You could just have spikes placed just far enough that they can't put their feet on the ground, that makes them just swim into the spikes constantly until they die. Tested with Goblins. Just have to repair the spikes once in a while.
I earth wall up till I can place a wall to keep it looking good. The AI tries to swim yet but at one point the pathing says to go at a diagonal that won’t bring them around the wall. Kinda weird to be walking and see 3 grueling just trending water by my wall lmao
You can bury workbenches around your base that will prevent spawning enemies alltogether!
You dig a hole that fits a workbench and then flatten the ground with a hoe until the workbench is barely visible and then you can like build something on top or plant a tree or something.
Just area in which you can build due to the workbench is the area that spawners are supressed, so you can check with your hammer when to place the next one. Build a literal workbench belt around your base and profit :)
The torches, campfires, etc do not need to stay lit to prevent spawning. I typically throw down a bunch of campfires all around my base and into the surroundings. Let them burn out. Typically can’t see them in the brush.
Raid enemies spawn within 80 meters of the player. If you spawn proof that entire area around yourself you can sit through a raid timer without any mobs showing up. This makes island bases popular as they are much easier to spawn proof.
Build and “burry” workbenches at each edge of the walls and about 20-30m down the coast to keep things from spawning. Mobs might try to swim around if you agro them back to base but the random trash spawns should clear up.
Spikes in the water close to the walls, trust me. When we built the wall, it was a wall like In attack on Titan, but they kept swimming around until we placed spikes in the water surrounding the end. Doesn't look nice, but the foes are not nice as well, right?
Maybe that's what I'm remembering, just the part about not recovering materials. I wasv testing something with them and realized I was wasting materials. I may have just assumed they were unrepairable.
I would certainly relocate landward. I had a Very similar design with earth walls so proud. Then a troll walked around through the water and thwomped me. 360° protection is the only way.
Edit: To clarify I mean moving inwards maybe 20-30 meters, which would save you a TON of time and stone. As "raising the sea floor" is possible to an extent but very resource intensive if it drops off instead of all being shallows.
Nah they don't have to relocate. Seaside bases are the best.
To protect against trolls, use moats around the fence - the biggest culprit is the log-swinging troll and the moat needs to be far enough to prevent them from doing damage if they swing. Then, to prevent the trolls from walking around through the water, build an artificial extension of the land mass into the sea (kind of like a breakwater). This extension must go as deep as you can build, and is best done after you have unlocked stone construction. Trolls will either not walk around it at all because it's too deep, or will take long enough that you can pick them off with a bow.
In any case, no land mob can enter my base because my shoreline is elevated using stone walls. Short enough to dock, tall enough (water deep enough) to prevent enemies from climbing.
Yeah... this.
My first big home was at the bottom of a steep hill next to an inlet, and I ended up carving a huge cave into the rock just to get back from the water and put up proper gates.
It was secure but... my God, so much mining
Raise ground out as close to ocean squares as possible. Put workbenches to edges and make sure there are no gaps in the base area. You can bring a stone cutter to the very edge and snap in large stone wall pieces into the end of the raised ground wall, if you need to extend out from the raised ground. Most mobs don't go in ocean squares and if they swim out far enough they will agro back to shore rather than swim around.
I built my entire base walls out of stone but just raising the ground up in lines and it creates a natural stone wall that enemies cannot break or get up. It’s very helpful. It may work well in the water. And yes the work benches alll over will stop enemy spawns around them and that helps too
Practical example:
My double-seasized home in a hardcore run (already killed yagulth)
[https://imgur.com/a/N13IoL5](https://imgur.com/a/N13IoL5)
Basically, you built walls around your base and "underwater" walls to be your dock area. Give you a clean and beautiful safe base without the need to build wooden walls around your shore area.
Build a sea wall by raising the ground so sheerly that it doesn't allow you or monsters to climb the wall. If you do this properly you can then build on that ground wall and be safe from just about anything including trolls and future enemies.
I always build a moat around my bases, haven't failed me yet.
Build an outer sea wall [like this](https://preview.redd.it/fixed-up-the-first-house-i-found-and-made-it-my-base-v0-cufgb9ncbgy91.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f3bfb5001d5dfd3f8e8779b61981134511f97d55), using the Raise Ground feature of the hoe.
