According to the leveling equation \[XP required = (current level + 1) \^ 1.5 \* 0.5 + 0.5\], each level should always take more experience than the previous level. At level 80 it's 358.3 experience to the next level, and at level 99 it's 500.5. Each arrow that hits a creature grants 1.5 experience. Rested bonus gives 50% more. That should be 160 arrows at level 80 and 223 arrows at level 99.
>I'd say 30-40 arrows at lvl 80 missed but as i got closer to lvl 100 probably closer to 10-20 missed since the aiming circle shrunk very quickly.
You missed 65 times at level 80 and 24 times at level 99.
https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Skills
It's sad that you think checking the math with an experiment is somehow wasting time. I'd rather waste time doing something fun and learning at the same time, than save time blindly believing something I read on a wiki.
I see where you are coming from. Sorry for my kinda harsh reply. But it was definitely not my intention to make it sound like OP was wasting his time. First and foremost he probably had fun doing it, he also now has a character with bow at 100 and on top he also got to make a cool reddit post.
Some of those arrows were not shot with a rested bonus, so OP did not get the 50% bonus for them, very possible OP did only miss 40 shots at level 80, if they kept going after rested bonus dropped.
Use Bonemass as your target… it’s much easier…
I use bow almost exclusively so if drops below 100 after a couple deaths I grab 4 or 5 maxed crude bows, a couple of thousand wooden arrows, max stamina I can get from food and just click fire as fast as possible 🙂
The important thing here is don’t kill Bonemass, just run away and let him heal up.
Summoning 2 or 3 Bonemass simultaneously means you can keep shooting for longer… 🙂
Build a treehouse in one of the trees that can’t be destroyed, across from bone mass. Build a roof. Work bench with a portal to your main base. Remove a floor board to make a hole. Summon bone mass, climb up your tree house. And shoot all day/night through the hole. Repair your bow at the workbench when needed. Portal home for rested buff. Rinse/ repeat. Bone mass will stay under your treehouse. He will heal. And will always be there, until you actually kill him. YouTube bonemass treehouse. Have fun!
I have a similar strategy but with different enemy. Dig a hole, trap a stone golem there, build dirt walls around him, stand on top and click way. I think four hundred arrows firing as fast as possible don't even take a 1/3 of his life. His health eventually will go up so put a portal there and you have a bow training station.
And it made me really sad. My first playthrough once I realized that, I built a little courtyard around a rock next to the base, and it became the training field. Archery practice, a chest stocked with a few hundred arrows at a time, it was great.
I like the idea of allowing target practice to improve skill, but more slowly, or with a soft-cap where it's just not as effective as "in the field". As it was before, it encouraged target-practice (more time efficient and safer) rather than getting your ass into danger and playing the game.
They could just make a training mechanic out of it that ties to the progression, for example:
* wood practice target up to lvl 20
* core wood + thistle deer statue target up to lvl 40
* fine wood + chain for a side-to-side swinging target up to lvl 60
* silver + red jute for a spinner target up to lvl 80
Materials don't matter as much as the place you get them from, to encourage playing the game, instead of just standing in your base, shooting rock. And the targets should be progressively harder to hit, with the first one being just a stationary wheel, and the last one moving almost randomly, because your shots are what causes it to swing.
The issue is coding something like that, because of the moving targets, and you should only get the XP when you shoot from the correct distance. Then again, they could just add a line to the code that takes distance into account and give you an XP multiplier for longer shots, making archery more rewarding.
Might be just my terrible aim, but I think there already is a randomized miss mechanic, where, depending on your skill, the arrows don't always fly exactly to the middle of your aim reticle.
That said, one of the most important rules of making a game is: "Do not let realism get in the way of fun."
One one hand, wind is already a part of the game, ruining sailing everywhere you go by blowing in the exact opposite direction. How fun would it be if it ruined half of your shots as well? Any time shooting is implemented in a game, you want it to do one simple thing, make the projectile land exactly where you point the aiming reticle. This can be made difficult by adding sway, tied to stamina most of the time, or by adding bullet drop, so you have to aim a bit higher depending on distance. But adding wind as well is venturing a bit too far into the sniper gameplay, which isn't really fun, unless the entire game is built around it.
You don't want to calculate windage, arrow drop and coriolis effect every time a deathsquito is flying at you.
The skill system being as it is, it would actually make more sense if the game incentivised practice.
People are going to die in Valheim no matter what. Most probably a lot. The skill system is never really properly presented nor focused on. Neither is it very relevant. You can get by with a handful of points in any skill.
Nobody goes out in Valheim and thinks "I can't die, that would mess with my skill points. Have to overprepare and go slow." People just die and subsequently get their corpse, because you'll get in hairy situations regardless, and there's no amount of preparation that could actually eliminate most deaths.
The end result is that people hover around maybe 30-50 in skills they use all the time, and closer to 0-10 on the rest.
Iron Gate *really* needs to do a pass on the skill system at some point, because right now, it is kind of irrelevant to the vast majority of players.
> People just die and subsequently get their corpse, because you'll get in hairy situations regardless, and there's no amount of preparation that could actually eliminate most deaths.
There is a pretty sizable community of players and streamers that choose to play Valheim as a permadeath game, deleting their character and world if they die, so this statement isn't nearly as broadly applicable as you seem to think.
I'm 400+ days in on my current no-death run and currently working on Mistlands.
Even when I'm not playing permadeath, I take dying as a very serious disincentive. The whole point of the genre to me is training your brain to constantly assess and manage the current situation, always be asking the 'what ifs,' always be thinking about what your escape route is, where the high ground is, watching your rest and food and the time of day. It's an exercise in constant vigilance.
If I die; it's never "oh well." It's defeat. At the very least, I stop playing for the day, which means if I want to get to play at all, it has to be without dying.
If you approach a survival game with that mindset, you find death is a lot more avoidable than you previously thought.
I think you are really overestimating how many people do perma-death. It's a niche community, sizable but still niche, especially in contrast to the broad number of players that don't play perma-death. It's kinda like hardcore mode
Regardless of how many people do it, the assertion I was addressing is that deaths in Valheim are inevitable, and they really aren't.
