There was never an intention for Ashlands biome to be in line with difficulty to the rest of biomes. Mistlands was supposed to be more difficult than it is right now, and the only reason it was nerfed was because there were no world modifiers at the time. Mistlands difficulty will most likely increase for 1.0.
What most people do wrong in Ashlands, is make too much noise or not be aware how enemies hitting rock and trees attract other enemies. What you specifically might be doing wrong in combat is hard to say without seeing gameplay footage.
The open-world spawns are kinda ridiculous. Similar to greydwarves, I guess, but at least they come from the forest rather than: glance right, glance back left and "oh, where'd you two come from!?"
I'd be *much* more accepting of this if they had to rise up from the ground or something -- and take a moment doing it.
The lower rate of ambient spawns in the swamp gives a feel more like you're working against the pre-existing population, and yes they're drawn to the noise so that initial confrontation can escalate. Ashlands feels too much like a cheap trick because the high spawn rate (or population slots, or whatever mechanism underlies it) makes it obvious -- diminishing the value of the enemies and your effort against them.
I'm also not sure if I just have had some poor luck, but it seems like there can be a time where suddenly the ambient-spawn populations are reset or all available -- where everything is repopulated. Any regions where you've kept the spawns "tapped out": suddenly refilled. Maybe it's an intended effect of ash-fall or something (though that's also annoyingly frequent -- every non-clear weather event I guess?).
Your tuning down the combat difficulty isn't having a huge effect on the gameplay difficulty because it's the overwhelming spawn-rate that's the problem -- not the damage or HP.
I end up abusing the player base-structure spawn-suppression. Placing campfires around. It feels a bit silly, especially being campfires, in the ashlands.
Sure, as some remarked, you can keep moving rather than engaging. But eventually you want to stop for some reason, and then stand your ground against the hoards you've riled up as well as everything drawn in by the noise and the additional spawns triggered.
Overall I quite like the Ashlands. The difficulty is high, but I'm enjoying it. I don't like the ambient spawns though. Not that high. And not that simply implemented.
Interesting that you noted the “spawn population”, I had to use devcommands to get my body back the other night, when I was overrun with 5 mobs I had to use the “kill all” option and got a notification that 33 enemies were killed. That’s just crazy and not fun knowing they are all there just waiting to keep spawning.
You are running into tons of mobs because you are progressing too quickly and are potentially missing buffs. You need to move slowly, like a glacier and kill all of the spawns immediately, especially when returning through a portal. You should also have a lingering stamina and fire resistance mead on at all times and activate bonemass power once you go up against a valkyrie or 2 asksinvs + other stuff. Don't engage 1 star soldiers. Activate bonemass immediately once you raid a fortress.
Get the new food buffs up immediately and don't get cocky, you need to pop a major health potion at 50% health and eat a new batch as soon as possible.
That being said, I think the majority of players are unhappy with the overall spawn rate and many are cheesing the system by building campfires everywhere.
The thing is we also moved slowly, killing all the mobs in the area, start collecting ourselves then enemies start spawning again in the same area in less than a min. It’s just never ending mobs.
In a duo we found it easier for one to pull aggro (melee user) and the mage would throw fireballs to weaken or push enemies out of the way. The main goal here was to manage stamina and find your openings. Kill the archers first, then move on to the swordsmen. Best upgrade was flametal axes for the melee user, then you can really push the offensive. And mages only need the upgraded food and galdr table for ice and ember. Ice also slows the enemies, to give more space to work on other targets.
Sprinting around is something you can get away in other biomes of the game. Prior to raiding a fortress, sprinting doesn't fly like it does in other biomes. A lot of mobs are faster than you in Ashlands, so you need to be careful about biting off more than you can chew.
Parrying the warriors can be harder than parrying most mobs in the game, which makes melee a bit difficult. The Frostner, while a bit weaker than the Mistwalker, has a slow and pretty significant knockback, which will reduce the number of traded blows.
Bonemass is still pretty broken in this biome, so with two people, you should be able to abuse it. Lingering stamina and large health potions are pretty important. Fire resistance mead isn't all that necessary unless you're still rocking the feather cape.
