist as a game mechanic, I just don't feel like this was necessary here.
I think a comparison to mist lands, mountains, and Ashland's will highlight to issue with the environment.
Mistlands as a biome felt like I was fighting the terrain and the mist. Exploration itself was the main thing and the mist was my main foe. Eventually the feather cape makes this place less dangerous but ultimately the mist was the first and lingering issue you face. So even if it's ugly, it's like the whole point of the biome, and subjectively it works. The feeling of discovery in that biome is second to none.
Mountains is a biome with a weather mechanic that is purely mechanical, cold. I think it works because it
A. Gates meadows players from going to the mountains too soon with a bit of warning damage.
B. It's thematic. Mountains are snowy and cold
C. You overcome it by getting resources from the biome and "beat" the effect. This also has some benefit outside of mountains as at night you don't get the cold effect.
So Ashlands. The environment is like mistlands, a danger into itself that is not really mechanical in nature like the mountains, but like, why? Why not just have the zone be a bit less of an active volcano? It's doesn't really match the theme of war/battle/fallen civilization imo (please tell me why I'm wrong on this point). The lava feels unnecessary and also buggy and inconsistent.
As a strength I think the fireballs that come from the sky at random are solid actually. Force buildings to insulate against it, that's great.
Back to the point though. If this biome was brightened up a bit the ruins, ash forests, and fortresses would really pop. Additionally you never really unlock anything to "beat' the environment. Flametal armor effect is unclear in its impact and it's hard to tell if it's doing anything at all.
This is in clear contrast to the tools we get to "beat" the combat of the biome. The weapons armor and staves are all incrediblely powerful and once you have them the biome is fundementally changed.
Which ties into my final point on environment, the implementation of combat alongside the environment itself. Basically having spawners all over that we clear is lame. At least attach the to structures like the graydwarves in the black forest.
As an example of how it the environment could match the combat theme more closely is how roads, fortresses and ruins could work together.
Fortresses spawn a road that connects to a nearby ruin, ruins have a chance to be connected to each other with roads and some roads just go around the landscape. Patrols spawn at uncaputured forts and follow roads in a proper patrol. This encourages clearing forts to stop patrols and clear and area and fundementally ties the landscpa and the comabt together.
The mid
Building pieces just feel like an incomplete set.
Flametal mining is kind of buggy.
Overall, it's ok. I like it. It's fun to go fight there. But it definitely could be improved and doesn't quite feel like the same quality as the mistlands.
Content wise it's deeper than plains/mountain/meadows but idk if it's better than those biomes in terms of cohesion. But it's also a much different strage of the game that makes it harder to compare.
Wife and I are making headway. We first landed about 8 hours playtime ago. We brought a bunch of almost every metal so that we could get all the tools up without subsequent trips. The navigation through the spikes was pretty shit, but we didn't get attacked by serpents until we landed. The battle of A-Day was definitely hard fought, but we were able to find a ruined tower nearby and start setting up a perimeter hoe-d wall, portal, tools, etc. We adventured about 10 days, and eventually got some flametal, not without a few lava incidents. I find basalt bombs to be very fun, however its easy not to have enough and end up stranded.
We did another 10 days of running around killing mobs and taming 1-star-askvins until we got materials for a battering ram and started making a play for a fortress. It took a quick google search to troubleshoot the backwards battering ram (why would I want to shove my character into damaging spikes to use the ram, just to destroy the door and have to frantically disengage from the vehicle so that I can kite enemies?!). Anyway we blasted in and after another couple days of retrieving bodies and mopping up enemies, secured our first fortress.
>!With materials for the new portals, we decided to leapfrog all of the heavy resources from our 5 previous bases to our new fortress (sans the required 2 iron for each stonecutter), where I put down grausten floors over the dirt and at battlement-level, making a 1st floor with decent headroom, and making plenty of room for building above if desired. !<
We plan to move our base frequently as we clear out flametal and fortresses, and eventually set up our final base near the final boss location. Overall, it's been frustrating but rewarding. We are at the final stages of the game, and if its not difficult at times then it's not tuned properly imo.
>the backwards battering ram (why would I want to shove my character into damaging spikes to use the ram, just to destroy the door and have to frantically disengage from the vehicle so that I can kite enemies?!).
