I think most of us got splattered the first time we ran into one of these.

Originally posted by jonnin:

I think most of us got splattered the first time we ran into one of these.

Tru dat... Oh, so true...

Again, thanks all for the advice, particularly on the seed map concept. I just want to reiterate that I didn't plan to encounter draugr. It was a total mistake. I saw a village in a meadow, thought the buzzing was bees, open a door and got annihilated. I promise to keep away from them from here on out!

Originally posted by canned ham 91:

Again, thanks all for the advice, particularly on the seed map concept. I just want to reiterate that I didn't plan to encounter draugr. It was a total mistake. I saw a village in a meadow, thought the buzzing was bees, open a door and got annihilated. I promise to keep away from them from here on out!

Actually, some of the buzzing is bees. The draugr villages are the single best source of honeybees I've found in the game. The first one I tackled (with way higher gear), gave me THREE queen honeybees. Before that I'd only ever found a single queen bee.

Ill keep it short and sweet:
avoid the D-villages until you can handle the swamp easily. They are actually tougher than the swamp itself, due to sheer volume of enemy in a small area.
They are easy to recognize: there are draghr there, more buildings than usual, larger buildings than usual.

At your current level I would say that you should stay the F*** away from Draugr villages until you got proper gear.

Since it is too late now, I would follow @Zep Tepi's advice and do a naked corpse run. Don't look back, just run using Eythgir.

You CAN take on Draugr villages in mostly Black Forest gear, but you need to be aware of higher level Draugrs and spawners. Take out the spawners BEFORE killing the Draugrs close by, or they will respawn with a higher level. You will stand no chance against these in low end gear.

My gear on my second char with way more experience under his belt, when I took out the Draugr village where I wanted to build my next home:

1. Full Lvl 3 Troll armor (don't bother with Bronze armor, you're wasting precious resources and it is not worth it).
2. Lvl 3 Bronze buckler (VERY important! It allows you to block and parry Draugr attacks).
3. Lvl 3 Bronze axe and lvl 2 abyssal dagger (very effective against Draugr).
4. Fully fed with the best food the Black Forest has to offer.

I was fully aware of spawners and knew how to deal with them. I advise you to get the parry technique down pat while practicing on Grey Dwarves, then use it on Draugrs. You will kill them easily.

Good Luck!

Edit: Parrying with a lvl 3 Bronze buckler will work up to one star Draugrs and Draugr elites. If you see a two star Draugr: Run. Kite it and pepper it with arrows from afar, or just run.

Originally posted by canned ham 91:

ose all his XP and the equipment he has in his backpack?

Nope. People commonly shift between maps and use them like "portal worlds" if you will. You can even use the same seed now with a different name for it (clone it if you will). Anything in inventory stays in inventory. This is how some people move large amounts or ore/metal bars to their home base since portals cant let metals through(they move to a chest on one map, move to their base on the first map, then go back to the 2nd map's chest with metal and hop back to the first at their base.)

I personally have lots of seeds selected for doing specific boss fights as boss farming maps. A main world map, etc. Some server owners have a main building map and then 1-2 resource maps that they replace every few weeks when resources start to get low for people.

Also remember when devs add new features and assets to biomes that an old map that already had such a biome explored will not have those new assets necessarily appear(this occurred with the mountain biomes and ice caves a couple of months ago) So having new seeds/seed clone can help with that.

Thanks for all the responses. Victims, I had exactly the same thing happen. I saw this nice fancy village in a meadow, and with the buzzing I figured I'd pick up some honey and a queen bee. Opened a door and got jumped. Now my hard earned troll armor is gone. Zep Tepi I'm going to try your naked run approach. If that doesn't work, I'll just keep farming the black forest, get better at killing trolls, and mine the heck out of copper and tin. I'l consider all my lost gear a learning experience until I progress enough to have a shot at the draguers.
Flare, if I generate a new seed, does my character lose all his XP and the equipment he has in his backpack?
Thanks again everyone, this was really helpful.

Originally posted by canned ham 91:

Flare, if I generate a new seed, does my character lose all his XP and the equipment he has in his backpack?

Maps and characters are separate. New characters don't affect your maps, and new maps don't affect your chars. Fyi. So if you "give up" on your current map, you could just play your same old toon on a new map. Doesn't seem much different than playing it on your current map though, except maybe if you got a problematic seed/map. Map layouts being roughly equal, it means that deleting your toon/map and starting over wouldn't really change anything. You're naked with nothing either way; at least with your current toon and map, maybe you have some existing infrastructure you could leverage, familiar geography, and some skills?

