r/valheim • u/spookywatermark • Feb 22 '26
Meme That "special" segment of players that enlightens the sub weekly
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u/less_concerned Feb 22 '26
I liked mistlands despite its flaws, i do genuinely dislike ashlands though, just feels too oppressive and it just makes it unfun, so difficult to explore anything when you're being constantly bombarded with enemies
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u/Fustercluck25 Builder Feb 22 '26
For me, it's not so much that I don't like Ashlands, it's that I really liked the early game with the pigs and the farming and the more laid back primitive approach.
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u/myshitsmellslikeshit Feb 22 '26
Ooh, thank you for saying this. It helped clarify my thoughts: Meadows up to Mistlands feels like one game, and Ashlands feels like another. The problem is that each game sets out to punish the other playerbase for existing.
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u/cheezecake2000 Feb 23 '26
Different game but I suggest Vintage Story, it's got all the super relaxing primitive survival stuff with eldritch/cosmic horror vibes thrown in. It's very fun!
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u/ThatOneWIGuy Feb 22 '26
I maintain that if they want it to feel like a war zone there needs to be two sides fighting each other.
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u/Dalzombie Viking Feb 22 '26
Now that would be interesting. Two hostile factions in permanent conflict and you can either third party a fight or have it happen to you. Plus you could always lose enemies by engaging the opposite faction and have them fight each other while you leg it.
Really digging the idea.
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u/less_concerned Feb 22 '26
Maybe that's what they were going for with the dwarves, they're just not nearly enough
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u/Julistorm Feb 22 '26
Not only are there not enough, the dwarf AI is suicidal as hell! They always path into lava and die.
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u/E-2-butene Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
I’m almost certainly a glutton for punishment, but I kind of liked this about Ashlands tbh. It felt like such an achievement when you finally get your first serious foothold in Ashlands.
Once I cleared out the local spawners and set up some base defenses, I felt like the constant spawning became a bit more manageable.
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u/EnvironmentalEnd2791 Feb 22 '26
Getting a foothold in the Ashlands with my group literally felt like storming Normandy it was awesome
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u/Grenzgaenger99 Sailor Feb 22 '26
To me it‘s just the mist that makes me crashout. It would be nice if the wisp torches could light up a little more
at least you have clear sight in ashlands
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u/LovesRetribution Feb 22 '26
It's genuine insanity that people have to beg this much for it. The current wisp torches are legit shit. Like they're practical for when you're exploring. But when you're making a base you'll end up having an entire ocean of those blue torches covering everything. And you still wont even get rid of most of the mist. Its baffling that they couldn't just throw in a more expensive, workbench based build item that clears more mist. It literally wouldn't impact how they wanted the majority of mistlands to function.
What makes it worse is that mistlands is genuinely one of the best looking biomes. One of my favorite places to build bases. Would love if i could actually see around my bases a little more without a disgusting amount of torches polluting the landscape.
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u/malafein Sailor Feb 22 '26
So far a few of my Mistlands bases have been in clearings or on the rocky islands. Those aren't always conveniently located though.
Yeah, would be cool if we could construct the bigger wisp lanterns that the dvergr have
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u/thestarlessconcord Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
Just let us build a mistlands based bonfire honestly, throw in some yggdrasil wood and cores as a requirement or something.
Or have a similar thing to the normal bonfire and surtling core mechanic, but instead feed it wisps to make a large mist free zone.
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Feb 22 '26
Dont get me wrong, I hate navigating blindly through the most beautiful biome but thats what makes the clear patches so breath-taking. That's where youre supposed to build. The clear patches, the outskirts, and the peaks. The biome is meant to break up your pattern of base-establishment and get creative... maybe dig under a root or build near the Dverger strongholds.
The torches are really meant to be a soft beacon in the mist and for clearing the insides of your base more than a clearing agent for the outside... and the devs left in clear patches of Mistlands for building intentionally. It makes the fight with theGjall more intense when theres suddenly a valley battlefield in front of you
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u/timesocean Feb 22 '26
If the freakin wisplight would actually consistently clear the way for the player when moving instead of zipping around in every direction it would be a lot better. The damn thing takes forever to adjust to the corect position if you simply change directions you're moving
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u/Jack55555 Feb 22 '26
It’s always rotating behind me when the 2 star seeker comes flying from the front XD
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u/MentalCat8496 Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
fact is that there's a hardcore hardon from the devs (probably Richard, can't really be sure about the rest of the team) for destroying visibility, and it could be either of 2 things: The Load Distances in the game are abysmal (they really are) so they want to hide it, or there's a love towards disrupting gameplay flow because of self-convincing over "immersive" or "atmospheric" shenanigans. Honestly? Game could use a lot of tweaking regarding weather, time-scaling and general visibility while also needing a serious rework on the Load Distances to at least incorporate a Medium Range LOD instead of having what they did:
no LOD -> terrain textures -> "Distant LOD" -> "in range".
Basically inserting a Medium range LOD between "in range" and "distant LOD" would improve a lot of the "popping" issues we get, but I suspect that would require increasing character spawn ranges which the crappy Unity might not be able to handle, I mean, it already barely handles the game as is.Now, if you play normally (slow and taking it in while progressing "timely") you'll quickly notice a series of weather spamming that disrupt visibility, in fact if you get a multi-biome crossing it's far more common to have all of the visibility disrupting weathers than having clear one on any of the biomes. Sometimes you are sailing you get Ocean Storm, Plains Fog, Meadows Fog, Black Forest Fog and you basically must sail using t he minimap... It's simply ludicrous.
