Originally posted by jjrobinson2:

I'm in the early iron age. I built a medium stone villa in Black Forest. When I began trying out roads and paths, a one-star troll appeared and partially destroyed the villa. It's permanent. It's parked outside the house, and never leaves except to chase me when I go outside. I lured it into a nearby swamp, a got it engaged with an Abomination. Left them fighting. Next morning, troll and abomination were back on their regular stations. Troll needs flint arrows or better to make nicks in it. When I quit tonight, it had wrecked the house again when it caught me trying to repair previous damage.

About the Swamp. I started basing my exploration for Sunken Crypts out of one that I cleared. Now there's a broken stone tower right outside that I don't remember being there, with a Body Pile in it. Respawn rate is so high, I can't get anywhere near the pile to try to destroy it, especially since I can't get anywhere near my lost armor and weapons because of the clouds of Dragr of all levels, the Abomination, etc.

There's a difference between play balance, even in a survival game, and brutalizing your customers for sport.

For important bases, always either build high earthen walls around them or dig trenches mobs.

Trolls are best shot with a bow. They are weak to pierce damage. Fire arrows work well with them too but even just wooden arrows are fine. Since you're in the iron age I assume you have a fully upgraded huntsman bow at least. Shoot them, run, shoot them, run. That's how you best deal with them.

The body piles, stock up on arrows, get in good distance bow range, build an earth plateau, and then shoot it. Shoot the draugr then after its been destroyed to clean it up. Again fire arrows are nice for that. but wooden do just as well.

Abominations are pretty easy. Just stand on crypts and shoot em. Fire arrows again make it easy. Aboms will path away after a bit, drop down, then range them to grab their attention back to you and then get back at it.

Most of the mobs(sans blobs and flyers/archers) are vertically challenged and killing them with these methods makes it really easy.

If op is in the early iron age, they should be able to take down trolls easily with wood arrows. Op should not be using a crude bow, but a finewood bow, and the sight of a troll should make them think only of loot.

Op claims to have lured the troll into combat with an abomination. Shoot and run is the tactic for taking down a troll with arrows, yet op is able to kite trolls around and can't figure out how to kill them?

Originally posted by jjrobinson2:

There's a difference between play balance, even in a survival game, and brutalizing your customers for sport.

There is a difference between a real problem and venting.

If you are early game you just have to work around the trolls... especially the starred trolls early on. Two star early are murder.

Just avoid them ... build someplace else. Once your bow skill is up to 20 or so use fire arrows... may take some time with a star troll at first but doable.


Now if you are entering the swamp you shouldn't have much problem with trolls. Are you sure you are not going in too deep too early?

What food do you have?
What armor do you use?
What weapons do you have?

A one star in iron should be about like a 0 star in leather. Fire arrows are your friend, but if you have iron, you may have found a few toxic ones as well.

Abominations are just annoying. As soon as you kill one, another spawns. Great if you want their loot, but I had one camping bonemass and it took several in game days to get rid of it (and its respawns). I killed it twice and finally got it to wander off far enough to bury itself and stay put. Drag them through a fire if you can. If you can't, they are blind and after you get a good lead on them you can hide and they will go away. Here again, if its near a crypt, find another crypt or rush the crypt to go inside. Once inside, immediately hide until the aggro clears, as if outside. That should not work, but it does :)

Stone can take a lot of hits but it is still better to loft a a platform or dig a trench to keep things away from your home.

Body piles... make a 'bee' like buzzing noise from a good ways off and are easily avoided. If its too close to a crypt, find another crypt. Sometimes randomly generated areas are pure deathtraps, and they key is to recognize this and rather than be brave, use some discretion.

The swamp is probably the hardest area in terms of what you have going into it vs the difficulty.

If you're having trouble with one specific non-flying mob the simplest solution is to dig a big hole and lure it in there. Nothing in the game can currently jump or climb.

Originally posted by Right Clicker:

Earthworks > stone walls. Raise up the earth around your villa and you're now nice and safe inside. Btw, you should be hunting trolls and have fully upgraded troll armor and fine bow before you go into the swamp.

Have raised the ground around my base, took a lot of stone but it indestructible, it high enough so if a Troll comes a long its just his head that sticks up

Trolls get shredded by any arrows, even wooden arrows. But their gigantic AoE attacks are very humbling for a first time builder.

Start with a fence. Always cover your entire land in a fence, water access also helps to protect one side. The fence will force trolls out of range so they can't crush dozens of bricks with a single swing. A decent size fence may be 300 or so wood, but the square cube law means that a slightly longer fence will cover far more land area.

Nothing wrong with the balancing.

This is one of those games where you just can't zerg in. You have to be sure you are using the proper armor, weapons, food combos, etc.. and most of all, execute caution and patience.

Earthworks > stone walls. Raise up the earth around your villa and you're now nice and safe inside. Btw, you should be hunting trolls and have fully upgraded troll armor and fine bow before you go into the swamp.

Originally posted by Right Clicker:

Earthworks > stone walls. Raise up the earth around your villa and you're now nice and safe inside. Btw, you should be hunting trolls and have fully upgraded troll armor and fine bow before you go into the swamp.

Totally... Play defensively..and you will rarely die! Snipe everything possible

Originally posted by jjrobinson2:

There's a difference between play balance, even in a survival game, and brutalizing your customers for sport.

There is another thing to consider, besides the points others have made.

Since the world generates randomly, this balance you're speaking of is also heavily influenced by that randomness. Ultimately, you either have to adjust your play style to survive in the environment you generated, or generate a new environment randomly or with an existing seed, then work your way around that instead.

Personally, I avoid building inside the Black Forest. In my first play through, running the game totally oblivious to how everything worked, I built a wooden fort just outside the Black Forest - I didn't know there was more than one Black Forest. A troll smelled me, then lay siege to my fort, destroying a third of it. I decided it was not worth trying to defend it, so I built up my resources, learned from the mistake, and rebuilt my settlement back in the Meadows.

Two world generations later, I'm running around trolls nearly naked, wearing only a Wolf Cape, shooting fire arrows with my Huntsman's Bow at them with ease. My raised castles can only be attacked by drakes and the occasional fireball from Surtlings.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2775503099

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2775503091

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2775503096

Make a moat (your first work with pickaxe) or raise the dirt wall around your base with hoe. I always do a moat around ASAP. 2m width and 4m - 5m deep is enough.

Plan and scout ahead, be patient, be prepared. You will overcome all these challenges.

PS: I have several houses in the Black Forest. Never had much issues with Trolls camping me. Oh, yeah, wait till you encounter the „the ground shakes“ event…

Yeah, body piles can be a pain. I died to one some time ago, and had to try to recover from it. In my opinion, you can't rush them. Like you say, respawn rate is too high. I just sniped it from afar with a bow. And I had to use a crude bow... because I lost all my good gear. Stay as far away from the piles as you can.

Is there any meadows biome around? Maybe retreat further back to an easier area, build a wood house, get some leather armor so you aren't naked at least, make a crude bow, flint and/or wood arrows, get some food, start from a better position. Instead of starting out in such dangerous circumstances. That's what I did (actually I didn't have to backtrack; my spawn point was already in meadows... but that was my launch point for recovery).

Spawners definitely are a pain in the behind. I can unequivocally confirm this, as I died several times to a two star skeleton archer in a grave in the Black Forest. Took me several tries till I finally killed that bone heap (and of course died myself) but after that I could concentrate on getting my stuff back before I could kill that darn two star skelly!

Major pain and a huge feeling of accomplishment when I finally killed it.