I guess all replays of a game that is centered on progression will inevitably be quicker.  The learning curve and (some of) the mistakes have been marked out or made already and you often know what the next upgrade brings and that drives you to move forward.  So it has been going for me.

Look, starting out last week, all I wanted was some obsidian so we could get the next workbench upgrade.  Obsidian means going to the mountains, but it is just the mountains.  The mountain biomes are already close by, easier to get to than the swamp. C’mon, I’ll zip in, pick some up, and zip right out again.  I just wanted to get my troll hide armor that last upgrade.  I put that on to go hunt and harvest because I am fast and stealthy in it.

I just needed to brew up some frost resist meads… and I’ll barely need those, practically a waste to comsume one for such a tiny mission… and I’ll be set.

The wolves in the mountains though, they had different ideas.

Wolves say “No!”

This led to a series of events that caused me to have to go and clear up death markers on my game map as they were becoming rather too frequent and obscuring some terrain.

Upgraded bronze kit sufficient to tank The Elder is not up to the task in the mountains.  Also, you cannot mine obsidian with a bronze pick, something I was reminded of when I was up in the mountains… but the sound of a bronze pick hitting obsidian, that is still loud enough to alert the local wolves and send them your way.  Another death.

At one point I was in a situation where I had a few corpses to recover and the naked run just wasn’t cutting it.  I decided I needed to gear up to get this done, so I raided our strategic iron supply, the pile of iron we had been slowly building up, and forged myself a set of upgraded iron armor set, along with iron mace and iron pickaxe.  I drained our iron reserves dry, but I got up there and got my stuff back… killed a few wolves… and grabbed some obsidian.

Mission accomplished I guess.

Then I spent the balance of last week binge mining armor, breaking into crypts to clear them out… iron gear made the dragur easier to deal with… and hauling scrap iron home to be refined.  I managed to get 900 iron back over the week, though we’ll get to the dynamics of that in another post.  There is a mod aspect to that.

Along the way, as I pillaged the swamps, I finally found some turnip seeds growing.  Those too went back to base to be cultivated until we built up a supply of seeds sufficient to maintain production in support of upgraded food.  Also, you need some turnips to make the spice rack upgrade for the cauldron to get upgraded food.  So all good there.

Turnip Seeds in the swamp

Turnip seeds are kind of tough to find because, unlike carrot seeds in the black forest, there isn’t as much ground suitible for them to spawn on… or so goes the theory online.  Seems reasonable.

Now I was upgeared and up gunned… or up bowed, having made the huntsman’s bow… and those wolves in the mountains were not such a terror.  But I needed frost resist meads to hang out in the mountains, lest I freeze.  The way around that is silver, which you need for the wolf hide cape, which gives you cold resistence.  But silver is only found in the mountains and it is mostly buried which means you need the wishbone to find it.

I did try to find some opportunistic silver.  You can find veins above ground now and then.  The world generation algorithm allows for that… or is imperfect, depending on how you look at it.  But exploration, while getting me more wolf hides, did not turn up any free silver.  William Jennigs Bryan wept.

That meant we needed wishbones, which meant killing Bonemass, the swamp boss.

Bonemass’s location had been revealed to us previously and I had taken a side trip to put up a portal by his spawn point.  To get ready to fight him I came up with a plan.  Usually, if there are a few of us, we build a few platforms and snipe away at him, mostly out of range.

However, one of the other aspects of this run at Valheim is that it has become mostly a Potshot and I venture.  That is fine.  We’re perhaps a little more into it than Ula or Bung, so it might be a pleasant break for them.

But with two of us, just arrows seemed like it might take a while.  Also, we had a limited amount of the most potant arrows against Bonemass, frost arrows.  While in the mountains I had killed a few drakes, enough to put together 200 frost arrows.  That would keep one person going through the fight, but somebody else would need to be on the ground.

First things first, I went out to the swamp and started on a platform.  This was hindered a bit at one point when an event happened, I got the message about the ground shaking, and trolls showed up and started smashing everything.  I guess I hit the threshold of structures that made the area constitute a base.  They took some effort to deal with as kiting in the swamp is tough as you’re always wet and have to wade through deep water if you don’t have a clear path.

