Valheim’s Broken Progression Mechanic

Valheim, released in 2021, has a functionally broken progression system. The game’s difficulty ramps up dramatically after the swamp, causing players to focus either on early game content or rely on mods to fundamentally change the game. Valheim’s approach to the survival mechanic has made progression take an exhausting amount of time to reach the best parts of the game and its updates.

Many players will reflect on their fondest memories resting between the meadows and the swamps, when the game is still simple and the gameplay loop is refreshing. The manual nature of everything works and the game is challenging and exciting, no matter the settings. Starting at the mountains things change.

This comes from a Valheim multiplayer prespective, not so much a single player perspective.

The Issues with Progression

The biome progression within Valheim is meadows, dark forest, swamp, mountains, plains, mistlands, ashlands and then the as of currently unfinished deep north. The ocean biome is effectively ever present, but always hinted as receiving updates as well. Each finished biome has a boss that provides an item that makes the next zone possible:

• Meadows: Pickaxe to mine ore in the Dark Forest.
• Dark Forest: Key to unlock the dungeons in the swamp.
• Swamp: A Wishbone, an item that lets you find silver in the mountains.
• Mountains: Dragons Tear, item that unlocks the Artisan Table which lets you smelt black metal.
• Plains: Torn Spirit that allows you to collect wisps, which remove the mists in the mistlands.
• Mistlands: A special carapace that lets you upgrade the Artisan Table and build ceramic plates, which allow you to build a boat that can take the boiling water in the ashlands.

Players start in the meadows, with low risk low spawn enemies and work to get the first boss down, requiring you to build a bow and some armor from local deer and enemies. The dark forest will open up armor, weapons and more buildings. Farming also starts to become important as food is essentially consumable gear, where your health, stamina and mana (Eitr) come from.

Once strong enough, the dark forest grants access into the dungeons within the swamps. This is where iron comes from. Players on default settings can’t build portals to transport iron, it has to be carried on foot, meaning that it has to usually be transported to a boat and taken through the ocean back to the base to be smelted.

This is the first breakpoint: the swamps.

Swamp and Mountains

The swamp is a lot of fun at first. It has new unique enemies and dungeon crawling is the entire point. Get inside the dungeons and acquire iron, then get it back to base to smelt it. This rinses and repeats for the entire swamp biome until you take on the boss, unlocking your ability to find silver.

The mountains require frost resistance mead and with the smelters needing to run and so many different metals in play, the game starts to become a logistical nightmare. Without mods you can’t move bases, without gameplay setting changes you have to walk or float iron back to your base. The more players the more swamps you’ll need to scrub for materials.

Not to mention needing portal materials, which you farm from the dark forest. Adding in the mountains, the frost mechanic, wolves, the eggs which can’t move through portals, etc. it can start becoming difficult to get much done. You’ve got to soup to nuts everything in the game and there isn’t any shortcuts yet.

The early simplicity starts to roll back and once you’re done with the mountains, it’s time for the plains.

The Plains

The plains is just brutal. Furlings are aggressive, fast and aren’t easy to out run (in contrast to enemies in the ashlands.. but more on that). Mosquitos can one shot you at this point in the game. Surtling cores drop here from bonfires, but you’ll still need greydwarf eyes and fine wood which will have you returning back to the dark forest.

You’ll also have an expansive farming operation at this point. You’ll need iron still, which will have you running back to the swamp. At this point, between how hard Furlings are and Mosquitos which can one shot you, many players drop off here.

It doesn’t get easier from here either.

Mistlands

If you get through the plains, you’ll now need to go into the mistlands. Here’s where things get far more complicated. There is no automation for past mechanics and the game adds several new ones. The food in the mistlands only grows in the mistlands and you’ll need sap, which can only be farmed in the mistlands. You can’t build a base here due to the Gjall, a flying monster that throws fireballs at buildigns.