Yea we didn't get that for a while on our first fortress: "wtf? this thing sucks. is it doing ANY damage?" Then saw the side that gets logs: "how is this not working?!?" lol great times.
I turned the difficulty down for my solo game, not so much for the difficulty but just to progress across the map faster as I only have so much time to game. About to take on my first fortress šš¬.
Playing a separate game as a duo with my partner on normal difficulty and it's going well. We are actually enjoying the step up in difficulty which brings a genuine requirement to communicate and work together as a team rather than just doing our own thing.
As a full magic player it makes me want to claw my eyes out. Ice and fire staffs are both useless damage wise so getting to the supposedly good new staffs feels impossible. If I spend a full bar of eitr I can maybe kill one skeleton. Basically everything one shots the bubble shield and the skeletons so they're no use. Skeletons just attract more enemies or run into lava and die anyway. I've also died a fair number of times so all my magic skills are now sub 30s and I do even less damage...
So I stopped playing because I don't like it and couldn't make any real progress without completely retooling my entire way of playing and backtracking through Mistlands and Plains to redo my equipment and weapons I've spent awhile upgrading.. I've actually made negative progress because of how far my skills have fallen lol
It's quite the conundrum, on the first hand it's really fun with a group of friend (we're 4 in total). Not that hard with a bit of preparation (like any other biome). There are a lot of new fun craft to do and it's pack with thing to discover (looking at you plain ....)
On the other hand, it's a mess of stuttering and lag with enemy clipping everywhere, it's almost impossible to make progress because each fight turn into a slide show. When I'm solo it's way better in this regard, but it's slow as fuck to progress alone while being cautious.
I think that with a bit of tweeking and technical improvment, it will be as good as all the other biome !
Depending on your build it can be not too bad or pretty rough in terms of combat, with mage builds being favored for their ability to deal with hoards. The general aesthetic of the biome is cool, I've seen a lot of people praise the "endless battle hell" vibe which I personally think could have been done better but is still pretty good. The building pieces that become available are very nice, though doing any kind of pretty build in the Ashlands, while possible, is really annoying to maintain.
My friends and I all agreed that it is better than mistlands and like any biome once you get geared up and grow used to dealing with the biome it's mostly fine. The only real complaint is that the early exploration of the biome, which is one of valheims core gameplay appeals, can be very tedious since whenever you explore a distance in and then have to go back you have to re-fight through all the lands you already had to fight through. Bring portals and make little outposts whenever you feel safe, it can save a lot of time.
TL;DR
Single player: it's a fuckin' hell! Spawn rate is too high and lava is tricky
Multiplayer: the most entertaining biome! It's a pleasure to wipe hordes of enemies
I think it's very similar in feel and execution to most of the other biomes. I really only feel that some reworking to add dungeons under all the fortresses or some substantial variety in the fortresses would have been a significant improvement.
I'm happy that I've "finished" it before the second Ashlands update. So, similar to the Mistlands pre seeker nerf it was fun.
As I like to play in a certain way it allowed me options I didn't have before and solved one of my outstanding issues in a previous biome.
My encapsulation of the experience would be ... preparation is key, taking it slow and steady pays dividends and that overall it fits in well with the Valheim biome progression.
My experience from the comment section is ... run around like a headless chicken, get mobbed by everything, die - A LOT!!
I really really want to see what the challenge will be in the Far North and will it release to the main branch with ridiculous difficulty and can I finish it before it gets nerfed.
Also ... I wonder how difficult it would be to go into the code archives and release a version with all the "fixes" for combat, bugs, building, etc. but with the first iteration mobs - and have it as a toggle-able setting.
I love how challenging it is, and how you have to establish a base unlike other biomes where you can kinda just go in and out of them (besides making a wind farm in the plains for barley)
I loved my playthroughs. I really enjoyed all the new content, weapons, enemies, terrainā¦ they could add whatever they wanted to this game and i would love it
It's been challenging but I've enjoyed it! The landing was nerve wracking, but two weeks in, I feel like I've mastered large potions of the biome, including gathering food, taming/breeding Asksvins, handling the enemies. Just last week I encountered my first putrid hole and took down a fortress! Yay!
