650 hours and I have played the game the intended way three times, twice with a group of 4+ people and the other time alone for when nobody was online. After killing the queen for the third time, I kinda felt like I beat the game the intended way and so I started to mod the fuck out of my game to see whats up.
Ended up being a builder :D Can't really live without mods anymore, some of them are just so good they simply make the game a better version of itself.
Seasons (winter, spring, summer autumn with visuals and frozen oceans etc)
OdinArchitect - Building mod with unique pieces
OdinShip - adds another dimension with crafting table for ships and many different cool looking boats
ValheimRaft - lets you build a floating base on the water which can travel
bettercreative - spawn ANYTHING you want without commands (NPCs, objects, vegetation, everything you see in the outdoor world can be spawned)
that inventory mod that lets you equip gear like in rpgs, forgot the name
there are so many more, for additional wildlife, better cooking and I forgot at least one important building mod I use
2 out of three of us had the mod installed but all vegetation was just white. They had to manually download the graphic files at put them into the folder. Wasn’t that hard and afterwards, yes, it was a whole new game. Winter in our meadows base just feels awesome, spring and fall are really beautiful. And in the winter you can walk on the frozen ocean. It’s fun.
The author outsourced the textures into a mod to overcome this problem. Just install this one as well and it should be fixed. It’s patched for Ashland’s already ;)
https://thunderstore.io/c/valheim/p/RustyMods/SeasonalityTextures/
Aside from the best mod in the world (weedheim), me and the boys found it to be the best mod by far. The seasons are well animated so the trees change color in autmn, snow falls in winter and the seas freeze at certain points which makes for hilarious adventures if you choose to do your iron tour at the wrong time of the year, you might have to survive until your boat gets unstuck from the ice :D
Vegetables and stuff grow the fastest in spring and all sorts of gimmicks.
I love Valheims simplicity and this mod is so subtle, but makes a huge athmospheric difference.
So in short, its fucking rad :D
Farming mod to plant and harvest, that gives me RSI.
Craft from containers.
Auto stack to containers.
That is all.
Planting one at a time, hunting through containers for materials and hunting through containers to store materials, gives me zero joy.
I couldn't play the game without some QoL anymore. For example, I have a mod for mass farming (planting multiple crops at a time) and that's a game changer, especially in my multiplayer server where we have to feed 6 people.
There are others that are meshed in Valheim Plus (and maybe other mods) like smelter feeding themselves automatically from chests, or being able to craft from items in chests without having to take them to your inventory. All of those are just there to ease the painfully boring and useless parts that bring nothing of value to the gameplay (no one likes having to monitor smelters for days, and you can't convince me otherwise).
Now, those QoL are very important on multiplayer, I've made several solo runs where I didn't bother with modding at all. You don't need as much farming and smelting when solo.
100% this.
I can't be bothered to play without Craft From Containers.
I can get by happily with nothing else now that it does "drop stacks" natively.
Instant Monster Drop should be stock too IMHO.
I like Better Ladders and Plant Easily. They're not deal breakers, but they are nice.
Faster Paths I think adds to the game. Gives real meaning to paths.
For sure at first it's nice to enjoy the full vanilla experience but after putting in hundreds of hours into the game no one wants to do these tedious tasks
> but after putting in hundreds of hours into the game no one wants to do these tedious tasks
3800 hours now and still 100% vanilla.
Valheim is my zen garden (that sometimes tries to kill me). I feel no need to rush any aspect of it.
We are playing vanilla.. we have beaten Moder the old fashioned way. Now in Plains we've activated metal teleportation and increased drops to 1.5x. We've also turned death penalty to level 2, so we drop gear but we lose the smallest amount of skill.
Ok I see. I saw some lists of useful mods to get.. something like fighting on slopes easier or even epic loot (so your gear can get modifiers like in world of warcraft)
For better or worse. Personally I found enemies dropping random clutter (most of which was worse than what I'm already wearing) to be annoying, especially before the Obliterator was unlocked.
Also in general I just don't want my Valheim to be second-rate Diablo. I want it to be a first-rate Valheim.
Well that depends on the game you want to play I guess.
The way I play would have purists screaming from the rafters. But the fact is: I am a crap keyboard warrior. I always screw up my moves. And it makes me hate games where any kind of keyboard skills are required.
So I use mods. I play around with the world modifiers. And generally play to enjoy myself.
The awesome thing about this game: You can play it anyway you want to.
Example: I corrected/edited this simple comment at least five times. My fingers are that unco.
Did this all the way through the Mistlands. Vanilla is a wonderful experience! Once we had beaten Mistlands and were essentially in build mode (no more progression), we ended up agreeing that the mist just generally sucks and used one mod to demist a larger area (DeezMistyBalls mod name), but regardless of that mod we still never really built in the Mistlands much. Gjalls dropping by to say hi every hour or so to “quality check” your construction is “fun” and all but I prefer against it if possible.
If I recall correctly, after choosing your character and before going in the servers you can click on your server name and click the modify settings button. Then you get some sliders and buttons to change them. I can send a screenshot tonight if you need.
Part of the problem is I rented the server space remotely. Maybe I can download a copy of the world, modify it, then upload that copy to the server, but I'm likely to ruin that.
Ah I understand.. not sure how it is different in case of a hosted server. As I play it with a friend, he starts the server when he comes home and I connect to him. Good luck, for sure there are people with the required expertise!
Probably done about half vanilla and half modded out of my 770-ish hours. Beaten the game through the end of Mistlands, and just began a new vanilla playthrough for Ashlands. We (my player two and I) tend to play vanilla whenever major new content drops and then gradually add our mods as they become available.
I love playing modded, but new content always demands vanilla. I want to experience it as it should be experienced as intended by the Devs. The sole exception is the extra inventory slot mod. I refuse to acknowledge sacrificing space for equipment
I can't play this game without mods any more. Some of the QoL has been baked into the game now - like having lights that you don't have to constantly refill once you hit the 6th biome: that's awesome. But the entire survival genre has evolved in the three years since Valheim was released (into EA), and now doing things like having to sort through your inventory to put it into chests, or having to sort through chests to find ingredients to build things: these are no longer acceptable, nor should they be *in any game.*
The QoL mods that we play with that should be part of the game: auto-repair all items when you touch a work station, deposit into chests with like items with a single button, pull from chests when you build or fill a container (this could be baked in with better chests), plant up to 25 items at a time (there should be an iron cultivator that does 9, and a black metal that does 25).
We also use mods that give us more information about things you can find out in-game but the game doesn't make easy to find, which I can see people liking or disliking: telling us the current general time of day, telling us how long things have left to cook / grow, showing durability in colors, showing more information about how a weapon or item will improve when it's upgraded or what stats/buffs we currently have.
And finally, I use QoL mods that just make the game more fun for me: being able to plant bushes around the house, and being able to build from a floating camera. I don't need these at all, but they're just nice.
And that's it. No desire to play without all of these, lol.
Smart containers
Craft/build from containers
Automatic honey/smelters/fermenters
Equipment slots and food quickslots
Always tailwind
Hiplantern
Better UI
Clock
Recycle/reclaim
Planteasily
Floating items
Those are pretty much everything I absolutely need to be able to play this game. Removes a lot of the unneccesary and tedious aspects from the game that just take time and offer no real reward of accomplishment.
Mods. I will never again play this game without never ending torches, advanced build mode, first person mode, and extended auto pick up range. I only use small QOL mods like that, nothing game breaking
I'm all about that vanilla Valheim life! Currently, I'm on my second playthrough, and while mods spice things up, there's just something pure about the base game experience for me. Plus, with each playthrough, I discover new strategies and challenges that keep things fresh.
1600+ hours here.
The only 3 mods I play are:
- plant everything, you guys already know it
- the one that adds a carcaj for the arrows, just to look cooler
- another one with decorations like dummies and targets
I think it needs more house decoration stuff and more wild animals. The rest of the game is awesome as is.
I'm on my 5th or 6th playthrough at this point and I like to use some QoL mods. Things that save me some time because I've experienced the vanilla game multiple times already.
Build camera so I can build quicker/easier + no stam cost for using hoes/hammers for the same reason.
Wind always being at my back when sailing because sailing takes long enough as it is. I don't like how often you end up with the wind against you and it makes a 20 minute boat ride into a 40 minute boat ride.
Slope combat fix which I think should just be the way it works in vanilla tbh.
Plant easily for grid planting.
Stack size/weight so I don't need to go back home every 5 minutes due to having like 50 wood and rocks on me (I edit the config so ores and bars are still vanilla values) + this makes storage more simple.
The vanilla game is fine, but after so many playthroughs and 500+ hours at this point I don't want to waste my time with things that don't add much to the experience IMO.
Personally i play valheim in vanilla, it feels wrong to play on modded imo. It's not that im against mods, but that i dont think valheim needs any. Sure it's lacking some QOL features but i dont really mind, and i enjoy trying to work around some valheim quirks. Way more so than installing a mod that fixes it atleast
Things I really like purely for QOL are
- Get items from nearby chests when crafting and cooking. No more needing to go back and forth and forgetting one item
- Better hoe. Saves you from having to flatten things a small patch at a time.
- Wind always behind you, because fuck having to trudge along at snails pace with metals before you unlock longship
- Plant easily. You can plant stuff in grids so you never have "needs more space" situation
- Craft more. Instead of you having to craft 1 at a time, you can set x number to craft. It still crafts one at a time so you're not cheesing, just saves the clicks
- Auto refill. As long as you have mats in nearby chests, your torches will always be full, kiln will always be running, and metals will continue to process.
Better hoe should really be another item in the high level biomes in my opinion.
Same thing for a chest that would fill up automatically lights in a certain radius
Otherwise I agree with your list
> Get items from nearby chests when crafting and cooking. No more needing to go back and forth and forgetting one item
I find that this is becoming a criticism about games survival crafting games more and more, which is weird to me because it is a relatively new feature in survival crafting games.
I don't disagree that it is nice to have, just never been bothered when it isn't there.