Swamp Troll Getting His

I managed to fend them off, then went back to rebuilding, putting together a covered gallery for the sniper role.

A vantage point in the trees

That was just above the summoning are, which I had cleared out and leveled with the hoe.

The area of the coming fight

I was a bit worried about line of sight from the perch.  It seemed okay, but you only really know once the fight is on and the big bad is rolling around.

View from the shooting gallery

That all setup, Potshot and I got out there and setup, him in the perch loaded with most of our frost arrows and me down on the ground in the iron armor, upgraded as fully as possible, with a few frost arrows for some ranged attacks, but mostly planning to get stuck in with the iron mace, blunt and cold being the two weaknesses of Bonemass.

Once unleashed… summoning bosses now just requires one of whatever item calls them it seems, in this case a withered bone… I gulped down a poison resist mead and tried to get in there and pound on him when I could.

Bonesmass Unleashed

He summons blobs, which were one-shottable, and brings forth a big old cloud of poison, which you want to get away from even on a poison resist mead, and he does a couple of big attacks that you want your shield up for.  The trick of being on the ground with him is knowing when to get in close and beat on him and when to run away.

I did try laying back to hit him with frost arrows but, while they did damage and Potshot was consistantly ticking away at him, it was the mace that really made his health bar move.  So I got in close when I could, managed not to die, and took a health mead when I mis-timed a block or didn’t dance away in time, and we brought him down.

We returned to the main base to hang up the trophy on the henge and unlock his abilities, which are decent combat resists.

Bonemass on his hook

I still prefer Eikthyr for the running away potential, but Bonemass isn’t bad.

We also picked up a wishbone each, which we equipped.  Then I went through to a portal near some mountains and ran up to a ruin I saw previously that looked like it would make the core of a decent base and build a workbench and a portal.  Potshot joined me up there and, frost resist meads running, we found a silver vein not too far off and mined out our first silver.

Then we ran it down the mountain to bring it back to base.

At least running downhill is quick

The refining of silver has begun.  First items produced were wolf hide capes for the cold resist.

We still need a bunch of iron, and have plenty of crypts in the swamp mapped out, but now I can explore the mountains as well.

I guess all replays of a game that is centered on progression will inevitably be quicker.  The learning curve and (some of) the mistakes have been marked out or made already and you often know what the next upgrade brings and that drives you to move forward.  So it has been going for me.

Look, starting out last week, all I wanted was some obsidian so we could get the next workbench upgrade.  Obsidian means going to the mountains, but it is just the mountains.  The mountain biomes are already close by, easier to get to than the swamp. C’mon, I’ll zip in, pick some up, and zip right out again.  I just wanted to get my troll hide armor that last upgrade.  I put that on to go hunt and harvest because I am fast and stealthy in it.

I just needed to brew up some frost resist meads… and I’ll barely need those, practically a waste to comsume one for such a tiny mission… and I’ll be set.

The wolves in the mountains though, they had different ideas.

Wolves say “No!”

This led to a series of events that caused me to have to go and clear up death markers on my game map as they were becoming rather too frequent and obscuring some terrain.

Upgraded bronze kit sufficient to tank The Elder is not up to the task in the mountains.  Also, you cannot mine obsidian with a bronze pick, something I was reminded of when I was up in the mountains… but the sound of a bronze pick hitting obsidian, that is still loud enough to alert the local wolves and send them your way.  Another death.

At one point I was in a situation where I had a few corpses to recover and the naked run just wasn’t cutting it.  I decided I needed to gear up to get this done, so I raided our strategic iron supply, the pile of iron we had been slowly building up, and forged myself a set of upgraded iron armor set, along with iron mace and iron pickaxe.  I drained our iron reserves dry, but I got up there and got my stuff back… killed a few wolves… and grabbed some obsidian.

Mission accomplished I guess.

Then I spent the balance of last week binge mining armor, breaking into crypts to clear them out… iron gear made the dragur easier to deal with… and hauling scrap iron home to be refined.  I managed to get 900 iron back over the week, though we’ll get to the dynamics of that in another post.  There is a mod aspect to that.

Along the way, as I pillaged the swamps, I finally found some turnip seeds growing.  Those too went back to base to be cultivated until we built up a supply of seeds sufficient to maintain production in support of upgraded food.  Also, you need some turnips to make the spice rack upgrade for the cauldron to get upgraded food.  So all good there.

