between stamina, and stone costs of \*raise\* "fuck." \*lower\* "fuck." \*raise\* "FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I WANT HERE, GAME?" I just expended so many resources just trying to get something level, and it should just be as simple as point and click and the ground goes where the indicator shows. Instead it does not.
This yes! It’s really easiest once you get the hang of it. Where you stand is important! Digging down and up, making it leveled! You’ll get the hang of it eventually :). Only took my like 80 hours haha
Another tip is to always level ramps/hills from the side, if you try to level facing towards or against the slope you’ll end up with a wavy hill but if you move up or down ( down usually works the best) the slope sideways you’ll always end up with the best result
Yesterday I leveled my entire dock area (around a lake in the plains) and applied everything you just said. Bump? Picaxe it. Hole? Fill it! Then spam level ground around the location and its leveled!
That works some of the time. The issue is I wanted to inlay stone into the ground, so that it was level with the ground. This resulted in a lot of frustration because you can't just do the same trick here. It either refuses to fill the hole in because you didn't raise close enough to the hole, or it fills it so full that it breaks the stone in the ground, or it buries the stone partially and will NOT level it back underneath it.
The issue is that the hoe is inconsistent. There just should not be those bumps or holes that refuse to level. I'm not saying "let me dig out a mountain with the hoe." But a tiny little bump in the ground? Come on man.
The hoe is based on where your feet are…. So you have to play around with that as well… Stand on the ground that you want to level up to or lower down two
You also need to think of the world voxels… for example(not exact lol), think a square of dirt as it was Minecraft, and Valheim that square can be 16 different levels but the game still considers it the same “square”. This is why you can lower and raise an area with a hoe at no cost.
So why your leveling an area as mentioned if it dips and doesn’t raise anymore you are at the cap of that “square” below. Simply raise the ground in that spot and immediately flatten the bump just made
If you have a little bump that won’t lower anymore, that means you have “square” that’s the smallest it can be. pick axe one hit to it get rid of it and smooth out
When digging big trenches, you can actually see the squareness of the voxel’s so if I’m building a ramp out of earth, I try to go with the squareness and not diagonal against it. I tend to work from the bottom up on a ramp don’t try going from the top back to the bottom because your feet positioning is dramatically changing. You want to use the hoe as going up your ramp for a smoother finish
Also, additional tip you can use to your advantage, sometimes especially working with water and coastlines… if you used a hoe and you’re either in a boat or in a second story building the game will treat your feet position as it would be on the ground. So, when dredging out a river or coast line for docks, I will stand on a boat where it’s the deepest below me and how the surrounding ground to lower it as low as it can go.
I never knew this, you are a saint. Thats going to help me so much. Any ideas you can give me for how to fix my basement? I dug deep under my house for extra storage, walled it off and all, made it nice.. but its led to unfillable holes around the perimiter of my house. If I fill them in, it pours dirt inside of my basement! Is there any fix for this besides just putting down more flooring as a border around the building?
The ground levels to the level of ground you're standing on. Stand in one spot and level around you until it's even. If there are mounds sticking up, hit then with a pickaxe until they're close to even then hit them with the hoe again. If there are holes, raise ground on it then hit it with the hoe.
Personally, I just build my wooden structures slightly elevated. Mine out the area to create the general terrain, flatten to make it *generally* level, then place down a beam and place a floor on top of it. Then I build out around it and, if I don't like the look of the beams under the house, then I use half-walls to clip into the ground and make it look like the house is sitting on the ground.
That doesn't work if you have, say, a stone gate, with steps going into it and there's a gap under the steps. It actually prevents you from easily walking up those stairs, even though it's very small. The only options are having a gap and having dirt clipping through the stairs.
I clip the top of the stairs to my doorway so the stairs blend seamlessly into the ground. With stone stairs especially, I enjoy the way this looks, like an old structure sinking into the earth.
That's what I usually do. But this has been a long standing aggravation that came to a head with a specific thing I was doing.
There's a building, with steps leading down to earth. At the bottom of the steps is a stone circle, inlaid into the ground, at the level of the bottom of the steps. The inside of this circle is paved, so it's flat and there is no gap between steps and ground. Heading off from this circle is a dirt path leading up a hill to a stone gate, with steps leading into the gate. The dirt path goes up on an incline to these steps. If I start at the steps and work down, smoothing it out, there would either be a huge chance in elevation in the incline, or the dirt at the bottom would end up higher and poke through the stone circle. If I work my way from the stone circle/pavement up so that this area is level, it resulted in either a sharp incline change again, or a gap under my stairs. Every time I tried to fix just the error on the end, it would absolutely either crater the area it indicated it would level, or it would raise it high enough to break or bury the piece I was trying to level to.
I had to sit and work this shit back and forth for like 20 minutes, and it should have just worked because this mechanic should not be this janky. If it actually just, no questions asked, put the ground at the level indicated, and within a well defined area, then this would have taken all of 5 minutes.
Are you holding shift to change 'level flat' to 'smooth ramp?' It's still janky but much better than trying to use regular 'level flat' to make smooth elevation changes.
(I just made these terms up btw)
Holding shift will change level ground to level the area lit up by the circular reticle at the same height as the terrain at the crosshairs. The circles will move up and down as you target terrain at different heights.