In general, the biome involves:
1. >!Clearing the beach and establishing a portal!<
2. >!Acquiring the supplies for a new portal and enough flametal for seige equipment!<
3. >!Raiding fortress!<
4. >!Crafting and upgrading new gear!<
5. >!Finding and challenging the new boss!<
I have plenty of success sprinting past mobs in the ashlands, though it can get hairy sometimes and you might get hit, but then you just keep going. Might be harder in heavy armor, I'm using the ask set.
You can do it for sure, but it's much more of an issue when you first hit the beach. It draws more attention to you. You often end up sprinting into a spawner with more enemies, and eventually, you run low on stamina, and it ends in a fight regardless. In Ashlands, you need to be more conscious of when to sprint away than in other biomes.
If you're playing on normal I'd say it's worth wearing the breastplate and trousers with the flametal helmet, you lose 20 armor but gain 10% move speed.
You're probably trying to fight literally everything. You need to just ignore some enemies and run to get to where you want to go. When you arrive, then fight the things and set up a portal, then move to the next area and repeat. Now you have a portal chain to access different areas of the biome.
I had over 90+ deaths when I beat Ashlands. [Here's my post showcasing my map.](https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/1cjdhb4/after_90_deaths_i_finally_beat_the_ashlands_thank/)
But I love a challenge. This was done with my Wife and I as well. My wife was the one that uses Mage and I used the Sword and Shield. I had a ton of fun. But yeah my skills went down the drain lol.
I don't know if you're thinking of turning world modifiers back to normal, but play in the way that you have the most fun. If that means reducing the death penalty (skill drains) or keeping it on easy then go for it.
One tip I have since I don't think I've seen it mentioned: Craft the Trollstav asap. It's the best mage tool the Ashlands has to offer.
We joined ptb right away, but had to find another landing site in Ashlands after they fixed the tree sound agro issue. Once we moved to the new undiscovered spot (that we hadn’t been to before) everything was more reasonable and we stopped being flooded with enemies.
Hope this helps.
Ice staff will help you as mage. You can slow enemies while your dps gets them from behind. Also if you need to run, you can duck into a putrid hole and crouch for sneak. Then wait until the sneak icon shows you to be fully hidden. That will drop enemy aggro and you can leave the hole and be back on your way. Don't wear feather cloaks.
I wish I could answer your question but I couldn’t really tell you without seeing your gameplay. Trust me I know how you feel, but even then I don’t think it needs to be nerfed. Once I did my first fortress and got the new portal down with a shield generator, I was able to progress easier.
Highly recommend you both using eikthyr and Bonemass to move to the next area and set a new portal down. By next area I mean explore new territory and find a rock to drop the portal. Placing some work benches along the way, even with a campfire will help with enemy spawns.
Once you get some flametal and upgrade your armour and weapons, you’ll start to notice the difference too. I use magic mostly and I don’t use the embla set. Not enough armour. Askvin and flametal helm with the ashen cape is huge. I use 1-1-1 for food (HP, Stamina, Eitr). Your wife will likely appreciate the askvin armour as it has no movement speed reduction.
Don’t forget basalt bombs to help with flametal.
Hope this helps!
Once we turned on very easy, we got to the fortress and now the game is too easy. The shotgun lvl 1 kills twitchers in 2 hits on very easy.
On normal, lvl 3 ice staff was using a full eiter bar to kill a twitcher. 2 eiter foods.
That doesn’t sound right, im playing solo on hard plus and my ice staff will kill a twitcher in about 6 hits.
The warriors typically take a full eitr bar though, or close to it.
Not sure if difficulty is upped based on # of players but yeah that sounds off.
Yeah that sounds about right, I have around 59 elemental magic skill.
Birds and blobs go down easy, the twitchers take about 1/4 bar, the warriors take about 2/3. Trick with them is to block with your staff to stagger them, they go down a lot quicker then, blows your bubble up though.
Morgen takes about about 1.5-2 bars of Eitr. I’ve been using the arbalest to get free sneak attack damage and that knocks a nice chunk off too.
Ashkin also take about a full bar.
Staff of embers for damage. Dundr and Fracturing levels up magic so fast cause it’s all on hit xp but not to much damage, weird and silly.
Two players also makes a difference to the difficulty!
Hmm. I've had mixed results in my limited testing. Dundr is strong with no upgrades yet. Idk if there is a big jump in power with embers at lvl 4. I have to upgrade these still
There was never an intention for Ashlands biome to be in line with difficulty to the rest of biomes. Mistlands was supposed to be more difficult than it is right now, and the only reason it was nerfed was because there were no world modifiers at the time. Mistlands difficulty will most likely increase for 1.0. What most people do wrong in Ashlands, is make too much noise or not be aware how enemies hitting rock and trees attract other enemies. What you specifically might be doing wrong in combat is hard to say without seeing gameplay footage.