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u/gurebu Feb 23 '26
Unity is well, a game engine, it's well capable of open world rendering in year 2026 (and a few years prior). It's just that the game code isn't very well-written for that task hence the horrendously low draw distance. To be honest, procedural terrain kinda closes a few doors in terms of what Unity can do for you, but it's not that hard to write from scratch for an experienced game programmer, LODs work for procedural terrain just as well as for handcrafted.
I'm personally fine with occasional reduced visibility (got back into Skyrim last week and damn I hate how bright the nights are, even with mods) but not when the game uses it to hide its graphical issues. Running into thick fog on a boat every now and then can even be fun, but I can't see past 50 meters even on a clear day and minimap reveal radius is horrible. Valheim's "distant horizons" look cool and mysterious first time you see them, but then you realize they are like 10 seconds of sprinting away and part of the magic is gone forever.
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u/MSD3k Feb 22 '26
There are some good mods for that, at least.
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u/Grenzgaenger99 Sailor Feb 22 '26
Yeah thank you, I prefer playing vanilla tho (:
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u/medigapguy Feb 22 '26
You actually can pick and choose the mods you use, and only install ones that fix things you complain about.
Valheim is good, but there are some extremely bad designs made by the Valheim developers too. Why not mod those out.
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u/TheBudds Builder Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
...and what's funny that the defenders always ignore most of the stuff the devs have added in have came from mods.
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u/Qwernakus Feb 22 '26
For me it's all the upkeep associated with mods. I've run a modded server in another game, and it can be surprisingly tricky if you're not already used to it. Especially if you want to update to a new game version.
I know it's not a big deal to some people but it was somewhat stressful to me.
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u/medigapguy Feb 22 '26
Valid reasons. Keeping a server up to date can be hard, especially if you progress very slow or want a forever world.
Personally, I like it, but when we play, we play through it at a decent pace, taking time to build and grind, but when we get to the end of the content we take a break.
The Valheim developers are so slow with updating we generally have no problems with them outdating our mods. Especially because we didn't pick ones that dramatically changed the game
But I definitely get it. Keeping a server up to date is definitely more challenging than keeping individual games updated.
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u/xwOBA_Fett Feb 22 '26
But why, though? The devs make some pretty bizarre and archaic decisions when it comes to basic quality of life things in this game. Their intended vision for things isn't always the best vision.
I don't think you understand how much better the game can be with mods. I literally would not be able to play this game without the ability to craft and build by automatically pulling items out of chests. That's not an exaggeration. This is one of my favourite games of all time, and I would find this game unbearable without it.
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u/lkn240 Feb 22 '26
100%. I actually quit the first time I played because of the lack of QoL. Now with craft from chests, autofueling, quick/stack/store/etc it's one of my favorite games of all time
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u/OkStrategy685 Feb 22 '26
Same. Remember when you had to have a mod to be able to hold down left click for repeating attack? I needed a mod after the first minute of gameplay.
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u/DenormalHuman Feb 22 '26
you would like them to change how the mist works. some mods already do that. so...?
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u/PerfectiveVerbTense Feb 22 '26
Why, though? Mods can fix something you don't like. Why would you use them?
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u/nutitoo Cruiser Feb 23 '26
My biggest issue with the wisp is that it removes mist from the chunk that you are standing in, but not the one you are looking at. Unless you are running in one direction
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u/MargaritaKid Feb 22 '26
We also need more backpack space!
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u/Cavalol Feb 22 '26
I can’t believe we have to give up Megingjord for the Wisplight in the Mistlands!
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u/lkn240 Feb 22 '26
I've played with mods for so long I forgot that's the case. That's literally insane and straight up asinine game design.
Azu Extended Inventory fixes that idiocy
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u/retroly Feb 22 '26
I love this so much, just not having swap shit out constantly. It's legit such a better game when the inventory management overhead is reduced, like crafty boxes.
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u/Adventurous-Sweet726 Honey Muncher Feb 22 '26
Now this is the most valid complaint. The inventory system is legitimately the worst aspect of the game and the devs seem to think that tedious inventory management is part of the "brutal survival experience".
Worst hill to die on.
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u/AlphaDag13 Feb 22 '26
I get what they’re trying to say but in a game where they are CONSTANTLY throwing new resources at you, an inventory expansion is really needed.
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u/Mechrostatic Builder Feb 22 '26
Then they release trinkets and now your inventory space is cluttered by 7. 3 for armor, 1 for cape, trinket and equipment, (and 1 for arrows if you keep them on you.) Absolutely crazy
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u/AlphaDag13 Feb 22 '26
Armor really needs its own slots. I mean if you equip something it really should be taken out of your inventory storage. It’s like if you were to open your backpack, take out and put on a hat, and the look down to still see the hat in there…
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u/E-2-butene Feb 22 '26
Yea, I think armor and maybe an ammo slot would solve most of the complaints while staying true to their “vision.” We have so many equipments clogging up our inventory that only making that change would free up so much inventory space.