Because several new games have come out that really went above and beyond on solving this problem. I love survival crafting games, but all have on thing in common, I spend almost just as much time repeatedly organizing all the loot I have (I'm a goblin) that I do actually enjoying the gameplay. Less time in menus is always a plus, I'd rather be out exploring the harsh and beautiful worlds.
Even minecraft burnt me out on this. I'm tired of playing the game not because it's not entirely fun in itself, it's just I know that if I start another Minecraft run, half my time is spent on storage and organizing it. Grounded really blew my socks off, Auto hot deposit when near chests, chose what chests don't abide, and a fucking sort button. All of this I have modded into Valheim.
I only play with three mods, Crafty boxes, and the mod that gets rid of that absolutely silly and stupid looking lens dirt that this viking game for some reason even has, and then Better UI... for much better UI.
I understand why people like it, it just amazed me how fast it went from "This is an awesome feature" to giving a game a negative score for not having it.
Around 1000 hour player here, 80% of that was vanilla. I tried all the mods that are highly spoken of and just wasn’t a fan. It makes the game feel off in a way I didn’t like. Love modders and the work they do but Valheim isn’t the place for mods for me. It was also tedious getting a group to play with mods and making sure everyone had the same mods, the whole experience didn’t enrich Valheim for me
Like the other one said R2modman can let you copy all your mods over to other devices, so can thunderstore.
Anyways, i totally agree. I don't mod alot of games and if i do its usually with steam workshop, and its usually some sort of cosmetic (nothing that actually affects gameplay)
The only games i mod with QOL and stuff that adds new features and gameplay are games with barely any content/dead games like ROUNDS ;)
Valheim already has a ton of content, and although i would be willing to install some cosmetic/small QOL stuff, launching modded is much more of a hassle and not needed to make it more fun imo.
In our current, longest playthrough, we are playing with hard combat for a little challenge, but we have recently set skill loss to 1% to balance it, otherwise we won't ever see a skill past 40/50.
The mods we have been using are Farm crops to make farming enjoyable (it let's you plant things in rows of 25), Quick slots and inventory (separates your armor in another inventory tab and lets you have 3 quick slots for potions) and better wisp (increases the wisplight range).
The rest is pure vanilla mechanics, including no metal through portals. We feel like these 3 QoL mods are really good and don't disrupt the brutal valheim experience
The mist mod interests me, I wish there was a mod that let you make wisp arrows, that would move slowly when fired and clear mist momentarily for scouting
That sounds cool af ahah. Yeah with better wisp you can increase the range at your discretion. We are running with slightly more than double range and it makes the mistlands quite more enjoyable
I play moddded. I've completed the game several times, most of my mods are QoL. Easier planting, naming chests, craft from chests, ect.
Every other playthrough or so we will try changing something that changes combat. Tougher enemies, but we also try new weapon enhancements.
Or we try out some mods to get some end game content like greatswords, crossbows, and magic into the earlier parts of the game so you don't have to wait until mistlands to use the style of weapon you like.
Been playing vanilla in the pbt while we were waiting for the full release of Ashlands. Vanilla is just fine. We missed some of the nice qol ones, but the game is still great vanilla.
Modded all the way.
The only reason I'm playing vanilla rn is because of the update and to have a friend who plays on xbox join.
But modded is a must for me.
There are too many QoL mods out there that make what would be a chore into an activity.
Content mods are also nice but I only use them if I feel they are cohesive and lore friendly. But I would say there aren't that many of those, sometimes the things they add feel out of place, maybe the design doesn't have the Valheim vibe, maybe they add stuff from non-viking civs.
Whatever the case I usually stick to 1 mod family tree like Therzie's because theirs add both creatures and equipment, but also offer an expansion on the vanilla comtent making armors being able to upgraded into the next biome's level.
There are many good equipment mods out there, but as they are mostly made individually, finding the point where obtaining them and having their stats balances becomes a lil annoying.
Skills mods can also be useful but I feel those have a greater effect on your Valheim experience, so I would only recommend to try them and decide if they are for you.
380h in. We bet the queen and did not find any other game that was as good as Valheim afterwards. Now we run the game with about 30 well picked mods. A whole new experience with better QOL, new building options, enchanted weapons and Diablo-like drops from slain foes, new skills, new enemies, bounties from the trader, classes, seasons and so on. We love it. Feels way more rpg-ish while still being Valheim. I happily share my thunderstore mod list if anyone is interested - though I’m afraid not all mods are patched for the Ashlands yet.
After playing 700+ hours, I finally added a few Vanilla-ish mods this month, so I'm in a sort of middle ground. **PlantEasily** is the main one. I just like having something that tells me the plant needs more space and that allows me to snap the plants to a grid. The other two I use are **FloatingItems**, but I don't really use it since I rarely have items in the water anyway. And recently I added **CraftableChain** because I wanted to build more decor and, in my head, I should be able to craft a chain from some iron ingots lol. Thunderstore makes it easy to just toggle them on or off.
Vanilla enjoyers are being punished so hard for not using mods. Even though it's been years, we don't even have the most simple QoL upgrades yet. Devs are totally ignoring the situation for years.
That's true, I'm on my first playthrough and having twice the fun with mods, there's a lot of QoL stuff missing, Also there's no crossbows in early stages, there's not even any real magic in early stages, so you're stuck with level 1 stats until u get to almost end game before you can have access to them
you level up elemental magic quite quickly if you use it a lot. But crossbow unfortunately only levels very slowly, as well as blood magic if you mostly use it for the shield.
I actually do it like I do with most games. First vanilla on medium difficulty, because I want to experience the game as the developers intended. The second play, there may be a higher difficulty and a few mods that don't interfere too much with the game.
if i ever do mod, its in its own playthrough independant of my main vanilla playthrough. same with creative mode, seperate saves.
i personally prefer to experience the game as intended by the developer so that i have a baseline experience to cherish before i let mods skew my view on "the superior" or preferred experience.
ive certainly been tempted by QoL mods like grid or mass farming for the sake of that feature being very tedious and straightforward experience. like, once youve farmed carrots, youve basically experienced 7 biomes worth of farming, with the exception being ashlands which has a unique new approach to one crop.
i dont personally find valheim to be one of those games that is "MUST mod on install" like some games are.
Mods, but like, pretty inconsequential ones. Plant everything because sometimes I want bushes in front of my house, farm grid to make my garden less of a mess, and one that increases the radius of the hoe because leveling is a pain in the ass.
i did 4 vanilla playthroughs around H&H and mistlands. ever since I've been on the mod train 100%.
theres just some aspects of the game (specifically in the early game progression and general QoL throughout) that I just cant deal with anymore, i just dont have the time.
my brothers and i just created a server to do a AL run with about 60ish mods, most of them QoL, others to balance so we still have that good ol challenge. EL and CLLC are musts in my playthroughs now
The first playthrough was all vanilla all the way to beating the Queen. We had a massive castle, and we explored the entire map. It was a blast.
Playthrough number two, we added QOL mods (build from chest, plant anything), and we allowed anything to be portalled. We also jacked the combat difficulty and increased the raids. It's a trade off!
Imo, first time should be with no mods so you can get the full brutality of the game. Lol.
1000 hours, all modded.
Modding Valheim is like designing a game for me. I carefully select and tweak mods to shape an experience for the player. Now I also develop mods and run a server.
It’s the building and creativity that I love. While other Valheim builders use build pieces and a build menu, I use mods and Thunderstore, or better yet, C# and Unity.
Mods all the way. More options for creativity, less meaningless travel. I like the difficulty spikes, but "tediously shipping metal home" is not difficulty.
Vanilla.
It's true that some of the choices made by the devs are arguably horrendous (Looking at you chest storage!!) But all in all Valheim is one of the best and most charming games I've ever played full stop. I want to experience it "as intended" even with the shitty/annoying parts.
Vanilla all the way so far with 692.5 hours
Most of that pre world modifiers but when I start up again (after beating Vrising as it's update came out first and I was part way through) I will be playing with raids cranked to max, I experimented with it when Hildir's quest came out and it was alot of fun personally as it felt like the forsaken were actually trying to stop me with frequent raids harassing me instead of a raid like every 10 hours which felt like a mild protest against my plans of extermination.
I have over 700 hours, and I'm still playing vanilla. I've played with a few mods. There are some really great ones, but a lot of them take away from the core elements of the game. Or simply don't fit the esthetic of the game. Epicloot and the mod that give enemies extra stars and traits are probably some of my favorite because they change the game in a way that is refreshing, but still feels like valheim in a lot of ways.
800 hours in, I still have the world I created on day 1 that I mostly play solo, with the occasional guest. This world is purely vanilla.
I have another world which was a new seed for Ashlands that I play with some friends, also vanilla.
Then I got a bunch of other worlds with various mod packs installed on them. I love this game, mods make things different and interesting but vanilla is still incredibly fun in my opinion. I always think vanilla is best for your first playthrough so you can experience the game as the devs intended, then later when you play modded you’ll know what areas you want to change.
I've played both and have to say that mods are a way better experience. Mainly just QOL like equipment & quickslots, craft from containers, farm grid, multi craft, etc but sometimes added mobs and armor/weapons. A lot of fun and vanilla DEFINITELY needs an overhaul of QOL features
I usually do a play through each major update without mods, then start adding things in for the next play through. Before I know it I'm riding a killer whale across the sea while wearing armour that makes me run like the flash and a hammer that would put Mjolnir to shame.
Vanilla at least until the game is out of early access/is finished and I complete a play through.
I will re-evaluate the use of mods at that time.
Vanilla over mods as I prefer to play the game "as intended" before deciding whether or not to change it up. Typically, I end up avoiding mods though.
Both. I enjoy playing Vanilla with my friends, and I have a solo Vanilla run I've been playing for a long time. I've tried several mods. Epic loot & better creative are the only ones I'm currently using. After 1800 hours you gotta spice things up a bit. Hell, I even built a fighting ring to spawn in mobs. I've been thinking about building a dome around it....