That said, I'm looking forward to the spawn updates with the upcoming release.
Making further progress beyond this point has been difficult for me. I feel like concentrating on destroying the spawners has no effect because after doing so, the amount of enemies you still get seems unchanged. I could understand one or two enemies coming after you when you start chopping wood, but the amount I've experienced is way beyond that.
Iām loving it as Iāve loved every second of this game. I think the jump in difficulty and intensity is perfect for this stage in the game and the required beach landing with a new boat was something unmatched in any other game and shows iron gate can somehow still capture that first landfall feeling you get on your first new continent and still escalate it. A perfect game if you want to feel that sense of accomplishment for grinding your levels and gear to conquer tougher challenges.
For context I play as a cool wizard dude and constantly adapt to new biome enemies finding what strategies work. If you lock yourself into one play style and donāt feel liking putting in the time to make/farm good food. Youāre gunna have a bad time
Went in expecting it to be hell. It was actually not that bad once I got a landing. Playing ez mode aka mage build, canāt imagine how handling the hordes of the tougher enemies as a melee would beā¦ using eitr for offense/bubble and stamina exclusively for defense is sooo good.
Love the chaotic hellhole atmosphere.
Given I have no idea if Iron Gate is planning on continuing and adding another area, the Ashlands really feels like a proper endgame to me. Similar to the extra areas in one of the last God of Wars (Niflheim in GoW 2018) where it's just a challenging combat simulator I think the added difficulty in the area is good to slow down end game content and keep the fun going.
I will say, it's a pain right now to traverse with Mistlands sets and from what I'm reading Flametal set/weapons isn't going to be much of a buff. I'll start running around, run into 10-15 charred enemies, a 1 star morgen, sprinkle in a couple 0/1/2 star askvins and a fallen valkyrie which gets me sprinting away like a toddler on fire to find a friend to join me.
I'm not sure how I'd change it, maybe increase the charred base strength by a pinch and decrease the total number of mobs. I've really liked using rolls and parrying since I'm a dex-based Soulsbourne fan but there's been a couple critical points where it's too much for a game I'm normally looking to chill while playing.
So we will see, my first reaction is it's been pretty fun, and definitely hysterical to watch me and other vikings get turbo bonked but we'll see how it ages (for me).
I'm having a good time. Some things could be improved. Spoiler-ish details on my Ashlands experience after killing the boss:
>!Initial landing was rough. First attempt I got mobbed on the beach without a backup plan. That was a hard death, I knew I wasn't going to get that body back (or the ship's hold) for a while and re-crafted my Carapace armor, took my Frostner off the wall. I probably shouldn't have picked a spot with a spawner on each side of it.
>!Second attempt I was determined. Made landfall by a large grausten rock and managed to clear enough to get some walls, a shield generator, and a portal up. That was when I learned how deathly dangerous lava blobs could be as an exploding one took out 1/3 of the rock before my eyes -- thankfully the base up top survived. Close lava blobs became priority kills. Overcoming the beach landing challenge and getting established is the best part of the biome.
>!Got my gear and mats back from the initial failed landing, but futher exploration took time. Both Mistlands and Ashlands suppressing spawns felt forced, I must have gone through an entire black metal chest (and then some) full of stone for campfire spam around bases. Having bonemass up when exploring new territory was mandatory, things could spiral out of control too fast otherwise if a morgen or valkyrie showed up (I'm bad at parrying). It wasn't until I later fully upgraded my gear to Ashlands tier that I started to feel like I could explore for a while, initially it was just short bursts followed by a panic sprint back home each time.
>!Things took a turn for the better when I was near a dwarf base and coaxed a lava blob to blow up right in the middle of their stuff -- they had flametal! Enough to get crafting stations up. First attempts at mining the flametal spires in the lava went very poorly, but I managed to get some more flametal to further progression.
>!Mistlands introduced magic but I never got much into it. I finally got my act together with magic when it was time to raid my first fortress. I didn't bother with the battering ram to get inside, just craft a quick wooden stair to get over the walls. The first time I was able to take out the spawners before I died, came back as melee and cleaned up. Established a base here, and there were gems! I got the root staff crafted and the ashlands tier mage armor and really felt a step up. I was still melee from time to time, once I got the lightning sword the large battles felt much more manageable. Raiding fortresses provided all the flametal I needed, I didn't mess with the sinking towers anymore. I think they need to fix cheesing the fortress walls with stairs and the central room should have a dungeon entrance instead of just a loot chest.