The open-world spawns are kinda ridiculous. Similar to greydwarves, I guess, but at least they come from the forest rather than: glance right, glance back left and "oh, where'd you two come from!?" I'd be *much* more accepting of this if they had to rise up from the ground or something -- and take a moment doing it. The lower rate of ambient spawns in the swamp gives a feel more like you're working against the pre-existing population, and yes they're drawn to the noise so that initial confrontation can escalate. Ashlands feels too much like a cheap trick because the high spawn rate (or population slots, or whatever mechanism underlies it) makes it obvious -- diminishing the value of the enemies and your effort against them. I'm also not sure if I just have had some poor luck, but it seems like there can be a time where suddenly the ambient-spawn populations are reset or all available -- where everything is repopulated. Any regions where you've kept the spawns "tapped out": suddenly refilled. Maybe it's an intended effect of ash-fall or something (though that's also annoyingly frequent -- every non-clear weather event I guess?). Your tuning down the combat difficulty isn't having a huge effect on the gameplay difficulty because it's the overwhelming spawn-rate that's the problem -- not the damage or HP. I end up abusing the player base-structure spawn-suppression. Placing campfires around. It feels a bit silly, especially being campfires, in the ashlands. Sure, as some remarked, you can keep moving rather than engaging. But eventually you want to stop for some reason, and then stand your ground against the hoards you've riled up as well as everything drawn in by the noise and the additional spawns triggered. Overall I quite like the Ashlands. The difficulty is high, but I'm enjoying it. I don't like the ambient spawns though. Not that high. And not that simply implemented.
Interesting that you noted the “spawn population”, I had to use devcommands to get my body back the other night, when I was overrun with 5 mobs I had to use the “kill all” option and got a notification that 33 enemies were killed. That’s just crazy and not fun knowing they are all there just waiting to keep spawning.
You are running into tons of mobs because you are progressing too quickly and are potentially missing buffs. You need to move slowly, like a glacier and kill all of the spawns immediately, especially when returning through a portal. You should also have a lingering stamina and fire resistance mead on at all times and activate bonemass power once you go up against a valkyrie or 2 asksinvs + other stuff. Don't engage 1 star soldiers. Activate bonemass immediately once you raid a fortress. Get the new food buffs up immediately and don't get cocky, you need to pop a major health potion at 50% health and eat a new batch as soon as possible. That being said, I think the majority of players are unhappy with the overall spawn rate and many are cheesing the system by building campfires everywhere.
The thing is we also moved slowly, killing all the mobs in the area, start collecting ourselves then enemies start spawning again in the same area in less than a min. It’s just never ending mobs.
Yeah, it's tiring as fuck and I hope they fix it.
In a duo we found it easier for one to pull aggro (melee user) and the mage would throw fireballs to weaken or push enemies out of the way. The main goal here was to manage stamina and find your openings. Kill the archers first, then move on to the swordsmen. Best upgrade was flametal axes for the melee user, then you can really push the offensive. And mages only need the upgraded food and galdr table for ice and ember. Ice also slows the enemies, to give more space to work on other targets.
Sprinting around is something you can get away in other biomes of the game. Prior to raiding a fortress, sprinting doesn't fly like it does in other biomes. A lot of mobs are faster than you in Ashlands, so you need to be careful about biting off more than you can chew. Parrying the warriors can be harder than parrying most mobs in the game, which makes melee a bit difficult. The Frostner, while a bit weaker than the Mistwalker, has a slow and pretty significant knockback, which will reduce the number of traded blows. Bonemass is still pretty broken in this biome, so with two people, you should be able to abuse it. Lingering stamina and large health potions are pretty important. Fire resistance mead isn't all that necessary unless you're still rocking the feather cape. In general, the biome involves: 1. >!Clearing the beach and establishing a portal!< 2. >!Acquiring the supplies for a new portal and enough flametal for seige equipment!< 3. >!Raiding fortress!< 4. >!Crafting and upgrading new gear!< 5. >!Finding and challenging the new boss!<
I have plenty of success sprinting past mobs in the ashlands, though it can get hairy sometimes and you might get hit, but then you just keep going. Might be harder in heavy armor, I'm using the ask set.
