One of the truisms of life is that failure often teaches better that success, and getting stomped or being savaged by a boss mob on your first run will make a lesson stick. And if a boss fight is a milk run, then the details are… less likely to stick with you perhaps?
Anyway, this past weekend three of us got together in Valheim while Lugnut was off trying to chop down a real life tree and hoping not to have it fall on him or get caught in the kick back as it fell, a hazard in both the game and real life.
While Brynjar and I had been running around in the mountains, finding some more opportunistic silver and looking into the possibility of wolf pets, we felt we might be getting a bit ahead of ourselves. There was, after all, a boss to be taken care of in the swamps before we could or should head off to the mountains.
So we decided to go out and prepare for the battle with Bonemass. We had found his location and Brynjar had even put a portal in place close by in a little walled off compound, so travel out there was easy.
As for prep, we recalled having to smooth out the ground where the fight was going to take place. Nobody wants to get caught up on something or end up swimming while a boss is after you. And then there were platforms to be built. The fight, we remembered, went easily enough with us up on platforms shooting Bonemass with bow… unlike that run in with The Elder. So we got to work.
Working on a platform over the Bonemass summoning skull
Of course, Valheim won’t leave you in peace and we had a couple of run ins with the locals. On the bright side, as I noted before, you can do in an abomination fairly quickly by kiting it over a Surtling flame. The problem is that you need to keep kind of close to the abomination to get him there as he is a bit short sighted… and there are the other mobs hanging out that can lead to issues.
The abomination burns, but Ula is down…
That aside, we got ourselves setup, the ground nice and level, and a couple of nice platforms in place.
I might have gone a bit far putting up a roof on a couple of them, but I had the wood and it is always raining out there in the swamp.
Platforms in the trees… also, I really like how the swamp looks in that shot
Brynjar had read that you could also put up a platform on top of the summoning skull, and set about putting that together as well.
The skull platform complete
Of course, once we had gotten things to about where we thought they should be, there wasn’t anything else to do but test the whole thing out by summoning Bonemass. We would re-run the event later with Lugnut. This was just going to be a soft opening or some such.
We ran back to base and filled up on fire arrows, all the better to burn Bonemass, along with some poison resist meads, got ourselves that sweet, sweet rested buff, then went back to summon the big guy.
Brynjar had the 10 withered bones needed to summon Bonemass, so Ula and I took up positions on the platforms and the summoning commenced. Brynjar immediately scurried up to the top of the skull platform. That was going to be his spot for the fight.
Bonemass and the skull platform
Brynjar was at a safe height, but Bonemass seemed quite fixated on him on his platform. Also, Bonemass brought along some skeletons with him, who got up on top of the skull and commenced to chop away at it.
But we were loosing arrows at a fierce rate, so we hoped to bring Bonemass down before structural issues cropped up.
It turns out that fire arrows aren’t the ticket for Bonemass. I had misremembered his weakness, or carried it forward from The Elder. It wasn’t fire arrows we needed, it was frost arrows to do him in. So while we were barely chipping away at him, I said there were some frost arrows in the storage shed and Ula ran off to grab them.
However, there were only 11. But she brought them through to try them and they did indeed do considerably more damage. However, 11 arrows did not last long and I ran down, went through the portal, and went back to our main base to make some more.
We happened to have enough ingredients for two stacks of 100 arrows each. I ran back with those in my bag to share them out.
Sharing them out was made easier by the fact that Brynjar was running around on the ground now, Bonemass and his allies having broken down his platform just as I was getting ready to run off and make those arrows.
Skull platform down!
He survived the fall and scrambled away, leaving a couple of skeletons stuck up there.
Anyway, back with the frost arrows, I doled them out and we commenced finally doing some real damage.
Brynjar got up on one of the other platforms as Bonemass seemed to have it in for him. I ended up coming down off of my own platform to position myself for back shots into Bonemass from the ground. As long as you stay far enough away from his AOE gas cloud, things are okay.
Down on the ground… also, skeletons on top of the skull
Ula had her bow wear out and had to run back for repairs, but otherwise we were on the right track and were able to take Bonemass down.
Don’t get in the death splash of poison
Then there were the wishbones to pick up, the treasure finding charms that are the reward for the fight. There were three, so we each got one but will need to do the fight again for Lugnut.
Huginn showed up to tell us about the wishbones and how they can be used to find hidden treasures. We did a quick post fight pose, lit by the eerie light of the skull.
We won the battle
Then it was back to base and off to the stones at the starting point to hang up our third trophy for Odin.
Eikthyr, The Elder, and Bonemass trophies on display
After that, we did some repairs, made a few upgrades, and set out for the mountains where the wishbones found us a fresh silver node right away.
Silver exposed
We got a little aggressive digging it out… we dug about 15 feet below it before discovering it was above us and off to the right a bit… but it was our first find with the wishbones. We are now on the path for more silver… and more iron, because we still need some of that and will need more when we get to the plains.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 