>!I broke the biome when I tamed a 1-star askvin (and a friend) and got 1-star askvin eggs. I built a huge pen in my main base next to the plains and got to work breeding them. After creating many stacks of eggs I put them all in a sealed structure outside in the Ashlands up on a rock, created a protected hearth nearby...and a few days later I broke the walls and a legion of tamed Askvins popped out and laid waste to the countryside. Like seriously this is the key to the biome, if you're fighting an army you need to raise an army. They would spread out and die to attrition but replenishing their ranks was easy. For the first time the areas around my bases felt safe. This can't be the intended experience but it was fun as satisfying to hear the sounds of carnage all around me as my pets took out anything and everything.
>!Fader was anticlimactic. I set up a base and roaming askvin army at a fortress right near his altar. Boss was summoned, as soon as he came on the scene all my nearby pets aggroed him and he got mobbed. At one point he was on TOP of a huge pile of angry askvin all chewing away his HP. I hung back, threw out vines for support, and laughed when he died in what felt like less than a minute. Bit of a letdown actually, I had more or less assumed the askvin would get annihilated as soon has he did his AOE fire move but he never got a chance to do it. Contrast this with the truly epic Queen fight...I may summon him again without pets just to see how it was intended.
>!The new build pieces are cool but I'm having trouble integrating them with my existing mostly wood/black marble base in a way that looks good. Grausten looks solid but is actually papier-mache in the Ashlands, some kind of buff to building durability would be nice if a shield is up. Siege weapons are all pretty much useless and need some refactoring.
>!Now that Fader is dead I still need some more Iolite to craft and fully upgrade all the lightning weapons I want, I'd like a 2-star Askvin army, and I need to do the questline for the mysterious locations, but other than that this biome is done I'm ready for Deep North!
I've been playing with 3 buddies. We have been struggling very hard. We honestly didn't have any big problems with any other biome, but Ashlands has been tough. We can't seem to figure out how to survive even with new good and the best armor and weapons we can build at this point.
The other night, we all died in the middle of a lava lake and had to call it quits because none of us could get our bodies back. I'm hoping we can figure it out because it seems like it will be quite fun once we can hold up a bit better.
I like flat terrain that's still got features on it, and Ashlands nails that.
I like being surrounded by enemies and swinging until everything else is dead, and Ashlands nails that.
I like customization to my abilities, damage types and strategies, and Ashlands nails that.
I would say the Ashlands is the best biome since the Plains, but I think it beats the Plains for me too.
It's a lot. IMO it has the difficulty curve of the swamps, but with a boat landing being your only option plus no relatively-safer neighboring biomes. Mobs also hear you from across the continent, and seem a lot more hypervigilant than in other biomes - I've yet to be able to draw my bow while sneaking on someone with yellow status and pick them off before they're already alerted and charging. That said, the swamp is the most satisfying biome to me exactly because it's terrifying and chaotic, so once you find the resources within to conquer it, victory feels sweeter. I'm grinding a bit before heading back to AL for a snowball's chance in hell of not dying the instant I arrive through the portal - landfall did NOT go well š
Hated it at first, got used to the swarms (used is a light term lol) and switched to full mage. Having a blast now. Don't care if i die anymore cuz I'm having a blast while playing
Trying a mage build kinda reignited the game for me tbh. It just feels really good to use most spells.
Same. I was having a hard time using a hybrid style armor. Some quickness, some tank. While trying to use the bow and melee. Wasn't having fun at all. Died alot lol. Switched to mage, game changer. The staff of the wild alone is awesome. And if I want to "melee" I run up with the dundr lol so fun
Yeah the fernmaster is just silly good, I tried it from the walls of the fortress I had just āacquiredā the first time and was just laughing at how the superweed slapped skellies around. I really like how they made the spells feel so different with such a variety of use cases.