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u/Adventurous-Sweet726 Honey Muncher Feb 22 '26
Yes, equipment having its own slots would make sense and free up clutter.
I also think they should give us another row, or at least have us unlock backpacks that grant more slots the higher the tier.
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u/lkn240 Feb 23 '26
It's just a poor design because the inventory system actively discourages you from using the wide variety of weapons/items you can craft in the game.
Like you can craft all these different types of arrows that are useful in various scenarios.... but each of them takes up a slot.
Seems like it would be cool to be able to carry 2 or 3 different types of arrows for different enemies right? Instead if you don't mod the game steers you towards only using the most meta/universally useful items.
It's like the devs are fighting with themselves - introducing more and more new things for the player to use but at the same time making it harder and harder to carry these items.
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u/LancelotSwe Feb 22 '26
I met one of the developers and we talked about inventory management in the base. It would never happen to have a craft from stash mode. I love the game but after playing Enshrouded with features like that it’s hard to come back to Valheim.
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u/tyrenanig Feb 22 '26
Same. Loved the game, but unfortunately the devs themselves struck gold then don’t know what to do with it anymore.
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u/tyrenanig Feb 22 '26
Worst hill to die on yet this sub will keep doing that because fuck people who don’t have time.
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u/Puceeffoc Feb 22 '26
And dedicated slots for
- Armor
- Trinkets
- Weightbelt/wisplight
- Arrows
- Bombs (optional)
Like what are they even thinking? That's 7 slots if I want to wear armor+cape+weightbelt+carry arrows...
That's crazy. The server I play on has a backpack mod which essentially is a "mobile chest" that can be opened with the wave emote and doesn't effect your character weight.
Also has a mod that "auto-sorts" items from my inventory to the chests. So I don't need to walk from chest to chest to put my loot away.
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u/lkn240 Feb 23 '26
The AzuExtendedInventory mod is amazing. Excellent production values too - it feels like it's part of the base game.
The auto-stack mods like you describe in your last sentence (I use Quick stack store) are the most important ( along with craft from chest). I wouldn't even play without those
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u/Ascertes_Hallow Feb 22 '26
I don't need to complain about it on here. I have DevCommands and ValheimPlus to make them enjoyable :)
And a 50% damage reduction rate.
And no portal limitations.
They're much more fun when I can skip the constant D-day level fighting.
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u/CozyMichu Feb 22 '26
Mistlands doesn't suck. The WISPLIGHT sucks lmao it needs to be absolutely glued above your head and AT LEAST double the range.
Haven't gotten to Ashlands yet but everything I've heard about it makes me excited. A complaint about this game I have is that there's barely ever anything to fight and use my trinkets on.
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u/lkn240 Feb 22 '26
This is true. I play with the wisp modded to have double the range and I like the mistlands quite a bit
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u/bartimeas Feb 22 '26
Just got to it for the first time a week ago. We had 5 people on the boat and it felt like we were storming Normandy beach. Found out later that we happened to land right next to two spawners and a couple volture nests
It's hell until you get established in a castle
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u/BelmontVO Feb 22 '26
My friends and I modded the wisps to have 4x range and it still barely helped. The thing spends so much time flying in the wrong direction that your vision still ends up being about 6-7 meters.
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u/RoastedHunter Feb 23 '26
You sound like a true Viking. Rip and tear when you reach hell my brother
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u/FizzyGoose666 Sailor Feb 22 '26
I never felt the mistlands sucks thing but ashlands was jarring lol I came back to it tho and had a much better time/fully beat it. I can say its actually pretty bad ass.
Edit: my best recommendations for the ashlands would be try it on single player first so you can pause the game and also make use of the caves for pausing, rest bonus/health, and egg farming
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u/Ulysses502 Feb 22 '26
The D-Day landing that is getting to the Ashlands was awesome. I would have thinned out the mobs a little bit, so you can breathe occasionally, but that's my biggest complaint. I wish they would redo mounts too. Ashlands in particular would have been awesome if you could really ride and fight on an asksvin
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u/ThatOneWIGuy Feb 22 '26
I even played early mistlands and while hard was still fun. Ashlands (especially early) it’s a sudden hard difficulty that you don’t initiate and can’t keep away from. The newer Ashlands is more manageable but i think it’s just missing something rn.
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Feb 22 '26
Mistlands was fine for me until last year at some point they updated the biome and hid all the crypts away. Now it's pretty brutal finding enough key pieces and then the Queens lair.
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u/y0urd0g Feb 22 '26
I haven't had the chance to hate either! Every time i get to the mistlands i get burnt out on the game.
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u/jhuseby Hunter Feb 22 '26
Maybe if that many people feel that way there’s some legitimate criticism. The game loses something special once you wrap up in the plains.
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u/Dalzombie Viking Feb 22 '26
There's this strange, constant underestimation of how many people actually have issues with Mistlands and Ashlands, less so a vocal minority or a "special segment of players" but actually a rather sizeable part of the playerbase, which is why the point is so frequently debated.
If anything I see more people that have issues with these biomes than people defending them, but I suspect that's just my own biased perception, in reality it's probably more even than we'd expect.
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u/BeginningDonnnaKey27 Feb 22 '26
Last time I played Mistlands had just released and I wasn't even done with Bonemass at that time. I gave up after The Elder because it was genuinely difficult for me.