You can’t see either and Seekers can hunt you down, making the entire experience challenging. You’ll need to do a lot of things in the mistlands, to even just prepare for the boss and the ashlands. That includes still farming the dark forest, mountains and plains. Thankfully, iron is available in abundance in the mistlands.

There is no automation and a new building (that you have to wall in with iron) that you have to manage as a smelter. New equipment, new crafting tables and zero automation. At this point it can be fatiguing to run a base.

If you haven’t turned on metal through portals yet, you still have to walk any iron you get from the mistlands back to your base as well. You can’t have a base in the mistlands due to the Gjall and Seekers, which can fly over any defenses.

Ashlands

If you’re still in at this point, you’re going to need to establish some kind of portal into the ashlands to keep yourself safe. There are rock formations / spires on the edge that you can build on, but Voltures spawn and fly around them. You can build a few campfires to spawn suppress them, then build a portal and have a somewhat safe… landing zone.

You’re now in a new biome that has endless spawns as its gimmick. The swamp used the water, mountains was terrain, plains was the mosquitos and loxes, mistlands was the mists and gjalls and seekers. Ashlands is lots of enemies, everywhere, all chasing you. You can outrun them, especially with Ashlands gear.

Which you have to farm, the game now gives you the option to carry metal through portals. This is to more or less allow you to build with iron in the ashlands, a near requirement as it doesn’t burn and isn’t as heavy as stone.

Total Effort

At the Ashlands, you’ll need:

• Meadows: Wood, Boar/Deer Meat, Greydwarf Eyes, Honey, Mushrooms, Raspberries
• Black Forest: Wood (all), Copper, Bronze, Tin, Stone, Greydwarf Eyes, Surtling Cores, Carrots, Skeleton Trophies
• Swamp: Iron, Surtling Cores, Chains, Turnips
• Mountains: Obsidian, Silver, Onions
• Plains: Barley, Black Metal, Onions, Flax, Tar, Needle, Cloudberries
• Mistlands: Yggdrasil Wood, Sap, Jotun Puffs, Dvergr Lanterns, Soft Tissue, Black Cores, Royal Jelly, Wisps, Iron, Copper, Black Marble, Magecap

Many of these items have to be taken to a base manually. You’ll need to farm all of it manually, with the only automation in the form of being able to run a farm with seeds in a heavily defended area. Even then you’ve go to maintain farms in specific biomes and berries can’t be farmed.

Ashlands also adds in lots of new farmables, including new berries, but that’s all a new problem once you’re actually at the ashlands. Most of the problems begin to compile at the plains.

Solutions

Progression should be solved by the developers in a Hearth & Home style update, providing new forms of automation for players to compress the work from previous biomes. This can be done by introducing varients that require higher level biome materials, for instance portals. Instead of greydwarf eyes, you could have one that requires black marble and surtling cores.

Planting boxes that automatically regrow once you’ve gathered and let you grow out of biome would be nice, especially once you’ve defeated a boss of that biome. More responsive combat would also be kind of nice, if we’re asking for things.

Right now players turn to mods and the game settings from the pre-ashland update. That is, except for some of the community. The blog’s latest update focuses more on the board game, Valheim: Development Blog: In Case You Missed It – Valheim (valheimgame.com), but they’re also currently on a month break.

Hardcore Players = Hardcore Demands

At the core of the issue is the survivalist players of Valheim. They play the game to survive, not to thrive. As such, their demands are that everything has a cost. The Ballista targets players as a tradeoff for the automated nature, without a trophy (meaning you’ve personally defeated the enemy) at which point you trade it’s “attack everything” with “attack one thing.”

Meant more to help in outdoor boss fights with farming and less as autoamted defenses, the Ballista shows the mindset of how the game is meant to be played. Everything has a tradeoff, with everything requiring grueling work to achieve in a very harsh, unforgiving world.

That sounds great, but when you add in multiple players needing everything, it becomes a true slog. It’s one of those scenarios where more options, more customizations and more items in the game truly help it shine more, in my opinion.