Valheim’s boss based progression system… the next tier of gear and upgrades necessary for conquoring the next biome requires something from the current biome’s boss… means that knowing where the next boss is located is a key aspect to moving forward.

We had been pretty lucky so far.  Eikthyr was practically on our doorstep in the meadows.  A runestone that pointed us to The Elder was found very quickly on arrival in the black forest.  And while Bonemass was a bit of a trek from our main base, we had him on the map soon enough due to a runestone in the sunken crypt.

In fact, finding a boss hasn’t been much of a problem because the runestones that put them on your map have been, both in this round and in past runs at the game, pretty easy to find.

And then we came to Moder, where this time around a runestone wasn’t forthcoming.

Granted, the mountain biome, with its harsh, vision obscuring weather, tough mobs, and the need to conserve stamina for all the climbing required, hasn’t been our favorite biome.  This time around we took a somewhat minimalist swing at base building in the mountains.  In the past, Potshot has built up some quite formidible mountain bases with defenses to keep the stone golems at bay.  This time around he just built up around an abandoned stone tower where I placed a portal on my first exploration.

Nothing too special, just a foothold in the mountains

As it so happened, that particular mountain biome was not only fairly close to our main base… we just haul the silver ore downhill to a workbench, make a boat, and sail across a stretch of water to bring it home… but it was also extraordinarly rich in silver.  At one point I was digging out a silver vein and found it to actually be three veins interlaced… all about 50 feet from two more veins.  So we didn’t have to go far to do the mountain harvesting.

But our nice, silver rich biome did not have a runestone that we could find.  No runestone, no directions to Moder.

So we set out to explore, to find other mountain biomes, to either find Moder’s summoning spot or a runestone that would guide us to it.

[Insert montage of Wilhelm running around mountains fighting wolves]

As part of our expanding search, Potshot was well off to the west southwest of our main base in a boat at night, when he ran aground on an island in a plans biome and was ganked by a couple of fulings.  He had to log off for the night before recovering his gear.

So I sailed out to check the situation, and I found a stretch of meadow biome from which you coud literally see the island.  So I built a mini-base, put up a portal, and scouted as close as I could.

The island, tombstones just visible

At this point I had mined out quite a bit of silver to replace the mishap of the previous week, so went back to our main base and upgraded my armor, made the helm for the set… drake trophies were pretty rare as well, so it took a while get the two needed to make the helm… and set about seeing if I couldn’t get close to the island to thin out the locals a bit.

I managed to take down two deathsquitos from the boat, then stormed ashore and managed to get the furlings hanging out there one by one.  Island secured.

On the island

I put up a couple of workbenches, as they suppress mobs spawning within a short distance, grabbed Potshot’s main gear and weapon, then brought that back to the nearby meadows base and put it all in a chest for him, then sailed back to the island and put up a portal so he could grab the rest of his inventory quickly.

In scouting around the meadows base, finding the edges of that relatively safe biome, I had noted that there was a mountain biome close by.  I had to get across a bit of plains biome, but I was starting to get comfortable taking on the fulings, before I could start my ascent into the mountains.

I got in there, found one of those sunken ruins, the circular holes in the ground with steps down, and setup a scouting base there by putting up a portal.  Then I began to range around that mountain biome as I had so many previous ones, avoiding stone golems while thinning out the wolf and drake populations.

And this time I was in luck.  I found a ruin off not to far, though up a steep climb, and in it was a runestone.  This was exactly what I had been seeking for so long.

The runestone found!

I clicked it and Moder’s location was revealed to be… about 100 yards from the runestone.  Basically, had I ignore the ruin I would have found the location on my own less than a minute later.

I went back down to the portal I had setup, went back to our main base, grabbed gear for another portal, then set that up in the ruin near to Moder’s summoning location.

The map of the story so far

We now had a base very close to Moder.

The base viewed from Moder’s spawn

You can also see a pillar I raised with a hoe as part of the prep.  This time around, rather than just going, “There she is, get her!” I read a bit about the fight and it recommended raising a few such pillars to hide behind as, unlike things you might build, those won’t get knocked down.

There were also some dragon eggs to gather as you need three for the summoning.  Those, like the runestone, were just a short walk from where the fight would take place.

When the weekend came we were about ready.  We did some final gear upgrades and a weapons check… we were both swinging Frostner by default, which does frost and spirit damage to which Moder is immune, so we swapped out, me for an iron sword and Potshot for the spear of the fang… and headed up to take on the boss.

Once again, being prepared meant that the whole thing went pretty smoothly.  If you look at posts using the Moder tag, you can find evidence that we have not always been prepared.  This time it went well.

When Moder was up in the air Potshot hit her with poison arrows while I went with obsidian, because poison arrow damage over time doesn’t stack.

Plinking at flying Moder

When Moder landed for some ground fighting, we put up the Bonemass buff and got in close to give it to her.

Getting in close an personal

I have to say, I am a convert to the Bonemass buff now.  I used to be all-in on Eikthyr, because stamina management is a bit of a pain and it is very useful when kiting with a bow.  You can see I am going into low stam in that image above.

But Bonemass allowed you to get in there, toe to toe, and do a lot of damage.  Melee damage was a lot more effective than plinking away with arrows.

So we managed to defeat Moder without any drama or deaths.  She dropped the 10 dragon tears that are required for the next tier of crafting station and related items along with her head as a trophy.

From there it was a short walk to the portal and back to our main base where we hung it up to unlock the Moder buff.

Moder displayed

We are now cleared for the plains… not that we haven’t already been there a few times.  But now it is time to head there with an eye towards the next boss and the materials we’ll need to best them and get to the mistlands.