Just when things felt like they were going right I woke up to a message that indicated a raid of creatures was coming to destroy my shack. Needless to say, I was still no were near ready to be raided. I was mostly out of arrows from running a few dungeons and I’d yet make a better weapon.
I however marched out of my front door to see what kind of madness was incoming. While all on their own or even three of them things would normally not be an issue. When you have quite a lot of creatures, with some healers, and brutes in the mix.
Things start to get more interesting even more so when you let all your food expire so you only had the base health to deal with the situation in the first place. Needless to say, I had to resort to trying to kite and pick off what I could when I could.
At the very least I had the Eikthyr buff to use that reduced my stamina costs for running around. This allowed a little more breathing room than I would have gotten otherwise. I still did not solve another issue.
While trying to kite you do end up creating a bit of a death ball of creatures. If you get caught by it you are more than likely dead. This naturally did happen at least twice making it fun times trying to go back out, get my corpse, and equip some gear before things got close enough to hit me again on low health.
I was over time able to use the terrain to split up the death ball and get some well-placed hits killing off some of the weaker creatures. In the end, I did the best I could, and after a lot of struggle whatever was left ended up wandering away once their attempted raid on me ended.
For now, the shack survived. I went to start turning the tin and copper bars I had into bronze. It was about time I started upgrading some things. It turns out that making a sword as a weapon was not going to be the first thing I did. I ended up wanting to do a lot of tree cutting so I went for the axe first. I could always use it as a weapon if needed and it came in handy a couple of times.
I then proceeded to make a lot of trips back and forth to the Black Forest. Thankfully the section I was mining tin and copper out of was not that far away. There would be a point I’d set up a storage place to dump the ores and carry stuff back in a cart. For now, it was just quicker to do it all by foot.
Over time the mining deposits that were the closest to me ran dry and I had to keep running deeper and deeper into the Black Forest. That however was the last of my issues. There was a far bigger issue every time I went to tap some sweet copper ore out of the ground.
It was several factors bigger. It also hit like a truck and has already killed me a few times over. One thing I did not do was chop down some Black Forest trees for their special wood which would have allowed me to make a better bow. That would have come quite in handy.
I was still however to kill trolls most of the time even with the base bow. It just took a while to do so. I just had to make sure there was enough distance between me and it before lining up the bow for a shot. The only real issue was running out of arrows which happened once when a shaman showed up and started to heal one of the trolls I was killing.
The trolls themselves drop some leather that can be used for more ranged and stealth-type of armor. Not really my playstyle but at some point I’d craft some up as backup gear for corpse runs if things were quite dire.
While mining for ores I went on quite the troll killing spree. I never quite recalled ever having to deal with this many trolls. Sometimes it was entirely my fault. I’d be running off to the Black Forest way to alter into the day and only just be finishing up mining ore with a full inventory by nightfall.
Once I had a full set of bronze armor it made going back into the dungeons and clearing out anything I could not before easy. It even made running into a troll by mistake not as painful since I could take a blow a bit better.
I was even starting to work on upgrading some of the more important pieces such as the sword. I rather enjoy using a sword in Valheim. It was one of the first things I felt was well worth investing the resources into to upgrade first once I had everything else I needed at this level.
The biggest issue with a lot of these upgrades was my lack of leather scraps. I would end up going out on some quite late adventures exploring the different meadows in my area looking for boars so I could get further scraps. Not something I thought would end up being my bottleneck with how much hunting I had already done in the past.
These trips looked mostly for boar and taking out any deer I’d find along the way as well I felt helped break up my mining runs to the Black Forest. Sometimes it’s just nice to mix things up after you've been doing the same activity for hours on end.
Hunting in the meadows was also just a lot more peaceful. Unless I was along the edge of the Black Forest where I once noticed a Troll lurking through the trees. I could not let that sand and took the troll out before going onto the next spot to see if any boards had respawned.
Final Thoughts
After a while, I made a cart to help carry more things back with me. Each trip out for ores or even wood at this point were requiring a lot more distance to be traveled. There was also a growing problem with being in a shack this long. It was no longer enough space for all the chests and crafting instruments I needed.
It would be time soon enough that I’d have to invest some time in preparing and building a much larger house. I did enjoy the location I was at next to the water so it won’t be that far away. It was something I felt I’d start to work on in between doing a lot of other things as well. As it is nice to break up long-term tasks with something else.
I’m still having quite a blast in Valheim and the journey feels like it has only started despite how many in-game days I’m already at. Things are also about to get far more challenging as well. For now, it seems my sights will be focused on building some better protection at home for dealing with the next raid that might not be so kind.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Valheim.