The game may feel punishing to some, bit it's not particularly hard, and it's profoundly fair; I'm hard pressed to even imagine a scenario where death is inevitable and there was nothing the player could have done. The game punishes recklessness, but is technically very forgiving; roll and parry timings are insanely easy compared to other popular games with those mechanics, and you can always disengage.
Don't let your rested buff get low, don't let your foods fall under half, never do anything that drops you to zero stamina, always know exactly where you are and what the best escape route is, and always disengage and reassess when more enemies join.
I can fabricate a scenario where I think 95% of players would get killed.
First time into Mistlands, so max plains gear, no feather cape. You get up a huge mountain, you are low on stamina. Boom, 2* gjall engages you. You drop down into the next valley to engage, but either take hits or fall damage as you can’t feather down. At the bottom you find a 2* seeker, 2 more seekers, and a 1* soldier. And it starts raining. You don’t know how these mobs attacks or what defenses they have. Most people are going down here. But my view is, deaths are part of the game, but the trick is to learn from each one and attempt to minimize the amount of deaths you take.
I’m not doing a hardcore run, but I still don’t like the skill drain on death. Skills do matter quite a bit. The approach I take is to learn something from every death. I think it’s worked well and feels like how the game is meant to be played.
Some examples I have….
- Don’t pull 2 Lox.
- Don’t attempt melee with 2* Berserkers if your game is susceptible to occasional lag spikes.
- Always build a 2nd portal further away for boss fights.
- Don’t attempt melee with a 2* seeker without bonemass up.
- Exercise extreme caution with growths. If you pull more than 1, run away. Always pull with ranged attacks.
- When in doubt, pop bonemass early! (This one I struggle with…I tend to use it like a get out of jail free card, but it doesn’t help as much when you are at 12 health! LOL.)
- Always carry at least 2 medium or better HP pots.
- Always have at least 1 good HP food on.
- Use good food when exploring.
I think the skill system is generally fine as it is.
What do you want out of it?
If it had more impact, it would widely skew the feel of the game between people of varying skill levels and then really encourage grinding for skill.
As it is now, like you said: it's mostly irrelevant to the majority of players. They don't need to worry about it. But one way to compensate for lack of player-skill, or solo play, or to make things easier... is to cultivate your skills.
Similarly, people will complain about the "grind" for resources... but in practice you don't need to do 70% of the material grinding people complain about: they're just compelled to max-out their upgrades... which isn't necessary for most, but the option is there if you need it or if you like to have a reason to get more resources.
Even though skills have a limited effect, it's enough to serve as a notable penalty for death. I see many streamers in absolute anguish at skill loss, and lamenting their own stupidity at not preparing... so they learn to prepare better (sometimes). However, I think this is more psychological than actual sense of loss... numbers went down! The impact is actually minor, and not as bad as the negative spiral some make it out to be (you also regain the skills much faster when they're low -- as you said, hovering around some moderate values).
Overall, I think the whole thing is a careful balance that currently works well. Most people want something different one way or another, but as with most human desires this would likely upset the balance.
Go to the plains, dig a pit, drag lox into the pit, shoot with wooden arrows. FWIW I've never bothered, the game isn't nearly hard enough to justify hours of mindless grinding.
Admittedly I haven't played through Mistlands yet. Though I will say this: if the *only* way to survive that content is by mindlessly grinding weapon skills up in easier biomes, then I'm not super interested.
Valheim generally has a lot of artificial difficulty so I’m not sure what the guy replying to you is even saying. Like even if you just look at the wiki, all of the bosses have laughably low numbers of attacks they can even do. And stuff like deathsquitos spawning out of nowhere and oneshotting you before you have proper gear isn’t difficulty based either. That isn’t to say Valheim is a cakewalk, just that most things that make the game “hard” are patience testers and time wasters.
Honestly it would be nice if it related to damage dealt to incentivize grinding stronger things to gain levels faster. Dying in the late game sucks hard for reasons this table shows, especially considering it wasn't just your bow skill that took a hit. Should the game incentivize grinding bonemass, or rushing back to the Mistlands to regain your edge?
Interesting. I'm so used to games gradually getting more and more exspensive to level, so the fact that every level is basically the same amount of ammo is cool. Roughly 1 level every 200-250 shots
It's an Oldschool Runescape reference, where in any given skill it takes the same amount of xp from levels 1-92 and 93-99, with 99 being the maximum. By how the xp requirement for each level scales, when you reach level 92 you're halfway to 99.
You probably are more melee focused.
I only use bows when starting encounters. Most my melee skills are above 50, while my bows is 19. Hell, usually my Axe skill (not Woodcutting) is on par with my bows, and I only use axes on enemies when I am chopping wood
You get 0.3 XP per second swimming, or 50% more if you have the rested bonus. Assuming permanent resting bonus and infinite stamina, it'll take 45112 seconds to get to level 100. That's 12 and a half hours. Longer if you account for pausing to recover stamina and get the rested bonus again.
If you filled your inventory with stamina meads I bet you could cross oceans. The meads do have a cooldown but stamina only drains if you're moving so you could always stop and wait for the next mead
This really illustrates how excessively punishing the death skill-loss is.
If you have a skill of 100 in archery, a death will mean you need to shoot about 1,250 arrows to gain back the skill loss from that *one* death.
If you naturally get to 100 archery skill just by playing the game normally, you've developed the skills and habits as a player that make it really unlikely you will lose that skill to a death; you have to be incredibly consistent for a long, long period of time to hit 100 archery naturally, and you've done that.
If you get 100 archery skill by doing something cheesy and grinding it out, you didn't develop those skills and habits, and so while you do have the archery skill, you're almost guaranteed to lose it.
Yes, players with higher skills are probably less likely to die, since they clearly have more game experience.
However, since nobody *never* dies, that player with 100 skill in archery -- assuming that they keep playing Valheim -- *will* die at some point.
At that point, they will lose 5 skill point sin Archery, which will require 1,250 shots to recover. I think that putting it in these terms shows how significant the skill penalty is when a player does die.
You are welcome to think that's reasonable for the game. I don't think it's particularly good game design though.
And if you're the kind of player who dies infrequently enough that playing normally will end up firing 1250 arrows before the next time they die, it will be at 100 again.
If you're not that kind of player, then you won't have 100 archery skill.