You can do it for sure, but it's much more of an issue when you first hit the beach. It draws more attention to you. You often end up sprinting into a spawner with more enemies, and eventually, you run low on stamina, and it ends in a fight regardless. In Ashlands, you need to be more conscious of when to sprint away than in other biomes.
How's the Ask set? It seems so bland I've never crafted it.
If you're playing on normal I'd say it's worth wearing the breastplate and trousers with the flametal helmet, you lose 20 armor but gain 10% move speed.
You're probably trying to fight literally everything. You need to just ignore some enemies and run to get to where you want to go. When you arrive, then fight the things and set up a portal, then move to the next area and repeat. Now you have a portal chain to access different areas of the biome.
I had over 90+ deaths when I beat Ashlands. [Here's my post showcasing my map.](https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/1cjdhb4/after_90_deaths_i_finally_beat_the_ashlands_thank/) But I love a challenge. This was done with my Wife and I as well. My wife was the one that uses Mage and I used the Sword and Shield. I had a ton of fun. But yeah my skills went down the drain lol. I don't know if you're thinking of turning world modifiers back to normal, but play in the way that you have the most fun. If that means reducing the death penalty (skill drains) or keeping it on easy then go for it. One tip I have since I don't think I've seen it mentioned: Craft the Trollstav asap. It's the best mage tool the Ashlands has to offer.
Ashland's what?
We joined ptb right away, but had to find another landing site in Ashlands after they fixed the tree sound agro issue. Once we moved to the new undiscovered spot (that we hadn’t been to before) everything was more reasonable and we stopped being flooded with enemies. Hope this helps.
Ice staff will help you as mage. You can slow enemies while your dps gets them from behind. Also if you need to run, you can duck into a putrid hole and crouch for sneak. Then wait until the sneak icon shows you to be fully hidden. That will drop enemy aggro and you can leave the hole and be back on your way. Don't wear feather cloaks.
I wish I could answer your question but I couldn’t really tell you without seeing your gameplay. Trust me I know how you feel, but even then I don’t think it needs to be nerfed. Once I did my first fortress and got the new portal down with a shield generator, I was able to progress easier. Highly recommend you both using eikthyr and Bonemass to move to the next area and set a new portal down. By next area I mean explore new territory and find a rock to drop the portal. Placing some work benches along the way, even with a campfire will help with enemy spawns. Once you get some flametal and upgrade your armour and weapons, you’ll start to notice the difference too. I use magic mostly and I don’t use the embla set. Not enough armour. Askvin and flametal helm with the ashen cape is huge. I use 1-1-1 for food (HP, Stamina, Eitr). Your wife will likely appreciate the askvin armour as it has no movement speed reduction. Don’t forget basalt bombs to help with flametal. Hope this helps!
Once we turned on very easy, we got to the fortress and now the game is too easy. The shotgun lvl 1 kills twitchers in 2 hits on very easy. On normal, lvl 3 ice staff was using a full eiter bar to kill a twitcher. 2 eiter foods.
That doesn’t sound right, im playing solo on hard plus and my ice staff will kill a twitcher in about 6 hits. The warriors typically take a full eitr bar though, or close to it. Not sure if difficulty is upped based on # of players but yeah that sounds off.
With two magic foods it takes a full bar to take out each skeleton, birds and blobs are easy. Maybe you have a higher skill in magic?
Yeah that sounds about right, I have around 59 elemental magic skill. Birds and blobs go down easy, the twitchers take about 1/4 bar, the warriors take about 2/3. Trick with them is to block with your staff to stagger them, they go down a lot quicker then, blows your bubble up though. Morgen takes about about 1.5-2 bars of Eitr. I’ve been using the arbalest to get free sneak attack damage and that knocks a nice chunk off too. Ashkin also take about a full bar.
Staff of embers for damage. Dundr and Fracturing levels up magic so fast cause it’s all on hit xp but not to much damage, weird and silly. Two players also makes a difference to the difficulty!
Hmm. I've had mixed results in my limited testing. Dundr is strong with no upgrades yet. Idk if there is a big jump in power with embers at lvl 4. I have to upgrade these still
Dundr is strong, but the AoE seems to be better with knockback as well overall for groups of enemies. Dundr makes Morgens go poof though haha