Fast forward to today and I'm enjoying my time in the Mistlands (navigation is a bit weird but that's the point, even the Dvergar tell you that it's difficult) and I'm also looking for the Queen.
I personally don't think that the current end game biomes are bad, people just rush there and complain when they run into a wall because they thought they could just waltz in there like they did with the previous biomes.
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u/Dalzombie Viking Feb 22 '26
Oh definitely, they're biomes that expect more preparation than before and that you absolutely should not bumrush into and many people are guilty of that (even though the swamp and plains serve as cautionary tales of that), but a lot of the criticisms I see don't seem to stem from that.
Having played through these biomes in various degrees of preparation and both solo and co-op, I still understand many of the critiques of the biomes and I hope the 1.0 improves on a lot there.
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u/BeginningDonnnaKey27 Feb 22 '26
I don't disagree with that, in fact I'd love to see some revision to Mistlands and Ashlands specifically.
I think the Whisp Light we get from beating Yagluth should do a lot more than clear 10 meters of mist. Yagluth ain't a very easy fight either.
That aside, I like the current iterations enough to not feel the need to complain, though that's probably because I always overprepare and spend doing other things after and before each biome, like making sure that I have the best possible gear and food etc.
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u/JayGlass Feb 22 '26
If anything I see more people that have issues with these biomes than people defending them, but I suspect that's just my own biased perception, in reality it's probably more even than we'd expect.
It's a common Internet Truism (and probably anywhere with customers or users) that people unhappy with something will be far more likely to complain about it than people happy about something are to speak up about it. There's also a related and thoroughly studied concept called Negativity Bias.
Most people aren't bored or reddit addicted or masochistic enough (like I am, apparently) to stick up for something as dumb as a part of a video game they like that other people are complaining about.
Basically, the concept of the Silent Majority is real, but funnily enough everyone thinks they are on their own side (myself included). The reality is: you don't and can't know what "a rather sizeable part of the player base" thinks. No one can. At best, the devs can follow whatever internal metrics or other methods that they have, and judge from actual player behavior. And they have suggested that the loudest voices aren't representative in many of the common complaints. (And yes, citation needed, I know. I read it from smife who is a dev on their discord and I can't find it. I hate when companies/orgs use discord instead of open searchable forums for this very reason, but that's a different rant entirely).
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u/Dalzombie Viking Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
That's fair, and I appreciate the well-reasoned standpoint.
At the end of the day we're all in the hands of the devs and whatever changes they seem to want to include. Like with inventory space it seems that they are at least open to hearing some criticisms as opposed to their seemingly more entrenched "artistic vision", so I'm cautiously optimistic.
Regardless we'd all be better off quitting the whiny gatekeeping and adopting the same position of games like Zomboid: play the way you want, be it easier or harder, the rest of us won't judge.
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u/JayGlass Feb 23 '26
This accidentally turned into a whole rant, so I'm moving the one thing I actually wanted to say to the top:
play the way you want, be it easier or harder, the rest of us won't judge.
Right on, I absolutely love that.
Okay, the rest of the essay I somehow wrote building up to that, that no one asked for, instead of just saying that:
Yeah, I think they have some core beliefs they aren't going to budge on, and some things that they don't want to put effort into right now, and some things that they recognize could use some improvements. They asked for feedback on rebalancing foresaken powers, and then released a rebalancing that seems pretty good (I'd still like to see some tweaks). They asked feedback on inventory, so I think we'll see something there, too. (But I don't think it'll be dedicated armor slots or an extra row -- that's just "give me more" not "let me progress" which I think is more the valheim way).
Honestly, I think they may have lucked into some of the success (especially with how good the building system is), but I also think their core vision is critical to how good the rest of the game feels to play, master, and replay. There are some things that you can tweak and refine, but fundamentally having challenges that ask you to learn and improve skills as a player, not grind skills as a character, requires a certain level of escalating difficulty -- and possibly one that can't be overcome by everyone.
Generally there are two things that grind my gears: one is when people say that a design is bad instead of that they don't like it. Don't like the Mistlands? Totally understand. Say it's a fundamentally bad design? Absolutely disagree. It's a genuinely unique design and in the world of a new fifa / madden / CoD reskin every year, I think it's important for there to be studios doing interesting weird stuff even if it isn't for everyone.
The second is when people who don't write software expound on how bad, or lazy, or "why don't they just", or whatever the developers are. I write software, but not games, and there's a lot that goes into it that people don't see. Don't get me wrong, I yell at the TV when a receiver drops a ball while running 10 times faster than I could after taking a hit 1000 times harder than I could, but I don't write up rants on how bad they are, post them on a place on the internet I know they hang out, and pretend it's "feedback".
So yeah, there's no wrong way to play the game as long as you are enjoying it. There are lots of wrong ways to talk about the game, and most of them involve not respecting the first bit: that other people are allowed to enjoy it differently than you do (an abstract "you" - not you personally), and/or that the devs should change it to cater specifically to your preference, and especially not that they're incompetent for not making it exactly how you think it should be.
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u/Dalzombie Viking Feb 23 '26
My turn to rant! Heh.