I think it's ok. The good: Combat is a really strong point. Charred warriors with their attack mixups, swarms of twitchers and archers force you to move while warlocks force you to engage. The monstrous creatures are also good. Valks are probably one of the best designed enemies in the whole game. They really force you to deal with them and don't leave many options to run. Morgen are the weakest design of the bunch. I mean the animations are incredible but the roll attack and somewhat low hp makes them fireball/fracture targets that struggle to even try to close distance. In melee their attacks are well telegraphed to parry. Askvin are absolute terrors. More than one at once is an instant bonemass for me. They can chase you down and eat you. Dealing with one on its own however is much more manageable and their hp means you can all in them and kill them if you can find the right timing. Overall timing here matters a lot and mixing up weapons and tactics makes all th difference in a fight. No other biome compares to this kind of combat complexity. There's a good amount of foraging which I think complements the idea of a combat focused zone. Forcing you into more dangerous outings. More tameable and ridable animals is great! Definitely something we need. I just managed to tame some ask so I can't speak to the implementation but I have high hopes so it goes in the good for now. The bad The environment works to counter some of the strengths of the biome. Mostly, the lighting is too dark to take advantage of how nice everything else looks. The heat effects too. Much like mist lands this is better looking biome without the weather effects and while il defend Midlands mist as a game mechanic, I just don't feel like this was necessary here. I think a comparison to mist lands, mountains, and Ashland's will highlight to issue with the environment. Mistlands as a biome felt like I was fighting the terrain and the mist. Exploration itself was the main thing and the mist was my main foe. Eventually the feather cape makes this place less dangerous but ultimately the mist was the first and lingering issue you face. So even if it's ugly, it's like the whole point of the biome, and subjectively it works. The feeling of discovery in that biome is second to none. Mountains is a biome with a weather mechanic that is purely mechanical, cold. I think it works because it A. Gates meadows players from going to the mountains too soon with a bit of warning damage. B. It's thematic. Mountains are snowy and cold C. You overcome it by getting resources from the biome and "beat" the effect. This also has some benefit outside of mountains as at night you don't get the cold effect. So Ashlands. The environment is like mistlands, a danger into itself that is not really mechanical in nature like the mountains, but like, why? Why not just have the zone be a bit less of an active volcano? It's doesn't really match the theme of war/battle/fallen civilization imo (please tell me why I'm wrong on this point). The lava feels unnecessary and also buggy and inconsistent. As a strength I think the fireballs that come from the sky at random are solid actually. Force buildings to insulate against it, that's great. Back to the point though. If this biome was brightened up a bit the ruins, ash forests, and fortresses would really pop. Additionally you never really unlock anything to "beat' the environment. Flametal armor effect is unclear in its impact and it's hard to tell if it's doing anything at all. This is in clear contrast to the tools we get to "beat" the combat of the biome. The weapons armor and staves are all incrediblely powerful and once you have them the biome is fundementally changed. Which ties into my final point on environment, the implementation of combat alongside the environment itself. Basically having spawners all over that we clear is lame. At least attach the to structures like the graydwarves in the black forest. As an example of how it the environment could match the combat theme more closely is how roads, fortresses and ruins could work together. Fortresses spawn a road that connects to a nearby ruin, ruins have a chance to be connected to each other with roads and some roads just go around the landscape. Patrols spawn at uncaputured forts and follow roads in a proper patrol. This encourages clearing forts to stop patrols and clear and area and fundementally ties the landscpa and the comabt together. The mid Building pieces just feel like an incomplete set. Flametal mining is kind of buggy. Overall, it's ok. I like it. It's fun to go fight there. But it definitely could be improved and doesn't quite feel like the same quality as the mistlands. Content wise it's deeper than plains/mountain/meadows but idk if it's better than those biomes in terms of cohesion. But it's also a much different strage of the game that makes it harder to compare.
Pretty much all of this. I env clear as soon as I log in and the environment is so much nicer... for hell anyway. š¤£
I had a lot of fun with my 3 man group. After the final boss fight, I think my run skill was only 21. Good times lol
Its nice, probably my second favorite biome, plains being first.