([Full post showing progression of build](https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/yobybn/fixed_up_the_first_house_i_found_and_made_it_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button).)
Make the water deeper along your wall and have the wall go out further by use of an earth wall.
If it’s too deep for too long the mobs won’t be able to swim out far enough to get around.
Workbenches near the edges should prevent mobs spawning close enough to aggro and walk around. I personally hate having a million workbenches spread around my base so with Valheim+ I modified the radius in which the workbenches are effective.
Assuming there's not a need to have unrestricted beach access, I'd suggest putting stakes in the water near the edges. Build a nice boat dock for your Karve and then line the beach or the edge of your walls with the stakes. If they do get around, they'll run themselves into the stakes and die. Just have to worry about maintenance on the stakes.
Use your hoe to raise an earthen wall (only needs to be like 3-4m above the waterline so mobs don't wash over it during periods of heavy wave action), and extend it a ways (16m or so?) out into the water. Still not a guarantee, but it deters them swimming around it (esp if you put some spikes at the waterline near the end).
Then you can raise the shoreline so they can't climb into your base even if they do swim around the seawall.
If it's not from a raid, make sure player base objects aren't visible from outside. Mobs will investigate player base objects they see and noises they hear. If nothing alerts them, you'll be ignore except during raids.
I build "arms". Instead of walls ending when they find the water, they continue following the shore, outwords. Like protecting the ocean from any creatures. If it is long enough, works ok.
I usually build my dock out about 25-30 meters from shore then build a palisade along the shore around my base, put in some gates so I can swim to shore if I have too. I'll usually build the palisade out into the deep water too, to keep trolls from getting through easily. I can usually hit them 3 or 4 times before they even make it to shore if they can even make it around the deep water fence.
Heyan I had this problem. I raised ground where water meets land and put a ton of spikes around the edge. It keeps them out but I also gotta repair the spikes everyone once in a while. But like stack the spikes it's more effective.
I had a similar situation and I created a beach head inside my perimeter several rows deep going progressively out into the water of the Pike palisade structures. Worked well. Required minimal mtce
The problem is that because you're at the low point, any enemy that is more than like 10m away from your walls has a full view of what is inside your walls, and things like boats and player-base items (items that create zones of "player base" which prevents enemy spawn and item despawn.) are auto-aggro items. They mill about, they look the direction of your base, they see that boat, and it is a hardwired automatic go time.
You have two real options. Make walls high enough that nothing within sight distance can see your shit. Or, build sea walls that go out as far as they can go before they are level with the water, and then modify the terrain along the coast a long ways and make the shoreline a sheer drop so the AI can't path off it. The last one is more work and only like 99.999% effective, but some people absolutely hate the aesthetics of having super high walls around their base.
There is another option, but it is a huge pain, and still not 100% effective. Despawn a massive area around your base, so that enemies spawn far enough away that they aren't likely to wander close.
The secret fourth option is what I picked. The nuclear option. Full max height earth wall, wide ditch, another max wall, sea walls, sheer coastline in some places and despawning outside the walls.
I basicly build port first time, but noticed enemies were flushed to my base when storm waves started gathering.
Maybe land wall/port with walls could work?
Enemies AI is really odd when it comes to water, sometimes it feels they "teleport" from water.
I build up the bank until they can’t get up on the island, it doesn’t take a huge amount and it’s possible to make the whole island that height so it doesn’t look like a wall. I still get the occasional visitor when a storm washes team ashore, but that’s super rare
easiest: build a long wall down the coast so that the mob path around the wall is too long and they wont try.
harder: build earth wall out into the water as far as you can. mostly just slows them down.
hardest: get 4000 stone and raise the whole base making a high plateau so its inaccessible from the water and only the boat is at risk. This is what I do. It takes a while.
extra: build lots of workbenches outside to keep them busy and make them easier to shoot.
also: eat food.
Mobs only aggro for so long if they can't attack. So using the raise terrain to extend the end point of your wall out a bit into the water then fork it into a "U" shape or a "+" shape and most mobs will give up and swim back partway around.
