Valheim and the Mistlands – Uphill Both Ways in the Snow

I mentioned previously that we established our first foothold in the mistlands in Valheim.  However, since then we have not made a lot of progress.  In part, that is because Conan Exiles showed up and has become the shiny new thing to explore.  Well worth the 12 bucks and the server hosting on that front.

But the other reason is… well, not to get all whiny, but the mistlands are kind of a tough place to play.

I see mist, but where is the land?

Or, rather, it feels very much like a change in the approach to the game after the first five biomes.  But, since it is the first new biome since early access began, it no doubt reflects the dev’s response to how people played the game so far.

What I am on about here?  Well, we can start with the mist, which is the most obvious aspect of the biome.

A thick mist at high noon

Unlike, say, the fog that can enshroud the plains now and then, or the whiteout snow in the mountains, the mist in the mistlands is there all the time and it limits your ability to see to a pretty small sphere of terrain around you.  Even with the wisplight, that sphere feels tiny to the point of claustrophobic at times, even in the brightest of daylight.  At night you ability to see is even more diminished.

Meanwhile, the mobs can apparently see right through the mist, given how they loom out of it and straight at you at times.

So the mist makes life tough.  But Iron Gate didn’t stop there.  Then there is the terrain.

The mistlands is made up mostly of a lot of vertical terrain.  The occasional flat grassy patch is an exception, a momentary relief from the near ubiquitous terrain of back lava rock jutting up from the ground like a jumping puzzle from hell.

I can see a ways from up here, but not the path to get there

The terrain means either you spend you time and stamina scrambling up and down… including falling down from and injuring yourself… most of the terrain or finding yourself channelized by the easier paths that never seem to lead where you want to go.

More cliffs, more mist

Of course, this in part is back to the whole mist thing, which makes navigation by landmark a virtual impossibility.  You cannot travel towards something if you cannot see it.  So the mist and the terrain combine to make exploration, an essential part of the game for me, difficult even without danger looming… and danger does loom.

The seekers, the primary hostile mob out in the mistlands, are not the worst.  I can take a nomral one in a 1-on-1 fight most of the time.

A seeker at an usually open moment in the mist

But a 1 star seeker, or a seeker soldier, those I have to run from or die currently.  And two seekers, not a fun date unless I can get enough gap between them that I can take them down one at a time.  Oh, and they can all fly, so the difficult terrain is only difficult for you to deal with, they can just flit right over it to get to you.

A seeker soldier has found me

Compared to the persistence of seekers, the gjall, the floating death blimps of the mistlands are barely a worry.

There it is, in the mist!

To start with they are kind of rare, but also if you take a fire resist potion… which I now keep on me at all times… and can get to a semi-open area, it is just dance around an hit them with your bow until they fall.  And then the ticks show up, but they are more of a nuisance than a real threat.

So soldiers and one star seekers are the biggest threat.  My tactic has been to kite them into the black forest next door where I can pull some range and still see them, then use arrows to knock them down a bit… with the occasional greydwarf or troll coming to assist… until they are damaged enough that I feel I can go in for the kill and survive.

Our first mistlands biome is also next to some plains on the far side, so maybe I should explore that side just to have some harder hitting support to run back to.

The game does throw in some allies in the form of the Dvergr, the dwarves who live in the mistlands.  They wander around and has some structures about and are generally at war with the other mobs in the biome.

A Dvergr Mage at one of their towers

You just have to be careful you don’t hit them in a fight because they’ll turn on you and then your problems increase.  I’ve used them a few times, kiting a soldier over to let them tackle it, stepping in only at the end of the fight to help or collect the drops.

But you cannot depend on them, and their nice little strong points have wards in them that prevent you from building anything, like a portal, that would make your life a bit easier.  They are also full of advice.

Wait, who said that?

So what to do?

The usual method to deal with this sort of thing in the past in Valheim has been to go after gear upgrades… since the ship has probably sailed already on idea of us getting any better at this or any game… as a way to enhance our ability to survive.  But the devs have also decided that resources were too easy to harvest or grow in past biomes, and I am not just talking about hiding them in the mist… though the mist doesn’t make any of this easier.

For food upgrades you have to find them up and down the terrain.  The hares that are one of the staples of food upgrades are more wary than deer, smaller than boars, and barely visible in the mist until you get close enough to spook them.  So that is a bit of a pain to collect in quantity.  There can be half a dozen hares in sight, but getting one takes a deft touch and a bit of luck.

Then there is meat from the seekers.  Let me just say I am not actively looking for seekers just yet.

And then there are chickens.  When you defeat Yagluth that unlocks the ability to buy eggs from Haldir the merchant.  You think eggs are expensive in the real world?   Hoo boy, these eggs are very pricey.  But from them you can raise chicken, which can at least be done back at your base once you build a suitable chick coop.

Why are they always in this corner of the coop?

You have to keep the eggs covered and a fire nearby so they’ll hatch… though a fire in the coop is an issue as the chickens will walk into it, catch fire, and die… and once they develop into hens you can feed them and then they produce more eggs and more chickens and so on until you can collect meat and eggs.

But food isn’t really the upgrade I want and need.  It is gear.  To get mistlands gear you have to build a black forge.  And to build a black forge you need five black cores.  And black cores come from infested mines, which are somewhere out in the mistlands below black marble structures, but we have yet to find one, much less delve into one.

First though, we have to work out how to move more confidently through the mistlands.

Part of the explanation as to why we’re suddenly enthusiastic about Conan Exiles is that mistlands has brought us up short for the moment.  There is just enough of a barrier there to make us want to take a bit of a break.