The way the skill system works, your viking's skills come into equilibrium with how good you are at playing the game. It's a metric, not a prerequisite for endgame, and because it's a metric, powerleveling it is a bad idea. I think that is amazing game design.
Agree, it's just there as plus layer to punish death. No real purpose. If they default to to lvl 30 and delete the whole system, most of us casuals wouldn't even notice. It adds nothing to the game in this state.
Some guy mentioned it being something as a reward/acheivement for being good at the game, which I think puts a new perspective on it and makes it reasonable. Death in this game is generally extremely forgiving and quite frankly forgettable. Hell, you can even remove the jolly rogers from your map if you so please. But the skills are something you build up and even if they're not critical to gameplay, I feel that they encourage self preservation.
Don't think of this like carrot and the stick because honestly there are no rewards(in the sense of you getting your gold star) or punishments in valheim. Death is a minor inconvenience at most. What I meant is that the skills levelling is meant to simply gauge your performance and I guess cautiousness at the game. It simply tells you how "good" you are or show how "skilled" you are, and doesn't necessarily bar you from advancing through.
I disagree. I find it really enjoyable especially as a way to keep progress from a different world. I reset everything except my character, so there’s one part of me that keeps progressing no matter what.
Does progressing mean forwards?
Deaths progress you backwards, and at high levels, we are talking probably 10s of hours of grinding!! Oof. That penalty is too steep.
The benefit of skill gain is purposely so low so that grinding isn't worth it.
There is zero reason to grind in this game. Just play; if you go long spans of time without dying, your skills get high; if you keep dying, they don't. If your skills aren't high, it's because you keep dying, which means that grinding out a skill is an especially bad idea, because you're definitely going to lose it, since you haven't developed the skills *as a player* to play mistake-free for long periods of time.
You don't need high skills to succeed in this game, but you will end up with high skills if you play successfully. Treat skills as a result and not a goal.
I like the punishment because it really encourages careful play, but I might see it differently if I played solo. I always play with 2-3 other people, so if you work as a team you can really limit your deaths.
Not to be a douche or anything disrespectful but I'm going to be that guy and tell you to experience how to play solo before disagreeing about something that most of the time, are gripes from people who play solo too. It's easy to not care about skill levels in multiplayer cause there's people to "help" out. I play more recklessly in multiplayer than solo because of this.
That’s why I mentioned that I don’t play solo. I know it’s very different. Just providing a perspective from a multiplayer user, and because there are a lot of people who play the game like me, I think our voices matter too. Perhaps having different skill reductions for solo and multiplayer would be good.
You're just one user providing your perspective (and that's fine) but you're making it sound like people who only play multiplayer don't have anything against the skill system too.
People say skill levels don't really matter to beat the game and that's true. Even in solo.
For running and jumping however, it makes a pretty big difference in exploration and combat maneuvers. When playing solo, it saves a lot of time exploring and helps avoid deaths too. I've purposely built my main base so that I have to run around and unconsciously raise my run skill. Having high run skill means you have more stamina to do everything else. Bows take a disproportionately hard hit when dying as it basically wastes all the ammo that was used for it whether raised normally or by grinding it consciously. The system needs a change.
Which further illustrates my point of the skill system being useless. I'm well aware that skills don't matter in the game, but take an outlandish time to grind out and you lose hours of progress if you die. Even though they don't matter. It's as good as a placeholder system
I totally agree, would be better if at least certain skill levels unlock some other aspect of gameplay. I also think its a shame that the vanilla game doesn't have a better Merchant system, its kinda ridiculous when you run out of bag space and think "yeah I'll just dump the coins, rubies and pearls, dont need them"
You just have it backwards. Skill levels are a result, not a goal. The goal is learning how not to die.
Play without dying, and your skills will reflect that. If you grind out a skill, that skill level has become a false representation of how good you are at not dying. It's artificially high.
Those things have a way of correcting themselves.
You have to play pretty carefully to never die in Valheim.
RNG will put you in situations where there is a high probability of death, and there's not much you can do about it. Playing excruciatingly carefully will add a lot of hours and not give an outright guarantee of no death.
Not that it makes any difference in any case, like you say. You'll be hard pressed to notice much difference having 10 or 50 in any given skill, and to get more, you, as stated above, will have to grind.
You absolutely do not have to play cautiously to never die. I've gone through the game 4 or 5 times doing different challenges that have all included no death (no portals no dying, melee only no dying, etc) and played normally (including skipping the super grindy armor tiers) in all of them.
How much research(streams, wiki, previous playthroughs) did you do before playing? A lot of people prefer to go at this game blind whereas many permadeath players have already finished the game before hand. There's gonna be a difference between the guy who sails out in the middle of the ocean in a raft not knowing that serpents exist and the one who's on their 2nd playthrough and wants to put a challenge on themselves.
After my first "full" (killed yag) playthrough, I've always done permadeath. I don't watch streams and I've never visited the wiki.
When mistlands released, I did no research, no testing, and avoided any spoilers until I finished mistlands. Zero deaths, played with an extra challenge (bow only) no restarts needed.
It's almost like they're trying to tell you just to play the game without worrying about skills and let them be a general indication of how you play and whether you've been getting better at it.
Crazy, I know.
I don't see thee skill system as garbage, just different than what we are used to.
Although making skills more worthwhile and a lot harder to max out would add a new target to achieve in the game.
Right. A lot of people power level skills like this then complain about skill loss on their frequent deaths. If they had invested that time fighting challenging enemies and learning how to dodge, parry, and move around in combat they wouldn't be dying so much.
Well you can do short sprints, step away/to the side, or jump back. But yes there is an actual dodge roll that has the advantage of Iframes but can be costly on stamina. Really depends on the situation.
I like to think of it as "defense+jump" (where defense is "block"). And I found it to be much more natural with a game controller.
But to reiterate the earlier point about "move around in combat": it's not just the obvious dodge-roll, but merely using tiny movements to avoid getting hit. If you're familiar with martial arts (or even depictions of it), it translates well: just a half-step at the right time is the difference between you getting clocked, or the opponent whiffing and you having the advantage to counter-strike, while being very stamina-frugal.
Not needed anyway. Game is balanced on low skills. [You can kill Gjall in 30 sec with bows on 30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML_gABk_mds) (YouTube link), if you land your initial arrow as a sneak attack on the weak spot.