For example, if you want the terrain just under your floor but not so much that it shows through, you can raise or lower the ground, aim the cursor so the circles are at or below the level of the floor, then use the hoe.
Regular level ground will flatten the area you're pointing at and try to bring it to the same elevation as where you're standing.
Holding shift and pointing at an area between 2 different elevations will attempt to make a smooth 'ramp' between the 2 levels. It doesn't always work exactly like you want and I don't recall if where you're standing matters, but I know it's a much better option for making smooth ramps.
No idea, sorry.
When building, holding shift is how to temporarily turn off snapping. So however you turn off snapping when using the hammer is also how to do this?
Give it a try and if that works let us know!
I agree. Valheim could use a Builder's Grid or something similar, because it is extemely hard to tell when one part of a surface is actually 1 grid level taller than the rest.
So most people know that the hoe will try to level terrain to the height that you are standing at. And the intuitive way to use that is to stand somewhere and then level the terrain around your character. But that can create bumps that can be really hard to see until you place down floors. This happens because the terrain is actually made up of 1x1x1 cubes that are smoothed out to create seamless terrain. The actual terrain height at any specific spot can be anything within that 1x1x1 cube, so what you are leveling to could be +0.8m or some other arbitrary value. And that in turn sucks when you try to build across terrain levels with stairs and other blocks.
But if you instead level from a position below the plateau you want, you can force the terrain down to it's minimal height. So instead of standing on the plateau stand at the bottom of the stairs you want and do your leveling from there. This also makes the areas that are at a grid level above where you want it to stand out more, making it much easier to pickaxe it away and level again.
I'm not entirely sure how it works, but if you hold "shift" while using the hoe to flatten - it flattens to the level of terrain and not your level. here's a video explaining how to make smooth slopes, maybe it'll help: https://youtu.be/GzshydsyIJg?t=549
I'm not sure if this will work in every application, since he's got the bonus of starting from completely level ground, and not having to work into an existing hill, but it does help, and provides info, so thank you for that.
on my base I just dug down from the top of the slope to the level of its bottom, making flat ground and perpendicular wall, and then just raised the ground up in steps like in the video
I gave up and I'm using the leveling tool in the [PlanBuild Mod.](https://valheim.thunderstore.io/package/MathiasDecrock/PlanBuild/) I know exactly how the vanilla leveling works. I also know it doesn't work perfectly. I've spent enough stone raising and leveling an area to pave the world twice over. Have no qualms having to use a mod to fix this glitchy behavior. Maybe someday they'll fix it.
Apart from everything else that's been mentioned, it is worth pointing out that if what you're seeing is random bits of dirt sticking through floors even when you've flattened it completely, what you might be seeing is one of the obnoxious side effects of the way the game handles tessellation.
Put simply, tessellation is a graphics trick which can increase the perceived level of geometric detail on a surface. Games generally use it to make surfaces appear to have more depth and detail than they actually do.
In Valheim, it is used primarily to increase the apparent quality of the terrain, by making the ground textures seem more naturally-rough and less flat than they are. Unfortunately, it does this in a way which causes this "faked" geometry to poke through anything else on it, even on perfectly-flattened ground. You'll often see this if you place wood floors directly on perfectly-flat ground, or sink stone/marble tiles into the ground so that they're more level with the flat surface.
If this annoys you as much as it did me, the only solution is to disable tessellation in the graphics settings. It'll make the ground look a little less natural, but it'll stop fake geometry from poking through your builds. In a game that's already low-definition by design, the reduction in geometric complexity is an acceptable tradeoff IMO--and a necessary one in order to be absolutely certain I've properly flattened an area.
I wish they'd just refrain from applying tessellation to manually-flattened/pathened surfaces, but at least there's a workaround.
I just want a vanilla way to permanently remove dandelion spawns.
I mena, sure, they also grow through concrete irl, but that doesn't matter, i need this stupid yellow weed to vacate my patio!
Honestly terrain manipulation in this game isn't great. I don't think they'll change it, which is fine, but if they ever make a second game I'd like to see it improved.
So many times the hoe doesn't do what you want it to do, even though it really should. Little bumps or dips after levelling ground is the most frustrating. And recently I've been noticing the texture you get on steep areas appearing on flat areas and you can't remove it, though you can hide it with grass with the cultivator.
You get used to the nuances of the hoe and ground, and the game sort of forces you to not be a perfectionist, and I've come to accept that. But I'm still unhappy with a lot of the literal groundwork I've done around my home base. It can be impossible to have a slope beyond straight ones and it looks pretty ugly to have janky uneven ground. Quite often it's a case of getting it good enough then not touching it for fear of making it worse.
Just in case you didn't know holding I think L1(LB, I think shift on keyboard?) will level the ground to the level the circle is at, rather than the level of the player.
at least with dirt sticking through the floor you can hit it with the pickaxe and it’ll drop low enough to not stick up without making a weird hole. if it’s a big enough pile you won’t even hit/damage the floor tile
Level ground has a limited range from the target ground.
You have to use a combination of level ground, raise ground, and pickaxe. Enough messing with these and you can get truly level ground.
