Valheim. Survival about Vikings that took over Steam – Igromania

Valheim is a survival game. She has some kind of plot, and most importantly – a clear end goal. We play as a Viking who fell in battle, who, instead of getting to Valhalla, ended up on a stage in the world-prison of Valheim, where dangerous monsters are kept. The most powerful of them are so strong that even Odin fears them. So the choice is small: if you don’t want to hang out with half-dead slugs and draugrs until Ragnarok, prove yourself worthy, defeat all the bosses and you will find yourself in an endless drunkenness in a Viking paradise.

Diary of a Viking beginner. Day 1

I flew to Valheim with truly medieval comfort – in the clutches of a giant bird. There is no luggage compartment in the feathered liner: only a torch, a canvas tunic and underpants are with you. A standard start for most survivors. According to all the canons, we make our first ax from stones and sticks and go ahead – chop wood to build at least some shelter from inclement weather and wild animals.

Old Scandinavian air travel

Trees among Valheim fans have already become a viral meme: a felled log can heat up so that a gaping lumberjack will immediately go to the respawn point. You can talk for a long time about the trajectory of the fall, and about the fact that the fallen trunks break others according to the domino principle, but the most important thing here is the feeling. When you cut down a large tree for the first time, your hands naturally shake with tension. Each blow of the ax on the trunk seems to hit your nerves.

Over time, of course, you get used to it, but this does not mean that you can relax. Overconfidence can cost Valheim much more than hitting the back of the head with a log. For example, my first meager belongings – a fire, a workbench, and a bed under a thatched canopy – I nonchalantly attached right at the foot of the hill. Then I went up the slope for another batch of building materials, because several beeches were growing very successfully on the top … Where do you think the felled trees fell? There was no stone unturned from my humble hideout.

The first attempts at illegal timber mining were quickly interrupted by a local law enforcement officer

Day 4. Buffet

You can’t die of hunger in Valheim. Checked: I left the hapless Norman hanging around the fire for a couple of days of playtime while I was out on business. He did not become either deader or slimmer. The developers deliberately abandoned some realistic survival mechanics so as not to overload the gameplay with unnecessary hassle. The idea was to bring the gameplay closer to old-school single-action RPGs, so you don’t have to worry about every character’s vital signs.

But this does not mean that you can not worry about food at all: on the contrary, you need to feed the hero in Valheim often and as varied as possible. Each food eaten gives a buff – gradually heals, and also temporarily increases the scale of health and stamina. The more complex and nutritious the diet, the better the buff will be, and at the same time the hero can be fed no more than three different goodies. Fortified with raspberries and blueberries growing at every step, you can at least fight against greydwarves (souls of killers, revived in tree flesh) and trolls, but to compete on equal terms with the final bosses, you will need more abrupt buffs. You will have to take the time to learn how to make bullfin pies, brew mead and mix potions.

Sweets for the next few days

Day 9. The Viking who couldn’t swim

Killed a troll for the first time. For about ten minutes he showered the thick-skinned whopper with arrows, hiding behind bushes and birches. To celebrate, he hurried home with a full bag of trophies, was too lazy to look for a ford near a tiny river and drowned a couple of meters from the shore.

Having simplified some mechanics, the developers have filled others with nuances – where this did not prevent the implementation of exciting gameplay. Without learning how to swim, you can drown in water, simply exhausted. When preparing food, pieces of meat must be manually removed from the fire in time, otherwise they will turn into coals. And if you light a fire in the middle of a room without taking care of ventilation, you will face an inglorious death from carbon monoxide poisoning. The physics of smoke is perfectly implemented here: in order to sleep in warmth and comfort without the risk of suffocation, you will have to not only ventilate the room, but also build a thatched roof higher. Of course, all these are trifles, and we have already seen most of them in other games, however, it is on such details that the charm of successful survivors is built.

Days 25-29. The game is like going to work

He chopped wood, gouged copper and tin out of the rock. He carried heavy metals on his own hump to the base in several passes. Melted bronze. Crafted a car, it went faster, but not much. Unfortunately, it was not without a routine.

Day 30. Finally into battle

After the hard labor craft days, I went out to try out a new thing – a bronze cuirass, an ax and a birch bow. I recalled my grievances to all the inhabitants of the starting biomes – skeletons, greydwarves, ghosts. Having gone into a rage, he decided to make a noise in the swamps, but he quickly calmed down his ardor, having met an aggressive pile of mucus, spitting poison. It will not be possible to bravely fight such opponents on a sober head: in order not to sit out in the bushes after each poisonous hit, you need to arm yourself with healing mead.

Leveling is done in the tradition The elder scrolls – only those skills that you actively use grow. The decision is controversial: sometimes you catch yourself thinking that you don’t want to fight with another crowd of monsters, because they will not give experience points for this

The feel of the weapon is beyond praise. Hitting the enemy with an ax or club is accompanied by a juicy sound and shaking of the camera, critical hits scatter in a bunch of sparks. The only thing that leaves much to be desired: the opponents have a minimal set of attacks, and they always act in the same way.

Day 63. A good friend is better than a sharp ax

They blew mead, protecting from frost, and dealt with the fourth boss – the giant ice-breathing dragon Mouder – in just five minutes. I would have spent a long time with him alone, but I had a friend with me who had played Valheim for nearly a hundred hours. He brought with him to my server two Fangs of Draug (the best bow in the game) and two sets of padded armor with cloaks made of bullfinch. As a result, almost all of the cuffs and frostbite went to my high-level partner. Apparently, Mauder simply did not take me seriously, and all I had to do was to lightly shower the lizard with a hail of fiery arrows, standing to the side.

Bosses boast varied and spectacular attacks. However, the advantage will still be on the side of the “archer + tank” duo

I was especially pleased with the decision of the developers to allow players to transfer their pumped character along with all the equipment to the server to a friend. It’s pretty damn convenient. Thus, you can share resources, armor and weapons, and if a company of several people is playing, then you do not have to wait for the host to launch a shared server. While he is offline, you can tackle the hero in your world and then transfer him with all the achievements to a shared server to your friends.

But you won’t be able to go through the well-known paths on another server. Due to procedural generation, the landscape in each world is radically different, and each time the boss habitats will have to be rediscovered. The fact that the biomes are mixed here like glass in a kaleidoscope does not simplify the task: meadows, black forest, swamps, mountains, plains are scattered in random order in the waters of the endless ocean. For a high-level location, a piece of the initial one can go and vice versa. Starting with a friend on a voyage on a raft or drakkar, you will never know for sure what lies ahead – this makes you feel like real Norman discoverers.

Weighing only 1 GB and the absence of HD textures, the game somehow manages to conquer in some unthinkable way, even with a picture. In Valheim, you often want to take a break just to meet the sunrise and watch the clouds float across the sky