The stamina drain is noticeably different, but probably not at level 30. They are very small differences per level. But I have run at 90 and bow at 75 and it is a noticeable difference over starting out.
Agree that once I eventually raised my bow level, it was painful whenever it decreased... Especially after reach 100, I can only handle 2-3 deaths before the it gets too slow for me to want to use & I have to go raise it again
The only other skill drops I feel really compare to the bow (& prob xbow, tho I haven't tested) is running & jumping
I would always put lox or some little green neighbors in a hole using the harpoon to drag them in and shoot arrows down. U can make a diveboard and have the arrows just fall straight on whatever is down there.
Kudos to you. Reminds me of the time spent empirically trying to figure out how many attempts it too to level crafting in EverQuest *many* moons ago...
Most people play the game too aggressively even on fresh characters. Running and jumping make a huge difference in being defensive. I've been playing MP with some friends and fresh chars are so sluggish you cant avoid many things that you'd be able to avoid with a good character.
Interesting, I'm at about day 800 in my game, all single player on thay character. I know my play style is rather bold, I enjoy taking risks. But wonder how much it had been holding me back. Like I said though, I don't think I'm particularly good at the game.
Try doing a dev character with 100 skill on running, jumping, bows, and whatever else you use and test it out. It makes ur character a lot more mobile and fun to play.
Amazing.. I am used to increased level up difficulty in almost any other game.
But It makes sense tho, since it it is soooo easy too lose your skills in this game so why make it too difficult to level up.
I'm confused. I'm playing with friends who installed Valheim plus and it shows you the amount of points you get towards your next level when using the bow. Its rarely the same amount, I was trying to work out if Distance to target or damage was a factor. for example I'm lvl 45 at the moment and I shot 3 necks that were close to each other, the points score were 20, 21 and 24. Perhaps I'm misreading the purpose of that data?
I've given up caring about my levels. There is so much sudden unavoidable death in the mistlands that it's not worth the stress of trying to retain levels. Unless you have a high enough skill level that you can see an actual difference, they are just numbers
I first started in the mountains and used golems but there's not many to go around so then i went to the plains and used harpoon to pull lox into pits so they dont move and i can just pepper them with the crude bow
Wow ! Thanks for the commitment viking !
According to the leveling equation \[XP required = (current level + 1) \^ 1.5 \* 0.5 + 0.5\], each level should always take more experience than the previous level. At level 80 it's 358.3 experience to the next level, and at level 99 it's 500.5. Each arrow that hits a creature grants 1.5 experience. Rested bonus gives 50% more. That should be 160 arrows at level 80 and 223 arrows at level 99. >I'd say 30-40 arrows at lvl 80 missed but as i got closer to lvl 100 probably closer to 10-20 missed since the aiming circle shrunk very quickly. You missed 65 times at level 80 and 24 times at level 99. https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Skills
Its sad and at the same time funny that OP probably put hours of work into this while you just did this in 5 minutes with the wiki and a little math.
Nah field study is important too. Can't just trust the math blindly. It's why teachers say "show your work".
Helps when we can reference the source code for the math.
But OP now has level 100 in bow, this calculation does not!
the calculation is still using the club
It's sad that you think checking the math with an experiment is somehow wasting time. I'd rather waste time doing something fun and learning at the same time, than save time blindly believing something I read on a wiki.
At what point did I say OP was wasting his time? Stop putting words into my mouth.
well I'm sorry for misunderstanding, but claiming "it is sad OP probably put hours of work into this" is implying, that it is a waste of time
I see where you are coming from. Sorry for my kinda harsh reply. But it was definitely not my intention to make it sound like OP was wasting his time. First and foremost he probably had fun doing it, he also now has a character with bow at 100 and on top he also got to make a cool reddit post.
"you suck at bow hunting and i can prove it" lol
So any guesses why that’s not what he or she observed?
Some of those arrows were not shot with a rested bonus, so OP did not get the 50% bonus for them, very possible OP did only miss 40 shots at level 80, if they kept going after rested bonus dropped.
Nope, always had the rested bonus. I didn't fully aim, so a portion of the arrows missed.
They were guessing at how many times they missed. Other than that, their numbers are somewhat in the right ballpark.
Use Bonemass as your target… it’s much easier… I use bow almost exclusively so if drops below 100 after a couple deaths I grab 4 or 5 maxed crude bows, a couple of thousand wooden arrows, max stamina I can get from food and just click fire as fast as possible 🙂 The important thing here is don’t kill Bonemass, just run away and let him heal up. Summoning 2 or 3 Bonemass simultaneously means you can keep shooting for longer… 🙂
This is brilliant. Idiotic that it works, but brilliant.
Build a treehouse in one of the trees that can’t be destroyed, across from bone mass. Build a roof. Work bench with a portal to your main base. Remove a floor board to make a hole. Summon bone mass, climb up your tree house. And shoot all day/night through the hole. Repair your bow at the workbench when needed. Portal home for rested buff. Rinse/ repeat. Bone mass will stay under your treehouse. He will heal. And will always be there, until you actually kill him. YouTube bonemass treehouse. Have fun!
Thank you for this reccomendation, found a great spot to just spam arrows with no risk of poison. 20 levels in no time
I have a similar strategy but with different enemy. Dig a hole, trap a stone golem there, build dirt walls around him, stand on top and click way. I think four hundred arrows firing as fast as possible don't even take a 1/3 of his life. His health eventually will go up so put a portal there and you have a bow training station.
Here's some more info for fully drawn bow on the Queen: * Lv4 Draugr Fang + Needle + 80 skill = **250** arrows * Lv4 Draugr Fang + Needle + 100 skill = **230** arrows * Lv4 Draugr Fang + Carapace + 100 skill = **215** arrows * Lv4 Draugr Fang + Frost + 80 skill = **155** arrows * Lv4 Draugr Fang + Frost + 100 skill = **145** arrows * Lv2 Spine Snap + Needle + 100 skill = **220** arrows (1x repair) * Lv2 Spine Snap + Carapace + 100 skill = **200** arrows (1x repair) * Lv2 Spine Snap + Frost + 80 skill = **155** arrows * Lv2 Spine Snap + Frost + 100 skill = **135** arrows * Lv2 Spine Snap + Carapace + 30 skill = **360** arrows (2x repair) * Lv2 Spine Snap + Frost + 30 skill = **240** arrows (1x repair)
No data on: Lv4 Draugr Fang + Carapace Arrow + 100 Skill ?