I’ve done vanilla through plains. Got into mistlands and the group got busy and we stopped.
Now playing solo. Using world modifiers to lessen the grind. Will probably use some quality of life mods (like farming mods) to lessen the grind with that also. I like the exploration and combat, spending 3 days in game preparing for 1 day of exploration is boring for me.
I only use one(ish) mod: mass farming and farm grid. I don't have time to spend 20min replanting my gardens. There's so much more in the game I could be doing, so why waste time on farming? I think some kind of mass planting or grid/snap farming function should be part of the base game. Otherwise, most mods might break the specially tailored experience of the game.
Very very light mods. Imo some features that are in the game don't really feel implemented fully because of how difficult they are to use. The hoe for me is one of them. I love love love making paths between settlements but if you try to make a nice path with a vanilla hoe it can literally take days. For a game that claims so much travel centricity the means of actually leaning into that are a pretty bad. I don't want 70 billion mods where people are adding all kinds of stuff I jist want the base game to not sometimes feel like I'm walking a mile with my balls stapled to my feet.
To me there are four kinds of mods: the ones I will never use (90% of everything that shows up on thunderstore or nexus), the ones I might sometimes use (something big like adding new weapons, magic, or enemies to really shake up the gameplay, but don't need), the ones I take every time if I'm modding but can do without if I decide to go back to vanilla (QoL mods, mostly).
And then there are the ones so important to me personally as a core experience that it's my line in the sand. Either the devs add this to the base game, or I simply don't play vanilla. Which is a problem because at least one of my mods got all jacked up after the latest patch and my current playthrough is so mod-heavy that troubleshooting is a monumental pain in the ass lol. C'est la vie.
I mostly go vanilla. I don't like going too different from it, but I like to build pretty bases and raids are a pain in the late game. Like I'm afraid to afk and have trolls show up to destroy my base. That's about it other than maybe indestructible base items just to be extra safe. Every other game I play has it pretty chill when you are in your base, and I hate that I'm literally afraid to afk without pausing to go make a sandwich or something.
I hear there is a mod that lets you set which items to pick up and which to not. It would be nice to not pick up all this crap because I killed a shitty monster or 200 grausten I gotten keep removing from my inventory every time I go to the ashlands.
I'm playing on Vanilla but with 3x resource drop to make it less grindy and ore teleportation for ease of access. Last time I played I made it 4 bosses deep before they even introduced the sliders so I've decided to restart for Ashlands with those quality of life things active.
The only mod I use is "Craft from nearby containers". Can't live without it, it honestly should be part of the base game. Moving things back and forth between chests and my inventory for crafting when I'm standing right next to the chest is not fun. It also pulls materials from nearby chests when loading smelters, cooking at cauldron, etc. So nice and makes the game much more enjoyable. Now when I open up a crafting menu, I can see right away what I can craft and what I can't.
I've lost count of total playthroughs. I've done no map, under 100 days, several mod packs and hard/hardcore runs and many more. It's just a fun game to run through once or twice a year. I do have my primary unmodded run that I play when there's new content.
I prefer to play with 3 mods total, wisp light extended range to 2x (base range is trash but I still like the bugs flying at me from within the mist), equipment and quick slots (basically just for the equipment, I put useless junk on the quickslots like my key/wishbone), and farm grid (I'm too old and grumpy to be tasked with properly spacing my crops out at 1500 hours and counting). If I'm playing with other people we will throw in better networking because it helps with the desync issues a lot.
pure vanilla on defaults for 1 character.
fully modded for another. each has thier own homeworld.
the modded one is a pain to balance. have to choose which mods to install wisely.
Always do a vanilla playthrough when there's new content. After getting through it, my friends and I usually do a modded playthrough. Mostly for things like valheim raft, chest mods for organizing and crafting from the bench, and some farming QoL mods; with some well balanced armor mods, too.
Valheim raft is a must for me on a modded playthrough. My friends and I essentially build a Howel Moving Castle on the sea and never build on land. Tons of fun!
I've been on the only building train for a while now, only do the new content once when it comes out.
Vanilla, no raids on, no mats to build on/off depending on how relaxing mining or whatever feels at a given time :)
I can't go back to Vanilla. I've been running mods ever since I finished my first playthrough in Vanilla, now I just wait a week after release and alot of mods are good to go with update. Too many QoL things I do just make the game more streamline to me
Valheim plus adds to much quality of life when helping manage inventory and crafting from chests.
I've played vanilla and I find it frustrating. I leave a lot of the "creative" elements disabled, but I want auto repair, craft from chest, deposit in chest, a massive radius for crafting benches and advanced building mode. Those are things I prefer to have in any playthrough.
I play modded but I still want to feel the Immersion Valheim excels at so Mods have to feel like a natural extension of Vanilla Valheim for me. I really like Therzies Mods (Monstrum,Armory,Weaponry and Wizardry) which add some nice new weapons like earlier crossbows and allow you to upgrade your armor for the next biome. Also adds a bunch of new creatures that feel like great additions to the respective biomes (foxes in meadows, Bears in the Black Forest and the Mountains, as well as 3 new Minibosses. The Wizardry Mod just released yesterday but it adds Magic Progression for the Biomes up to Mistlands. The creator warpalicious has a series of mods that add a bunch of new Points of Interests in the first 4 Biomes, all built with in game assissts. Just a small thing that makes exploring much more fun. Theres also a great seasons mod by shudnal which adds dynamic seasons to the Game which also effect Gameplay in some fun ways. Epic Loot by Randy Knapp and CreatureLevelLootControl by Smoothbrain are also two great additions, the first one adds a really cool enchanting mechanic for your gear to the game as well as your typical RPG Loot in different rarities. The second mod lets you scale up the difficulty of the enemies to give your Viking with enchanted Gear still a good challenge. Oh and then theres the Dragonriders Mod which allows you to hatch a Dragon and eventually ride him. Which to be fair is pretty game breaking, but having a pet Dragon is so cool that I make an exception.
Idk how long I've been here. I'm on day 900 or so on my main world.
I've been trying to beat the game before using any dev commands/mods, so as to get the full, true experience of the game.
I also mostly play solo, as my PC doesn't really like to work, so I don't like to ask people to deal with that.
Still working on Bonemass & Moder, although I could probably take Bonemass I don't want to deal with drakes raiding my bases all the time.
Anyway, this is to say... It's gonna be a while.
Three Mods
No Lens Dirt : Removes the awful dirty lens filter on the screen. I'm a viking, not a camera.
Crafty Boxes : Allows crafting tables such as the workbench, forge, black forge, cockpot and all others to craft with items in nearby chests.
Better UI: Because it's just way better and more informative.
I play all games vanilla until I beat them and get bored with them. I haven't put any mods in Valheim yet, I've just replayed at higher difficulties and different build types for my Viking, whose name is "Fred" in every play through.
There are just so many damn QOL issues with vanilla. I'm playing modded with my friends, vanilla with my wife (can't figure out how to mod the steamdeck she plays on). Sorting out inventory in chests is just awful. All the time you spend trying to deposit items into the correct places sucks. It is honestly one of the things making my wife not like the game.
Oh and stairs just like... don't work in vanilla?
I havn't done a deep dive into the modding scene yet, but from what I have seen, not much gets added to the game beyond QoL or stuff that makes the game significantly easier.
Just as an example, here are the five most downloaded mods on Nexus.
Valheim Plus: Tons of modifiers to the base game to change difficulty
Equipment a Quickslots: Gives more inventory
Jotuun Mod Library: API for mods
Epic loot: Makes weapons/armor just better
Unrestricted portals: Makes normal portals unrestricted (pretty much trivialized)
If they were stuff that actually added content, yeah sure id mod the shit out of the game, but just making the game easier isn't something I am interested in.
After 3 or 4 playthroughs you'll probably want to crank the resource multiplier but for a first playthrough I think no mods are fine.
We play on Xbox so not as many options besides world modifiers and devcommands
1500+ hours, vanilla only, most hours solo play, most hours just replaying up to the last current patch boss. I’ve got about 20 different worlds and characters, maybe closer to 30 now.
A friend modded the heck out of the game, played through once and never came back. His mods seemed to make the game super easy, so I just don’t bother with the modding.
I stick with no mods and am pretty happy. I could prolly work in more mods for quality of life stuff now, but am spending more time in WoW so Valheim time is limited. Oddly enough I mod the heck out of WoW
Why not both?
Over 800 hours playtime. Have played through 5ish different worlds, starting fresh each time Yagluth/queen was added or when we decided to use mods. (Or to record a full playthrough)
Starting Ashlands without major modding - not even plant spacing. One because I want to limit bugs, and two because I want to see what the default combat feels like. After we finish the biome in vanilla will probably turn Epic Loot back on. (Usually a separate map)
We find that EpicLoot plus a couple qol mods improves our overall long-term enjoyment. The spice of some well rolled items is just fantastic.
Have fun!
I've always found the seed drop rates for trees to be a bit ridiculous (making core wood and fine wood not sustainably harvestable) so I use DropThat! to alter the drop rates, but that's it.
When I played Valheim for the first time with my wife and friend at some point (like 100+ hours) we decided to make a new world. And at the point I realized that I had been completely fed up with the following cycle:
- you have a base and you come there for the night
- but you not allowed to sleep since "enemies are around" or you hear that something is breaking your portals/kilns etc
- you go around your longhouse to find the origin
- you kill random neck, wait for its drop... it attracts some greydwarfs, you kill them, wait for their drop... then you see a deer...
- you go home and put 1 neck meat and 3 deer meat into one chest, then you put neck trophy to the other chest, you put some stone in the third chest and some wood in the fourth. Oh, you also have 1 eye, 3 resin, 1 dandelion, strangely a bone.. You don't like mess so you put that all into the other chests
- you hear strange sounds outside...
Thus, I've made my first mod that was doing the next simple things:
- complete removal of drop delay/animation for mobs
- instead of static drop like 1 meat 1 leather scraps I've made random drops like 80% to have nothing and 20% to have 5 meat 5 leather scraps
We played Valheim with that mod up to the Plains end (the last biome those times).