Turnip Seeds in the swamp

Turnip seeds are kind of tough to find because, unlike carrot seeds in the black forest, there isn’t as much ground suitible for them to spawn on… or so goes the theory online.  Seems reasonable.

Now I was upgeared and up gunned… or up bowed, having made the huntsman’s bow… and those wolves in the mountains were not such a terror.  But I needed frost resist meads to hang out in the mountains, lest I freeze.  The way around that is silver, which you need for the wolf hide cape, which gives you cold resistence.  But silver is only found in the mountains and it is mostly buried which means you need the wishbone to find it.

I did try to find some opportunistic silver.  You can find veins above ground now and then.  The world generation algorithm allows for that… or is imperfect, depending on how you look at it.  But exploration, while getting me more wolf hides, did not turn up any free silver.  William Jennigs Bryan wept.

That meant we needed wishbones, which meant killing Bonemass, the swamp boss.

Bonemass’s location had been revealed to us previously and I had taken a side trip to put up a portal by his spawn point.  To get ready to fight him I came up with a plan.  Usually, if there are a few of us, we build a few platforms and snipe away at him, mostly out of range.

However, one of the other aspects of this run at Valheim is that it has become mostly a Potshot and I venture.  That is fine.  We’re perhaps a little more into it than Ula or Bung, so it might be a pleasant break for them.

But with two of us, just arrows seemed like it might take a while.  Also, we had a limited amount of the most potant arrows against Bonemass, frost arrows.  While in the mountains I had killed a few drakes, enough to put together 200 frost arrows.  That would keep one person going through the fight, but somebody else would need to be on the ground.

First things first, I went out to the swamp and started on a platform.  This was hindered a bit at one point when an event happened, I got the message about the ground shaking, and trolls showed up and started smashing everything.  I guess I hit the threshold of structures that made the area constitute a base.  They took some effort to deal with as kiting in the swamp is tough as you’re always wet and have to wade through deep water if you don’t have a clear path.

Swamp Troll Getting His

I managed to fend them off, then went back to rebuilding, putting together a covered gallery for the sniper role.

A vantage point in the trees

That was just above the summoning are, which I had cleared out and leveled with the hoe.

The area of the coming fight

I was a bit worried about line of sight from the perch.  It seemed okay, but you only really know once the fight is on and the big bad is rolling around.

View from the shooting gallery

That all setup, Potshot and I got out there and setup, him in the perch loaded with most of our frost arrows and me down on the ground in the iron armor, upgraded as fully as possible, with a few frost arrows for some ranged attacks, but mostly planning to get stuck in with the iron mace, blunt and cold being the two weaknesses of Bonemass.

Once unleashed… summoning bosses now just requires one of whatever item calls them it seems, in this case a withered bone… I gulped down a poison resist mead and tried to get in there and pound on him when I could.

Bonesmass Unleashed

He summons blobs, which were one-shottable, and brings forth a big old cloud of poison, which you want to get away from even on a poison resist mead, and he does a couple of big attacks that you want your shield up for.  The trick of being on the ground with him is knowing when to get in close and beat on him and when to run away.

I did try laying back to hit him with frost arrows but, while they did damage and Potshot was consistantly ticking away at him, it was the mace that really made his health bar move.  So I got in close when I could, managed not to die, and took a health mead when I mis-timed a block or didn’t dance away in time, and we brought him down.

We returned to the main base to hang up the trophy on the henge and unlock his abilities, which are decent combat resists.

Bonemass on his hook

I still prefer Eikthyr for the running away potential, but Bonemass isn’t bad.

We also picked up a wishbone each, which we equipped.  Then I went through to a portal near some mountains and ran up to a ruin I saw previously that looked like it would make the core of a decent base and build a workbench and a portal.  Potshot joined me up there and, frost resist meads running, we found a silver vein not too far off and mined out our first silver.

Then we ran it down the mountain to bring it back to base.

At least running downhill is quick

The refining of silver has begun.  First items produced were wolf hide capes for the cold resist.

We still need a bunch of iron, and have plenty of crypts in the swamp mapped out, but now I can explore the mountains as well.