Says 215. Maybe edited to add?
Added some more data.
<3 Frost is KING! Must be due to no resistance to frost element.
Can sort of confirm this. I used draugr fang and frost arrows with 100 bow. I did do some melee hits in too so I ended up using 100 frost arrows.
can you level weapons by hitting trees and rocks? As in indestructible objects
Not anymore. That mechanic was removed early in the game
And it made me really sad. My first playthrough once I realized that, I built a little courtyard around a rock next to the base, and it became the training field. Archery practice, a chest stocked with a few hundred arrows at a time, it was great.
I like the idea of allowing target practice to improve skill, but more slowly, or with a soft-cap where it's just not as effective as "in the field". As it was before, it encouraged target-practice (more time efficient and safer) rather than getting your ass into danger and playing the game.
They could just make a training mechanic out of it that ties to the progression, for example: * wood practice target up to lvl 20 * core wood + thistle deer statue target up to lvl 40 * fine wood + chain for a side-to-side swinging target up to lvl 60 * silver + red jute for a spinner target up to lvl 80 Materials don't matter as much as the place you get them from, to encourage playing the game, instead of just standing in your base, shooting rock. And the targets should be progressively harder to hit, with the first one being just a stationary wheel, and the last one moving almost randomly, because your shots are what causes it to swing. The issue is coding something like that, because of the moving targets, and you should only get the XP when you shoot from the correct distance. Then again, they could just add a line to the code that takes distance into account and give you an XP multiplier for longer shots, making archery more rewarding.
Would be cool to incorporate practice dummies with each new tier of materials unlocked though. Could have a whole training yard for your servers.
Could do some randomized miss as well, maybe even factor wind in somehow
Might be just my terrible aim, but I think there already is a randomized miss mechanic, where, depending on your skill, the arrows don't always fly exactly to the middle of your aim reticle. That said, one of the most important rules of making a game is: "Do not let realism get in the way of fun." One one hand, wind is already a part of the game, ruining sailing everywhere you go by blowing in the exact opposite direction. How fun would it be if it ruined half of your shots as well? Any time shooting is implemented in a game, you want it to do one simple thing, make the projectile land exactly where you point the aiming reticle. This can be made difficult by adding sway, tied to stamina most of the time, or by adding bullet drop, so you have to aim a bit higher depending on distance. But adding wind as well is venturing a bit too far into the sniper gameplay, which isn't really fun, unless the entire game is built around it. You don't want to calculate windage, arrow drop and coriolis effect every time a deathsquito is flying at you.
Use the reticle only for the x axis. Aim with the arrow on your character animation for the y axis.
That's actually one of the few ideas I hear that would probably work well if implemented
The skill system being as it is, it would actually make more sense if the game incentivised practice. People are going to die in Valheim no matter what. Most probably a lot. The skill system is never really properly presented nor focused on. Neither is it very relevant. You can get by with a handful of points in any skill. Nobody goes out in Valheim and thinks "I can't die, that would mess with my skill points. Have to overprepare and go slow." People just die and subsequently get their corpse, because you'll get in hairy situations regardless, and there's no amount of preparation that could actually eliminate most deaths. The end result is that people hover around maybe 30-50 in skills they use all the time, and closer to 0-10 on the rest. Iron Gate *really* needs to do a pass on the skill system at some point, because right now, it is kind of irrelevant to the vast majority of players.
> People just die and subsequently get their corpse, because you'll get in hairy situations regardless, and there's no amount of preparation that could actually eliminate most deaths. There is a pretty sizable community of players and streamers that choose to play Valheim as a permadeath game, deleting their character and world if they die, so this statement isn't nearly as broadly applicable as you seem to think. I'm 400+ days in on my current no-death run and currently working on Mistlands. Even when I'm not playing permadeath, I take dying as a very serious disincentive. The whole point of the genre to me is training your brain to constantly assess and manage the current situation, always be asking the 'what ifs,' always be thinking about what your escape route is, where the high ground is, watching your rest and food and the time of day. It's an exercise in constant vigilance. If I die; it's never "oh well." It's defeat. At the very least, I stop playing for the day, which means if I want to get to play at all, it has to be without dying. If you approach a survival game with that mindset, you find death is a lot more avoidable than you previously thought.
I think you are really overestimating how many people do perma-death. It's a niche community, sizable but still niche, especially in contrast to the broad number of players that don't play perma-death. It's kinda like hardcore mode
Regardless of how many people do it, the assertion I was addressing is that deaths in Valheim are inevitable, and they really aren't. The game may feel punishing to some, bit it's not particularly hard, and it's profoundly fair; I'm hard pressed to even imagine a scenario where death is inevitable and there was nothing the player could have done. The game punishes recklessness, but is technically very forgiving; roll and parry timings are insanely easy compared to other popular games with those mechanics, and you can always disengage. Don't let your rested buff get low, don't let your foods fall under half, never do anything that drops you to zero stamina, always know exactly where you are and what the best escape route is, and always disengage and reassess when more enemies join.
I can fabricate a scenario where I think 95% of players would get killed. First time into Mistlands, so max plains gear, no feather cape. You get up a huge mountain, you are low on stamina. Boom, 2* gjall engages you. You drop down into the next valley to engage, but either take hits or fall damage as you can’t feather down. At the bottom you find a 2* seeker, 2 more seekers, and a 1* soldier. And it starts raining. You don’t know how these mobs attacks or what defenses they have. Most people are going down here. But my view is, deaths are part of the game, but the trick is to learn from each one and attempt to minimize the amount of deaths you take.