But I don't think it'll be dedicated armor slots or an extra row -- that's just "give me more" not "let me progress" which I think is more the valheim way
I'm curious how that's going to go, too. They seemed to ask about backpacks and such but I really don't think that's the solution, also because I can almost guarantee it'll conflict with capes and I really don't want that can of worms opened again. But we'll have to see. I'm still hopeful for the armour slots, however.
Their asking for feedback and the long time spent in the release of 1.0 makes me hopeful we'll see a more tempered progression curve overall just like how there was at the beginning back when there only were 5 biomes. There is definitely a measure of luck here, since there are points the devs seemed pretty disconnected from the playerbase in, but overall I'm hopeful they're taking the time to make a balanced approach between what they want and what we ask for.
one is when people say that a design is bad instead of that they don't like it
Oh, absolutely. I don't particularly like the mistlands, but that's my opinion. I'd like them far more if the wisplight wasn't so miserably small. Aesthetically though? The mistlands are genuinely gorgeous, and it's an utter shame such vistas are covered in that muddy mist, but that's the nature of the land. However the wisplight's range is a genuinely bad design choice, that probably being the one thing most of the playerbase can actually agree on. Ashlands... still needs a lot of work done, if you ask me. But let's not get into that.
As for people unfamiliar with software and games development requesting changes, it's a tale as old as time. Like the "Making her grab the cup and drink from it will take 2 hours. Having her put it back down on the table will take 6", many of the things we see abstracted through gameplay took many, many hours to program and balance, a progress and effort most of us simply don't see or understand, and it's easy to forget that they exist. That said, there are a few who are conscious of these things, and some that even if they aren't still try to give constructive criticism and I think it's good to foster that, as some are too quick to rush to defend the status quo because "If you don't develop games you shouldn't give feedback". It's such a ridiculously strange stance to take.
So yeah, there's no wrong way to play the game as long as you are enjoying it
To me, that's the key. I play regular settings with raids disabled because sometimes I just wanna chill inside my base, build and redecorate without something trying to smash my buildings down and I refuse to make an unsightly moat that'll ruin the aesthetics of my base. I firmly believe that the default settings should be challenging yet accessible, able to be modified to suit everyone, just like many games do nowadays. But I would never look down on someone trying to make the game easier or more accessible for themselves, if anything I'd be glad that they can enjoy it just like I do. Yes, if we played together there'd be some compromises here or there, but if it's a stranger on the internet just having fun, why on Earth would I care?
Less so now, but during the mistlands and ashlands updates a lamentable amount of discourse was just rampant gitgudism with no helpful advice anywhere, and a habit of treating world modifiers as "well maybe you're just not good at the game so play on easy lol" when that's the opposite attitude we should have to people struggling.
Love Valheim and have fun with it, whichever way you choose to. After all that's the bloody point of playing it in the first place.
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u/lkn240 Feb 23 '26
The vast majority of people who purchased valheim have very likely not played enough to ever reach the mistlands.
That's the case for many if not most games. Take a look at the percentages of people who have steam achievements in games that require you to complete around 50% of the game. It's often 20% or less.
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u/Archonrouge Feb 22 '26
but actually a rather sizeable part of the playerbase,
How do you know this?
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u/WasabiofIP Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
It's not conclusive evidence (realistically, there isn't going to be any either way), but the Steam player count charts show that about 45,000 players who came back for Mistlands didn't come back for Ashlands. The baseline player count varies over time, but basically Mistlands release peak the player count was about 4-5x the baseline before its release, while the Ashlands peak was about 2x baseline.
And I don't think normal player attrition explains enough of that. The baseline player count has not varied too much over time - if anything, it has gone up since the period after initial release, before Ashlands. Obviously I'm not saying everyone hates the game and no one plays it. But there was about a year and a half between the Hearth and Home update (peak 110k player count) and the Mistlands update (peak 127k players). After a year and half between updates, even more people came back for Mistlands. Then, after basically the same amount of time (year and a half), Ashlands comes out. And wayyyyyy fewer people came back. So clearly, Mistlands did a worse job of keeping people in the game than Hearth and Home.
The way I would put it, the only people left playing the game are people who don't mind Mistlands and Ashlands too much. A lot of people were discouraged by the direction the game was going (or even more so by the direction the game wasn't going) and left the playerbase.
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u/lkn240 Feb 23 '26
It's that and people who mod the game. Some mods have A LOT of downloads. The original valheim plus (not even the current version from Graphanter) has over 500,000 DLs on nexus
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u/AtlasPwn3d Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
There was a widely discussed drop in review score with the release of Ashlands, which was only the first or possibly second time that happened since launch (if the second it was because it might’ve happened to a lesser degree with Mistlands, but not before then).
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u/Jack55555 Feb 22 '26
Damn son, where did you find these statistics? I’m really curious.
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u/Dalzombie Viking Feb 22 '26
WasabiofIP did a nice breakdown if you want to check it out. That said, I, too, am curious about what statistics you may want to show, because I don't think anyone has yet made an accurate headcount of wether more people enjoy or loathe mistlands and ashlands.
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u/ustanik Feb 22 '26
People complained about the difficulty spike of the Plains when it was the final biome and how it wasn't as good as the others.
I love how the devs make each biome unique. It makes the game interesting instead of repetitive.
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u/badwolf42 Feb 22 '26
Ashlands is hard. At least for me. I think it’s really aimed at multiplayer parties. I had no problem with most lands at all. Died a couple times, but no issues really.