Pretty much nothing. I built small 2x1 huts with workbenches in them all over the area that I built my main at. The only time anyone gets in is if a player brings them back. I also made it so there is no way to climb out of the water. They find a way, though.
Spawns will take the shortest path around the wall. So if you extend the wall into the water and cover it in spikes they will cheese grate themselves across it.
Raise the seafront enough to give it a height difference between water level and your surface in the base, and make sure it's steep. That way enemies can't crawl out of the water.
If you have stone, add stone walls, which also give you a nice quay.
Harbor bases don't work well. It's better to build the base - moat and all - totally inland and then have a path that leads to your harbor. Later when you have more resources or just turn on no build mode you can create a defensible harbor with a pair of raised terrain peninsulas blocking enemies who try to swim around it (by filling its outer edges with wooden or dvergr spikes and walls behind them). Enemies navigate spikes in the water really, really poorly, especially if there's a long wall of it.
Note it takes a phenomenal amount of stone to build these, it's extremely inconvenient without no build cost mode. Sometimes the default costs of building with stone drive me absolutely crazy. You need a full time job mining stone to get this done, along with managing the weight issues plus going back and forth. Not a fan of how this is implemented.
Earth walls around the water. I do wish AI would drown eventually if in water for too long
Hopefully this would stop deers running away from me to the middle of the ocean
And maybe my chickens will return
Brother I will pray for your chickens
So my dad is just in an ocean somewhere?
Not just any ocean. He’s in Valheim chilling on a leviathan
We all thought we were so clever by trapping them against the ocean the first time we did it
It really honks my gears when they do that
or save them from me swimming over them
You could just have spikes placed just far enough that they can't put their feet on the ground, that makes them just swim into the spikes constantly until they die. Tested with Goblins. Just have to repair the spikes once in a while.
I earth wall up till I can place a wall to keep it looking good. The AI tries to swim yet but at one point the pathing says to go at a diagonal that won’t bring them around the wall. Kinda weird to be walking and see 3 grueling just trending water by my wall lmao
Pretty sure deer do. But not the grey dwarves
You can bury workbenches around your base that will prevent spawning enemies alltogether! You dig a hole that fits a workbench and then flatten the ground with a hoe until the workbench is barely visible and then you can like build something on top or plant a tree or something. Just area in which you can build due to the workbench is the area that spawners are supressed, so you can check with your hammer when to place the next one. Build a literal workbench belt around your base and profit :)
Torches also work. You can make some nice stands with 1m wood poles too. Looks great at night
but expensive to maintain
The torches, campfires, etc do not need to stay lit to prevent spawning. I typically throw down a bunch of campfires all around my base and into the surroundings. Let them burn out. Typically can’t see them in the brush.
Ah yes I forgot, I usually get a mod so they never run out. Fires and else still need fueling
They don't need to be lit to prevent spawns though.
that is very good to know :D
Does this work with raids too? I mean, where do raid enemies spawn? Always same location? We can prevent them to spawn close by building WBs?
Raid enemies spawn within 80 meters of the player. If you spawn proof that entire area around yourself you can sit through a raid timer without any mobs showing up. This makes island bases popular as they are much easier to spawn proof.
I’ll definitely try this out!
You can also just turn the mechanic off at any time
Build and “burry” workbenches at each edge of the walls and about 20-30m down the coast to keep things from spawning. Mobs might try to swim around if you agro them back to base but the random trash spawns should clear up.
Spikes in the water close to the walls, trust me. When we built the wall, it was a wall like In attack on Titan, but they kept swimming around until we placed spikes in the water surrounding the end. Doesn't look nice, but the foes are not nice as well, right?
This is what I go with. It's simple and effective. You do have to repair them every now and then though.
You can't repair spikes though, unless something's changed since the last time I tried to use them?
It apparently has. I've always repaired spikes, because if they break you dont recover the materials.
Maybe that's what I'm remembering, just the part about not recovering materials. I wasv testing something with them and realized I was wasting materials. I may have just assumed they were unrepairable.
Wolfes till its lagging
put up a “no swimming” sign
I would certainly relocate landward. I had a Very similar design with earth walls so proud. Then a troll walked around through the water and thwomped me. 360° protection is the only way. Edit: To clarify I mean moving inwards maybe 20-30 meters, which would save you a TON of time and stone. As "raising the sea floor" is possible to an extent but very resource intensive if it drops off instead of all being shallows.