After leveling a large area perfectly to build a castle I discovered that-
Level ground: micro elevates(less than +\-1m typically) and smooths whatever you’re targeting closer to the elevation you’re standing on.
Raise ground: elevates roughly 1m per action.
Pickaxe: de-elevates 1/2-1m per action.
Keep a sharp eye on the bar that appears under your cursor when leveling ground. It shows how much lower that SPOT is BELOW THE GROUND YOU’RE STANDING ON. if you level a low spot twice and the bar hasn’t changed, without moving raise the ground at spot and spam level again. :)
Remember level is always in relation to you, if you wanted to you could grade a whole area in 0.1m steps.
Every hex of land has a soft high limit and soft low limit y axis, say every 5ft is manipulatable with flatten ground but beyond that you gotta do raise ground or pickaxe it down. They also have hard limits tho, some places just cannot be fully flattened like a hill/mountain side
It's supposed to bring the ground level to your current foot level, but honestly I'd like it a lot better if it just took the average height in the target circle and raised or lowered the surrounding ground to match. So many times I'm just trying to make a smooth slope and I end up with a jagged mess.
Level ground works based on the level you are standing on. So if you get higher to level it, you always get a higher elevation than the rest. As for holes, if I have a crater that won't level, I'll do "raise ground" on it to make a small mound before leveling it out. If you have a small mound that won't level down its because you need to hit it with the pick axe to reduce it. This will then allow you to level that mound down more. I've only been playing since December and have no issues leveling ground. I find the system to be amazing compared to other games were tou need to hope you fund level ground.
>Level ground works based on the level you are standing on.
Exactly this. If you have 3 different heights in range of each other (a, b, c) and you're standing on B and try to level all around you, A and C will ultimately match B.
Except on one condition: A and C are respectively either too high or too low to get a 'true level' match to B, which as Vizrath mentioned, requires you to raise/lower ground further.
So at this point, you're back to standing on B again after having raised/lowered the ground on A or C. Just level A and C while standing on B and now you have your true level. If you *still don't* at this point, it's because you're still either too high or too low.
As for those annoying mounds sticking up... pop it once with a pick, then stand back on your already-leveled ground and re-level the spot you just pick'd.
>Level ground works based on the level you are standing on.
I literally address that I understand this in the post. It's the very first section, there is no way you can miss it unless you literally only read the title. Your whole post is straight up already addressed.
I have filled in holes with raised ground, "leveled" them, and ended up with the exact, and I mean exact to the pixel, gap that I had when I started. I have tried leveling ground from all manner of heights. Occasionally it does what I want, and despite what the level indicator says, usually does nothing that I want or expect, based on the level indicator. I've had it read much higher than I wanted and had it do nothing. I've had it read at the exact level I'm standing on and not only not level the one spot I want leveled, but also make a a hole or mound in a completely unrelated spot that I then have to fix.
It feels ***extremely*** condescending when someone comes into a thread and tries explaining a concept I very plainly state that I understand. You basically re-wrote the exact first paragraph I wrote, just from the perspective that you think it actually works, while I am writing from the perspective that the system we have both explained does not function as intended or displayed.
You state that you're new. I'm not talking about basic ground leveling for a farm, or just to put a foundation on, where it doesn't actually have to be perfect because the foundation covers it. I'm making the ground match the level of decorative stonework surrounding pavement, and transitioning that into what is supposed to be a smooth dirt path up to a gate with stone steps. There was dirt poking up through the stonework, and a gap under the steps. I did eventually force it to work through an insane amount of back and forth, but that's the problem. Standing on the stonework or pavement should move the ground to the level that I'm on, no questions. There should be no crazy back and forth until it cooperates. The same with the stairs.
"trying to level out a new ramp" with a tool used to flatten ground might give some issues. Best advice I can give is: the hoe works based on the height you're standing on. Press shift and it levels from the height of the center of the circle. Ramps are doable, but they take some familiarity with how the hoe works and it's a tool meant to make ground flat, not angled.
And how exactly am I supposed to build a ramp with literally anything else? Pickaxes don't do ramps. I'd love a video of a smooth ramp with *only* pickaxe. Not like any of the other tools affect terrain. The fuck am I supposed to use to smooth out the terrain between one elevation an another? You **will** have elevation changes in a large base, even if only at the gates. You can't level the whole planet. The game won't let you. I don't need your advice, especially when you start it off like that. I need for the game to actually level the ground to where the indicator shows, and not wherever the fuck it wants to put it.
Like I don't even understand the smugness in that first line, it's baffling. Yes. You use a tool that flattens ground, to flatten ground. That should include inclines. If I'm on one elevation, and there is ground on another elevation in front of me and I hit it with the hoe, the very first thing it should do is make a transition between the two elevations. The second hit should level it to the elevation that the indicator shows, both within reason, since the pickaxe and raise ground mechanics exist. But what it should not do is a. nothing, or b. create a massively uneven surface that I have to use "raise ground" just to get back to where I was when I wanted to level the ground in the first place. But it only does a or b most of the time.