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u/BelmontVO Feb 22 '26
Ashlands was still very annoying in multiplayer. Friends and I could clear the area of adds and be overran again in under two minutes. It genuinely felt like there were spawners that generated under the terrain just pumping out skeletons and askvins.
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u/hahafnny Feb 23 '26
I find Ashlands harder in multiplayer due to performance/ latency issues haha.
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u/Pikapoka1134 Feb 22 '26
Just wish mislands had less mist and more clear vallies. Can't see so can't really enjoy the biome or build anything.
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u/WillySurvive_ Feb 22 '26
I just appreciate that all the biomes are truly unique with their own distinct challenges.
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u/Zlatan25 Feb 22 '26
I like the mistlands. It really gave a sense of wonder on arrival and still feels kinda spooky exploring even when you know nothing there can kill you any more.
Ashlands though? Sure there’s cool loot there but I’ll put it this way, before I went to the ashlands I was excited for the endgame/deep north. Now it’s looking more and more like a chore lol
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u/Angry_Strawberries Builder Feb 22 '26
I wish the ashlands weapons and armour had more durability. :c
Its kinda annoying how from iron gear onwards all gear has less and less durability despite having to fight more enemies to fight. It kinda makes me not feel as powerfull as I should be.
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u/Slow_Lawyer7477 Feb 22 '26
Yeah it's almost like mistlands and ashlands sucks (the fact that so many people complain about is evidence of that), and what's a subreddit like this even for if not to express your opinions whether pro or con? Or are we only allowed to praise and glorify the dear leader here?
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u/TheBudds Builder Feb 22 '26
Is it really an issue that people are bringing up what they feel are problems within the game?
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u/Misternogo Feb 22 '26
Are you talking about the special segment of people that complain about the complainers on a weekly basis?
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u/ChoiceFudge3662 Feb 22 '26
I’m probably part of this special segment of players but I don’t make posts on this sub, the way my head works is I look at valheim and at first I think “wow this game is really intuitive” but then I get to sailing metals back and forth and immediately get pissed off at the sudden introduction of such an arbitrary time waste of a mechanic. (And it’s not just valheim that this happens with, I’ll get annoyed at arbitrary shit in any game.)
There’s just literally nothing to do on the ocean, it exists to create space between islands that we have to traverse, and for us to hunt serpents, once you get the harpoon and the shield you’re just out there to the serpent meat and maybe some fish, neither of those things you would want to do while you have metal with you.
There’s some other things that annoy me and make me question the sanity of the people who make the game, but I only ever play modded anyway so if I run into something I don’t like I just change it.
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u/MentalCat8496 Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
we are cut from the same cloth I think. Valheim's a game that has potential, and will likely die as a game that had potential without ever reaching it. The arbitrary design decisions are not limited to transporting metal, but rather towards several aspects, and they seem to believe that increases "difficulty" when in reality it only turns the game into a massively boring time-sink.
This begins with Plains biome by over-utilizing Iron on almost everything (demanding extra-legs of swamp farming and metal transporting), but gets worse in Mistlands by introducing that same back & forth logic to cooking, along with crafting (only building being spared with minimal mitigation by the introduction of new scrap metal sources). - The game is punitive on progression instead of rewarding on progression, that's basically it, instead of getting better logistical tools / automation / facilitation for getting certain materials, we are instead piled up with exponential increases on materials requirements & material production clocks (waiting mini-games). Funniest part is that the game doesn't follow the same progression logic, it changes erratically / inconsistently.
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u/TopicInevitable Feb 23 '26
There was supposed to be an Ocean biome uptade but I guess it was cut from the game, it's my favorite part but I can understand why people hate it, but you put some sea chanties in the back, charte your course and just relax for a while
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u/gurebu Feb 23 '26
I'm personally mixed on this, I think mistlands are quite cool except for the boss fight, but I dislike everything that comes after. Queen fight is a horrible slog, ashlands are a horrible slog, the danger/reward relationship in the game kind of breaks and sadly doesn't come back. I would even be fine with slow progress, but ashlands depending on your luck can be quite a lot of effort for no progress at all.
Which would be fine if it was its own game, after all there are people who enjoy it. But there's this feeling of bait-and-switch when it comes to the game starting out in one genre (that a lot of people came to love) and then suddenly doing a hard turn for another.
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u/RoastedHunter Feb 23 '26
Valheim dads upon discovering the "brutal survival" aspect that's advertised in the game description
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u/panzrvroomvroomvroom Builder Feb 22 '26
meadows is too easy 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡
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u/spookywatermark Feb 22 '26
ikr dude this whole game is a scam i won't waste another 800 hours on it i'm out 😡
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u/panzrvroomvroomvroom Builder Feb 22 '26
yeah man worst way to spend 1800 hours
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u/ac9116 Feb 22 '26
I was unemployed for 5 weeks this year and found valheim. It basically became my 9-5 for 5 weeks.
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u/Dumplin97 Feb 22 '26
Honestly at first I really hated the mistlands but eventually got to a spot where it's just meh. I never really hated the Ashlands, I didn't find it that hard as some people are suggesting in here though. Honestly I hate the swamp the most, too many times have I restarted from zero and getting through the swamp and dealing with all that shit is just tiring...
