Originally posted by Noodle:

I see heaps of posts complaining about difficulty. The only time I've died is when I've rushed or gone in under-prepared.

However, I wouldn't mind a bit more of a challenge. What are some suggestions as to what would make this game a bit more challenging without simply increasing enemy health/damage outputs?

Yes, I've seen all of the "i set myself some self limit on what I can/can't do in the game" forum posts, that's not what I'm getting at. I mean what could the devs do to make the game more of a challenge without resorting to the aforementioned "cheap" difficulty approaches some games do.

Easy, Un-do the 2 Nerfs they have done since launch.

Mixing up enemy attack patterns is probably the best bet here.
Archers with varied timings would make them more difficult to ignore. All ranged attacks, actually.
Maybe drakes could swoop at you.
Enemies with harpoons to lock you down temporarily.


Once you learn the few fight mechanics it's a much easier game, so imo that's the best area for improvement.

Without knowing how far into the game the OP has progressed or if they visited a wiki or watched any YT videos it is difficult to equate their experience to others.

In general yes, if you are prepared you should do fine.

But I would argue a new player, with no wiki or YT, no forum visits or the like, playing the game for the first time will most likely find it challenging at times.

You can equate it to a Dark Souls encounter. Go in blind and it will be tough until you figure out patterns, but once you do its same-old-same-old.

As to how to make the game more challenging sometimes simply giving the AI some of the same tools the player has can make a difference. For instance give skeleton archers random ammunition types like frost or poison. Give Draugr randomized armor types armor types, from bronze up.

Or have more environmental events like damaging winds, freezing rains or lighting started forest fires that force the player to seek shelter or take action to mitigate damage.

Or how about more varied random events not centered on your base, be it a single unique enemy or a mob of baddies in an actually well defended old keep; think draugr village that is actually tough.

Or remove 'stars' from enemies. Don't remove tougher enemies mind you, just the label so a player goes in not knowing what a fight might hold.

And who knows what might be added later on that can add difficulty while still fitting into the mythos.

I am totally on board with making the mobs smarter and the combat side of the game more intricate and challenging. A difficulty slider related to this would just make the mobs slower.

All good suggestions. In the future what I'd hope for is some more optional content. Like Hunt the white stag: no great in game advantages but a rare trophy you could have or a cosmetic perk for doing something not required for progression but still took some effort and challenge?
Especially if not all of these optional spawns on any given world forcing us to explore other Valheim worlds if we wanna collect the set etc.

But the OP is right = Valheim = prepare to win. If you don't ten your rollin' the dice don't complain if they come up craps for ya!

Can be rough on new players, but once the mechanics are learned, it does get easy.

To increase difficulty all they need to do is put it back to what it was the day H&H dropped where you had hardly any stamina and everything cost too much stamina to use. That made the game very difficult... I think a lot of players, including myself, actually stopped playing for a time since they didn't find it fun to play anymore.

Of course other easy ways to increase difficulty would be...
Reduce armor ability to block damage
Reduce food effects
Reduce speed of player
Remove portals
Remove cooking upgrades
Remove parry
Remove Crits
Remove tombstone just lose all gear
Perma death lose world and character on death

I'm sure I can think of lots more, this is just off the top of my head.

Reduce skill gain
No map markers except player made ones
No mini map
No maps at all
No trader
Half inventory space
You have to pick up 100 of any item to get the recipes from it
Make the wind AI actually work against you
Any hit taken from Mountain creatures causes a slow effect on player that can stack.
When creatures die they put out a death cloud that makes drop recovery impossible for 10 real mins. So you have to wait to collect any drops.

Just to add I am not personally wanting any of this ... I am just trying to think of painful things for people who like pain might like. Most of these things would make me stop playing at all and think the dev went insane.

Well they could remove parry and crits and I probably wouldn't care....

The real strength of this game is the building mechanic, everything is tailored towards unlocking more options, so many projects, so little time lol

I think a way to increase difficulty in an original way is give enemies multiple attack patterns and abilities so it's slightly unpredictable what kind of fight you'll have every time.

Example: imagine wolves didn't just have the one attack and some wolves leaped at you or some wolves bounded backed away to avoid a strike. So not all abilites are part of the same wolf it's like a random skill set wolves will spawn with. Make sense?

Originally posted by Fzanco:

I think a way to increase difficulty in an original way is give enemies multiple attack patterns and abilities so it's slightly unpredictable what kind of fight you'll have every time.

Example: imagine wolves didn't just have the one attack and some wolves leaped at you or some wolves bounded backed away to avoid a strike. So not all abilites are part of the same wolf it's like a random skill set wolves will spawn with. Make sense?

Great idea, I like that.

Improve mob pathing - let them go over logs and such like players do. Some balance work for weapons and shields. Let the block/zone run a bit after player portals out. Let bosses, at least, break through terrain. Make boss fights shorter but more exciting - like add some more attacks and randomize which set of three or four a boss has when spawned. Add some mobs that aren't weak to blunt, or for that matter elemental attacks.

I'm sure they'll eventually work something out.

Most of the time it's easy if you know what to do. But there are some very hard scenarios in the game such as.
1. Entering Swamp for the first time.

2. Comming to close to the Plains for the first time and get attention by some mosquitos.

3. And last of all getting stunned by 2 star wolf with other wolfs around, or being stunned in the middle of a Fuling village will get you killed no matter how much you know the game or having the best gear and food on you.

The first time around without knowing anything about the game it's starting to get hard in the Black forest imo. If you don't count all the trees that killed you or almost killed you in Meadows. :)

Originally posted by Leffe-(SWE):

If you don't count all the trees that killed you or almost killed you in Meadows. :)

Don't use hoes around fallen logs either without be prepared to run if one dissappears.

Originally posted by blprice61:

Improve mob pathing - let them go over logs and such like players do. Some balance work for weapons and shields. Let the block/zone run a bit after player portals out. Let bosses, at least, break through terrain. Make boss fights shorter but more exciting - like add some more attacks and randomize which set of three or four a boss has when spawned. Add some mobs that aren't weak to blunt, or for that matter elemental attacks.

All solid suggestions.

Originally posted by Leffe-(SWE):

Most of the time it's easy if you know what to do. But there are some very hard scenarios in the game such as.
1. Entering Swamp for the first time.

2. Comming to close to the Plains for the first time and get attention by some mosquitos.

3. And last of all getting stunned by 2 star wolf with other wolfs around, or being stunned in the middle of a Fuling village will get you killed no matter how much you know the game or having the best gear and food on you.

The first time around without knowing anything about the game it's starting to get hard in the Black forest imo. If you don't count all the trees that killed you or almost killed you in Meadows. :)

I'm inclined to disagree with you a bit. While those scenarios are certainly dangerous, I don't consider them hard. I think that they are all relatively manageable so long as you don't rush into unfamiliar situations.

Difficulty slider. And everyone is happy. You can make it as easy or hard you want. The slider is hiding a more complex interface for all the people that really want to get into the nittygritty of tailoring the game to their liking, regular people just use the slider.

I keep saying it. Difficulty slider NEEDS to be an option, with a more indepth settings screen behind that.