Facing Yagluth at last in Valheim

The one thing we ended up not doing as part of our first pass through Valheim was fight the final boss of the plains, Yagluth.  I had set us up for it… and I even did a test run with another group on their server… but we ended up never getting to Yagluth on our server.

A year later, and making another run at Valheim, we had once again reached the point where Yagluth was an option, and this time we were going to do it.  Enough resources had been harvested in order to get everybody into the padded armor that represents the plains tier, weapons had been upgraded, and we had found Yagluth’s altar.

That latter was a bit of an accident.  As with Moder, we never ran into a rune stone that would display the location of Yagluth.  Brynjar stumbled across the altar during an exploration run.  He and Lugnut had created a small base nearby and cleared the fuling camps that were close to hand, so we were about set.

Then there were the fuling totems.  You need five of them to summon Yagluth, but we had only found three so far.  We did a preliminary run at a big fuling camp, but which I mean I tried to solo it, got in over my head, died, then everybody had to come rescue me and everybody died a couple of times before we finally got things under control.  But we got the totems we needed.

So we grabbed some food and a couple of fire resistance meads each… they last 10 minutes, so we figured we might need two each… and headed out to the plains.  Our portal was kind of a run from the altar, so we moved it up to a big rock that was just within sight of the altar, then went to the altar.

Morning at Yagluth’s altar

It is on a raised rock in the middle of five stone pillars that stick up like fingers of a hand coming up to try and grab the altar and pull it into the earth.

We were geared up, had our fire resist meads, along with some stamina an health meads… the meads don’t share timers, so you can run them all at once… along with a stack of 100 frost arrows, said to be the best ranged weapon to use, along with the totem.  We felt like we were ready, so I started setting out the totems.

Getting out the totems for Yagluth

You can see some platforms that Lugnut built in the two screen shots above.  Platforms have had mixed results for us in boss fights.  They seemed very useful for Bonemass, but less so for other fights.  You can also see Lugnut on the platform, glowing Dragur Fang bow out and ready to go.

I put the last totem in its slot and activated the altar, summoning Yagluth.

Yagluth Arises

We got our bows into action and started plinking away at him.

For the most part his attacks… he swats at those close by and has a fire breath beam weapon that you can move out of fairly easily… were not too bad.  And then we got to his fire meteors, which rain down out of the sky like an artillery strike, landing on somebody who Yagluth is not facing.  The first to take a hit was Lugnut, whose platform was wiped off the rock spire with the attack.

As an attack it was survivable, if you were not low on health, moved out of it right away, and had the fire resist buff on you.  If you failed on any of those three, however, it could prove quickly deadly, which it did.

We started having problems with adds, as fulins, lox, and the occasional growth from a distant tar pit started showing up, dividing out attention, beating down our health, and making us susceptible to Yagluth’s meteor strikes.  We started dying.

Running back to the fight, the five finger stones around the altar visible

We started dying enough that we eventually pulled Yagluth back to our portal, which promptly got hit by his meteor strike and broken.  Now that would have been a disaster, because we were set to spawn back at the plains base and the only way to get back if it was down was a boat trip.

Fortunately we were taking turns dying, so somebody was always around to rebuild the portal, if they had inventory space.

Rebuilding the portal behind the rock this time

Meanwhile day turned into night and the plains became an active place for roving fuling gangs, which again occupied our attention as we fought to stay alive and chip away at Yagluth when we had the chance, all while avoiding his meteor attack.

The fulings were a double menace.  Groups of three or four could be quite deadly.  But even when you killed them, they dropped the black metal scraps which I was auto picking up, and having one on you means you cannot use a portal.  I died at least twice unable to jump through the portal because I kept picking up black metal scraps, which were strewn about the field at that point.

And then it became clear that we didn’t have enough fire resist potions to go around.  After a few rounds of death there were none left in the supply chest, so we started to brew some more, but were otherwise going to have to do without.

And doing without meant dying even more often as that fire resistance was pretty much the only margin between living and dying when hit by the meteors.

After an hour of this, with Yagluth having about one third of his health left, I had to go and get dinner ready, so logged off with a promise to return.  About 30 minutes later I was back on and Yagluth was still alive.  He was down to about 10% health, but more deaths had occurred.

We had also apparently burned through all of our frost arrows.  We had 500 in the supply box when we started, and each of us took a stack of 100.  But Ula had to go back and make 300 more to sustain the battle.

Still, even at low health Yagluth was still deadly and I managed to get hit by a meteor strike and die pretty quickly upon my return.

Running back towards the now broken fingers

Lugnut had a pattern he was working with Yagluth that was whittling him down, but eventually got caught by the meteors as well.  I was picking up to carry on for Lugnut when Brynjar got in there with the Frostner mace, the cold damage from which seemed to hit pretty hard on Yagluth, and finished him off.  He was down at last.

Defeated at last

That all took close to two hours to wrap up, with too many deaths to count.  We used up almost all of the 800 frost arrows we had made, drank up most of our potions, and put a severe dent in the food supplies we had back at base.  It was an effort, made more difficult by some of our own missteps, but we made it.

Yagluth’s giant head was ours now

The area around the altar was pretty ripped up from the fight.  The world does change in Valheim when you break stuff.

Then it was back to base and then to the stones at the spawn point to hang up the trophy on its spot.

The trophy mounted, the buff unlocked

After which we had kind of hit the end of our journey.  Back at our main base we sat down and thought about how far we had come in the last couple of months that marked our return to the game.