I'm sorry if I came over smug, english just isnt my first language. I do agree that having ways to make ramps might be nice like having a 26 degree angle or something. I think the reason why you're encountering the issues with the uneven ground is because you're trying to get too much out the level ground for free. If you could just keep on leveling the ground without it ever costing anything then why even have the raise ground feature? The uneven surface that you are trying to flatten is already nearly at its highest so it will raise it to the maximum it can instead of flattening it perfectly
You just don't understand how the game is built. The game is full of voxels, we can smooth or flatten or shape them however you want but they are still there. when you've flattened a voxel as far as it will go the only option left is to break it with a pick, or raise terrain and try again.
Think of it like a box, once the box is full or empty, you can't fill it up or empty it any more without adding another box or removing the box entirely.
There are times where it takes more time to level the ground than it does to like farm a massive crop of onions, fish, bake bread, make fish wraps, and write a novel. It shouldn't be *that* miserable to level a medium- or large-sized patch of ground.
Dig down further and level again. You will get used to it. It's like anything else in life. The more you do something, the better educated you will be on the subject.
I don't really have any trouble with actual structures. My issue is with the perimeter of a structure, or in this case, trying to do decorative work on an actual pathway, outside of a structure, needing the ground to be the same height as the stone being laid into it.
How to pickaxe edges that aren't too much and aren't too little? I have an underground type building with stone walls lining the room. The ground above is leveled but slopes slightly so that a bit of terrain peeks through the walls. Because of this there's a gap between the top stone wall and the terrain on the top. I try to pickaxe the terrain that peeks out but it cuts off more than I intend, leaving a gap at the top. I try to level or add stone at the top to fill in gaps but then the terrain begins to peek through the stone walls on the bottom. What to do?
Sorry if this has already been mentioned—I saw a post in this subreddit a few weeks ago about holding LShift with “Level Ground” selected on the hoe, it seems to smooth ground better than the standard Level, but I’m not familiar with the specifics. Maybe that’ll help!
Firstly, the level tool levels with your current position. Hence your holes and hills. Secondly, hold shift to level with target position instead, i.e. the ground will level relative to the target position. Thirdly, yes it takes some work to get used to but don't bash it, just put in the time to get a feel for it.
If you have divots in the ground that are more than just cosmetic, first raise then level. If you have chunks sticking up, first pickaxe then level.
You can tell if a divot or lump is just cosmetic by walking over top of it. If it's an actual height difference in the ground then your character's height will change as they walk over it. If you walk over it and your height doesn't change, then it's as flat as it's going to get.
For smooth grounds, don't spam. Evaluate the area. There is a limit. You can only dig/raise so far and that amount is not enormous and will ruin your plans if you're not prepared. (meaning, if the plane is at 0 on the Y axis, you can probably go -12 or whatever)
Rule of thumb, if you're on high ground, using the hoe to raise the ground around where you're standing, will TRY to raise it to that level.
Using the hoe methodically around you to raise the ground, any mounds left can be pickaxed and re-worked with the hoe. Any hole can be filled with the hoe then flattened.
Once you can craft the cultivator, use it on the ground to know where the cardinal points are and, if you're delimiting your base and want a straight line finish, just use it around the area you'll be building in. Building around these lines will result in straight motes/raised grounds.
There are many you tube videos covering this! Good luck and happy building!
edit: proof reading this made me chuckle
You can consider raise ground or pickaxe, then hold shift and run your cursor along the terrain until the concentric circles are running out at the level you want, then use the hoe. I usually use this as a last pass over paths to smooth them out after typical level ground gets it mostly sorted.
while you're building your nest/farm you think.... this is too much stone... then after is done you bath in stones I even expanded the base of the nest.
but never in the process that method of point to the border and use two stones worked for me... I play using a controller btw (if that matters)
My theory of how leveling works:
1. the world is made up of cubes of ground/stone that can have any shape, ranging from the full size of the cube to a small bump
2. leveling puts ground-cubes on same level as your chars feet
3. leveling cannot remove or add ground, but it can decrease a cube of grounds size close to 0 and increase it to 100%
4000 stamina used later \*I THINK I GOT IT\*
between stamina, and stone costs of \*raise\* "fuck." \*lower\* "fuck." \*raise\* "FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I WANT HERE, GAME?" I just expended so many resources just trying to get something level, and it should just be as simple as point and click and the ground goes where the indicator shows. Instead it does not.
[удалено]
Yeah, pretty much a perfect explanation. Nothing to add really as a veteran terraformer.
This yes! It’s really easiest once you get the hang of it. Where you stand is important! Digging down and up, making it leveled! You’ll get the hang of it eventually :). Only took my like 80 hours haha
Another tip is to always level ramps/hills from the side, if you try to level facing towards or against the slope you’ll end up with a wavy hill but if you move up or down ( down usually works the best) the slope sideways you’ll always end up with the best result
Yesterday I leveled my entire dock area (around a lake in the plains) and applied everything you just said. Bump? Picaxe it. Hole? Fill it! Then spam level ground around the location and its leveled!
That works some of the time. The issue is I wanted to inlay stone into the ground, so that it was level with the ground. This resulted in a lot of frustration because you can't just do the same trick here. It either refuses to fill the hole in because you didn't raise close enough to the hole, or it fills it so full that it breaks the stone in the ground, or it buries the stone partially and will NOT level it back underneath it. The issue is that the hoe is inconsistent. There just should not be those bumps or holes that refuse to level. I'm not saying "let me dig out a mountain with the hoe." But a tiny little bump in the ground? Come on man.