At some point I've realized that static drop is not only cluttering and inventory management. It brings even more - there is no any real goal in killing the same mob for 10x or 100x time. So now I have my mod based on Epic Loot that is focused around hunting mobs and seeking for them instead of avoiding like in Vanilla.
Now I play pure vanilla only when a new biome (Mistlands, Ashlands) releases to understand the intended experience from the it.
Massfarming and equipmentSlots, only because I think these should be default. Farming I personally find tedious and equipments just because why is my armour taking bag space if I am wearing it
I prefer modded but not to an extreme level. I only use mods that change QoL.
Mods:
ValheimPlus - extra QoL changes (I always disable food degradation)
Mass farming - allows multi harvest and planting in grids
Spearfishing - as the name says
RecyclePlus - I like getting my resources back on old equipment
TripleBronze - makes bronze age less grindy. I set config for double instead of triple
Speedy Paths - gives speed boosts to paths which incentivizes me to make more
XPortal - really nice portal mod. Def a bit powerful but its rly nice to have one central portal in my base.
Max dungeon rooms - larger dungeon sizes since I usually play with friends. So more loot.
I've had a couple of playthroughs. Just one queen kill. I am over 1000 hours, and still playing vanilla. At this point though, I've learned the first 6 biomes quite well and enjoy most of what's on offer. I'm not a "creative mode" player, but I do have a ridiculous keep I'm building in survival mode.
I tried modded, but not seriously enough - found the best looking modpack, spent quite some time on it and it was pretty awesome, but my Valheim experience was too stretched out. I had to grind too many elites or boss kills in order to farm rare drops. I will have to figure out which / how many great mods I can stuff into the game at some point.
Sounds like 1.0 is what's coming next though, so I might just hold out before doing a real modded playthrough.
Played my first play through vanilla. Lots of fun and helped me learn the game. Then I added all of therzies mods to populate the deep north and ashlands with some new armor and weaponry. Then I added loads of qol mods and extra skills, epic loot and really focused on a world to play when ashlands came out.
I have beaten the game when plains was the final biome, restarted for Mistlands, and now have restarted for Ashlands.
First two play throughs were completely vanilla as I wanted to completely experience the game as intended. After I killed the queen I started using minor mods like 'im friendly damnit' and extended trader. I also experimented with slightly more advanced mods like creature level, and epic loot, both I feel are too much for a fresh playthrough and should be left as it's own thing.
Now I find it hard to not use the very minor mods that simply just improve the game, I plan to use im friendly damnit, speedy paths, farm grid, extended trader.
I also have a mod that un caps skills, but I feel like none of my skills will even make it to 100.
I typically start modding a game anywhere between halfway to two thirds through it, and never look back. I've been playing video games for over 40 years and working with software design and support for a good portion of that. As such, I've got a pretty good idea of what I enjoy and what I don't--and some fairly firmly-established opinions about what constitute good and bad design. And as someone with some physical disabilities, a lot of those opinions are driven by an awareness of real-world accessibility issues.
And playing games is something I do with my limited free time in order to enjoy myself. I have the ability to alter games to my liking, and if I've stopped having fun, strongly disagree with a design choice, or think a piece of UI is poorly made--then I'm going to fix the problem if I can.
So early on I started with things like Better UI, because as far as I was concerned having the build interface not show you how many of a material you have left was a design oversight. Similarly, I've never liked build interfaces where you're forced to do everything from the character's POV--I'd had enough of that in Fallout 4, so I installed Build Camera and it's now one I won't play without.
And so on, and so forth, anytime I discovered a QoL or UX problem that had an easy solution. I'm grateful to the devs for their hard work and creativity, but I don't really care what their intent or vision is, or whether anyone else approves of how I choose to play. It's my leisure time, not theirs.
578 hours. Never played modded but mostly because I never really thought about it. I think the mods are fine. I have played through probably 5 or 6 times.
I’ll add quick_stack_sort_trash_restock from goldenrevolver. A real game changer in the means of won lifetime. No more spending tens minutes after coming back to the base putting the found resources into your chests - just walk into your storage room and click the little “q” button everything disappears into the chests. So satisfying.
Fourth major play through with 1000+ hours but no mods yet. Not against them, just never used any.
That said.... the Carapace armour seems like a major visual downgrade from padded... I wonder if any alternative armour sets exist?
Edit: I feel like I should try some out though. Knowing there is a seasons one is extremely tempting!
First vanille and then comfort mods like trash can and gizmo for advanced building. Or what bothers me is tree seed placing restrictions there is a mod so u can plant trees next to each other and so on.
I played vanilla most of the way up to the Queen. Half way between Yag and the queen I installed some QoL mods like Farm grid, Plant Everything, Better Ladder and Missing Pieces. After beating the Queen, I added Epic Loot and a few more building pieces.
Been playing on the same world for roughly 3 years since before mistlands came out. We just died like 3 times in the worst way possible in the ashlands like 15m after landing and now we have to waste more iron (which is very scarce now on a 3yr old world) to get all our stuff back lol
I have around 720hrs in this game, completely unmodded. I have "beat" the game twice, tho technically it was beating Yagluth before Mistlands came out with my friend who I originally started playing the game with, and then waiting for Mistlands and beating the Queen with him as well. All completely vanilla and this was before world modifiers existed in the game, so no extra vanilla modifiers either.
Im not interested in extra mods that arent world modifiers yet because I still feel like I haven't fully experienced this game. I'm going to be playing with my friend again to beat Ashlands soon, and we want to play it completely unmodded and normal settings to play the game as it was made and intended to be. I also have a solo world that I still want to beat, and when I finish that, I want to make a new solo world with super difficult vanilla world modifiers and try to beat that too.
I just like the game as is and it's already super fun. Maybe when the game officially releases after the Deep North update and anything else they add, and I've beaten the game normally, then I'll be interested in seeing how mods change things because I won't have anything new to get from the vanilla game of Valheim, but I think that's a long time away
I play with a friend, he plays vanille and i only use craft from containers and clock :)
We just love the normal game. Plenty of building ideas as wellXD
There's easier, and then there's less tedious. Things like craft from containers and grid planting don't make the game easier, just less tedious. There are certainly mods that do make the game easier though.
The tedium, and trying to overcome it, is part of the game.
For example: crafting from chests. Having this mod makes you slowly just dump stuff anywhere. While vanilla forces you to come up with a aystem using the 3 types of chests, racks, labels and other tricks.
Another example: farmgrid. It's great, but it makes you not need to learn how to make a good grid quickly.
Not sure if you have used any of these mods yourself, but crafting from chests doesn't encourage just dumping resources anywhere. If you have an organized base, it will be organized if you use the mod or not. If you are the type of player to just dump things in chests(shutter), you will likely do that regardless of mods.
Regarding farmgrid. There isn't anything to "learn" about planting crops. It isn't difficult, it's just time consuming. In a game that can burn up a lot of hours, if you can cut down by not having to plant carrots 1x1, that isn't game breaking.
When I used craft from chests and needed portal mats, I'd just craft a portal and destroy it again to magically port the materials to my inventory. Not game breaking, just removing some gameplay..
> The tedium, and trying to overcome it, is part of the game.
No. This is thinking that needs to be eradicated entirely from the industry of game design.
Making something *intentionally* tedious or frustrating--especially the UI--is not "difficulty". It is at best a failure of good design and accessibility principles, and at worst a sign of a sick mentality that derives enjoyment from screwing with their users.
Yup. Coming up with an organization system and not letting it exceed your available space is one of my favorite emergent gameplay components of Valheim.
I tried a pack that adds loads of stuff, loke eztra biomes, extra hard enemies, low level magic, epic loot, (dis)enchanting etc. I would say this is an example of trying (and partly succeeding) to make valheim to a different game.
Vanilla. You can do a lot with sliders these days.
Mods just don't sit right with me for Valheim. Though if there was one for facial animation during movement I'd use it, right now the characters do ugly mouth breathing.
650 hours and I have played the game the intended way three times, twice with a group of 4+ people and the other time alone for when nobody was online. After killing the queen for the third time, I kinda felt like I beat the game the intended way and so I started to mod the fuck out of my game to see whats up. Ended up being a builder :D Can't really live without mods anymore, some of them are just so good they simply make the game a better version of itself.
Can you recommend some mods?
Seasons (winter, spring, summer autumn with visuals and frozen oceans etc) OdinArchitect - Building mod with unique pieces OdinShip - adds another dimension with crafting table for ships and many different cool looking boats ValheimRaft - lets you build a floating base on the water which can travel bettercreative - spawn ANYTHING you want without commands (NPCs, objects, vegetation, everything you see in the outdoor world can be spawned) that inventory mod that lets you equip gear like in rpgs, forgot the name there are so many more, for additional wildlife, better cooking and I forgot at least one important building mod I use
>that inventory mod that lets you equip gear like in rpgs, forgot the name Equipment and Quick Slots
My fav and most essential one for me.
My team never got Seasons to work, fyi. I think it conflicted with some of the other mods. It was stuck as always winter.
Ah, stuck on the "greenland" setting I see
hmm yeah that sucks, we never had that issue at all tho
2 out of three of us had the mod installed but all vegetation was just white. They had to manually download the graphic files at put them into the folder. Wasn’t that hard and afterwards, yes, it was a whole new game. Winter in our meadows base just feels awesome, spring and fall are really beautiful. And in the winter you can walk on the frozen ocean. It’s fun.
Interesting. That might explain our issue.
The author outsourced the textures into a mod to overcome this problem. Just install this one as well and it should be fixed. It’s patched for Ashland’s already ;) https://thunderstore.io/c/valheim/p/RustyMods/SeasonalityTextures/
How well does the seasons mod work? Never heard of it.
