I swear they changed the overall world generation. Coming back to this game after a few updates, this is the first time i "had" to use the map generator to find something (other than a ridiculously far out merchant once in a while, boy does he travel). After 5-6 continents of exploration I just couldn't find decently large meadows outside of spawn, and our spawn meadow didn't have like any bees. Eventually had to just raid a draugr village at bronze age because that was the only place I could find bees to make mead to make poison resist for swamps.
The quest to find the meadows saw me finding my trader at least, which was nice, the he also normally has a decent swamp near him last i recalled. This time it's the one crypt swamp I mentioned that's near him though (but that did give me bonemass location and the "bonemass swamps tend to have lots of crypts" rule still applies it seems).

its typical to have medium swamps with 0 - 2 crypts and yet elsewhere a smaller swamp may have 10 or so. Every map you generate is like this, give the map generator a try and even if you don't put YOUR map into it, you will see how bad the distribution of these (and ice caves later) can be with none at all in such large areas.
I personally use the map. I know it can be fun to run blind and explore, but I don't have the 20+ hours to find a useable area these days.

I wish they would look into this just a little, to make sure a good sized area has a few, or alternately make the random outdoor piles a little more frequent & higher yield. Iron is arguably the most critical asset in the game, used for structural integrity and over half the armor and weapons and many of the crafting stations use a good bit. Not finding it after a while is game breaking.

Originally posted by jonnin:

its typical to have medium swamps with 0 - 2 crypts and yet elsewhere a smaller swamp may have 10 or so. Every map you generate is like this, give the map generator a try and even if you don't put YOUR map into it, you will see how bad the distribution of these (and ice caves later) can be with none at all in such large areas.
I personally use the map. I know it can be fun to run blind and explore, but I don't have the 20+ hours to find a useable area these days.

I wish they would look into this just a little, to make sure a good sized area has a few, or alternately make the random outdoor piles a little more frequent & higher yield. Iron is arguably the most critical asset in the game, used for structural integrity and over half the armor and weapons and many of the crafting stations use a good bit. Not finding it after a while is game breaking.

yeah i had to check my seed because I was getting frustrated, turns out the 2 swamps I explored had none, thankfully i didnt just miss them. The swamp across the other side of the ocean had about 5 and I am currently saving up for the longship since it has big cargo...my kurve is a good boi but can only hold 4 stacks.

if you want to risk it, you can break a cart and kick 2 or 3 of the boxes onto your karve to give it 12 or more stacks. Do this where you load it, of course, so take mats to make a cart with you.
its risky because you can lose one overboard or get sunk etc. It generally works if you are cautious.

We have run into several large chunks of swamp that had zero crypts. The entire biome had none. Then there were other swamp biome chunks that were just bursting at the seams with crypts.

I'm not sure if it was just that seed, or what, but I have run into that. Keep hunting.

I had the same problem at first. I sailed Northwest of my starting area I found 3 or 4 swamps with only 1 Sunken Crypt among them. Twas very frustrating, but like a Zep Tepi posted, those swamps were all thin strips of swamp along the edge of Black Forest biomes. I then sailed Southeast of my starting area and the first landmass I came across had 2 very large swamp biomes separated by a strip of Black Forest. I sailed completely around the land mass and on the Southeast corner found an abandoned Draugr village in a meadow. I set up a headquarters there as it already had 5 buildings that needed only a little repair. Between the 2 swamps I found a 9 Sunken Crypts and ended up refining all my ore at my 2nd base.

thanks soo much all, I found a crypt that had like almost 70 iron scraps in it so I think I am good now!

Noice. 70-80 is about average in my experience, although I have had the odd crypt in excess of 180. That Dverger circlet, sold by Haldor is essential for Sunken Crypts. I am OCB when it comes to getting every last scrap. I take reagents in to make a campfire & a sitting log. You can place a sitting log at the base of the dead end craggy rock alcoves with a muddy scrap pile, to stand on in order to reach those bits that are stuck up high in the rock. I also take 2 pickaxes in with me. I hate having to go back because my pickaxe broke.

Find a larger swamp area. The small swamp areas often have no crypts. Keep searching.
You will eventually find a swamp with nearly endless crypts and you won't need to search any more.

Since they nerfed the crypts spawning rate, cos of all the iron in Mistlands, I think it was like 430 down to 140 odd, your later generated seeds will have the crypts further spread out, so you're probably better off exploring the swamps after you kill the great unclean one and get the wishbone, never leave any muddy pile behind, get the iron pick axe first, and always take some iron on every boat ride so you can build the stonecutter and forge and stuff at safe spots. And build repair stations, just a table, along sailing routes you're going to use a lot. Good luck.

I try to find larger swamps, preferably with a nearby meadow to make a safer outpost (with a portal) at. Though even the bigger ones can be weirdly empty sometimes. The one currently near my base apparently has abomination spawns all over the place (yay root armor at least) but only had one crypt, a ruin i couldnt even access because it spawned mostly underwater (i could see the chest but even the jump "dive" wouldnt be enough to reach it, so frustrating), and not even a geyser to make a core farm at. Just a whole lot of witch huts mostly. If the crypts you did find show you where your nearest bonemass is, the swamp bonemass altars spawn in are usually great for finding crypts as well.

If you really can't find any crypts then yeah, your only real alternative is muddy scrap piles on the surface. Just like silver you can sometimes get super lucky and find a pile that's just sticking up out of the ground but most of the time it's more hidden underneath. Wishbone does reveal these but if you don't have that yet, you have to use something like stagbreaker to just randomly smack the ground basically and look out for when it tells you "Too Hard" for no apparent reason. You may have hit a scrap pile under the ground with stagbreakers AoE attack. That, or spend a lifetime hunting oozers. Those aren't exactly the most common enemies and they aren't guaranteed to drop any either, just a chance of it.

Download your seed onto the the Valheim seed map generator and look for the closet crypts. You can also look for bosses, fuling camps ect. Really handy and saves a lot of time

Yes. if you have a Stagbreaker, or better yet, a wishbone, you can find muddy scrap piles buried in the ground outside in the swamp. I went back & revisited a swamp I had thought I cleared a while ago, only had 2 crypts in a decent sized swamp.

Went back just today with the wishbone equipped & found about 10 scrap piles all outside that simply had to be dug up in order to be retrieved. Only about halfway through them currently, but have about 40ish or more Iron Scrap just from digging them up. So it can be done this way too.

If you don't have the wishbone however, it is a needle in a haystack trying to find them.

Also Oozers have a % chance to drop them when you kill them.

You are probably better off continuing to look around. Tiny strips of swamp along mountains are not likely to be big enough to have crypts. As far as the wishbone goes, you would need to defeat bonemass first, and usually there are crypts in a swamp where bonemass is.

You could try sailing next to a swamp, not too close, outside of the fog range and look for the green torches, then keep going and hope to find a black forest or meadows to land and put your portal there. Landing in a swamp itself is generally a bad idea, but sometimes it's hard to find a good swamp that has a good place to land. Beware the plains.