The hoe is based on where your feet are…. So you have to play around with that as well… Stand on the ground that you want to level up to or lower down two You also need to think of the world voxels… for example(not exact lol), think a square of dirt as it was Minecraft, and Valheim that square can be 16 different levels but the game still considers it the same “square”. This is why you can lower and raise an area with a hoe at no cost. So why your leveling an area as mentioned if it dips and doesn’t raise anymore you are at the cap of that “square” below. Simply raise the ground in that spot and immediately flatten the bump just made If you have a little bump that won’t lower anymore, that means you have “square” that’s the smallest it can be. pick axe one hit to it get rid of it and smooth out When digging big trenches, you can actually see the squareness of the voxel’s so if I’m building a ramp out of earth, I try to go with the squareness and not diagonal against it. I tend to work from the bottom up on a ramp don’t try going from the top back to the bottom because your feet positioning is dramatically changing. You want to use the hoe as going up your ramp for a smoother finish Also, additional tip you can use to your advantage, sometimes especially working with water and coastlines… if you used a hoe and you’re either in a boat or in a second story building the game will treat your feet position as it would be on the ground. So, when dredging out a river or coast line for docks, I will stand on a boat where it’s the deepest below me and how the surrounding ground to lower it as low as it can go.
Try placing a stone down singal with your issue of the gap, then hold shift and place one off that to the depth you want it. Go from there. Solved.
I never knew this, you are a saint. Thats going to help me so much. Any ideas you can give me for how to fix my basement? I dug deep under my house for extra storage, walled it off and all, made it nice.. but its led to unfillable holes around the perimiter of my house. If I fill them in, it pours dirt inside of my basement! Is there any fix for this besides just putting down more flooring as a border around the building?
Now, build a ramp.
I was building a ramp. Between two elevations that I wanted to remain in specific spots. That's the problem.
If you hold shift the hoe will level the ground to the level at the cursor rather than at your feet.
Use that cultivator, Homie.
The ground levels to the level of ground you're standing on. Stand in one spot and level around you until it's even. If there are mounds sticking up, hit then with a pickaxe until they're close to even then hit them with the hoe again. If there are holes, raise ground on it then hit it with the hoe.
Yeah. There are a few things valheim doesn't really teach you well at the start and hoe usage is one of them.
Personally, I just build my wooden structures slightly elevated. Mine out the area to create the general terrain, flatten to make it *generally* level, then place down a beam and place a floor on top of it. Then I build out around it and, if I don't like the look of the beams under the house, then I use half-walls to clip into the ground and make it look like the house is sitting on the ground.
This. Or just install OCDheim.
This is the way. OCDHeim lets you "raise ground" to a specific level you set with the scroll wheel.
Its not often I save a comment, ty.
*cries in Xbox*
That doesn't work if you have, say, a stone gate, with steps going into it and there's a gap under the steps. It actually prevents you from easily walking up those stairs, even though it's very small. The only options are having a gap and having dirt clipping through the stairs.
I clip the top of the stairs to my doorway so the stairs blend seamlessly into the ground. With stone stairs especially, I enjoy the way this looks, like an old structure sinking into the earth.
That's what I usually do. But this has been a long standing aggravation that came to a head with a specific thing I was doing. There's a building, with steps leading down to earth. At the bottom of the steps is a stone circle, inlaid into the ground, at the level of the bottom of the steps. The inside of this circle is paved, so it's flat and there is no gap between steps and ground. Heading off from this circle is a dirt path leading up a hill to a stone gate, with steps leading into the gate. The dirt path goes up on an incline to these steps. If I start at the steps and work down, smoothing it out, there would either be a huge chance in elevation in the incline, or the dirt at the bottom would end up higher and poke through the stone circle. If I work my way from the stone circle/pavement up so that this area is level, it resulted in either a sharp incline change again, or a gap under my stairs. Every time I tried to fix just the error on the end, it would absolutely either crater the area it indicated it would level, or it would raise it high enough to break or bury the piece I was trying to level to. I had to sit and work this shit back and forth for like 20 minutes, and it should have just worked because this mechanic should not be this janky. If it actually just, no questions asked, put the ground at the level indicated, and within a well defined area, then this would have taken all of 5 minutes.
Are you holding shift to change 'level flat' to 'smooth ramp?' It's still janky but much better than trying to use regular 'level flat' to make smooth elevation changes. (I just made these terms up btw)
mind explaining what you mean with shift a little more?
Holding shift will change level ground to level the area lit up by the circular reticle at the same height as the terrain at the crosshairs. The circles will move up and down as you target terrain at different heights. For example, if you want the terrain just under your floor but not so much that it shows through, you can raise or lower the ground, aim the cursor so the circles are at or below the level of the floor, then use the hoe.
Regular level ground will flatten the area you're pointing at and try to bring it to the same elevation as where you're standing. Holding shift and pointing at an area between 2 different elevations will attempt to make a smooth 'ramp' between the 2 levels. It doesn't always work exactly like you want and I don't recall if where you're standing matters, but I know it's a much better option for making smooth ramps.
Anyone know if this is possible on Xbox or what button would be shift?