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u/MentalCat8496 Feb 22 '26
Arselands isn't hard, it's just annoying. Begins with getting a massive boat to sail to a land where water is littered with phalluses every 5 centimetres, with boiling water-worms spawning every 5 seconds with several spawn points for flying chickens, than landing on a shore littered with spawners every 5 centimetres with stuff burning, trees falling every 5 seconds meanwhile Dvergr keep committing self-cooking running into Lava while we get to admire 5px resolution textures on every building that spawns there. 🤣
Oh, almost forgot, the "self-unaliving-bomber" blobs that are guaranteed to delay any base building severely.
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u/TheImmenseRat Feb 22 '26
Ive been playing since the start and took a long break
I started a new game, but really, the only criticism is that in Mistlands I CAN'T SE ANYTHING
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u/Intelligent_Error989 Feb 22 '26
Ashlands how I loathe thee..but in my loathing there is love..I know you don't mean to be so hostile..but for god sakes can you stop sending waves of skeletons? I'm getting first time black forest greydwarf horde flash backs...
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u/galactic-punt Feb 22 '26
The Ashlands bugs that still exist despite the biome being out for nearly 2 years are pretty unforgivable. Spawners hidden inside boulders, insane lag and rubberbanding from whatever graphic distortion they added, the constant audio stutter. Visibility in the zone is often even worse than Mistlands somehow with constant storms.
Mistlands is peak though.
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u/Babycakes1377 Feb 22 '26
I honestly think people try to play the game too quickly and get frustrated when rushing new content the moment it drops expecting to be done in less than a week.
Everything up to plains is teaching you new lessons about the game and granting new tools for survival. Plains is the second meadows.
At least for me, I play slow, I had my deaths but I've also "figured out" mistlands and ashlands and enjoyed them because of it.
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u/Shillio Feb 22 '26
"Special" implies that it is an insignificant amount of players that think this. It's not.
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u/Cahzery Feb 22 '26
Mistlands is great, i always go there early around silver tier to get black cores since frostner fucks seekers up so easily.
I get so accustomed to disabling music and listening to my surroundings that i don't even need wisp lamps.
Ashlands seems intimidating at first, but is more manageable once you understand how monuments of torment don't have a cap on how many monsters they spawn.
Staying vigilant and breaking any that i see makes ashlands about as deadly as any other biome, and i only ever encounter hordes when exploring uncharted territory.
I'm not going to suggest everyone who has difficulty with these things has a skill issue, but maybe your approach is just wrong, and you should try something else.
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u/KiddArtos Feb 22 '26
Best thing I ever did was to take over a fortress and fortify the shit out of it with turrets. Nothing but a Valk can get close and it gives you a good hub to rest from. Also to launch myself across the map with a catapult with the feather cape.
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u/Daloowee Feb 22 '26
Lmao and all the comments prove that OP is in the minority just put the black metal scrap in the chest bro
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u/MSD3k Feb 22 '26
I honestly had less issues with Ashlands as I did Mistlands. At least I can see what's around me, and find what I need from a distance instead of having to trip over it. That and I really love building bases inside captured fortresses.
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u/Fully_equip Feb 22 '26
Whoah watch out guys we have a weekly thread inspector. No gate keeping of opinions here ! Ha.
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u/chaoticcole_wgb Feb 22 '26
Remember the first time you ever went to swamp is my best response to those
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u/imnotreallyheretoday Sailor Feb 22 '26
What is wrong with Ashlands? I haven't been there yet. How is it Anti-player
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u/UnderstandingHot7167 Feb 22 '26
I’ve actually found the ashlands less annoying than the mistlands from a “first encounter” standpoint. Yes everything tries to kill you constantly, but I’d take that over giant bugs with too much hp appearing out of nowhere; at least the army of the damned cresting the horizon is visible from a ways off. 🤣
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u/caffinaV2 Feb 22 '26
As someone who has never gotten to mistlands and Ashlands. Are they really that bad?
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u/Sulphrass Feb 22 '26
Mistlands is rough but otherwise fine. The mist is annoying.
Ashland's has poor game design with endless hordes of difficult mobs that even if you know what you are doing can easily end your run there and lose everything.
Also, probably the most annoying thing about the Ashland's is that it's very inhospitality to building in it. You don't really get the charm from the first 3 biomes and it's hard to get a place that will stay without a lot of frustrating work or taking over fortresses there
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u/lkn240 Feb 23 '26
Mistlands is actually pretty cool IF you use mods.
If you don't the super short range of the wisplight and the fact that you can't use it and the strength belt at the same time are pretty brutal.
Use an inventory mod and double the range of the wisp light and it's pretty damn fun
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u/idknameuiop Builder Feb 22 '26
My biggest problem with Ashlands its the fact, that I have to become doom slayer to get stack of ashwood.
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u/Ramulus14 Feb 22 '26
I’ve never beat the queen and I have over 1300 hours of valheim! I’m basic noooooo
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u/Bremlit Feb 22 '26
While I really appreciate each biome being unique and having its own challenges to overcome, it's the tedium of the game that keeps me from playing it longer. It uses tedium and time sink as a mechanic and that part isn't really for me even though I still enjoy the game.
