We are not supposed to be in a hurry to get through Valheim this time around. But then again, it is a game where progress is a thing and we do love our progress. Defeating Moder, the boss of the mountain biome, would unlock new crafting technology for us and give us the Moder buff, which allows you to change the direction of the wind. This latter can be important because the game seems to know where you want to go and steers the wind straight into your face.
We have spend a lot of time rowing, waiting for the wind to change so we could unfurl our sails.
As I mentioned last time around, the altar for Moder happened to be right next to our mountain base.
Moder’s altar from the top of our base
There were only the three of us… we’ll have to do another run for Lugnut… but Brynjar, Ula, and myself got ourselves together, upgraded our gear… we had been hauling a lot of silver off of that mountain as noted… and set ourselves up for the fight.
Everybody around the battleground… the roof of our base more visible
We had collected the important bit, the three dragon eggs from the mountain biome. There happened to be three nests within a short walk of the base. Again, a seemingly ideal location.
The dragon eggs in position
Once you have the eggs slotted into their spots, you just have to activate the altar and the battle begins. We weren’t exactly ready, but ready enough, so nobody objected when I kicked off the event.
The sky turned crimson and Moder arose and started chasing us all around. I was a little too close and had to duck under cover after taking a couple of direct hits from Moder’s crystal breath attack.
Hiding from Moder and regaining hp and stamina
One of the guides suggested that if Moder comes into some enclosed space and gets stuck, it is a good idea to then engage in melee combat with him. Our general plan had been to lay back and hit him with obsidian arrows, which do the most damage, but when Moder decided to jump down in the hole after me, Brynjar gave the melee option a try.
up close and personal with Moder
That went okay, but we had already lost our Bonemass buff, which reduces incoming damage, so while we smacked Moder about, she returned the favor. Also, as you can see, stamina management matters, with my stamina bar showing just 1 then. I had time to take a screen shot because I couldn’t hit anything, jump around, or run.
Brynjar ended up dying in the hole, while I managed to get off a health mead and get back enough stamina to flee the scene.
Ula and I returned to the plan of staying back and hitting Moder with arrows. Moder obliged us in this by getting stuck in the terrain a couple of times so we could safely plink away at her.
Moder stuck at range
When Moder lands, she can’t always make much headway over broken terrain, and we had broken up things in the area pretty well digging for silver. But she still gets up and flies around, at which point it is best to stay mobile.
Brynjar got back, grabbed his gear, and carried on with the fight, only to get smacked hard by Moder once again. He died and had to make a second run back to the fight. Meanwhile Ula and I were getting Moder close to the end.
Moder almost done… Ula was down to fire arrows by that point I guess… burn Moder burn…
A few more arrows and Moder was down.
Moder defeated, her tears were now ours
It is Moder’s tears that enables us to build the Artisan’s Table which unlocks the crafting stations and resource processing that come into play in the plains.
Meanwhile, the fight took a toll on our base. Here is a shot looking over the front area not far from where the first screen shot in this post was taken.
Some chunks taken out of the landscape
I couldn’t take that screen shot from the exact same location because it was gone by the time the fight was done. The fight didn’t break into the base proper, but our foyer now has an open view to the sky.
The snow now falls on our stoop
But we were able to repair the damage to the structure… as well as gathering up some more stone.
Then it was back to our portal hub and off to the trophy stones to hang Moder’s head in its spot.
The trophy on display
That got us the wind changing buff and opened up our next goal, a base in the plains.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 