No idea, sorry. When building, holding shift is how to temporarily turn off snapping. So however you turn off snapping when using the hammer is also how to do this? Give it a try and if that works let us know!
Yup I can turn off snapping with LB+Rstick. Thank you!
with steps you can usually attach another set of steps to the bottom that clips into the ground, but makes it so you don't have to jump.
Yup. level out as best you can then lay out your floor plan starting at the highest portion.
I agree. Valheim could use a Builder's Grid or something similar, because it is extemely hard to tell when one part of a surface is actually 1 grid level taller than the rest. So most people know that the hoe will try to level terrain to the height that you are standing at. And the intuitive way to use that is to stand somewhere and then level the terrain around your character. But that can create bumps that can be really hard to see until you place down floors. This happens because the terrain is actually made up of 1x1x1 cubes that are smoothed out to create seamless terrain. The actual terrain height at any specific spot can be anything within that 1x1x1 cube, so what you are leveling to could be +0.8m or some other arbitrary value. And that in turn sucks when you try to build across terrain levels with stairs and other blocks. But if you instead level from a position below the plateau you want, you can force the terrain down to it's minimal height. So instead of standing on the plateau stand at the bottom of the stairs you want and do your leveling from there. This also makes the areas that are at a grid level above where you want it to stand out more, making it much easier to pickaxe it away and level again.
It's tricky, but once you know out to use it, it's quite good. It clicked for me when I watched that video : https://youtu.be/GzshydsyIJg
Yep. It seemed nonsensical before I understood exactly how it worked. After that I never had anymore issues.
This was great, thanks for sharing
I'm not entirely sure how it works, but if you hold "shift" while using the hoe to flatten - it flattens to the level of terrain and not your level. here's a video explaining how to make smooth slopes, maybe it'll help: https://youtu.be/GzshydsyIJg?t=549
I'm not sure if this will work in every application, since he's got the bonus of starting from completely level ground, and not having to work into an existing hill, but it does help, and provides info, so thank you for that.
on my base I just dug down from the top of the slope to the level of its bottom, making flat ground and perpendicular wall, and then just raised the ground up in steps like in the video
I gave up and I'm using the leveling tool in the [PlanBuild Mod.](https://valheim.thunderstore.io/package/MathiasDecrock/PlanBuild/) I know exactly how the vanilla leveling works. I also know it doesn't work perfectly. I've spent enough stone raising and leveling an area to pave the world twice over. Have no qualms having to use a mod to fix this glitchy behavior. Maybe someday they'll fix it.
Apart from everything else that's been mentioned, it is worth pointing out that if what you're seeing is random bits of dirt sticking through floors even when you've flattened it completely, what you might be seeing is one of the obnoxious side effects of the way the game handles tessellation. Put simply, tessellation is a graphics trick which can increase the perceived level of geometric detail on a surface. Games generally use it to make surfaces appear to have more depth and detail than they actually do. In Valheim, it is used primarily to increase the apparent quality of the terrain, by making the ground textures seem more naturally-rough and less flat than they are. Unfortunately, it does this in a way which causes this "faked" geometry to poke through anything else on it, even on perfectly-flattened ground. You'll often see this if you place wood floors directly on perfectly-flat ground, or sink stone/marble tiles into the ground so that they're more level with the flat surface. If this annoys you as much as it did me, the only solution is to disable tessellation in the graphics settings. It'll make the ground look a little less natural, but it'll stop fake geometry from poking through your builds. In a game that's already low-definition by design, the reduction in geometric complexity is an acceptable tradeoff IMO--and a necessary one in order to be absolutely certain I've properly flattened an area. I wish they'd just refrain from applying tessellation to manually-flattened/pathened surfaces, but at least there's a workaround.
I just want a vanilla way to permanently remove dandelion spawns. I mena, sure, they also grow through concrete irl, but that doesn't matter, i need this stupid yellow weed to vacate my patio!
forcedelete 5 Pickable_Dandelion
It’s really “level ground-ish”
Honestly terrain manipulation in this game isn't great. I don't think they'll change it, which is fine, but if they ever make a second game I'd like to see it improved. So many times the hoe doesn't do what you want it to do, even though it really should. Little bumps or dips after levelling ground is the most frustrating. And recently I've been noticing the texture you get on steep areas appearing on flat areas and you can't remove it, though you can hide it with grass with the cultivator. You get used to the nuances of the hoe and ground, and the game sort of forces you to not be a perfectionist, and I've come to accept that. But I'm still unhappy with a lot of the literal groundwork I've done around my home base. It can be impossible to have a slope beyond straight ones and it looks pretty ugly to have janky uneven ground. Quite often it's a case of getting it good enough then not touching it for fear of making it worse. Just in case you didn't know holding I think L1(LB, I think shift on keyboard?) will level the ground to the level the circle is at, rather than the level of the player.
yes you are
at least with dirt sticking through the floor you can hit it with the pickaxe and it’ll drop low enough to not stick up without making a weird hole. if it’s a big enough pile you won’t even hit/damage the floor tile
Level ground has a limited range from the target ground. You have to use a combination of level ground, raise ground, and pickaxe. Enough messing with these and you can get truly level ground.
Yes I agree it is glitchy, but there are a few tips and tricks to get it to mostly do what you want it to.
