Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Another thing not mentioned is skill levels for certain skill. Higher a skill is the less it stamina drains. For example sneaking, running, jumping, swimming, etc.

The fourth paragraph of comment #2 in this thread.

If you are in a field full of enemies, then you are in a field full of trash enemies and maybe 1 to 2 tankier dudes. The majority of your enemies will die in 1 to 3 hits, while the beefier dudes you'll need to save for last. So fight accordingly.

This is a fairly common occurance with the raids, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you arent pulling way too much when you shouldnt be (instead they're bringing the party to you). This could also occur in the plains with the villages, but you should be able to pull less than 5 fulings most of the time.

Anyways, the game is balanced such that you can rapidly take down an individual normal trash monster as long as you've been keeping up in gear. Or 2 or 3 monsters, and then you're going to run out of stamina. When you are in these situations, where you have a group larger than that, managing stamina is the entire thing that the situation is balanced around. Will you take down an enemy and then preserve your stamina so you can survive and dodge better to take down the next enemy? Or are you going to take the riskier move and spend all your stamina to take down as many as you can at once, but risk getting overrun? How does the situation change if you are a shield user? or a sword user? The shield can take those hits, and reduce the stamina cost, but at some point you have to counter attack. Where you see an annoying experience, I see an experience the devs balanced finely around, behaving exactly as they intended it to. They want you to spend your stamina points carefully, which is why you dont get a huge amount of them, and why weapons get more expensive to swing as you go up in gear and food levels; and if that means you draw that encounter out a lot and it takes a few minutes instead of a moment to resolve, well, then its functioning as intended.

Also I want to reiterate what someone else said: You regen stamina while walking. As opposed to sprinting, which drains it. In these group encounters, walking around is usually more than enough to keep you from getting hit. Enemies stop to take a swing, and if you keep moving, they arent going to hit you. You mentioned not having enough stamina to block or dodge. Well, walking is the better alternative, because its better than free, it slightly restores stamina while you're doing it!

Originally posted by Troppamus:

Also I want to reiterate what someone else said: You regen stamina while walking. As opposed to sprinting, which drains it. In these group encounters, walking around is usually more than enough to keep you from getting hit. Enemies stop to take a swing, and if you keep moving, they arent going to hit you. You mentioned not having enough stamina to block or dodge. Well, walking is the better alternative, because its better than free, it slightly restores stamina while you're doing it!

Spot on. Your previous comment was excellent . It seems that too many people who are complaining about stamina are not managing it properly, they are trying to do much too quickly. You cannot fight hordes of enemies in this game without running out of stamina.

Originally posted by Troppamus:

You mentioned not having enough stamina to block or dodge. Well, walking is the better alternative, because its better than free, it slightly restores stamina while you're doing it!

I don't agree with all of your comments, but this is spot on. Blocking and dodging are mostly delay tactics that drain stamina and don't do anything to degrade your enemy. Parrying is a win-win-win, in that it provide the defense of a block or dodge, prevents the enemy from attacking, and greatly enhances your followup attack.

Of course, you have to have enough stamina to pull it off, and that's where walking comes in.

My fighting style is to be aggressive on attack, which means either leading off with a 3-hit combo with whatever weapon I'm using (usually sword), which will easily finish off most enemies, or hold for the parry, followed by a strong attack (sword secondary), which will finish off most stronger enemies, or at least do significant damage.

Between attack, walk around, reposition, and build back up your stamina for the next attack. Unfortunately (IMO), most enemies in Valheim will be happy to give you a chance to recover between attack while they run around in circles for no apparent reason.

Another thing not mentioned is skill levels for certain skill. Higher a skill is the less it stamina drains. For example sneaking, running, jumping, swimming, etc.

Another mention is troll armor, it has no movement penalty so you can run farther in it for your stamina versus other armor that have movement penalties. So if you are going to be running cross country in a Black Forest or Meadows biome to explore it pays to use the troll armor instead of your normal heavy armor.

Originally posted by bylandt11:

Always have a stamina potion in quick slot. Saved me many times. Particularly when swilmming across a river and just not making it to the other side.

True, but they are time gated between uses.

Originally posted by Blud:

Originally posted by bylandt11:

Always have a stamina potion in quick slot. Saved me many times. Particularly when swilmming across a river and just not making it to the other side.

True, but they are time gated between uses.

Tasty Mead has no cooldown.

make sure you have the rested buff 100% the time. without it stamina regen is too slow. getting that buff is rather easy and you can even increase its duration by raiseing the comfort level near your bed.