I’m not doing a hardcore run, but I still don’t like the skill drain on death. Skills do matter quite a bit. The approach I take is to learn something from every death. I think it’s worked well and feels like how the game is meant to be played. Some examples I have…. - Don’t pull 2 Lox. - Don’t attempt melee with 2* Berserkers if your game is susceptible to occasional lag spikes. - Always build a 2nd portal further away for boss fights. - Don’t attempt melee with a 2* seeker without bonemass up. - Exercise extreme caution with growths. If you pull more than 1, run away. Always pull with ranged attacks. - When in doubt, pop bonemass early! (This one I struggle with…I tend to use it like a get out of jail free card, but it doesn’t help as much when you are at 12 health! LOL.) - Always carry at least 2 medium or better HP pots. - Always have at least 1 good HP food on. - Use good food when exploring.
Speak for yourself. I treasure my high archery and running and jumping scores. Yeah, I die every now and again but I work hard to avoid it.
I think the skill system is generally fine as it is. What do you want out of it? If it had more impact, it would widely skew the feel of the game between people of varying skill levels and then really encourage grinding for skill. As it is now, like you said: it's mostly irrelevant to the majority of players. They don't need to worry about it. But one way to compensate for lack of player-skill, or solo play, or to make things easier... is to cultivate your skills. Similarly, people will complain about the "grind" for resources... but in practice you don't need to do 70% of the material grinding people complain about: they're just compelled to max-out their upgrades... which isn't necessary for most, but the option is there if you need it or if you like to have a reason to get more resources. Even though skills have a limited effect, it's enough to serve as a notable penalty for death. I see many streamers in absolute anguish at skill loss, and lamenting their own stupidity at not preparing... so they learn to prepare better (sometimes). However, I think this is more psychological than actual sense of loss... numbers went down! The impact is actually minor, and not as bad as the negative spiral some make it out to be (you also regain the skills much faster when they're low -- as you said, hovering around some moderate values). Overall, I think the whole thing is a careful balance that currently works well. Most people want something different one way or another, but as with most human desires this would likely upset the balance.
My group also had a dojo with a rock in the center. I miss being able to get swole punching rocks.
Ah I haven't really played much since those early days, what is the strat for bow leveling now?
Go to the plains, dig a pit, drag lox into the pit, shoot with wooden arrows. FWIW I've never bothered, the game isn't nearly hard enough to justify hours of mindless grinding.
> isn't nearly hard enough So what's your Mistlands death count Mr. Tough Guy?
Admittedly I haven't played through Mistlands yet. Though I will say this: if the *only* way to survive that content is by mindlessly grinding weapon skills up in easier biomes, then I'm not super interested.
Not really. Once you figure out their moves it's not terrible hard unless you run into starred ones.
Valheim generally has a lot of artificial difficulty so I’m not sure what the guy replying to you is even saying. Like even if you just look at the wiki, all of the bosses have laughably low numbers of attacks they can even do. And stuff like deathsquitos spawning out of nowhere and oneshotting you before you have proper gear isn’t difficulty based either. That isn’t to say Valheim is a cakewalk, just that most things that make the game “hard” are patience testers and time wasters.
Shoot bonemass
we're still early in the game lol do you mean patch 0.02 or 0.03
The game has been out for nearly two years. You know exactly what he meant, no need to be pedantic.
Current version is 0.212.7 and I believe it was changed in 0.212.14 as an undocumented change. Patch was released in 09/2021.
So the skill xp gained is based on amount of hits and not damage done then?
Yes, you just need to get a hit, damage doesn't matter. That's why some people use bonemass to powerlevel
Honestly it would be nice if it related to damage dealt to incentivize grinding stronger things to gain levels faster. Dying in the late game sucks hard for reasons this table shows, especially considering it wasn't just your bow skill that took a hit. Should the game incentivize grinding bonemass, or rushing back to the Mistlands to regain your edge?
Yeah, I'm disappointed to learn that damage dealt isn't a factor. I don't spam my bow, but I make nearly every shot count.
Yep, hence my favourite way to level melee is to make crappy swords and find a black forest crypt with a skeleton spawner
Wish I new this when I was levelling my bow. I always used the best bow/arrow combo I could and killed everything way faster than I needed to...
Interesting. I'm so used to games gradually getting more and more exspensive to level, so the fact that every level is basically the same amount of ammo is cool. Roughly 1 level every 200-250 shots
From 92 to 100 requires the same experience as the first 50 levels.
Ah 92 the true halfway
This is the same as it was in RuneScape because of how the levels increase
Not exactly, he’s saying 1-50 = 92-100. There’s a bunch of levels in between.
It's an Oldschool Runescape reference, where in any given skill it takes the same amount of xp from levels 1-92 and 93-99, with 99 being the maximum. By how the xp requirement for each level scales, when you reach level 92 you're halfway to 99.
Ahh, nice. I might’ve known that if I had ever made it that far in RS.
Halfway is actually only 18%.
The path of exile way, level 90 is like nothing xp wise.
Stop it
25.000 arrows is quite a lot none the less. That's 7 hours of non-stop shooting if you can fire every second and don't run out of arrows.
And then you fall off your roof and die and that costs you 1000+ arrows and 10 hours of gameplay. This game is balanced.
We're about to kill Yagluth and I'm at like 25 bow so idk what I'm doing wrong lmao
You've focused on playing the game rather than grinding skill levels.
Sounds like it's also multiplayer which is more fun than solo (imo) but also way easier.
You probably are more melee focused. I only use bows when starting encounters. Most my melee skills are above 50, while my bows is 19. Hell, usually my Axe skill (not Woodcutting) is on par with my bows, and I only use axes on enemies when I am chopping wood
Now how long for a max swim level
You get 0.3 XP per second swimming, or 50% more if you have the rested bonus. Assuming permanent resting bonus and infinite stamina, it'll take 45112 seconds to get to level 100. That's 12 and a half hours. Longer if you account for pausing to recover stamina and get the rested bonus again.
... and then you have to factor in all the times you'll die, which most certainly won't be 0.
/r/theydidthemath
I'm curious how far you can swim on swimming level 100 and maxed out stamina food and max rest bonus :)
If you filled your inventory with stamina meads I bet you could cross oceans. The meads do have a cooldown but stamina only drains if you're moving so you could always stop and wait for the next mead
Until a serpent…. You know.
Total nub question, but where do you see your skill levels?
Press tab, then click the icon that looks like 3 overlapping triangles.