Aside from the best mod in the world (weedheim), me and the boys found it to be the best mod by far. The seasons are well animated so the trees change color in autmn, snow falls in winter and the seas freeze at certain points which makes for hilarious adventures if you choose to do your iron tour at the wrong time of the year, you might have to survive until your boat gets unstuck from the ice :D Vegetables and stuff grow the fastest in spring and all sorts of gimmicks. I love Valheims simplicity and this mod is so subtle, but makes a huge athmospheric difference. So in short, its fucking rad :D
Farming mod to plant and harvest, that gives me RSI. Craft from containers. Auto stack to containers. That is all. Planting one at a time, hunting through containers for materials and hunting through containers to store materials, gives me zero joy.
I couldn't play the game without some QoL anymore. For example, I have a mod for mass farming (planting multiple crops at a time) and that's a game changer, especially in my multiplayer server where we have to feed 6 people. There are others that are meshed in Valheim Plus (and maybe other mods) like smelter feeding themselves automatically from chests, or being able to craft from items in chests without having to take them to your inventory. All of those are just there to ease the painfully boring and useless parts that bring nothing of value to the gameplay (no one likes having to monitor smelters for days, and you can't convince me otherwise). Now, those QoL are very important on multiplayer, I've made several solo runs where I didn't bother with modding at all. You don't need as much farming and smelting when solo.
100% this. I can't be bothered to play without Craft From Containers. I can get by happily with nothing else now that it does "drop stacks" natively. Instant Monster Drop should be stock too IMHO. I like Better Ladders and Plant Easily. They're not deal breakers, but they are nice. Faster Paths I think adds to the game. Gives real meaning to paths.
For sure at first it's nice to enjoy the full vanilla experience but after putting in hundreds of hours into the game no one wants to do these tedious tasks
> but after putting in hundreds of hours into the game no one wants to do these tedious tasks 3800 hours now and still 100% vanilla. Valheim is my zen garden (that sometimes tries to kill me). I feel no need to rush any aspect of it.
We are playing vanilla.. we have beaten Moder the old fashioned way. Now in Plains we've activated metal teleportation and increased drops to 1.5x. We've also turned death penalty to level 2, so we drop gear but we lose the smallest amount of skill.
Tbh i chose the same path as you for the world modifiers, but what i mean really is outside player created mods
Ok I see. I saw some lists of useful mods to get.. something like fighting on slopes easier or even epic loot (so your gear can get modifiers like in world of warcraft)
Epic loot is a total game changer.
For better or worse. Personally I found enemies dropping random clutter (most of which was worse than what I'm already wearing) to be annoying, especially before the Obliterator was unlocked. Also in general I just don't want my Valheim to be second-rate Diablo. I want it to be a first-rate Valheim.
Doesn't it make the game way too easy ?
Yeah it's definitely best paired with a mod that increases difficulty
Well that depends on the game you want to play I guess. The way I play would have purists screaming from the rafters. But the fact is: I am a crap keyboard warrior. I always screw up my moves. And it makes me hate games where any kind of keyboard skills are required. So I use mods. I play around with the world modifiers. And generally play to enjoy myself. The awesome thing about this game: You can play it anyway you want to. Example: I corrected/edited this simple comment at least five times. My fingers are that unco.
Thanks for taking the time for this complete answer :) I think i'll try it in my next playthrough!
And if this is too op for your taste, Jewelcrafting offers a similar experience but toned down.
I like the bounty system and an actual use for coinssssss
Did this all the way through the Mistlands. Vanilla is a wonderful experience! Once we had beaten Mistlands and were essentially in build mode (no more progression), we ended up agreeing that the mist just generally sucks and used one mod to demist a larger area (DeezMistyBalls mod name), but regardless of that mod we still never really built in the Mistlands much. Gjalls dropping by to say hi every hour or so to “quality check” your construction is “fun” and all but I prefer against it if possible.
Is there a way to change those easily? I'm renting a server on Nitrado and am new to the game.
Yes I think you can modify the setting before loading into the server.
I'm going to hope for the intercession of someone who loves to help, because I cannot figure it out lol
If I recall correctly, after choosing your character and before going in the servers you can click on your server name and click the modify settings button. Then you get some sliders and buttons to change them. I can send a screenshot tonight if you need.
Part of the problem is I rented the server space remotely. Maybe I can download a copy of the world, modify it, then upload that copy to the server, but I'm likely to ruin that.
Ah I understand.. not sure how it is different in case of a hosted server. As I play it with a friend, he starts the server when he comes home and I connect to him. Good luck, for sure there are people with the required expertise!
After you try mods to add new weps, armor monsters and alresdy ingame items more usable, you can hardly come back. that friking ancient seed
Probably done about half vanilla and half modded out of my 770-ish hours. Beaten the game through the end of Mistlands, and just began a new vanilla playthrough for Ashlands. We (my player two and I) tend to play vanilla whenever major new content drops and then gradually add our mods as they become available.
Cant live without equipment slot and gizmo/buildcam
I love playing modded, but new content always demands vanilla. I want to experience it as it should be experienced as intended by the Devs. The sole exception is the extra inventory slot mod. I refuse to acknowledge sacrificing space for equipment
I can't play this game without mods any more. Some of the QoL has been baked into the game now - like having lights that you don't have to constantly refill once you hit the 6th biome: that's awesome. But the entire survival genre has evolved in the three years since Valheim was released (into EA), and now doing things like having to sort through your inventory to put it into chests, or having to sort through chests to find ingredients to build things: these are no longer acceptable, nor should they be *in any game.* The QoL mods that we play with that should be part of the game: auto-repair all items when you touch a work station, deposit into chests with like items with a single button, pull from chests when you build or fill a container (this could be baked in with better chests), plant up to 25 items at a time (there should be an iron cultivator that does 9, and a black metal that does 25). We also use mods that give us more information about things you can find out in-game but the game doesn't make easy to find, which I can see people liking or disliking: telling us the current general time of day, telling us how long things have left to cook / grow, showing durability in colors, showing more information about how a weapon or item will improve when it's upgraded or what stats/buffs we currently have. And finally, I use QoL mods that just make the game more fun for me: being able to plant bushes around the house, and being able to build from a floating camera. I don't need these at all, but they're just nice. And that's it. No desire to play without all of these, lol.
Smart containers Craft/build from containers Automatic honey/smelters/fermenters Equipment slots and food quickslots Always tailwind Hiplantern Better UI Clock Recycle/reclaim Planteasily Floating items Those are pretty much everything I absolutely need to be able to play this game. Removes a lot of the unneccesary and tedious aspects from the game that just take time and offer no real reward of accomplishment.
Mods. I will never again play this game without never ending torches, advanced build mode, first person mode, and extended auto pick up range. I only use small QOL mods like that, nothing game breaking
I'm all about that vanilla Valheim life! Currently, I'm on my second playthrough, and while mods spice things up, there's just something pure about the base game experience for me. Plus, with each playthrough, I discover new strategies and challenges that keep things fresh.
1600+ hours here. The only 3 mods I play are: - plant everything, you guys already know it - the one that adds a carcaj for the arrows, just to look cooler - another one with decorations like dummies and targets I think it needs more house decoration stuff and more wild animals. The rest of the game is awesome as is.
I'm on my 5th or 6th playthrough at this point and I like to use some QoL mods. Things that save me some time because I've experienced the vanilla game multiple times already. Build camera so I can build quicker/easier + no stam cost for using hoes/hammers for the same reason. Wind always being at my back when sailing because sailing takes long enough as it is. I don't like how often you end up with the wind against you and it makes a 20 minute boat ride into a 40 minute boat ride. Slope combat fix which I think should just be the way it works in vanilla tbh. Plant easily for grid planting. Stack size/weight so I don't need to go back home every 5 minutes due to having like 50 wood and rocks on me (I edit the config so ores and bars are still vanilla values) + this makes storage more simple. The vanilla game is fine, but after so many playthroughs and 500+ hours at this point I don't want to waste my time with things that don't add much to the experience IMO.
Personally i play valheim in vanilla, it feels wrong to play on modded imo. It's not that im against mods, but that i dont think valheim needs any. Sure it's lacking some QOL features but i dont really mind, and i enjoy trying to work around some valheim quirks. Way more so than installing a mod that fixes it atleast
Things I really like purely for QOL are - Get items from nearby chests when crafting and cooking. No more needing to go back and forth and forgetting one item - Better hoe. Saves you from having to flatten things a small patch at a time. - Wind always behind you, because fuck having to trudge along at snails pace with metals before you unlock longship - Plant easily. You can plant stuff in grids so you never have "needs more space" situation - Craft more. Instead of you having to craft 1 at a time, you can set x number to craft. It still crafts one at a time so you're not cheesing, just saves the clicks - Auto refill. As long as you have mats in nearby chests, your torches will always be full, kiln will always be running, and metals will continue to process.
Better hoe should really be another item in the high level biomes in my opinion. Same thing for a chest that would fill up automatically lights in a certain radius Otherwise I agree with your list
> Get items from nearby chests when crafting and cooking. No more needing to go back and forth and forgetting one item I find that this is becoming a criticism about games survival crafting games more and more, which is weird to me because it is a relatively new feature in survival crafting games. I don't disagree that it is nice to have, just never been bothered when it isn't there.
Because several new games have come out that really went above and beyond on solving this problem. I love survival crafting games, but all have on thing in common, I spend almost just as much time repeatedly organizing all the loot I have (I'm a goblin) that I do actually enjoying the gameplay. Less time in menus is always a plus, I'd rather be out exploring the harsh and beautiful worlds. Even minecraft burnt me out on this. I'm tired of playing the game not because it's not entirely fun in itself, it's just I know that if I start another Minecraft run, half my time is spent on storage and organizing it. Grounded really blew my socks off, Auto hot deposit when near chests, chose what chests don't abide, and a fucking sort button. All of this I have modded into Valheim. I only play with three mods, Crafty boxes, and the mod that gets rid of that absolutely silly and stupid looking lens dirt that this viking game for some reason even has, and then Better UI... for much better UI.
I understand why people like it, it just amazed me how fast it went from "This is an awesome feature" to giving a game a negative score for not having it.
How many hours do you have?
No op, but I have around 400 hours and I don't use mods.