Always have a stamina potion in quick slot. Saved me many times. Particularly when swilmming across a river and just not making it to the other side.

#1 stamina tip is to get the well rested bonus. Simply sit down next to a campfire, and start building a proper home base. More comfort points = longer bonus. It is possible to have well rested last from dawn until dusk, then just portal home to sleep and refresh it. Aim to have the buff active at all times.

The swamp is basically your "well rested" stat check. The wet debuff ruins stamina regen, and well rested counters it.

Sweet mead super charges your natural regen rate for a few seconds and is generally good for an emergency bar recharge. Do beware that using stamina will pause the regen and waste the mead. Stamina potions recover stamina in any situation, and can even save you from drowning.

That's the big secret of Valheim, it styles itself as survival, exploration and action combat but it's really 50% Viking The Sims. Playing online with a dedicated homemaker is a vastly different experience.

"Tasty Mead" is the friend a lot of people forget; it reduces Health Regen, but increases your Stamina Regen. Great for your "Out of Combat" scenarios like mining.

If you're going through an area with a lot of mobs, don't rush through it. Take your time, and defeat the enemies one at a time, instead of getting surrounded and having your stamina (and health) draining scenario you mention. When you are at a point in the game where you are overgeared for the area, THAT is when you can just be a parkour king; not before.

Believe me, I'm the absolute last person to tell someone to "git gud", especially someone who has played "all the souls games". I haven't played any of them, because my frustration tolerance is nowhere near high enough for that. That being said:

Are you staying rested? That doubles your stamina regen. Adding comfort to your base will increase the amount of time you keep the rested buff, to the point that eventually it lasts longer than the sun is up. As a bonus, it also adds 50% health regen, 50% XP gain, and doubles your Eitr regen (assuming you've made it that far).

Additionally, night time makes you cold, which drops your stamina regen by 25%. Being wet reduces it by another 15%... and those effects stack. Running around in the swamp at night is ridiculously bad for stamina regen, especially if you're not rested up.

Increasing your skills reduces the amount of stamina drain for running, blocking, swinging a weapon... by up to 40%. Assuming it's farther apart than the 10 minute "no skill drain" buff lasts after you die, every time you die you lose 5% of your skills... which translates directly to using more stamina to do everything.

You say you're eating good food, so I'll take that at face value... but if you're not rested, you're throwing away half your potential stamina regen. If you're not skilled up, you're throwing away another 40% of stamina regen. If you're cold and wet, that's another 40% cut. If all of those things are true, and you're running through the swamp at night without being rested and with low skills because you're dying all the time... your stamina regen is perhaps 12% of what it could be.

There are more ways to mitigate stamina drain than food, and if you're not using all of them then you're just not trying hard enough... which, as a souls player, I'll assume you already know. This game's description says it's "a brutal exploration and survival game". Take that into account, and use everything at your disposal to increase your chances of survival.

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Believe me, I'm the absolute last person to tell someone to "git gud", especially someone who has played "all the souls games". I haven't played any of them, because my frustration tolerance is nowhere near high enough for that. That being said:

Are you staying rested? That doubles your stamina regen. Adding comfort to your base will increase the amount of time you keep the rested buff, to the point that eventually it lasts longer than the sun is up. As a bonus, it also adds 50% health regen, 50% XP gain, and doubles your Eitr regen (assuming you've made it that far).

Additionally, night time makes you cold, which drops your stamina regen by 25%. Being wet reduces it by another 15%... and those effects stack. Running around in the swamp at night is ridiculously bad for stamina regen, especially if you're not rested up.

Increasing your skills reduces the amount of stamina drain for running, blocking, swinging a weapon... by up to 40%. Assuming it's farther apart than the 10 minute "no skill drain" buff lasts after you die, every time you die you lose 5% of your skills... which translates directly to using more stamina to do everything.

You say you're eating good food, so I'll take that at face value... but if you're not rested, you're throwing away half your potential stamina regen. If you're not skilled up, you're throwing away another 40% of stamina regen. If you're cold and wet, that's another 40% cut. If all of those things are true, and you're running through the swamp at night without being rested and with low skills because you're dying all the time... your stamina regen is perhaps 12% of what it could be.

There are more ways to mitigate stamina drain than food, and if you're not using all of them then you're just not trying hard enough... which, as a souls player, I'll assume you already know. This game's description says it's "a brutal exploration and survival game". Take that into account, and use everything at your disposal to increase your chances of survival.

Thats some great info there. Thank you for the well worded and thought out response!