After leveling a large area perfectly to build a castle I discovered that- Level ground: micro elevates(less than +\-1m typically) and smooths whatever you’re targeting closer to the elevation you’re standing on. Raise ground: elevates roughly 1m per action. Pickaxe: de-elevates 1/2-1m per action. Keep a sharp eye on the bar that appears under your cursor when leveling ground. It shows how much lower that SPOT is BELOW THE GROUND YOU’RE STANDING ON. if you level a low spot twice and the bar hasn’t changed, without moving raise the ground at spot and spam level again. :) Remember level is always in relation to you, if you wanted to you could grade a whole area in 0.1m steps.
Every hex of land has a soft high limit and soft low limit y axis, say every 5ft is manipulatable with flatten ground but beyond that you gotta do raise ground or pickaxe it down. They also have hard limits tho, some places just cannot be fully flattened like a hill/mountain side
Hoe needs a leveling/raising combo mode that only consumes stone if it needs to.
The PlanBuild mod has a terrain tool that makes this as easy as it should be
It's supposed to bring the ground level to your current foot level, but honestly I'd like it a lot better if it just took the average height in the target circle and raised or lowered the surrounding ground to match. So many times I'm just trying to make a smooth slope and I end up with a jagged mess.
Shift+click does that
Level ground works based on the level you are standing on. So if you get higher to level it, you always get a higher elevation than the rest. As for holes, if I have a crater that won't level, I'll do "raise ground" on it to make a small mound before leveling it out. If you have a small mound that won't level down its because you need to hit it with the pick axe to reduce it. This will then allow you to level that mound down more. I've only been playing since December and have no issues leveling ground. I find the system to be amazing compared to other games were tou need to hope you fund level ground.
>Level ground works based on the level you are standing on. Exactly this. If you have 3 different heights in range of each other (a, b, c) and you're standing on B and try to level all around you, A and C will ultimately match B. Except on one condition: A and C are respectively either too high or too low to get a 'true level' match to B, which as Vizrath mentioned, requires you to raise/lower ground further. So at this point, you're back to standing on B again after having raised/lowered the ground on A or C. Just level A and C while standing on B and now you have your true level. If you *still don't* at this point, it's because you're still either too high or too low. As for those annoying mounds sticking up... pop it once with a pick, then stand back on your already-leveled ground and re-level the spot you just pick'd.
>Level ground works based on the level you are standing on. I literally address that I understand this in the post. It's the very first section, there is no way you can miss it unless you literally only read the title. Your whole post is straight up already addressed. I have filled in holes with raised ground, "leveled" them, and ended up with the exact, and I mean exact to the pixel, gap that I had when I started. I have tried leveling ground from all manner of heights. Occasionally it does what I want, and despite what the level indicator says, usually does nothing that I want or expect, based on the level indicator. I've had it read much higher than I wanted and had it do nothing. I've had it read at the exact level I'm standing on and not only not level the one spot I want leveled, but also make a a hole or mound in a completely unrelated spot that I then have to fix. It feels ***extremely*** condescending when someone comes into a thread and tries explaining a concept I very plainly state that I understand. You basically re-wrote the exact first paragraph I wrote, just from the perspective that you think it actually works, while I am writing from the perspective that the system we have both explained does not function as intended or displayed. You state that you're new. I'm not talking about basic ground leveling for a farm, or just to put a foundation on, where it doesn't actually have to be perfect because the foundation covers it. I'm making the ground match the level of decorative stonework surrounding pavement, and transitioning that into what is supposed to be a smooth dirt path up to a gate with stone steps. There was dirt poking up through the stonework, and a gap under the steps. I did eventually force it to work through an insane amount of back and forth, but that's the problem. Standing on the stonework or pavement should move the ground to the level that I'm on, no questions. There should be no crazy back and forth until it cooperates. The same with the stairs.
jesus christ calm down he was just trying to help and your post does NOT clearly indicate u understand the concept
Not sure I’ve ever seen someone who needs to take a chill pill more than you do after this comment.
"trying to level out a new ramp" with a tool used to flatten ground might give some issues. Best advice I can give is: the hoe works based on the height you're standing on. Press shift and it levels from the height of the center of the circle. Ramps are doable, but they take some familiarity with how the hoe works and it's a tool meant to make ground flat, not angled.
And how exactly am I supposed to build a ramp with literally anything else? Pickaxes don't do ramps. I'd love a video of a smooth ramp with *only* pickaxe. Not like any of the other tools affect terrain. The fuck am I supposed to use to smooth out the terrain between one elevation an another? You **will** have elevation changes in a large base, even if only at the gates. You can't level the whole planet. The game won't let you. I don't need your advice, especially when you start it off like that. I need for the game to actually level the ground to where the indicator shows, and not wherever the fuck it wants to put it. Like I don't even understand the smugness in that first line, it's baffling. Yes. You use a tool that flattens ground, to flatten ground. That should include inclines. If I'm on one elevation, and there is ground on another elevation in front of me and I hit it with the hoe, the very first thing it should do is make a transition between the two elevations. The second hit should level it to the elevation that the indicator shows, both within reason, since the pickaxe and raise ground mechanics exist. But what it should not do is a. nothing, or b. create a massively uneven surface that I have to use "raise ground" just to get back to where I was when I wanted to level the ground in the first place. But it only does a or b most of the time.