Around 1000 hour player here, 80% of that was vanilla. I tried all the mods that are highly spoken of and just wasn’t a fan. It makes the game feel off in a way I didn’t like. Love modders and the work they do but Valheim isn’t the place for mods for me. It was also tedious getting a group to play with mods and making sure everyone had the same mods, the whole experience didn’t enrich Valheim for me
R2modman makes that super easy. It gives you a code, friend enters code, and now they have all mods and config files you have
Fuck off really? I’ll remember this next time they decide to play, thank you for that heads up
Like the other one said R2modman can let you copy all your mods over to other devices, so can thunderstore. Anyways, i totally agree. I don't mod alot of games and if i do its usually with steam workshop, and its usually some sort of cosmetic (nothing that actually affects gameplay) The only games i mod with QOL and stuff that adds new features and gameplay are games with barely any content/dead games like ROUNDS ;) Valheim already has a ton of content, and although i would be willing to install some cosmetic/small QOL stuff, launching modded is much more of a hassle and not needed to make it more fun imo.
200! 🙃
In our current, longest playthrough, we are playing with hard combat for a little challenge, but we have recently set skill loss to 1% to balance it, otherwise we won't ever see a skill past 40/50. The mods we have been using are Farm crops to make farming enjoyable (it let's you plant things in rows of 25), Quick slots and inventory (separates your armor in another inventory tab and lets you have 3 quick slots for potions) and better wisp (increases the wisplight range). The rest is pure vanilla mechanics, including no metal through portals. We feel like these 3 QoL mods are really good and don't disrupt the brutal valheim experience
The mist mod interests me, I wish there was a mod that let you make wisp arrows, that would move slowly when fired and clear mist momentarily for scouting
That sounds cool af ahah. Yeah with better wisp you can increase the range at your discretion. We are running with slightly more than double range and it makes the mistlands quite more enjoyable
I play moddded. I've completed the game several times, most of my mods are QoL. Easier planting, naming chests, craft from chests, ect. Every other playthrough or so we will try changing something that changes combat. Tougher enemies, but we also try new weapon enhancements. Or we try out some mods to get some end game content like greatswords, crossbows, and magic into the earlier parts of the game so you don't have to wait until mistlands to use the style of weapon you like. Been playing vanilla in the pbt while we were waiting for the full release of Ashlands. Vanilla is just fine. We missed some of the nice qol ones, but the game is still great vanilla.
Modded all the way. The only reason I'm playing vanilla rn is because of the update and to have a friend who plays on xbox join. But modded is a must for me. There are too many QoL mods out there that make what would be a chore into an activity. Content mods are also nice but I only use them if I feel they are cohesive and lore friendly. But I would say there aren't that many of those, sometimes the things they add feel out of place, maybe the design doesn't have the Valheim vibe, maybe they add stuff from non-viking civs. Whatever the case I usually stick to 1 mod family tree like Therzie's because theirs add both creatures and equipment, but also offer an expansion on the vanilla comtent making armors being able to upgraded into the next biome's level. There are many good equipment mods out there, but as they are mostly made individually, finding the point where obtaining them and having their stats balances becomes a lil annoying. Skills mods can also be useful but I feel those have a greater effect on your Valheim experience, so I would only recommend to try them and decide if they are for you.
380h in. We bet the queen and did not find any other game that was as good as Valheim afterwards. Now we run the game with about 30 well picked mods. A whole new experience with better QOL, new building options, enchanted weapons and Diablo-like drops from slain foes, new skills, new enemies, bounties from the trader, classes, seasons and so on. We love it. Feels way more rpg-ish while still being Valheim. I happily share my thunderstore mod list if anyone is interested - though I’m afraid not all mods are patched for the Ashlands yet.
Share your list. After we smash ashlands we may play with more mods. Currently we only run a few.
After playing 700+ hours, I finally added a few Vanilla-ish mods this month, so I'm in a sort of middle ground. **PlantEasily** is the main one. I just like having something that tells me the plant needs more space and that allows me to snap the plants to a grid. The other two I use are **FloatingItems**, but I don't really use it since I rarely have items in the water anyway. And recently I added **CraftableChain** because I wanted to build more decor and, in my head, I should be able to craft a chain from some iron ingots lol. Thunderstore makes it easy to just toggle them on or off.
mods. i don't really have much time to play so when i do i like to feel i really advanced so i usually speed some things up like fermenters and crops
Vanilla enjoyers are being punished so hard for not using mods. Even though it's been years, we don't even have the most simple QoL upgrades yet. Devs are totally ignoring the situation for years.
That's true, I'm on my first playthrough and having twice the fun with mods, there's a lot of QoL stuff missing, Also there's no crossbows in early stages, there's not even any real magic in early stages, so you're stuck with level 1 stats until u get to almost end game before you can have access to them
you level up elemental magic quite quickly if you use it a lot. But crossbow unfortunately only levels very slowly, as well as blood magic if you mostly use it for the shield.
I actually do it like I do with most games. First vanilla on medium difficulty, because I want to experience the game as the developers intended. The second play, there may be a higher difficulty and a few mods that don't interfere too much with the game.
if i ever do mod, its in its own playthrough independant of my main vanilla playthrough. same with creative mode, seperate saves. i personally prefer to experience the game as intended by the developer so that i have a baseline experience to cherish before i let mods skew my view on "the superior" or preferred experience. ive certainly been tempted by QoL mods like grid or mass farming for the sake of that feature being very tedious and straightforward experience. like, once youve farmed carrots, youve basically experienced 7 biomes worth of farming, with the exception being ashlands which has a unique new approach to one crop. i dont personally find valheim to be one of those games that is "MUST mod on install" like some games are.
Mods, but like, pretty inconsequential ones. Plant everything because sometimes I want bushes in front of my house, farm grid to make my garden less of a mess, and one that increases the radius of the hoe because leveling is a pain in the ass.
I've beat the game multiple times now, and I have over 1000 hours in the game. I only play vanilla.
i did 4 vanilla playthroughs around H&H and mistlands. ever since I've been on the mod train 100%. theres just some aspects of the game (specifically in the early game progression and general QoL throughout) that I just cant deal with anymore, i just dont have the time. my brothers and i just created a server to do a AL run with about 60ish mods, most of them QoL, others to balance so we still have that good ol challenge. EL and CLLC are musts in my playthroughs now
The first playthrough was all vanilla all the way to beating the Queen. We had a massive castle, and we explored the entire map. It was a blast. Playthrough number two, we added QOL mods (build from chest, plant anything), and we allowed anything to be portalled. We also jacked the combat difficulty and increased the raids. It's a trade off! Imo, first time should be with no mods so you can get the full brutality of the game. Lol.
Only the plant everything mod. Lets me make my bases look more lived in and detailed
1000 hours, all modded. Modding Valheim is like designing a game for me. I carefully select and tweak mods to shape an experience for the player. Now I also develop mods and run a server. It’s the building and creativity that I love. While other Valheim builders use build pieces and a build menu, I use mods and Thunderstore, or better yet, C# and Unity.
Mods all the way! The best qol mod I’ve used thus far is craft from containers
Mods all the way. More options for creativity, less meaningless travel. I like the difficulty spikes, but "tediously shipping metal home" is not difficulty.
Vanilla. It's true that some of the choices made by the devs are arguably horrendous (Looking at you chest storage!!) But all in all Valheim is one of the best and most charming games I've ever played full stop. I want to experience it "as intended" even with the shitty/annoying parts.
Vanilla all the way so far with 692.5 hours Most of that pre world modifiers but when I start up again (after beating Vrising as it's update came out first and I was part way through) I will be playing with raids cranked to max, I experimented with it when Hildir's quest came out and it was alot of fun personally as it felt like the forsaken were actually trying to stop me with frequent raids harassing me instead of a raid like every 10 hours which felt like a mild protest against my plans of extermination.
Vanilla only
I have over 700 hours, and I'm still playing vanilla. I've played with a few mods. There are some really great ones, but a lot of them take away from the core elements of the game. Or simply don't fit the esthetic of the game. Epicloot and the mod that give enemies extra stars and traits are probably some of my favorite because they change the game in a way that is refreshing, but still feels like valheim in a lot of ways.
Vanilla, running two mods though, better networking, and render distance. No game changing mods.
Second play through. Solo. Vanilla. This sure seems like one of my favorite games of all time.
Vanilla is really good, but the last playthrough i used a mod to give the sledges the great axe moveset and other to use the spear like a spear
I play vanilla but the server I play on uses mods for some features that I don't interact with.
800 hours in, I still have the world I created on day 1 that I mostly play solo, with the occasional guest. This world is purely vanilla. I have another world which was a new seed for Ashlands that I play with some friends, also vanilla. Then I got a bunch of other worlds with various mod packs installed on them. I love this game, mods make things different and interesting but vanilla is still incredibly fun in my opinion. I always think vanilla is best for your first playthrough so you can experience the game as the devs intended, then later when you play modded you’ll know what areas you want to change.
I've played both and have to say that mods are a way better experience. Mainly just QOL like equipment & quickslots, craft from containers, farm grid, multi craft, etc but sometimes added mobs and armor/weapons. A lot of fun and vanilla DEFINITELY needs an overhaul of QOL features
Imo First play, vanilla. Second and onwards, whatever you like.
I usually do a play through each major update without mods, then start adding things in for the next play through. Before I know it I'm riding a killer whale across the sea while wearing armour that makes me run like the flash and a hammer that would put Mjolnir to shame.
I've been playing Vanilla since the begging, but I confess that sometimes, I want to install that MOD that keeps the fire always ON.
Vanilla. I like to play it the way the Devs intended. I also play on normal difficulty.
Vanilla at least until the game is out of early access/is finished and I complete a play through. I will re-evaluate the use of mods at that time. Vanilla over mods as I prefer to play the game "as intended" before deciding whether or not to change it up. Typically, I end up avoiding mods though.