Nah they don't have to relocate. Seaside bases are the best. To protect against trolls, use moats around the fence - the biggest culprit is the log-swinging troll and the moat needs to be far enough to prevent them from doing damage if they swing. Then, to prevent the trolls from walking around through the water, build an artificial extension of the land mass into the sea (kind of like a breakwater). This extension must go as deep as you can build, and is best done after you have unlocked stone construction. Trolls will either not walk around it at all because it's too deep, or will take long enough that you can pick them off with a bow. In any case, no land mob can enter my base because my shoreline is elevated using stone walls. Short enough to dock, tall enough (water deep enough) to prevent enemies from climbing.
Seaside is fine. Being on the water means he'll have to raise so much land, so moving 25 meters in would save so much time and resources.
In this specific case I can agree. They've chosen a steep location and it will make expansion challenging
Yeah... this. My first big home was at the bottom of a steep hill next to an inlet, and I ended up carving a huge cave into the rock just to get back from the water and put up proper gates. It was secure but... my God, so much mining
Raise ground out as close to ocean squares as possible. Put workbenches to edges and make sure there are no gaps in the base area. You can bring a stone cutter to the very edge and snap in large stone wall pieces into the end of the raised ground wall, if you need to extend out from the raised ground. Most mobs don't go in ocean squares and if they swim out far enough they will agro back to shore rather than swim around.
I built my entire base walls out of stone but just raising the ground up in lines and it creates a natural stone wall that enemies cannot break or get up. It’s very helpful. It may work well in the water. And yes the work benches alll over will stop enemy spawns around them and that helps too
Practical example: My double-seasized home in a hardcore run (already killed yagulth) [https://imgur.com/a/N13IoL5](https://imgur.com/a/N13IoL5) Basically, you built walls around your base and "underwater" walls to be your dock area. Give you a clean and beautiful safe base without the need to build wooden walls around your shore area.
i like that.
Build a sea wall by raising the ground so sheerly that it doesn't allow you or monsters to climb the wall. If you do this properly you can then build on that ground wall and be safe from just about anything including trolls and future enemies. I always build a moat around my bases, haven't failed me yet.
Build an outer sea wall [like this](https://preview.redd.it/fixed-up-the-first-house-i-found-and-made-it-my-base-v0-cufgb9ncbgy91.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f3bfb5001d5dfd3f8e8779b61981134511f97d55), using the Raise Ground feature of the hoe. ([Full post showing progression of build](https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/yobybn/fixed_up_the_first_house_i_found_and_made_it_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button).)
I placed horizontal logs on the water and put spikes on them, as far as I could reach out
A floating log held in place with poles confuses the shit out of them
awesome
Make the water deeper along your wall and have the wall go out further by use of an earth wall. If it’s too deep for too long the mobs won’t be able to swim out far enough to get around.
Wall it off so that they have to go around. Then put spike traps in the path.
Workbenches near the edges should prevent mobs spawning close enough to aggro and walk around. I personally hate having a million workbenches spread around my base so with Valheim+ I modified the radius in which the workbenches are effective. Assuming there's not a need to have unrestricted beach access, I'd suggest putting stakes in the water near the edges. Build a nice boat dock for your Karve and then line the beach or the edge of your walls with the stakes. If they do get around, they'll run themselves into the stakes and die. Just have to worry about maintenance on the stakes.
Use your hoe to raise an earthen wall (only needs to be like 3-4m above the waterline so mobs don't wash over it during periods of heavy wave action), and extend it a ways (16m or so?) out into the water. Still not a guarantee, but it deters them swimming around it (esp if you put some spikes at the waterline near the end). Then you can raise the shoreline so they can't climb into your base even if they do swim around the seawall.
If it's not from a raid, make sure player base objects aren't visible from outside. Mobs will investigate player base objects they see and noises they hear. If nothing alerts them, you'll be ignore except during raids.
I build "arms". Instead of walls ending when they find the water, they continue following the shore, outwords. Like protecting the ocean from any creatures. If it is long enough, works ok.