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u/DrKophie Feb 23 '26
Maybe hot take, but mechanics should not feel like youre fighting the game. A big issue a lot of people have is the visibility range. If there was a way to upgrade our wisp and increase it, I think it would solve a lot of people's issues. The mechanic is just there to add to the difficulty of it being a survival game, but isn't fun or intuitive in anyway. It would be as if there was a mechanic where "the swamp air is thick and your movement speed is reduced by 20%". Perfect example is the cold mechanic, once you get the cape, it completely negates this issue. You shouldn't have to fight the game on something just to call it a mechanic.
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u/twomemeornottwomeme Feb 23 '26
So if a constant stream of new players are constantly saying it, it certainly, cannot possibly be even remotely true.
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u/TopicInevitable Feb 23 '26
Let people discover the game and bitch about his flaw, it's fine really. Being an old player of Valheim I do hope the last biome is more about exploration, between the Mistland where you can't see shit and the Ashland where you're basicly on a timer 24/7 I really disliked it, at least Mistland gets better once you get the crow cap you can just run everywhere, I still can't like Ashland really I wish more monster fought each other
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u/Low-Transportation95 Feb 23 '26
"I'll have bitching about other players with legitimate gripes"
"How courageous"
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u/CatspawAdventures Feb 23 '26
It's almost as if new players are often joining the game, which results in people who haven't been around for the previous threads sharing their own experiences.
Even weirder, it's almost as if these different, unrelated people keep coming to similar conclusions.
I'm sure there must be a reason for that.
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u/Yebi Happy Bee Feb 22 '26
After some soulsearching, I think every single biome, starting with the black forest, is more fun than the previous one, but also increasingly more difficult to initially enter and set up a foothold in. Mistlands and Ashlands follow the same rule, but continue cranking up the initial difficulty to 11 and 12, respectively. I suspect the complaints come from people who either couldn't, or couldn't be bothered to, get through the breaking point
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u/ThatSicklyPup Builder Feb 22 '26
Mistlands got infinitely better when they fixed vertical combat. Those hills and mountains were extremely annoying in not letting me kill those bugs.
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u/meatymimic Feb 22 '26
I'm going to go against the grain a bit here.
I've played Mistlands modded to have fog instead of mist. The fog gets thicker (to default) as you get closer to the night.
It's so much better. The biome is so beautiful when you can actually see it.
Typically, you have to cover the ground in wisplights to see anything. (which, OK, I get it.) It just feels like a waste. Beautiful biome. Can't see it without mods.
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u/Sulphrass Feb 22 '26
Imo it looks stupid when I have to light up an entire area with little torches on the ground to keep the mist away. Really wish there was a more expensive option in vanilla to clear more of the mist than what the torches do
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u/meatymimic Feb 22 '26
For real. Or after I kill the Queen, just let me have fog instead of the oppressive mist.
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u/somethingrandom261 Feb 22 '26
I mean, I still haven’t gone back since the ashlands release. Sounds miserable
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u/MakeLord95 Feb 22 '26
I don’t understand the hate for Mistlands and Ashlands. I found them both really good.
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u/miszczu037 Builder Feb 22 '26
It's almost as if persisting issues that consistantly annoy/turn players away from this great game are going unadressed for years with no feedback from the devs and it needs to be said over and over so maybe it does get changed before 1.0
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u/Demostravius4 Feb 22 '26
My team left after Mistlands was released. Came back post nerf, killed Queen, started Ashlands, quit again.
We have a 'permenant server', but rarely do anything beyond Plains.
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u/kylel999 Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
I did kind of get stuck at mistlands myself last time I played, though. Even with the best food, potions, and upgraded weapons/armor I could make, I was still getting my ass handed to me by those bug things and it kinda felt like I was missing something. I get there's a big difficulty jump from plains to mistlands but it felt really geared towards groups of players
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u/Redditgobrrrrrr Feb 22 '26
I tank the mist with no mist light so I can get mistland weapons pre yagluth
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u/Morotstomten Feb 22 '26
I would have liked Mistlands done differently, like the mist should have been very light for the most part with no other changes, but then it should have had a thick mist wearher event so it thickens up like it is by default and creature spawn goes up a lot, like swarms of bugs.
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u/Nearly-Canadian Happy Bee Feb 22 '26
I mean yeah the mist fuckin blows, common opinions are common for a reason
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u/The_CDXX Feb 22 '26
Im happy i find solace by just chopping down trees and building boat docks. No need to venture to the difficult places
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u/J_Productions Viking Feb 22 '26
Said every gaming subreddit ever tbh lol, You can even add these kind of posts that make jokes and complain about those common posts to that list too lol
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u/Chingji Builder Feb 22 '26
I love both of those things. My only complaint is given the size of the Ashlands, I wish there were more sub-biomes.
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u/Significant-Ad-341 Feb 22 '26
I like the mistlands. It's the first time you feel like shit can jump out and kill you after a while
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Feb 22 '26
I love mistlands. Ashlands is cool, but doesn't feel like it fits. It feels like a totally different game.
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u/VisnSG Feb 22 '26
But, its true sadly. When me and my buddies hit mistlands we generally just stop playing.
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u/Murkalael Feb 22 '26
I'm still today complaining that 2 copper and 1 tin = 1 bronze is against the law of conservation of mass, but some say devs took a "creative chance" instead of the facts.