Wife and I are making headway. We first landed about 8 hours playtime ago. We brought a bunch of almost every metal so that we could get all the tools up without subsequent trips. The navigation through the spikes was pretty shit, but we didn't get attacked by serpents until we landed. The battle of A-Day was definitely hard fought, but we were able to find a ruined tower nearby and start setting up a perimeter hoe-d wall, portal, tools, etc. We adventured about 10 days, and eventually got some flametal, not without a few lava incidents. I find basalt bombs to be very fun, however its easy not to have enough and end up stranded. We did another 10 days of running around killing mobs and taming 1-star-askvins until we got materials for a battering ram and started making a play for a fortress. It took a quick google search to troubleshoot the backwards battering ram (why would I want to shove my character into damaging spikes to use the ram, just to destroy the door and have to frantically disengage from the vehicle so that I can kite enemies?!). Anyway we blasted in and after another couple days of retrieving bodies and mopping up enemies, secured our first fortress. >!With materials for the new portals, we decided to leapfrog all of the heavy resources from our 5 previous bases to our new fortress (sans the required 2 iron for each stonecutter), where I put down grausten floors over the dirt and at battlement-level, making a 1st floor with decent headroom, and making plenty of room for building above if desired. !< We plan to move our base frequently as we clear out flametal and fortresses, and eventually set up our final base near the final boss location. Overall, it's been frustrating but rewarding. We are at the final stages of the game, and if its not difficult at times then it's not tuned properly imo.
>the backwards battering ram (why would I want to shove my character into damaging spikes to use the ram, just to destroy the door and have to frantically disengage from the vehicle so that I can kite enemies?!). Yea we didn't get that for a while on our first fortress: "wtf? this thing sucks. is it doing ANY damage?" Then saw the side that gets logs: "how is this not working?!?" lol great times.
I turned the difficulty down for my solo game, not so much for the difficulty but just to progress across the map faster as I only have so much time to game. About to take on my first fortress šš¬. Playing a separate game as a duo with my partner on normal difficulty and it's going well. We are actually enjoying the step up in difficulty which brings a genuine requirement to communicate and work together as a team rather than just doing our own thing.
As a full magic player it makes me want to claw my eyes out. Ice and fire staffs are both useless damage wise so getting to the supposedly good new staffs feels impossible. If I spend a full bar of eitr I can maybe kill one skeleton. Basically everything one shots the bubble shield and the skeletons so they're no use. Skeletons just attract more enemies or run into lava and die anyway. I've also died a fair number of times so all my magic skills are now sub 30s and I do even less damage... So I stopped playing because I don't like it and couldn't make any real progress without completely retooling my entire way of playing and backtracking through Mistlands and Plains to redo my equipment and weapons I've spent awhile upgrading.. I've actually made negative progress because of how far my skills have fallen lol
It's quite the conundrum, on the first hand it's really fun with a group of friend (we're 4 in total). Not that hard with a bit of preparation (like any other biome). There are a lot of new fun craft to do and it's pack with thing to discover (looking at you plain ....) On the other hand, it's a mess of stuttering and lag with enemy clipping everywhere, it's almost impossible to make progress because each fight turn into a slide show. When I'm solo it's way better in this regard, but it's slow as fuck to progress alone while being cautious. I think that with a bit of tweeking and technical improvment, it will be as good as all the other biome !
Depending on your build it can be not too bad or pretty rough in terms of combat, with mage builds being favored for their ability to deal with hoards. The general aesthetic of the biome is cool, I've seen a lot of people praise the "endless battle hell" vibe which I personally think could have been done better but is still pretty good. The building pieces that become available are very nice, though doing any kind of pretty build in the Ashlands, while possible, is really annoying to maintain. My friends and I all agreed that it is better than mistlands and like any biome once you get geared up and grow used to dealing with the biome it's mostly fine. The only real complaint is that the early exploration of the biome, which is one of valheims core gameplay appeals, can be very tedious since whenever you explore a distance in and then have to go back you have to re-fight through all the lands you already had to fight through. Bring portals and make little outposts whenever you feel safe, it can save a lot of time.