Originally posted by canned ham 91:

I just started this game a week ago. Defeated the first boss, but not the second. Built a boat and went exploring. Found a nice island with black forest and meadows, and even the trader. Also stepped onto the mountain biome but immediately left, and same with the plains biome. Was exploring through a meadows biome, came upon a collection of buildings, and got attacked and immediately killed by drageurs (sp?). So now all my good equipment is stuck in the middle of a settlement of these brutal beasts (were probably 5 or 6 of them) . Any way my newb character can get my equipment back without being repeatedly killed?

I thought players weren't supposed to encounter beasts in biomes that hadn't open up for them yet.

Help!

1. There are draugr villages in some meadow biomes of the game. Their building architecture is different from that of the other abandoned villages and become easier to spot once you pay attention to that. Also getting close you can hear flies buzzing in some buildings (draugr spawners). That should be your first line of defense to help avoid them until you can handle them.

2. As for handling them in your current level of progression(which let's assume is really low) the most conservative/safe way perhaps is to:

- make tons and tons of arrows and a few bows Fire arrows at your assumed level would be best but if you're low on resources for that just wooden.

- have resources to make a campfire or two, wood for construction of covering the campfire in case of rain), wood for fuel for it, and wood perhaps to make a workbench and more arrows(but this will then require a larger construction that comes next)

-If you have the hoe yet and can raise ground, bow range to most or all the structures, raise the ground to make a high plateu. Draugr archers can still shoot you but if you make a 3x3 plateau you can drop the ground in the middle square where archers cant get to you to rest if needed.

- Make the plateau covered for a campfire on the edge. to let you rest in the center drop down safe spot.

- Make the plateau even bigger if you want to have a workbench for repairs/more arrows.

-Alternatively, you can build a wooden tower with the fire at the bottom under the tower but you'll need to put fort defense walls around as a buffer defense. Make sure the walls around are at a wide enough radius that you can shoot down from the blind at draugr but not so wide that you cant get a good angle'd shot.

-Once built, shoot the draugr free roaming outside of the buildings first.

-Then (and this is why you need tons of arrows/bows/repairs) shoot the structures(roof or walls depending on angles to expose the buildings inside.

-Focus on destroying the draugr spawners inside them. If you don't they'll unlimitedly spawn more draugr. That can become a serious problem if you don't take the spawners out first because the spawners will spawn more draugr is there is not 3 in radius to the spawner. If you shoot walls and they get out from the building and out of the spawner's 3x check range), you can get tons of draugr going and that's going to be a challenge.

Also the more that spawn, the higher the chances for 1 and 2 star draugr(harder) and draugr elites.

This will take a considerable amount of time because the structures can take alot of damage before demolishing. The larger long houses in draugr villages can also require you to demolish layers before you cant get clear shots to the spawners or draugr.

3. If the range method isn't to your liking at this stage of things, you can opt to clear only with range the draugr that killed you(hopefully you didnt open a building with a spawner) and get your stuff and come back when you are stronger to handle them.

4. The spawners as mentioned as the real issue to deal with because its endless spawns if they're not contained. Staghammer or iron sledge hammer are good for clearing draugr spawners because the range of their aoe can clip through walls. So you can sometimes safely melee through a building to destroy them(and other draugr but you also run the risk of breaking the walls and letting them out. Its tricky.

5. If you choose to melee in, a shield with good block parry helps so you can then counter attack and take them down. At your level though I suspect that's not going to be very effective until you get bronze or better armor because you can easily get overwhelmed. Some like using polearms special attack too for aoe'ing if too many around but that does nothing for archers in the fray either.

6. An alternate (and resource costly) method is a speed runner method for mobs: campfires. When they run over the fires they take damage but eventually the fires break. You can run around placing down fires as you kite draugr but again the archers will still be potentially an issue unless you keep moving well. Its also a method that requires practice to use well as you also need stamina to run around with too.

7. Another alternative method is building spike walls and running them through a gauntlet of it(that doesnt remove spawners though) it also requires you going through the black forest (usually though small camps can have core wood pieces you can demolish sometimes but not enough for lots of spikes) and I don't know if you are at that level of things yet.