I guess all replays of a game that is centered on progression will inevitably be quicker.  The learning curve and (some of) the mistakes have been marked out or made already and you often know what the next upgrade brings and that drives you to move forward.  So it has been going for me.

Look, starting out last week, all I wanted was some obsidian so we could get the next workbench upgrade.  Obsidian means going to the mountains, but it is just the mountains.  The mountain biomes are already close by, easier to get to than the swamp. C’mon, I’ll zip in, pick some up, and zip right out again.  I just wanted to get my troll hide armor that last upgrade.  I put that on to go hunt and harvest because I am fast and stealthy in it.

I just needed to brew up some frost resist meads… and I’ll barely need those, practically a waste to comsume one for such a tiny mission… and I’ll be set.

The wolves in the mountains though, they had different ideas.

Wolves say “No!”

This led to a series of events that caused me to have to go and clear up death markers on my game map as they were becoming rather too frequent and obscuring some terrain.

Upgraded bronze kit sufficient to tank The Elder is not up to the task in the mountains.  Also, you cannot mine obsidian with a bronze pick, something I was reminded of when I was up in the mountains… but the sound of a bronze pick hitting obsidian, that is still loud enough to alert the local wolves and send them your way.  Another death.

At one point I was in a situation where I had a few corpses to recover and the naked run just wasn’t cutting it.  I decided I needed to gear up to get this done, so I raided our strategic iron supply, the pile of iron we had been slowly building up, and forged myself a set of upgraded iron armor set, along with iron mace and iron pickaxe.  I drained our iron reserves dry, but I got up there and got my stuff back… killed a few wolves… and grabbed some obsidian.

Mission accomplished I guess.

Then I spent the balance of last week binge mining armor, breaking into crypts to clear them out… iron gear made the dragur easier to deal with… and hauling scrap iron home to be refined.  I managed to get 900 iron back over the week, though we’ll get to the dynamics of that in another post.  There is a mod aspect to that.

Along the way, as I pillaged the swamps, I finally found some turnip seeds growing.  Those too went back to base to be cultivated until we built up a supply of seeds sufficient to maintain production in support of upgraded food.  Also, you need some turnips to make the spice rack upgrade for the cauldron to get upgraded food.  So all good there.

Turnip Seeds in the swamp

Turnip seeds are kind of tough to find because, unlike carrot seeds in the black forest, there isn’t as much ground suitible for them to spawn on… or so goes the theory online.  Seems reasonable.

Now I was upgeared and up gunned… or up bowed, having made the huntsman’s bow… and those wolves in the mountains were not such a terror.  But I needed frost resist meads to hang out in the mountains, lest I freeze.  The way around that is silver, which you need for the wolf hide cape, which gives you cold resistence.  But silver is only found in the mountains and it is mostly buried which means you need the wishbone to find it.

I did try to find some opportunistic silver.  You can find veins above ground now and then.  The world generation algorithm allows for that… or is imperfect, depending on how you look at it.  But exploration, while getting me more wolf hides, did not turn up any free silver.  William Jennigs Bryan wept.

That meant we needed wishbones, which meant killing Bonemass, the swamp boss.

Bonemass’s location had been revealed to us previously and I had taken a side trip to put up a portal by his spawn point.  To get ready to fight him I came up with a plan.  Usually, if there are a few of us, we build a few platforms and snipe away at him, mostly out of range.

However, one of the other aspects of this run at Valheim is that it has become mostly a Potshot and I venture.  That is fine.  We’re perhaps a little more into it than Ula or Bung, so it might be a pleasant break for them.

But with two of us, just arrows seemed like it might take a while.  Also, we had a limited amount of the most potant arrows against Bonemass, frost arrows.  While in the mountains I had killed a few drakes, enough to put together 200 frost arrows.  That would keep one person going through the fight, but somebody else would need to be on the ground.

First things first, I went out to the swamp and started on a platform.  This was hindered a bit at one point when an event happened, I got the message about the ground shaking, and trolls showed up and started smashing everything.  I guess I hit the threshold of structures that made the area constitute a base.  They took some effort to deal with as kiting in the swamp is tough as you’re always wet and have to wade through deep water if you don’t have a clear path.