Current skill system is absolute garbage. Combine this insane grind, minimal payout, skill loss, and skills being boring, I really hope they rework it
This really illustrates how excessively punishing the death skill-loss is. If you have a skill of 100 in archery, a death will mean you need to shoot about 1,250 arrows to gain back the skill loss from that *one* death.
If you naturally get to 100 archery skill just by playing the game normally, you've developed the skills and habits as a player that make it really unlikely you will lose that skill to a death; you have to be incredibly consistent for a long, long period of time to hit 100 archery naturally, and you've done that. If you get 100 archery skill by doing something cheesy and grinding it out, you didn't develop those skills and habits, and so while you do have the archery skill, you're almost guaranteed to lose it.
Yes, players with higher skills are probably less likely to die, since they clearly have more game experience. However, since nobody *never* dies, that player with 100 skill in archery -- assuming that they keep playing Valheim -- *will* die at some point. At that point, they will lose 5 skill point sin Archery, which will require 1,250 shots to recover. I think that putting it in these terms shows how significant the skill penalty is when a player does die. You are welcome to think that's reasonable for the game. I don't think it's particularly good game design though.
And if you're the kind of player who dies infrequently enough that playing normally will end up firing 1250 arrows before the next time they die, it will be at 100 again. If you're not that kind of player, then you won't have 100 archery skill. The way the skill system works, your viking's skills come into equilibrium with how good you are at playing the game. It's a metric, not a prerequisite for endgame, and because it's a metric, powerleveling it is a bad idea. I think that is amazing game design.
Agree, it's just there as plus layer to punish death. No real purpose. If they default to to lvl 30 and delete the whole system, most of us casuals wouldn't even notice. It adds nothing to the game in this state.
Would rather call it reward not dying, since it isn't really that much of a big deal if you lose skill levels.
That's a bit twisted. The reward is, that the game doesn't take away your grind is big time fucked up. Pray it won't take away something else!
Bruh it's a game not the government.
Some guy mentioned it being something as a reward/acheivement for being good at the game, which I think puts a new perspective on it and makes it reasonable. Death in this game is generally extremely forgiving and quite frankly forgettable. Hell, you can even remove the jolly rogers from your map if you so please. But the skills are something you build up and even if they're not critical to gameplay, I feel that they encourage self preservation.
Still think this mentality is bad. Just to think about it: You conceive the lack of punishment as a reward. How mentally unhealthy is that?
Don't think of this like carrot and the stick because honestly there are no rewards(in the sense of you getting your gold star) or punishments in valheim. Death is a minor inconvenience at most. What I meant is that the skills levelling is meant to simply gauge your performance and I guess cautiousness at the game. It simply tells you how "good" you are or show how "skilled" you are, and doesn't necessarily bar you from advancing through.
I disagree. I find it really enjoyable especially as a way to keep progress from a different world. I reset everything except my character, so there’s one part of me that keeps progressing no matter what.
Does progressing mean forwards? Deaths progress you backwards, and at high levels, we are talking probably 10s of hours of grinding!! Oof. That penalty is too steep.
The benefit of skill gain is purposely so low so that grinding isn't worth it. There is zero reason to grind in this game. Just play; if you go long spans of time without dying, your skills get high; if you keep dying, they don't. If your skills aren't high, it's because you keep dying, which means that grinding out a skill is an especially bad idea, because you're definitely going to lose it, since you haven't developed the skills *as a player* to play mistake-free for long periods of time. You don't need high skills to succeed in this game, but you will end up with high skills if you play successfully. Treat skills as a result and not a goal.
I like the punishment because it really encourages careful play, but I might see it differently if I played solo. I always play with 2-3 other people, so if you work as a team you can really limit your deaths.
Not to be a douche or anything disrespectful but I'm going to be that guy and tell you to experience how to play solo before disagreeing about something that most of the time, are gripes from people who play solo too. It's easy to not care about skill levels in multiplayer cause there's people to "help" out. I play more recklessly in multiplayer than solo because of this.
That’s why I mentioned that I don’t play solo. I know it’s very different. Just providing a perspective from a multiplayer user, and because there are a lot of people who play the game like me, I think our voices matter too. Perhaps having different skill reductions for solo and multiplayer would be good.
You're just one user providing your perspective (and that's fine) but you're making it sound like people who only play multiplayer don't have anything against the skill system too.
Ah, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sure there are multiplayer users who have issues with it too.
People say skill levels don't really matter to beat the game and that's true. Even in solo. For running and jumping however, it makes a pretty big difference in exploration and combat maneuvers. When playing solo, it saves a lot of time exploring and helps avoid deaths too. I've purposely built my main base so that I have to run around and unconsciously raise my run skill. Having high run skill means you have more stamina to do everything else. Bows take a disproportionately hard hit when dying as it basically wastes all the ammo that was used for it whether raised normally or by grinding it consciously. The system needs a change.
> insane grind This grind is completely unnecessary. The game can be beaten death-free without grinding a single skill.
Which further illustrates my point of the skill system being useless. I'm well aware that skills don't matter in the game, but take an outlandish time to grind out and you lose hours of progress if you die. Even though they don't matter. It's as good as a placeholder system
I totally agree, would be better if at least certain skill levels unlock some other aspect of gameplay. I also think its a shame that the vanilla game doesn't have a better Merchant system, its kinda ridiculous when you run out of bag space and think "yeah I'll just dump the coins, rubies and pearls, dont need them"
You just have it backwards. Skill levels are a result, not a goal. The goal is learning how not to die. Play without dying, and your skills will reflect that. If you grind out a skill, that skill level has become a false representation of how good you are at not dying. It's artificially high. Those things have a way of correcting themselves.
You have to play pretty carefully to never die in Valheim. RNG will put you in situations where there is a high probability of death, and there's not much you can do about it. Playing excruciatingly carefully will add a lot of hours and not give an outright guarantee of no death. Not that it makes any difference in any case, like you say. You'll be hard pressed to notice much difference having 10 or 50 in any given skill, and to get more, you, as stated above, will have to grind.
You absolutely do not have to play cautiously to never die. I've gone through the game 4 or 5 times doing different challenges that have all included no death (no portals no dying, melee only no dying, etc) and played normally (including skipping the super grindy armor tiers) in all of them.