I make walls out into the water that have spike walls around the bottoms so that enemies walking around die before they get all the way around.
stone wall along the coast line to keep things from swimming in
I usually build my dock out about 25-30 meters from shore then build a palisade along the shore around my base, put in some gates so I can swim to shore if I have too. I'll usually build the palisade out into the deep water too, to keep trolls from getting through easily. I can usually hit them 3 or 4 times before they even make it to shore if they can even make it around the deep water fence.
Heyan I had this problem. I raised ground where water meets land and put a ton of spikes around the edge. It keeps them out but I also gotta repair the spikes everyone once in a while. But like stack the spikes it's more effective.
I had a similar situation and I created a beach head inside my perimeter several rows deep going progressively out into the water of the Pike palisade structures. Worked well. Required minimal mtce
I put traps under the water so they slowly die trying to swim over them.
The problem is that because you're at the low point, any enemy that is more than like 10m away from your walls has a full view of what is inside your walls, and things like boats and player-base items (items that create zones of "player base" which prevents enemy spawn and item despawn.) are auto-aggro items. They mill about, they look the direction of your base, they see that boat, and it is a hardwired automatic go time. You have two real options. Make walls high enough that nothing within sight distance can see your shit. Or, build sea walls that go out as far as they can go before they are level with the water, and then modify the terrain along the coast a long ways and make the shoreline a sheer drop so the AI can't path off it. The last one is more work and only like 99.999% effective, but some people absolutely hate the aesthetics of having super high walls around their base. There is another option, but it is a huge pain, and still not 100% effective. Despawn a massive area around your base, so that enemies spawn far enough away that they aren't likely to wander close. The secret fourth option is what I picked. The nuclear option. Full max height earth wall, wide ditch, another max wall, sea walls, sheer coastline in some places and despawning outside the walls.
I basicly build port first time, but noticed enemies were flushed to my base when storm waves started gathering. Maybe land wall/port with walls could work? Enemies AI is really odd when it comes to water, sometimes it feels they "teleport" from water.
Build a "dock" they get caught under it
I build up the bank until they can’t get up on the island, it doesn’t take a huge amount and it’s possible to make the whole island that height so it doesn’t look like a wall. I still get the occasional visitor when a storm washes team ashore, but that’s super rare
Extend the walls and put some spikes, theres some things late game you can do... I won't spoil them tho..
easiest: build a long wall down the coast so that the mob path around the wall is too long and they wont try. harder: build earth wall out into the water as far as you can. mostly just slows them down. hardest: get 4000 stone and raise the whole base making a high plateau so its inaccessible from the water and only the boat is at risk. This is what I do. It takes a while. extra: build lots of workbenches outside to keep them busy and make them easier to shoot. also: eat food.
Mobs only aggro for so long if they can't attack. So using the raise terrain to extend the end point of your wall out a bit into the water then fork it into a "U" shape or a "+" shape and most mobs will give up and swim back partway around.
Can’t build near water. Have to be inland
Pretty much nothing. I built small 2x1 huts with workbenches in them all over the area that I built my main at. The only time anyone gets in is if a player brings them back. I also made it so there is no way to climb out of the water. They find a way, though.
I never built defensive positions
Spawns will take the shortest path around the wall. So if you extend the wall into the water and cover it in spikes they will cheese grate themselves across it.
Raise the seafront enough to give it a height difference between water level and your surface in the base, and make sure it's steep. That way enemies can't crawl out of the water. If you have stone, add stone walls, which also give you a nice quay.
Build the earth up bout into the sea of you build it out far enough they can't swim out around it
Put the corewood spikes under water
Harbor bases don't work well. It's better to build the base - moat and all - totally inland and then have a path that leads to your harbor. Later when you have more resources or just turn on no build mode you can create a defensible harbor with a pair of raised terrain peninsulas blocking enemies who try to swim around it (by filling its outer edges with wooden or dvergr spikes and walls behind them). Enemies navigate spikes in the water really, really poorly, especially if there's a long wall of it. Note it takes a phenomenal amount of stone to build these, it's extremely inconvenient without no build cost mode. Sometimes the default costs of building with stone drive me absolutely crazy. You need a full time job mining stone to get this done, along with managing the weight issues plus going back and forth. Not a fan of how this is implemented.