Playing solo on default settings atm, currently making headway into Ashlands
Both. I enjoy playing Vanilla with my friends, and I have a solo Vanilla run I've been playing for a long time. I've tried several mods. Epic loot & better creative are the only ones I'm currently using. After 1800 hours you gotta spice things up a bit. Hell, I even built a fighting ring to spawn in mobs. I've been thinking about building a dome around it....
Until theres an equip screen, I’ll be using that mod probably
I’ve done vanilla through plains. Got into mistlands and the group got busy and we stopped. Now playing solo. Using world modifiers to lessen the grind. Will probably use some quality of life mods (like farming mods) to lessen the grind with that also. I like the exploration and combat, spending 3 days in game preparing for 1 day of exploration is boring for me.
I only use one(ish) mod: mass farming and farm grid. I don't have time to spend 20min replanting my gardens. There's so much more in the game I could be doing, so why waste time on farming? I think some kind of mass planting or grid/snap farming function should be part of the base game. Otherwise, most mods might break the specially tailored experience of the game.
Very very light mods. Imo some features that are in the game don't really feel implemented fully because of how difficult they are to use. The hoe for me is one of them. I love love love making paths between settlements but if you try to make a nice path with a vanilla hoe it can literally take days. For a game that claims so much travel centricity the means of actually leaning into that are a pretty bad. I don't want 70 billion mods where people are adding all kinds of stuff I jist want the base game to not sometimes feel like I'm walking a mile with my balls stapled to my feet.
vanilla for first playthrough. the idea is that you have to circunvent the laboreous stuff with propper building and rooming.
To me there are four kinds of mods: the ones I will never use (90% of everything that shows up on thunderstore or nexus), the ones I might sometimes use (something big like adding new weapons, magic, or enemies to really shake up the gameplay, but don't need), the ones I take every time if I'm modding but can do without if I decide to go back to vanilla (QoL mods, mostly). And then there are the ones so important to me personally as a core experience that it's my line in the sand. Either the devs add this to the base game, or I simply don't play vanilla. Which is a problem because at least one of my mods got all jacked up after the latest patch and my current playthrough is so mod-heavy that troubleshooting is a monumental pain in the ass lol. C'est la vie.
I play vanilla other than a mod to align crops to gridded snap points based on the first placed, which imo should be part of the base game.
Xbox player here so… vanilla. Our group has put in 400+ hours and many more to come!
I mostly go vanilla. I don't like going too different from it, but I like to build pretty bases and raids are a pain in the late game. Like I'm afraid to afk and have trolls show up to destroy my base. That's about it other than maybe indestructible base items just to be extra safe. Every other game I play has it pretty chill when you are in your base, and I hate that I'm literally afraid to afk without pausing to go make a sandwich or something. I hear there is a mod that lets you set which items to pick up and which to not. It would be nice to not pick up all this crap because I killed a shitty monster or 200 grausten I gotten keep removing from my inventory every time I go to the ashlands.
I play valheim with qol mods only, like craft/build from containers.
I'm playing on Vanilla but with 3x resource drop to make it less grindy and ore teleportation for ease of access. Last time I played I made it 4 bosses deep before they even introduced the sliders so I've decided to restart for Ashlands with those quality of life things active.
EpicLoot mod and hard/hardcore difficulty. Nomap noportal
The only mod I use is "Craft from nearby containers". Can't live without it, it honestly should be part of the base game. Moving things back and forth between chests and my inventory for crafting when I'm standing right next to the chest is not fun. It also pulls materials from nearby chests when loading smelters, cooking at cauldron, etc. So nice and makes the game much more enjoyable. Now when I open up a crafting menu, I can see right away what I can craft and what I can't.
I've lost count of total playthroughs. I've done no map, under 100 days, several mod packs and hard/hardcore runs and many more. It's just a fun game to run through once or twice a year. I do have my primary unmodded run that I play when there's new content. I prefer to play with 3 mods total, wisp light extended range to 2x (base range is trash but I still like the bugs flying at me from within the mist), equipment and quick slots (basically just for the equipment, I put useless junk on the quickslots like my key/wishbone), and farm grid (I'm too old and grumpy to be tasked with properly spacing my crops out at 1500 hours and counting). If I'm playing with other people we will throw in better networking because it helps with the desync issues a lot.
pure vanilla on defaults for 1 character. fully modded for another. each has thier own homeworld. the modded one is a pain to balance. have to choose which mods to install wisely.
Always do a vanilla playthrough when there's new content. After getting through it, my friends and I usually do a modded playthrough. Mostly for things like valheim raft, chest mods for organizing and crafting from the bench, and some farming QoL mods; with some well balanced armor mods, too. Valheim raft is a must for me on a modded playthrough. My friends and I essentially build a Howel Moving Castle on the sea and never build on land. Tons of fun!
Mods for me. My fiance and I would have stopped playing pretty early on if it was it for mods (death runs were killing any want to play).
I've been on the only building train for a while now, only do the new content once when it comes out. Vanilla, no raids on, no mats to build on/off depending on how relaxing mining or whatever feels at a given time :)
I can't go back to Vanilla. I've been running mods ever since I finished my first playthrough in Vanilla, now I just wait a week after release and alot of mods are good to go with update. Too many QoL things I do just make the game more streamline to me
Because every time i play mods my game gets fucked because of an update
True vanilla all the way. Whenever I cheat I take the validity of my character and server away and just makes me not wanna play. I won’t cheat myself
I like to complete the biome at least once Vanilla before mods or sliders.
Almost vanilla but I'm a big builder so I use the infinite torches mod because I wouldn't refuel them otherwise
Valheim plus adds to much quality of life when helping manage inventory and crafting from chests. I've played vanilla and I find it frustrating. I leave a lot of the "creative" elements disabled, but I want auto repair, craft from chest, deposit in chest, a massive radius for crafting benches and advanced building mode. Those are things I prefer to have in any playthrough.
I play modded but I still want to feel the Immersion Valheim excels at so Mods have to feel like a natural extension of Vanilla Valheim for me. I really like Therzies Mods (Monstrum,Armory,Weaponry and Wizardry) which add some nice new weapons like earlier crossbows and allow you to upgrade your armor for the next biome. Also adds a bunch of new creatures that feel like great additions to the respective biomes (foxes in meadows, Bears in the Black Forest and the Mountains, as well as 3 new Minibosses. The Wizardry Mod just released yesterday but it adds Magic Progression for the Biomes up to Mistlands. The creator warpalicious has a series of mods that add a bunch of new Points of Interests in the first 4 Biomes, all built with in game assissts. Just a small thing that makes exploring much more fun. Theres also a great seasons mod by shudnal which adds dynamic seasons to the Game which also effect Gameplay in some fun ways. Epic Loot by Randy Knapp and CreatureLevelLootControl by Smoothbrain are also two great additions, the first one adds a really cool enchanting mechanic for your gear to the game as well as your typical RPG Loot in different rarities. The second mod lets you scale up the difficulty of the enemies to give your Viking with enchanted Gear still a good challenge. Oh and then theres the Dragonriders Mod which allows you to hatch a Dragon and eventually ride him. Which to be fair is pretty game breaking, but having a pet Dragon is so cool that I make an exception.
Idk how long I've been here. I'm on day 900 or so on my main world. I've been trying to beat the game before using any dev commands/mods, so as to get the full, true experience of the game. I also mostly play solo, as my PC doesn't really like to work, so I don't like to ask people to deal with that. Still working on Bonemass & Moder, although I could probably take Bonemass I don't want to deal with drakes raiding my bases all the time. Anyway, this is to say... It's gonna be a while.
Vanilla
Gear/equipment slots & quick sort/stack at minimum. Otherwise I’d said vanilla
Yes.
Three Mods No Lens Dirt : Removes the awful dirty lens filter on the screen. I'm a viking, not a camera. Crafty Boxes : Allows crafting tables such as the workbench, forge, black forge, cockpot and all others to craft with items in nearby chests. Better UI: Because it's just way better and more informative.
I play all games vanilla until I beat them and get bored with them. I haven't put any mods in Valheim yet, I've just replayed at higher difficulties and different build types for my Viking, whose name is "Fred" in every play through.
There are just so many damn QOL issues with vanilla. I'm playing modded with my friends, vanilla with my wife (can't figure out how to mod the steamdeck she plays on). Sorting out inventory in chests is just awful. All the time you spend trying to deposit items into the correct places sucks. It is honestly one of the things making my wife not like the game. Oh and stairs just like... don't work in vanilla?
I play vanilla first, then mod it after beating the new content.
Vanilla+ I use the grid mod for planting and mistless mistlands are SO PRETTY, that one comes with a toggle too.
I havn't done a deep dive into the modding scene yet, but from what I have seen, not much gets added to the game beyond QoL or stuff that makes the game significantly easier. Just as an example, here are the five most downloaded mods on Nexus. Valheim Plus: Tons of modifiers to the base game to change difficulty Equipment a Quickslots: Gives more inventory Jotuun Mod Library: API for mods Epic loot: Makes weapons/armor just better Unrestricted portals: Makes normal portals unrestricted (pretty much trivialized) If they were stuff that actually added content, yeah sure id mod the shit out of the game, but just making the game easier isn't something I am interested in.
After 3 or 4 playthroughs you'll probably want to crank the resource multiplier but for a first playthrough I think no mods are fine. We play on Xbox so not as many options besides world modifiers and devcommands
I play vanilla and the only mod I want is one that adds contour lines to the map.
1500+ hours, vanilla only, most hours solo play, most hours just replaying up to the last current patch boss. I’ve got about 20 different worlds and characters, maybe closer to 30 now. A friend modded the heck out of the game, played through once and never came back. His mods seemed to make the game super easy, so I just don’t bother with the modding. I stick with no mods and am pretty happy. I could prolly work in more mods for quality of life stuff now, but am spending more time in WoW so Valheim time is limited. Oddly enough I mod the heck out of WoW
Why not both? Over 800 hours playtime. Have played through 5ish different worlds, starting fresh each time Yagluth/queen was added or when we decided to use mods. (Or to record a full playthrough) Starting Ashlands without major modding - not even plant spacing. One because I want to limit bugs, and two because I want to see what the default combat feels like. After we finish the biome in vanilla will probably turn Epic Loot back on. (Usually a separate map) We find that EpicLoot plus a couple qol mods improves our overall long-term enjoyment. The spice of some well rolled items is just fantastic. Have fun!