So really alot depends on your play style and abilities at your current progression stage of the game. There are many different methods to take them on and it just depends on how risky/conservative you want to be in handling them.



And lastly, take things slow. Exploring is ok but this game (as you've learned) will quickly punish you if you're not cautious with your exploration. A good rule of thumb until you really are adept with the game is to stick to the biome you're supposed to be progressing through and do so cautiously until you're geared with that biome's best stuff relative to your play style.

The guys above have good advice.

The game is a procedural generation game, while it has rules, the generation can and will make bad seeds.
The usual rule is meadow, forest, swamp, mountain then plains, the generator may make a few mistakes, if you are playing solo... try another seed.
If you dont want to random a good seed, try the [search google Valheim map generator] for a solid seed, I did that as I had some seeds with a bad boss location.
Luckily you can generate nearly infenite number of seeds, so trying again is easy enough.

You're playing solo, I take it?

Draugr villages my friend , these are a little far from midle /starting point in far meadow biomes , not just from swamps
Try to not over explore and more grind/ gear first

There are spawners inside the buildings there. The sound of flies will tell you where the spawners are. You found a draugr village that occurs in the meadows away from the starting area. That's a tough one.

If it were me, I'd build a hut with a bed well outside of aggro range, but close enough for a quick jog. Have a chest in there with the best food that you can get ahold of. Cook some meat if that's the best you can do. Then I'd do well-fed naked runs. Sneak as close as you can, then run for the tombstone and run out. With nothing in your inventory, grabbing your gear is one click. It might take several tries, but even if you get killed on the way out, you would have moved your stuff a little closer to safety. Activating Eikthyr's power would help with the stamina for running in and out.

You can probably outrun melee, but archers might be the real problem, so look for things to hide behind. Maybe trail some dwarves from the forest through as a distraction? But I'd only try that if regular runs weren't working because it might complicate it too much.

That does involve possibly getting killed repeatedly, but at least you'll die with a purpose like a true viking! Or maybe you'll be fast enough and lucky enough to do it in one shot.

I got time if you need a corpse run help, vanilla only.
Just pay it forward.

Originally posted by canned ham 91:

I just started this game a week ago. Defeated the first boss, but not the second. Built a boat and went exploring. Found a nice island with black forest and meadows, and even the trader. Also stepped onto the mountain biome but immediately left, and same with the plains biome. Was exploring through a meadows biome, came upon a collection of buildings, and got attacked and immediately killed by drageurs (sp?). So now all my good equipment is stuck in the middle of a settlement of these brutal beasts (were probably 5 or 6 of them) . Any way my newb character can get my equipment back without being repeatedly killed?

I thought players weren't supposed to encounter beasts in biomes that hadn't open up for them yet.

Help!

As a newb player myself, I can tell you this (WARNING: there might be content spoilers in case you don't want to know what's up ahead):
- The game has linear progression and a soft-gatekeeping mechanic. Basically, you can move freely around the world but mobs work as a gear check and materials tend to be only obtained through boss progression (they drop items that are vital to access the resources of the next biome). So trying to skip biomes is not only dangerous but unrewarding.
- It seems like you ran into a draugr village. I just died today that way. The swamp boss spawned so far that forced me to sail and I landed on a Meadow thinking it was safe. Saw a village and I thought it was going to be easy to build a settlement but it was filled with draugrs. Fortunately, I've been in the swamps enough to kill them. The aetgir/stagbreaker works well vs them in the meadows because you're not wet and they tend to be in buildings and that weapon deals dmg through walls. The problem is that there were plains next to it and that's like 2 biomes higher so I got 2 shot by a deathsquitto because it came to the meadows while chasing something else.
- Sailing too far is very dangerous, specially if you claim a bed in a settlement and move far from it. The further you go from the spawn point the stronger the enemies and the higher chances to find higher biomes surrounding low level biomes like meadows which can lead to monsters from those higher biomes "leaking" into your biome when chasing a deer or something. You can get soft-locked like that if you can't access your corpse or your boat to get out of the island/continent you got into (since you have no gear and no tools you can't gather anything and you can't go back home because you sailed there so you're forever spawning into a certain death). So when sailing I'd advice you to either not claim a bed and just hide during the night or build a portal in your base and bring materials to build another one in your destination to tag it and link it so you can either get out of there quick or, in case you died without claiming your bed, go back to retrieve your corpse if possible and bounce.