Firespark's videos on shields showed something that's being completely overlooked.

That speed decrease from the Tower shields is *also* a decrease on knockback/stagger from blocking hard hits. If you block with an appropriate tower shield, there's not many things that are gonna budge you, so you can use the opening right after their swing to punish them for it.

If you are being attacked by multiple opponents and you're using a parry shield; if you parry one of the attackers you get a boost to your shield block vs that attack... now logically it shouldn't affect the block rating vs the other attackers, but... does it?

Second the knife/shield stunlock method. Knife is fast.

Edit: I've never seen a reason to use a slow and cumbersome tower shield. A regular shield was always more than "good enough".

First thing you should craft after getting iron is the iron banded shield. Doesn't need as much material as the buckler and is more than enough to block even fulings and deathsquitos... wearing troll armor! Good food is paramount, of course.

A good shield is more important than armor. Shield first, armor next.

I have used a shield since starting to play Valheim. Currently I use the Black Metal Shield, the best shield in the game. The trick to successfully parrying an opponent is to wait and raise your shield just as your opponent begins their strike. My first practice was against a troll (thanks to my nephew), and it was so much easier than I imagined. Because a troll's strike is so slow, it is telegraphed, so you can easily see when he begins his swing to strike. 99.9% of the time, whether it is a troll or a fuling, or even a ranged attack, a successful parry will stunlock your opponent, leaving lots of time to generally finish them off, especially if one uses a knife as it is such a fast weapon one can get in multiple hits, enough to kill a stunlocked enemy.

What people above have said, go buckler / round shield and actually parry the attack rather than block. Generally you need to upgrade the shield to the metal in that zone before you can parry the harder hitting mobs in the zone. e.g. Trolls will hit through and stagger you if you try parry with a wood shield but Bronze is OK. A 2 star Draugher or Abomination will similarly stagger you on a bronze shield but are are easily parried with iron

The concept of tank isn't really a thing. Most things you parry will die on your counter attack, it isn't as if you stand there for 10 swings soaking damage. Bows are useless on most bosses and take a long time to kill anything in the worldso basically useless apart from 1 mob in the mountains .

Both of you on Ategirs would be better, don't have to bother with shield then and just dodge, hack n slash your way through the game, it's more fun.

Originally posted by blankitosonic:

Originally posted by Bobucles:

The highest level shields are generally the best. Block strength determines how much stamina a block eats, and also determines how much stagger damage you take. The bronze buckler will no longer take you to end game.

Parry is much worse off than the early days. It consumes an extra 20 stamina, which will burn your bar out very quickly in battle. Standard blocking is convenient all around and works well for single player. Tower shields have a bit of extra block power, but the speed bonus hurts it badly. Try them in multiplayer with friends.

Them dont burn stamina if you have very high defense lol , burns in terms of how much base defense you have , its an extra payoff to parry a little more damage that you can
I never have stamina problems as you , at least with good gear equiped and kill the monster after the parry to not consume more stamina , not use critical hits its too wrong ...for using normal block or having a 80 years old man timing to be bad at parry ...



For OP :
use this in order : bronze buckler ( 75 parry + some extra with block skill and hp foods ) , iron buckler ( 100 parry ) , silver shield ( 107 parry ) , blackmetal shield ( 135 parry )
And remember , if you wantto be an efficient tanky try to parry every hit that is incoming to you and kill that parryed monster fast
Use top heavy gear ( iron > wolf > padded ) and hp+hp+stamina food combo , you will be so fine with all that

Wait silver shield has more parry block ? then buckler will be useless for parry right ?

Originally posted by MAB:

Originally posted by blankitosonic:

Them dont burn stamina if you have very high defense lol , burns in terms of how much base defense you have , its an extra payoff to parry a little more damage that you can
I never have stamina problems as you , at least with good gear equiped and kill the monster after the parry to not consume more stamina , not use critical hits its too wrong ...for using normal block or having a 80 years old man timing to be bad at parry ...