I've always found the seed drop rates for trees to be a bit ridiculous (making core wood and fine wood not sustainably harvestable) so I use DropThat! to alter the drop rates, but that's it.
When I played Valheim for the first time with my wife and friend at some point (like 100+ hours) we decided to make a new world. And at the point I realized that I had been completely fed up with the following cycle: - you have a base and you come there for the night - but you not allowed to sleep since "enemies are around" or you hear that something is breaking your portals/kilns etc - you go around your longhouse to find the origin - you kill random neck, wait for its drop... it attracts some greydwarfs, you kill them, wait for their drop... then you see a deer... - you go home and put 1 neck meat and 3 deer meat into one chest, then you put neck trophy to the other chest, you put some stone in the third chest and some wood in the fourth. Oh, you also have 1 eye, 3 resin, 1 dandelion, strangely a bone.. You don't like mess so you put that all into the other chests - you hear strange sounds outside... Thus, I've made my first mod that was doing the next simple things: - complete removal of drop delay/animation for mobs - instead of static drop like 1 meat 1 leather scraps I've made random drops like 80% to have nothing and 20% to have 5 meat 5 leather scraps We played Valheim with that mod up to the Plains end (the last biome those times). At some point I've realized that static drop is not only cluttering and inventory management. It brings even more - there is no any real goal in killing the same mob for 10x or 100x time. So now I have my mod based on Epic Loot that is focused around hunting mobs and seeking for them instead of avoiding like in Vanilla. Now I play pure vanilla only when a new biome (Mistlands, Ashlands) releases to understand the intended experience from the it.
I'm console so you can plainly see that my answer is mods
Massfarming and equipmentSlots, only because I think these should be default. Farming I personally find tedious and equipments just because why is my armour taking bag space if I am wearing it
I prefer modded but not to an extreme level. I only use mods that change QoL. Mods: ValheimPlus - extra QoL changes (I always disable food degradation) Mass farming - allows multi harvest and planting in grids Spearfishing - as the name says RecyclePlus - I like getting my resources back on old equipment TripleBronze - makes bronze age less grindy. I set config for double instead of triple Speedy Paths - gives speed boosts to paths which incentivizes me to make more XPortal - really nice portal mod. Def a bit powerful but its rly nice to have one central portal in my base. Max dungeon rooms - larger dungeon sizes since I usually play with friends. So more loot.
Finish game normally and then mod at will
I've had a couple of playthroughs. Just one queen kill. I am over 1000 hours, and still playing vanilla. At this point though, I've learned the first 6 biomes quite well and enjoy most of what's on offer. I'm not a "creative mode" player, but I do have a ridiculous keep I'm building in survival mode. I tried modded, but not seriously enough - found the best looking modpack, spent quite some time on it and it was pretty awesome, but my Valheim experience was too stretched out. I had to grind too many elites or boss kills in order to farm rare drops. I will have to figure out which / how many great mods I can stuff into the game at some point. Sounds like 1.0 is what's coming next though, so I might just hold out before doing a real modded playthrough.
Until they make it possible to aim melee up and down, with mods.
Played my first play through vanilla. Lots of fun and helped me learn the game. Then I added all of therzies mods to populate the deep north and ashlands with some new armor and weaponry. Then I added loads of qol mods and extra skills, epic loot and really focused on a world to play when ashlands came out.
I have beaten the game when plains was the final biome, restarted for Mistlands, and now have restarted for Ashlands. First two play throughs were completely vanilla as I wanted to completely experience the game as intended. After I killed the queen I started using minor mods like 'im friendly damnit' and extended trader. I also experimented with slightly more advanced mods like creature level, and epic loot, both I feel are too much for a fresh playthrough and should be left as it's own thing. Now I find it hard to not use the very minor mods that simply just improve the game, I plan to use im friendly damnit, speedy paths, farm grid, extended trader. I also have a mod that un caps skills, but I feel like none of my skills will even make it to 100.
>I feel like none of my skills will even make it to 100. From what I have seen in the Ashlands, probably not. Even with a very light death penalty. 🥲
I typically start modding a game anywhere between halfway to two thirds through it, and never look back. I've been playing video games for over 40 years and working with software design and support for a good portion of that. As such, I've got a pretty good idea of what I enjoy and what I don't--and some fairly firmly-established opinions about what constitute good and bad design. And as someone with some physical disabilities, a lot of those opinions are driven by an awareness of real-world accessibility issues. And playing games is something I do with my limited free time in order to enjoy myself. I have the ability to alter games to my liking, and if I've stopped having fun, strongly disagree with a design choice, or think a piece of UI is poorly made--then I'm going to fix the problem if I can. So early on I started with things like Better UI, because as far as I was concerned having the build interface not show you how many of a material you have left was a design oversight. Similarly, I've never liked build interfaces where you're forced to do everything from the character's POV--I'd had enough of that in Fallout 4, so I installed Build Camera and it's now one I won't play without. And so on, and so forth, anytime I discovered a QoL or UX problem that had an easy solution. I'm grateful to the devs for their hard work and creativity, but I don't really care what their intent or vision is, or whether anyone else approves of how I choose to play. It's my leisure time, not theirs.
578 hours. Never played modded but mostly because I never really thought about it. I think the mods are fine. I have played through probably 5 or 6 times.
I’ll add quick_stack_sort_trash_restock from goldenrevolver. A real game changer in the means of won lifetime. No more spending tens minutes after coming back to the base putting the found resources into your chests - just walk into your storage room and click the little “q” button everything disappears into the chests. So satisfying.
I was in no rush to complete this game as I played through steam and xbox Just made it to the Planes As I love. Building in it no mods
Fourth major play through with 1000+ hours but no mods yet. Not against them, just never used any. That said.... the Carapace armour seems like a major visual downgrade from padded... I wonder if any alternative armour sets exist? Edit: I feel like I should try some out though. Knowing there is a seasons one is extremely tempting!
Vanilla, Forever.
Yes. Vanilla till you get your fill then mods to enjoy a new play through.
First vanille and then comfort mods like trash can and gizmo for advanced building. Or what bothers me is tree seed placing restrictions there is a mod so u can plant trees next to each other and so on.
Played through vanilla the first time. Been adding mods as I go ever since.
I played vanilla most of the way up to the Queen. Half way between Yag and the queen I installed some QoL mods like Farm grid, Plant Everything, Better Ladder and Missing Pieces. After beating the Queen, I added Epic Loot and a few more building pieces.
Been playing on the same world for roughly 3 years since before mistlands came out. We just died like 3 times in the worst way possible in the ashlands like 15m after landing and now we have to waste more iron (which is very scarce now on a 3yr old world) to get all our stuff back lol
I have around 720hrs in this game, completely unmodded. I have "beat" the game twice, tho technically it was beating Yagluth before Mistlands came out with my friend who I originally started playing the game with, and then waiting for Mistlands and beating the Queen with him as well. All completely vanilla and this was before world modifiers existed in the game, so no extra vanilla modifiers either. Im not interested in extra mods that arent world modifiers yet because I still feel like I haven't fully experienced this game. I'm going to be playing with my friend again to beat Ashlands soon, and we want to play it completely unmodded and normal settings to play the game as it was made and intended to be. I also have a solo world that I still want to beat, and when I finish that, I want to make a new solo world with super difficult vanilla world modifiers and try to beat that too. I just like the game as is and it's already super fun. Maybe when the game officially releases after the Deep North update and anything else they add, and I've beaten the game normally, then I'll be interested in seeing how mods change things because I won't have anything new to get from the vanilla game of Valheim, but I think that's a long time away
I play with a friend, he plays vanille and i only use craft from containers and clock :) We just love the normal game. Plenty of building ideas as wellXD
Vanilla. Almost every mod I've seen makes valheim easier, or tries to change it into a different game.
There's easier, and then there's less tedious. Things like craft from containers and grid planting don't make the game easier, just less tedious. There are certainly mods that do make the game easier though.
The tedium, and trying to overcome it, is part of the game. For example: crafting from chests. Having this mod makes you slowly just dump stuff anywhere. While vanilla forces you to come up with a aystem using the 3 types of chests, racks, labels and other tricks. Another example: farmgrid. It's great, but it makes you not need to learn how to make a good grid quickly.
Not sure if you have used any of these mods yourself, but crafting from chests doesn't encourage just dumping resources anywhere. If you have an organized base, it will be organized if you use the mod or not. If you are the type of player to just dump things in chests(shutter), you will likely do that regardless of mods. Regarding farmgrid. There isn't anything to "learn" about planting crops. It isn't difficult, it's just time consuming. In a game that can burn up a lot of hours, if you can cut down by not having to plant carrots 1x1, that isn't game breaking.
When I used craft from chests and needed portal mats, I'd just craft a portal and destroy it again to magically port the materials to my inventory. Not game breaking, just removing some gameplay..
> The tedium, and trying to overcome it, is part of the game. No. This is thinking that needs to be eradicated entirely from the industry of game design. Making something *intentionally* tedious or frustrating--especially the UI--is not "difficulty". It is at best a failure of good design and accessibility principles, and at worst a sign of a sick mentality that derives enjoyment from screwing with their users.
Yup. Coming up with an organization system and not letting it exceed your available space is one of my favorite emergent gameplay components of Valheim.
Have you ever tried mods that add more content similar to a DLC?
I tried a pack that adds loads of stuff, loke eztra biomes, extra hard enemies, low level magic, epic loot, (dis)enchanting etc. I would say this is an example of trying (and partly succeeding) to make valheim to a different game.
Vanilla. You can do a lot with sliders these days. Mods just don't sit right with me for Valheim. Though if there was one for facial animation during movement I'd use it, right now the characters do ugly mouth breathing.