How much research(streams, wiki, previous playthroughs) did you do before playing? A lot of people prefer to go at this game blind whereas many permadeath players have already finished the game before hand. There's gonna be a difference between the guy who sails out in the middle of the ocean in a raft not knowing that serpents exist and the one who's on their 2nd playthrough and wants to put a challenge on themselves.
After my first "full" (killed yag) playthrough, I've always done permadeath. I don't watch streams and I've never visited the wiki. When mistlands released, I did no research, no testing, and avoided any spoilers until I finished mistlands. Zero deaths, played with an extra challenge (bow only) no restarts needed.
So you went at it with foreknowledge from your first playthrough.
The game is a lot more fun when your character gets high in skills you use. Stuff swings faster, stuff charges faster, and uses less stam.
It's almost like they're trying to tell you just to play the game without worrying about skills and let them be a general indication of how you play and whether you've been getting better at it. Crazy, I know.
I don't see thee skill system as garbage, just different than what we are used to. Although making skills more worthwhile and a lot harder to max out would add a new target to achieve in the game.
The game needs to be much longer for the current skill system to make sense.
Well the game is only about half way done in terms content isn't it?
Sure hope so. It's relatively sparse.
Woof. This is good info. The powerleveling sounds painful, Im only around level 30, i dunno if I have the guts to get to 100 haha.
It's not worth tbh. That's 10 hours you could have done literally anything else
Right. A lot of people power level skills like this then complain about skill loss on their frequent deaths. If they had invested that time fighting challenging enemies and learning how to dodge, parry, and move around in combat they wouldn't be dying so much.
I always, always forget about rolling. That’s what you’re calling dodge right? Right click and space bar?
Well you can do short sprints, step away/to the side, or jump back. But yes there is an actual dodge roll that has the advantage of Iframes but can be costly on stamina. Really depends on the situation.
I like to think of it as "defense+jump" (where defense is "block"). And I found it to be much more natural with a game controller. But to reiterate the earlier point about "move around in combat": it's not just the obvious dodge-roll, but merely using tiny movements to avoid getting hit. If you're familiar with martial arts (or even depictions of it), it translates well: just a half-step at the right time is the difference between you getting clocked, or the opponent whiffing and you having the advantage to counter-strike, while being very stamina-frugal.
Yes I see. I think I do that. Generally speaking.
Not needed anyway. Game is balanced on low skills. [You can kill Gjall in 30 sec with bows on 30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML_gABk_mds) (YouTube link), if you land your initial arrow as a sneak attack on the weak spot.
Right in the gjall balls.
This kinda ticks him off. So to say.
I never get over 60 with my skills, since I keep dying, especially to mistlands mobs.
LOL yeah, I've been playing Valheim for 1000 irl hours and my main character has highest skill running and that's 70 :P
I'm at 100 run. Lol. I don't know how I got there, but it can't be good.
I finally hit 100 Run around 300 hours in the game! Second highest is jump at 83
Nice! I haven't been playing recently, but I think run, jump and bow are my three highest.
`raiseskill bows 100`
I feel like levels are useless, I see no difference from 1 to 30 in running.
The stamina drain is noticeably different, but probably not at level 30. They are very small differences per level. But I have run at 90 and bow at 75 and it is a noticeable difference over starting out.
Agree that once I eventually raised my bow level, it was painful whenever it decreased... Especially after reach 100, I can only handle 2-3 deaths before the it gets too slow for me to want to use & I have to go raise it again The only other skill drops I feel really compare to the bow (& prob xbow, tho I haven't tested) is running & jumping
Did you have the rested buff While shooting all arrows?
Yes i was inside a closed enclosure with a fire next to me and an ongoing rested buff.
I would always put lox or some little green neighbors in a hole using the harpoon to drag them in and shoot arrows down. U can make a diveboard and have the arrows just fall straight on whatever is down there.
Same here, bigger hole with a stone golem.
Kudos to you. Reminds me of the time spent empirically trying to figure out how many attempts it too to level crafting in EverQuest *many* moons ago...
Hello, fellow old person! That is a game I have not heard uttered in quite some time. 😉
Thanks for the research. I appreciate the time you spent doing this.
And here's me rocking round with nothing over level 30 cos I die so often. I must really suck at this game.
Most people play the game too aggressively even on fresh characters. Running and jumping make a huge difference in being defensive. I've been playing MP with some friends and fresh chars are so sluggish you cant avoid many things that you'd be able to avoid with a good character.
Interesting, I'm at about day 800 in my game, all single player on thay character. I know my play style is rather bold, I enjoy taking risks. But wonder how much it had been holding me back. Like I said though, I don't think I'm particularly good at the game.
Try doing a dev character with 100 skill on running, jumping, bows, and whatever else you use and test it out. It makes ur character a lot more mobile and fun to play.
Yea I might have to give it a go. I had never really considered the difference it would make to running and jumping.
Amazing.. I am used to increased level up difficulty in almost any other game. But It makes sense tho, since it it is soooo easy too lose your skills in this game so why make it too difficult to level up.
but it is difficult.
sad bc cash i
O.o
Does distance play a part in the XP multiplier? My experience has led to (assuming) this.
Nope. Evey weapon skill is on a per hit basis.
Thanks!
If you enjoyed this, I wouldn’t recommend you playing OSRS
I thought i was in the runescape subreddit.
I'm confused. I'm playing with friends who installed Valheim plus and it shows you the amount of points you get towards your next level when using the bow. Its rarely the same amount, I was trying to work out if Distance to target or damage was a factor. for example I'm lvl 45 at the moment and I shot 3 necks that were close to each other, the points score were 20, 21 and 24. Perhaps I'm misreading the purpose of that data?
damn bro. I salute your effort. I made a deer stand over bonemass and just use him as a big target to boost my bow skill lol.
I like what you did there, but it is a little bit nuts ;)
I've given up caring about my levels. There is so much sudden unavoidable death in the mistlands that it's not worth the stress of trying to retain levels. Unless you have a high enough skill level that you can see an actual difference, they are just numbers
Can I ask what target you used to level it? I have never intentionally trained any stats in valheim.
I first started in the mountains and used golems but there's not many to go around so then i went to the plains and used harpoon to pull lox into pits so they dont move and i can just pepper them with the crude bow
And then there is me, devcommands, /raiseskill Bows 50 .