Some Fortuitous Silver in Valheim

We have been in the scrap iron accumulation phase of Valheim for a bit now.  One of the challenges so far has been simply hunting down enough crypts in the swamps to feed our demand so we can upgrade our gear.

In a reminder of the capricious nature of the random map generator, Lugnut found a stretch of swamp with an island on the coast, built an somewhat elaborate base in order to make a safe foothold for a portal and a dock, then as we joined him to go into the swamp to explore, found it to be a rather narrow strip of swamp with no crypts to be found.

We found a similar narrow wedge of swamp near our Grey Pit base, wide enough to spawn all the usual suspects, but not big enough to get a crypt.

Still, we kept going, finding a crypt here and there, hauling back the scrap iron to be refined and used to make upgrades.  I always go for weapons first, so it was an iron mace and the huntsman’s bow for me, then a pick.

There was also the longship to be built, the better to haul whatever large cache of scrap iron we might eventually find.

Setting sail on the longship

Of course, once you have a longship you need a suitable dock in which to park it, which Brynjar built out for us.

Docking at sunrise

We did eventually start to bring in some scrap iron, giving the mighty longship a cargo worth carrying… at least in volume.  The Karve, though nimble, cannot carry much, while the longship has a cargo hold to fill.

Scrap iron to haul back to base

A couple of loads like that and we had iron for further upgrades.  There was enough there for me to bid farewell to my sneaky trollhide armor set… though I stored it away in case I felt the need for some stealth later… and made myself the iron armor set with two upgrades, which felt like enough to of an upgrade to be worth the loss of both stealth and movement speed.  Being in the iron set does slow you down.

The iron doesn’t make you invulnerable.  I’m not going toe to toe with abominations in the swamp quite yet.

It is easier to just kite them over surtling flames in any case

Meanwhile, somewhere long the way, Brynjar started brewing some frost protection meads in the cauldron with an eye towards our eventual need to move into the mountains.  We still haven’t take on Bonemass, so things to do, but getting a head start didn’t seem like a bad idea.

Of course, having the meads meant the temptation to go up into the mountains, which Brynjar did, only to get mauled by wolves.  But he did come back with some treasures.  That got me thinking about poking around in the mountains, just to see where the bet opportunities might be.  In addition to silver being mined, there are the new frost caves to be explored.

So I started poking around myself.  I was quickly reminded how much stamina matters in the mountains.  The running up hills takes it out of you.

Mountain terrain is often a steep slope

But, in a bit of incredible luck, the first thing I saw after my first ascent into a mountain biome was an exposed silver vein.  I immediately got out my pick and knock off ten pieces of silver, then ran on back down the mountain and sailed them back to our main base to be refined.

Silver was just laying there waiting for me

Exposed silver isn’t unheard of in the mountains.  I’ve seen it before.  But it is rare.  Usually you need the little detector that you get when you defeat Bonemass in order to find it, the veins are generally under ground.

Now, ten chunks, refined down to ten silver bars, isn’t much.  But I wanted to get the silver bars to get the recipes for the next tiers of gear.  And I got them, all save the one item I really wanted, the wolf fur cape.  I thought we had everything for it.  Brynjar had come back with wold pelts and fangs and all sorts of things from the mountains.

But, on looking it up, the wolf fur cape requires a wolf trophy, the head of a wolf, in order to craft it.  No wolf head, no recipe, no cloak.  Getting the cape gives you frost resist, negating the need for the meads, which only last for 10 minutes, so I was kind of keep to get the cloak made.  Otherwise it only requires 4 silver and some wolf hides.

So it was back to the mountains in order to hunt wolves.  At least I got to explore some more of the mountain area we’ll likely be exploring for silver.

The mountain biome north of the Grey Pit

Wolves, however, only drop a trophy 10% of the time, so I ended up chasing down their howls for quite a while.  I also learned that if you log out, then log back in, you lose whatever mead you had going plus your rested status.  I drank another mead, but not having the rested status meant that my stamina regen was very slow.

After a few trips I finally managed to get the trophy drop, so I ran back to our base and made the wolf cloak.

Iron gear with a wolf fur cloak

It is actually less armor than my fully upgraded troll hide cloak, but it has that frost resist going for it.  I know the wolf armor chest piece has that as well, but that takes 20 silver bars, and we’re not quite there yet.

Also in my wanderings, I found some onion seeds.

Onions planted to make more seeds

Those are used in the next level of cooking.  Something else to work with.  Onions soup is very high stamina.

Now to find a few more wolf trophies and mine a bit more silver so we all have the frost resist.