Swamp Troll Getting His

I managed to fend them off, then went back to rebuilding, putting together a covered gallery for the sniper role.

A vantage point in the trees

That was just above the summoning are, which I had cleared out and leveled with the hoe.

The area of the coming fight

I was a bit worried about line of sight from the perch.  It seemed okay, but you only really know once the fight is on and the big bad is rolling around.

View from the shooting gallery

That all setup, Potshot and I got out there and setup, him in the perch loaded with most of our frost arrows and me down on the ground in the iron armor, upgraded as fully as possible, with a few frost arrows for some ranged attacks, but mostly planning to get stuck in with the iron mace, blunt and cold being the two weaknesses of Bonemass.

Once unleashed… summoning bosses now just requires one of whatever item calls them it seems, in this case a withered bone… I gulped down a poison resist mead and tried to get in there and pound on him when I could.

Bonesmass Unleashed

He summons blobs, which were one-shottable, and brings forth a big old cloud of poison, which you want to get away from even on a poison resist mead, and he does a couple of big attacks that you want your shield up for.  The trick of being on the ground with him is knowing when to get in close and beat on him and when to run away.

I did try laying back to hit him with frost arrows but, while they did damage and Potshot was consistantly ticking away at him, it was the mace that really made his health bar move.  So I got in close when I could, managed not to die, and took a health mead when I mis-timed a block or didn’t dance away in time, and we brought him down.

We returned to the main base to hang up the trophy on the henge and unlock his abilities, which are decent combat resists.

Bonemass on his hook

I still prefer Eikthyr for the running away potential, but Bonemass isn’t bad.

We also picked up a wishbone each, which we equipped.  Then I went through to a portal near some mountains and ran up to a ruin I saw previously that looked like it would make the core of a decent base and build a workbench and a portal.  Potshot joined me up there and, frost resist meads running, we found a silver vein not too far off and mined out our first silver.

Then we ran it down the mountain to bring it back to base.

At least running downhill is quick

The refining of silver has begun.  First items produced were wolf hide capes for the cold resist.

We still need a bunch of iron, and have plenty of crypts in the swamp mapped out, but now I can explore the mountains as well.

I guess all replays of a game that is centered on progression will inevitably be quicker.  The learning curve and (some of) the mistakes have been marked out or made already and you often know what the next upgrade brings and that drives you to move forward.  So it has been going for me.

Look, starting out last week, all I wanted was some obsidian so we could get the next workbench upgrade.  Obsidian means going to the mountains, but it is just the mountains.  The mountain biomes are already close by, easier to get to than the swamp. C’mon, I’ll zip in, pick some up, and zip right out again.  I just wanted to get my troll hide armor that last upgrade.  I put that on to go hunt and harvest because I am fast and stealthy in it.

I just needed to brew up some frost resist meads… and I’ll barely need those, practically a waste to comsume one for such a tiny mission… and I’ll be set.

The wolves in the mountains though, they had different ideas.

Wolves say “No!”

This led to a series of events that caused me to have to go and clear up death markers on my game map as they were becoming rather too frequent and obscuring some terrain.

Upgraded bronze kit sufficient to tank The Elder is not up to the task in the mountains.  Also, you cannot mine obsidian with a bronze pick, something I was reminded of when I was up in the mountains… but the sound of a bronze pick hitting obsidian, that is still loud enough to alert the local wolves and send them your way.  Another death.

At one point I was in a situation where I had a few corpses to recover and the naked run just wasn’t cutting it.  I decided I needed to gear up to get this done, so I raided our strategic iron supply, the pile of iron we had been slowly building up, and forged myself a set of upgraded iron armor set, along with iron mace and iron pickaxe.  I drained our iron reserves dry, but I got up there and got my stuff back… killed a few wolves… and grabbed some obsidian.

Mission accomplished I guess.

Then I spent the balance of last week binge mining armor, breaking into crypts to clear them out… iron gear made the dragur easier to deal with… and hauling scrap iron home to be refined.  I managed to get 900 iron back over the week, though we’ll get to the dynamics of that in another post.  There is a mod aspect to that.

Along the way, as I pillaged the swamps, I finally found some turnip seeds growing.  Those too went back to base to be cultivated until we built up a supply of seeds sufficient to maintain production in support of upgraded food.  Also, you need some turnips to make the spice rack upgrade for the cauldron to get upgraded food.  So all good there.