Ula lost her pants somewhere in the fight… they were in the potion chest

There are still many small things to be done.  Base building is an endless pursuit, and compared to our last run, we have barely explored as much of the world.  But, while the devs are still teasing us about the eventual Mistlands update, it isn’t there yet and we don’t want to invalidate another world by ranging too far and wide.

So we drank a toast to our efforts.

Raise a tankard to Odin

And we were then reminded that using a tankard consumes a mead from your inventory.  Oh well.  Now to consider where to go next while we wait for the giant ticks of the Mistlands to be made ready for us.

Showdown with Yagluth

On our server we’re still pottering about in the plains, gathering resources, building bases, and exploring.  There is no hurry to get to what is currently the final boss, Yagluth.  In fact, we need to go back and slay Moder again just to get a head to hang on the wall in the main base.

But over on the Cat Context server, they were ready to go.  You may remember them from Fantasy Movie League or, more recently, my preview run at The Elder, where I went over to their server to give the fight a try before we did it on our server.  (That fight went well, on our server most everything went wrong.)

I asked if I could tag along again for their attempt and they graciously invited me to join in.

On our server I used some of the resources we were stockpiling and finished upgrading Sigwerd’s gear, save for his weapon.  I decided to stick with Frostner for now, rather than going for the Porcupine.  I grabbed a few fire resist potions, as I heard that was a requirement, loaded up on some arrows, and then logged off and on to their server.

Once there I found my way through their portal network… every world ends up simulating a regional airport plan with portals eventually I guess… and ended up with the group out on the plains biome at a portal build close to Yagluth’s altar.

The group together

It looked like we were ready to get straight to it, until it was mentioned that they hadn’t actually collected the totems yet.  You need five totems to summon Yagluth.  The totems come from fuling camps, so we set out to go find some camps.

This, of course, went comically bad.  We somehow were never able to pull less than four fulings at once and often got more.  And, as night fell, we ended up running into wandering packs of fulings as in addition to the groups from the camps.  Everybody died at least once, and a couple more than once.

Down in a pack of fulings

Maybe Corr didn’t die.  He seemed to be around to cover people as they ran back.

There he is, back where I died

Anyway, after much comedy on the plain the totems were eventually secured and we ran all the way back to where we started, to Yagluth’s altar, to get set up for the fight.

Back and ready to go

As with past boss fights, you set up items, click on the altar, and the boss shows up.  There is also the standard rune stone there with some cryptic clue about what you’re supposed to do.  This one is perhaps a bit less helpful than others have been.

What does that even mean?  Is he a fuling then?

We ate some food and took our fire resist potions, then Corr did the needful and we were greeted with the big intro message.

Ah, there we go

He rose up out of the ground and came for us.

Funny, you don’t look like a fuling…

It is hard to see in any of the screen shots, but he is a giant skeletal torso.  His legs have gone missing, which just makes him moving about that much more creepy.

Also, he has his own heavy metal sound track.  Generally I keep the music turned down, listening, especially in the plains, being such an important survival trait, but Aure said we had to turn that up once the fight began.  He has a Swedish metal sound track that seems wholly appropriate to his character and the fight.  So I turned that up and we carried on.

The fight was fairly straight forward.  He throws around some fire, so you can end up with a burning DOT on you, but the fire protection potion mitigates that to such an extent that you might not even notice.  Fire hasn’t been a strong damage type in Valheim so far.   I’ve set myself alight on so many campfires that my resistance to fire is probably maxed out.  Certainly surtlings in the swamps never did me much harm with their fire attacks.

Of course, I didn’t stand in the fire to find out exactly how harmful they might be.  He slams his fists down for a big AOE hit with an after effect and breaths fire now and again.  We seemed able to avoid most of that and nobody died during the fight.

The plan was to sit at range and hit him with frost arrows, but that was taking time.  Eventually we just moved up into melee range, got in close behind him, and use whatever weapon special attack we had.

Yagluth at melee range

The Frostner big swing attack was doing a lot more damage for me than the bow was able to manage.  But Yagluth is a skeleton of sorts, and piercing weapons and arrows tend to be less effective on those in the game.

So we got in there and beat on him and dodged his attacks until we finally brought him down.

Victory over Yagluth

After that it was clean up time.

He drops several items called “Yagluth Thing” that currently have no use in the game, but which will no doubt be used to unlock whatever the next level of crafting is in Valheim.  And, of course, you get the trophy, which is a giant skull with a crown, which you go hang up on the last stone back at the spawn point.

Hanging the trophy

That unlocks a new buff which gives you a boost against fire, frost, and lightning.  But there isn’t much else.  According to the wiki, fuling base attack events cease with Yagluth’s defeat, though I have heard that fulings also become more common in the world as well, like skeletons, and will show up at night in other biomes.

And that is about it.  Sure, Yagluth’s skull makes a great conversation piece in any trophy room or display, so going back to slay him again to have one to hang up in your base is a likely scenario.  But Odin doesn’t show up or free you from Valheim, as Hugin mentioned back when he dropped you into the world.  The All Father hasn’t finished enumerating the tasks required of you yet, so you get to hang out and wait until he… or the small team in Sweden… gets around to it.

We have Yagluth’s location scouted out… we found that rune stone on our first real run into the plains… and I have explored the map around it and even set up a portal a short distance from the altar.

Yagluth’s Island

When we’re feeling ready, we can go get him.  But we’re not in any hurry.  While I am sure we want his head for a trophy, his buff isn’t all that alluring at the moment and his death does not yet unlock anything new.  We’ll get to him some time though.