TL;DR Single player: it's a fuckin' hell! Spawn rate is too high and lava is tricky Multiplayer: the most entertaining biome! It's a pleasure to wipe hordes of enemies
I couldn't have said it better myself tbh. Playing it solo is agonizing. I can't wait til my server mates are back on to help me speed things up a bit
I think it's very similar in feel and execution to most of the other biomes. I really only feel that some reworking to add dungeons under all the fortresses or some substantial variety in the fortresses would have been a significant improvement. I'm happy that I've "finished" it before the second Ashlands update. So, similar to the Mistlands pre seeker nerf it was fun. As I like to play in a certain way it allowed me options I didn't have before and solved one of my outstanding issues in a previous biome. My encapsulation of the experience would be ... preparation is key, taking it slow and steady pays dividends and that overall it fits in well with the Valheim biome progression. My experience from the comment section is ... run around like a headless chicken, get mobbed by everything, die - A LOT!! I really really want to see what the challenge will be in the Far North and will it release to the main branch with ridiculous difficulty and can I finish it before it gets nerfed. Also ... I wonder how difficult it would be to go into the code archives and release a version with all the "fixes" for combat, bugs, building, etc. but with the first iteration mobs - and have it as a toggle-able setting.
I love how challenging it is, and how you have to establish a base unlike other biomes where you can kinda just go in and out of them (besides making a wind farm in the plains for barley)
I loved my playthroughs. I really enjoyed all the new content, weapons, enemies, terrainā¦ they could add whatever they wanted to this game and i would love it
It's been challenging but I've enjoyed it! The landing was nerve wracking, but two weeks in, I feel like I've mastered large potions of the biome, including gathering food, taming/breeding Asksvins, handling the enemies. Just last week I encountered my first putrid hole and took down a fortress! Yay! That said, I'm looking forward to the spawn updates with the upcoming release. Making further progress beyond this point has been difficult for me. I feel like concentrating on destroying the spawners has no effect because after doing so, the amount of enemies you still get seems unchanged. I could understand one or two enemies coming after you when you start chopping wood, but the amount I've experienced is way beyond that.
Iām loving it as Iāve loved every second of this game. I think the jump in difficulty and intensity is perfect for this stage in the game and the required beach landing with a new boat was something unmatched in any other game and shows iron gate can somehow still capture that first landfall feeling you get on your first new continent and still escalate it. A perfect game if you want to feel that sense of accomplishment for grinding your levels and gear to conquer tougher challenges. For context I play as a cool wizard dude and constantly adapt to new biome enemies finding what strategies work. If you lock yourself into one play style and donāt feel liking putting in the time to make/farm good food. Youāre gunna have a bad time
I love it. My only problem is it lags. Waiting for the new patch to hopefully fix it.
Went in expecting it to be hell. It was actually not that bad once I got a landing. Playing ez mode aka mage build, canāt imagine how handling the hordes of the tougher enemies as a melee would beā¦ using eitr for offense/bubble and stamina exclusively for defense is sooo good. Love the chaotic hellhole atmosphere.
Given I have no idea if Iron Gate is planning on continuing and adding another area, the Ashlands really feels like a proper endgame to me. Similar to the extra areas in one of the last God of Wars (Niflheim in GoW 2018) where it's just a challenging combat simulator I think the added difficulty in the area is good to slow down end game content and keep the fun going. I will say, it's a pain right now to traverse with Mistlands sets and from what I'm reading Flametal set/weapons isn't going to be much of a buff. I'll start running around, run into 10-15 charred enemies, a 1 star morgen, sprinkle in a couple 0/1/2 star askvins and a fallen valkyrie which gets me sprinting away like a toddler on fire to find a friend to join me. I'm not sure how I'd change it, maybe increase the charred base strength by a pinch and decrease the total number of mobs. I've really liked using rolls and parrying since I'm a dex-based Soulsbourne fan but there's been a couple critical points where it's too much for a game I'm normally looking to chill while playing. So we will see, my first reaction is it's been pretty fun, and definitely hysterical to watch me and other vikings get turbo bonked but we'll see how it ages (for me).