Turnip Seeds in the swamp

Turnip seeds are kind of tough to find because, unlike carrot seeds in the black forest, there isn’t as much ground suitible for them to spawn on… or so goes the theory online.  Seems reasonable.

Now I was upgeared and up gunned… or up bowed, having made the huntsman’s bow… and those wolves in the mountains were not such a terror.  But I needed frost resist meads to hang out in the mountains, lest I freeze.  The way around that is silver, which you need for the wolf hide cape, which gives you cold resistence.  But silver is only found in the mountains and it is mostly buried which means you need the wishbone to find it.

I did try to find some opportunistic silver.  You can find veins above ground now and then.  The world generation algorithm allows for that… or is imperfect, depending on how you look at it.  But exploration, while getting me more wolf hides, did not turn up any free silver.  William Jennigs Bryan wept.

That meant we needed wishbones, which meant killing Bonemass, the swamp boss.

Bonemass’s location had been revealed to us previously and I had taken a side trip to put up a portal by his spawn point.  To get ready to fight him I came up with a plan.  Usually, if there are a few of us, we build a few platforms and snipe away at him, mostly out of range.

However, one of the other aspects of this run at Valheim is that it has become mostly a Potshot and I venture.  That is fine.  We’re perhaps a little more into it than Ula or Bung, so it might be a pleasant break for them.

But with two of us, just arrows seemed like it might take a while.  Also, we had a limited amount of the most potant arrows against Bonemass, frost arrows.  While in the mountains I had killed a few drakes, enough to put together 200 frost arrows.  That would keep one person going through the fight, but somebody else would need to be on the ground.

First things first, I went out to the swamp and started on a platform.  This was hindered a bit at one point when an event happened, I got the message about the ground shaking, and trolls showed up and started smashing everything.  I guess I hit the threshold of structures that made the area constitute a base.  They took some effort to deal with as kiting in the swamp is tough as you’re always wet and have to wade through deep water if you don’t have a clear path.

Swamp Troll Getting His

I managed to fend them off, then went back to rebuilding, putting together a covered gallery for the sniper role.

A vantage point in the trees

That was just above the summoning are, which I had cleared out and leveled with the hoe.

The area of the coming fight

I was a bit worried about line of sight from the perch.  It seemed okay, but you only really know once the fight is on and the big bad is rolling around.

View from the shooting gallery

That all setup, Potshot and I got out there and setup, him in the perch loaded with most of our frost arrows and me down on the ground in the iron armor, upgraded as fully as possible, with a few frost arrows for some ranged attacks, but mostly planning to get stuck in with the iron mace, blunt and cold being the two weaknesses of Bonemass.

Once unleashed… summoning bosses now just requires one of whatever item calls them it seems, in this case a withered bone… I gulped down a poison resist mead and tried to get in there and pound on him when I could.

Bonesmass Unleashed

He summons blobs, which were one-shottable, and brings forth a big old cloud of poison, which you want to get away from even on a poison resist mead, and he does a couple of big attacks that you want your shield up for.  The trick of being on the ground with him is knowing when to get in close and beat on him and when to run away.

I did try laying back to hit him with frost arrows but, while they did damage and Potshot was consistantly ticking away at him, it was the mace that really made his health bar move.  So I got in close when I could, managed not to die, and took a health mead when I mis-timed a block or didn’t dance away in time, and we brought him down.

We returned to the main base to hang up the trophy on the henge and unlock his abilities, which are decent combat resists.

Bonemass on his hook

I still prefer Eikthyr for the running away potential, but Bonemass isn’t bad.

We also picked up a wishbone each, which we equipped.  Then I went through to a portal near some mountains and ran up to a ruin I saw previously that looked like it would make the core of a decent base and build a workbench and a portal.  Potshot joined me up there and, frost resist meads running, we found a silver vein not too far off and mined out our first silver.

Then we ran it down the mountain to bring it back to base.

At least running downhill is quick

The refining of silver has begun.  First items produced were wolf hide capes for the cold resist.

We still need a bunch of iron, and have plenty of crypts in the swamp mapped out, but now I can explore the mountains as well.