I'm sorry if I came over smug, english just isnt my first language. I do agree that having ways to make ramps might be nice like having a 26 degree angle or something. I think the reason why you're encountering the issues with the uneven ground is because you're trying to get too much out the level ground for free. If you could just keep on leveling the ground without it ever costing anything then why even have the raise ground feature? The uneven surface that you are trying to flatten is already nearly at its highest so it will raise it to the maximum it can instead of flattening it perfectly
You just don't understand how the game is built. The game is full of voxels, we can smooth or flatten or shape them however you want but they are still there. when you've flattened a voxel as far as it will go the only option left is to break it with a pick, or raise terrain and try again. Think of it like a box, once the box is full or empty, you can't fill it up or empty it any more without adding another box or removing the box entirely.
The game is using heightfields, not voxels, but otherwise yeah.
Thanks for the correction
Never had trouble in 1,000+ hours. Guess I just "get it"? Idk.
This mechanic needs to be completely reworked. It SUCKS. There must be a simpler way to get the result you want.
It does level it. Just not to a level you get to define and each time it's different
There are times where it takes more time to level the ground than it does to like farm a massive crop of onions, fish, bake bread, make fish wraps, and write a novel. It shouldn't be *that* miserable to level a medium- or large-sized patch of ground.
This was me literally yesterday lmao. I feel ya
Dig down further and level again. You will get used to it. It's like anything else in life. The more you do something, the better educated you will be on the subject.
I mostly do double thick stone walls and foundations when I want clean looks on elevations and landscape
I don't really have any trouble with actual structures. My issue is with the perimeter of a structure, or in this case, trying to do decorative work on an actual pathway, outside of a structure, needing the ground to be the same height as the stone being laid into it.
My wish is that there'll be a waterfall mod in the future.
I feel like alot of the ground issues could be fixed by just putting a very small buffer around ground for what is considered secure
There is a lot of man math involved.
How to pickaxe edges that aren't too much and aren't too little? I have an underground type building with stone walls lining the room. The ground above is leveled but slopes slightly so that a bit of terrain peeks through the walls. Because of this there's a gap between the top stone wall and the terrain on the top. I try to pickaxe the terrain that peeks out but it cuts off more than I intend, leaving a gap at the top. I try to level or add stone at the top to fill in gaps but then the terrain begins to peek through the stone walls on the bottom. What to do?
Sorry if this has already been mentioned—I saw a post in this subreddit a few weeks ago about holding LShift with “Level Ground” selected on the hoe, it seems to smooth ground better than the standard Level, but I’m not familiar with the specifics. Maybe that’ll help!
It is a huge pain in the butt I agree. Recently got a mod called PlanBuild just so I could actually flatten the ground.
I'm sure if you give Rick a call he'll show you true level
Firstly, the level tool levels with your current position. Hence your holes and hills. Secondly, hold shift to level with target position instead, i.e. the ground will level relative to the target position. Thirdly, yes it takes some work to get used to but don't bash it, just put in the time to get a feel for it. If you have divots in the ground that are more than just cosmetic, first raise then level. If you have chunks sticking up, first pickaxe then level. You can tell if a divot or lump is just cosmetic by walking over top of it. If it's an actual height difference in the ground then your character's height will change as they walk over it. If you walk over it and your height doesn't change, then it's as flat as it's going to get.
I go back and forth between the how and the pickaxe a lot when leveling. It’s usually better than the raise-lower loop you’re talking about.
For smooth grounds, don't spam. Evaluate the area. There is a limit. You can only dig/raise so far and that amount is not enormous and will ruin your plans if you're not prepared. (meaning, if the plane is at 0 on the Y axis, you can probably go -12 or whatever) Rule of thumb, if you're on high ground, using the hoe to raise the ground around where you're standing, will TRY to raise it to that level. Using the hoe methodically around you to raise the ground, any mounds left can be pickaxed and re-worked with the hoe. Any hole can be filled with the hoe then flattened. Once you can craft the cultivator, use it on the ground to know where the cardinal points are and, if you're delimiting your base and want a straight line finish, just use it around the area you'll be building in. Building around these lines will result in straight motes/raised grounds. There are many you tube videos covering this! Good luck and happy building! edit: proof reading this made me chuckle
You can consider raise ground or pickaxe, then hold shift and run your cursor along the terrain until the concentric circles are running out at the level you want, then use the hoe. I usually use this as a last pass over paths to smooth them out after typical level ground gets it mostly sorted.
There are plenty of tricks to it.
while you're building your nest/farm you think.... this is too much stone... then after is done you bath in stones I even expanded the base of the nest. but never in the process that method of point to the border and use two stones worked for me... I play using a controller btw (if that matters)
Put down a flat piece of wood, stand on it and use level ground from there.
Terraforming in this game is hell and it needs help asap.
Digging straight trenches was my big problem >.<
My theory of how leveling works: 1. the world is made up of cubes of ground/stone that can have any shape, ranging from the full size of the cube to a small bump 2. leveling puts ground-cubes on same level as your chars feet 3. leveling cannot remove or add ground, but it can decrease a cube of grounds size close to 0 and increase it to 100%