For OP :
use this in order : bronze buckler ( 75 parry + some extra with block skill and hp foods ) , iron buckler ( 100 parry ) , silver shield ( 107 parry ) , blackmetal shield ( 135 parry )
And remember , if you wantto be an efficient tanky try to parry every hit that is incoming to you and kill that parryed monster fast
Use top heavy gear ( iron > wolf > padded ) and hp+hp+stamina food combo , you will be so fine with all that

Wait silver shield has more parry block ? then buckler will be useless for parry right ?

You are confusing your self. There are two categories of shields. Small and large. Bucklers and rounds shields are small. These are the ones you can parry with. And just like everything else in the game it scales up with each biome. Wood<Copper<Iron<Silver<Blackmetal.
It isn't complicated.

Originally posted by Darkdaze:

i dont have much to offer on advice other than parrying an enemy afaik is based off timing the longer you wait the higher the chance to an attack being parried (waiting till the very last second to press the block button before enemy blow lands).

Really ? i didn't know that damn

The highest level shields are generally the best. Block strength determines how much stamina a block eats, and also determines how much stagger damage you take. The bronze buckler will no longer take you to end game.

Parry is much worse off than the early days. It consumes an extra 20 stamina, which will burn your bar out very quickly in battle. Standard blocking is convenient all around and works well for single player. Tower shields have a bit of extra block power, but the speed bonus hurts it badly. Try them in multiplayer with friends.

Originally posted by Bobucles:

The highest level shields are generally the best. Block strength determines how much stamina a block eats, and also determines how much stagger damage you take. The bronze buckler will no longer take you to end game.

Parry is much worse off than the early days. It consumes an extra 20 stamina, which will burn your bar out very quickly in battle. Standard blocking is convenient all around and works well for single player. Tower shields have a bit of extra block power, but the speed bonus hurts it badly. Try them in multiplayer with friends.

Them dont burn stamina if you have very high defense lol , burns in terms of how much base defense you have , its an extra payoff to parry a little more damage that you can
I never have stamina problems as you , at least with good gear equiped and kill the monster after the parry to not consume more stamina , not use critical hits its too wrong ...for using normal block or having a 80 years old man timing to be bad at parry ...



For OP :
use this in order : bronze buckler ( 75 parry + some extra with block skill and hp foods ) , iron buckler ( 100 parry ) , silver shield ( 107 parry ) , blackmetal shield ( 135 parry )
And remember , if you wantto be an efficient tanky try to parry every hit that is incoming to you and kill that parryed monster fast
Use top heavy gear ( iron > wolf > padded ) and hp+hp+stamina food combo , you will be so fine with all that

Yes blocking helps parry,
The type shield I use depends on the style I am playing. My toe to toe fighter I use either a round shield or special (bone, serpent...), A fast moving archer type I use buckler for higher run speeds. I often have a character I specialize in cooking, farming, building... For that one I use tower shields to hide behind and get out of trouble.

i dont have much to offer on advice other than parrying an enemy afaik is based off timing the longer you wait the higher the chance to an attack being parried (waiting till the very last second to press the block button before enemy blow lands).

Best explanation of shields in Valheim especially after the H&H update last year is in a video - "How Shields Work In Valheim After Hearth And Home - YouTube · FireSpark81 · 18 Sept 2021" - not sure if I can post direct link, but trying below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw33dzhz21c

As I understand it, Valheim's combat is more or less in the Dark Souls lineage style - should be some players familiar with that who will hopefully chime in.

Parry power is a multiplier of a shield's blocking power. Round shields give x1.5, bucklers give x2.5, and tower shields give no bonus (you cannot parry with a tower shield). Blocking skill multiplies the base Block Power of your shield (x0.4 at skill level 0, x1 at skill level 100). Since it increases base blocking power and Parry is a function of blocking power, then yes, Blocking skill increases overall Parry capacity.

As to question 3, I prefer round shields and bucklers, specifically for being able to parry. For how I play, the marginally higher blocking power on tower shields just can't come close to what you can get with a parry.

Finally, if you're already at the point of replacing older armor with iron armor, then you should also switch out your bronze buckler for an iron buckler. Both have x2.5 multipliers for parry, but the iron buckler has a much higher base blocking power (a level 1 iron is the same amount of defense as a level 4 bronze).