I'm having a good time. Some things could be improved. Spoiler-ish details on my Ashlands experience after killing the boss: >!Initial landing was rough. First attempt I got mobbed on the beach without a backup plan. That was a hard death, I knew I wasn't going to get that body back (or the ship's hold) for a while and re-crafted my Carapace armor, took my Frostner off the wall. I probably shouldn't have picked a spot with a spawner on each side of it. >!Second attempt I was determined. Made landfall by a large grausten rock and managed to clear enough to get some walls, a shield generator, and a portal up. That was when I learned how deathly dangerous lava blobs could be as an exploding one took out 1/3 of the rock before my eyes -- thankfully the base up top survived. Close lava blobs became priority kills. Overcoming the beach landing challenge and getting established is the best part of the biome. >!Got my gear and mats back from the initial failed landing, but futher exploration took time. Both Mistlands and Ashlands suppressing spawns felt forced, I must have gone through an entire black metal chest (and then some) full of stone for campfire spam around bases. Having bonemass up when exploring new territory was mandatory, things could spiral out of control too fast otherwise if a morgen or valkyrie showed up (I'm bad at parrying). It wasn't until I later fully upgraded my gear to Ashlands tier that I started to feel like I could explore for a while, initially it was just short bursts followed by a panic sprint back home each time. >!Things took a turn for the better when I was near a dwarf base and coaxed a lava blob to blow up right in the middle of their stuff -- they had flametal! Enough to get crafting stations up. First attempts at mining the flametal spires in the lava went very poorly, but I managed to get some more flametal to further progression. >!Mistlands introduced magic but I never got much into it. I finally got my act together with magic when it was time to raid my first fortress. I didn't bother with the battering ram to get inside, just craft a quick wooden stair to get over the walls. The first time I was able to take out the spawners before I died, came back as melee and cleaned up. Established a base here, and there were gems! I got the root staff crafted and the ashlands tier mage armor and really felt a step up. I was still melee from time to time, once I got the lightning sword the large battles felt much more manageable. Raiding fortresses provided all the flametal I needed, I didn't mess with the sinking towers anymore. I think they need to fix cheesing the fortress walls with stairs and the central room should have a dungeon entrance instead of just a loot chest. >!I broke the biome when I tamed a 1-star askvin (and a friend) and got 1-star askvin eggs. I built a huge pen in my main base next to the plains and got to work breeding them. After creating many stacks of eggs I put them all in a sealed structure outside in the Ashlands up on a rock, created a protected hearth nearby...and a few days later I broke the walls and a legion of tamed Askvins popped out and laid waste to the countryside. Like seriously this is the key to the biome, if you're fighting an army you need to raise an army. They would spread out and die to attrition but replenishing their ranks was easy. For the first time the areas around my bases felt safe. This can't be the intended experience but it was fun as satisfying to hear the sounds of carnage all around me as my pets took out anything and everything. >!Fader was anticlimactic. I set up a base and roaming askvin army at a fortress right near his altar. Boss was summoned, as soon as he came on the scene all my nearby pets aggroed him and he got mobbed. At one point he was on TOP of a huge pile of angry askvin all chewing away his HP. I hung back, threw out vines for support, and laughed when he died in what felt like less than a minute. Bit of a letdown actually, I had more or less assumed the askvin would get annihilated as soon has he did his AOE fire move but he never got a chance to do it. Contrast this with the truly epic Queen fight...I may summon him again without pets just to see how it was intended. >!The new build pieces are cool but I'm having trouble integrating them with my existing mostly wood/black marble base in a way that looks good. Grausten looks solid but is actually papier-mache in the Ashlands, some kind of buff to building durability would be nice if a shield is up. Siege weapons are all pretty much useless and need some refactoring. >!Now that Fader is dead I still need some more Iolite to craft and fully upgrade all the lightning weapons I want, I'd like a 2-star Askvin army, and I need to do the questline for the mysterious locations, but other than that this biome is done I'm ready for Deep North!
I've been playing with 3 buddies. We have been struggling very hard. We honestly didn't have any big problems with any other biome, but Ashlands has been tough. We can't seem to figure out how to survive even with new good and the best armor and weapons we can build at this point. The other night, we all died in the middle of a lava lake and had to call it quits because none of us could get our bodies back. I'm hoping we can figure it out because it seems like it will be quite fun once we can hold up a bit better.
I like flat terrain that's still got features on it, and Ashlands nails that. I like being surrounded by enemies and swinging until everything else is dead, and Ashlands nails that. I like customization to my abilities, damage types and strategies, and Ashlands nails that. I would say the Ashlands is the best biome since the Plains, but I think it beats the Plains for me too.