A few people said this already but it needs to be said again. It's all about preparation. You run in to tackle the Bonemass or Moder with the wrong gear and without getting ready for the fight? You're gonna have a bad time. Prepare properly and you'll demolish them. It's 100% on you though, and some people don't get that. They complain that it's too hard but they weren't ready, didn't get the right gear or consumables, and didn't do the proper preparation (and I don't mean using cheesy methods to win).

Not all bosses are difficult. No, really. Some of them are easy. Once you understand how they attack both The Elder and Eikthyr are relatively easy even with very low tier equipment and without any preparation. I've killed Eikthyr with no armour, a shield, and a wooden club and I'm not that good at the game. If I can win with no armour, and the lowest tier weapon and shield in the game then you can definitely win if you've got your gear upgraded as far as possible and play carefully.

Make sure you aren't using absolute garbage equipment (upgrade, upgrade, upgrade), and perhaps do a little more fighting before you fight the bosses if you're struggling. If you fight more (and don't die) your character's skills will increase which gives you a better chance to win against a boss. You aren't on a timer, there's no big rush to summon and kill a boss. Slow down if you're finding it difficult. Take time to get better at fighting, and I mean you - not your character's skills. You. If you gain more experience, more skill, you'll quickly find things get much easier.

Eat decent food. Get the right balance of health and stamina for your play style. I find more stamina is usually better. I'd rather be able to quickly move and not get hit at all instead of maybe having about 20 to 30 more health that's going to *MAYBE* let me take one more hit before I get killed.

If you had to travel to get to the boss (which is likely) do yourself a favour and make small camp a safe distance, but close, to the spot you plan to spawn the boss. Set your spawn point there so if you die you don't have to travel a long distance to get your gear back. Even better - set up teleporters so if you find it too tough you can go back to your main base and gear up even more.

Prepare, practice, persevere, pulverize...

Edit: This is worth a look for people complaining about the bosses being difficult now. They were easier, and they're still not all that tough even with the buffs.

https://www.pcgamer.com/valheim-players-are-killing-bosses-too-quickly-so-todays-patch-makes-them-tougher/

You don't even need to prepare that much.
Just use poison potion and stand on his summon skull. Frost arrows and finewood bow.


If you want super cheese in a group then just have one person go there and summon the boss. It will be locked at one person health, then the rest of the group can join the area. <unless that got patched out>

Originally posted by loppantorkel:

It should be said that the bosses are tougher the more players are in the game, at least I believe this is the case.

This link explains enemy leveling, and scaling. It does not specify whether or not the scaling applies to bosses.

https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Creature_Level

Here's the section that discusses the scaling.

Creature damage is further increased by 4% and effective health is further increased by 30% for each additional player within 100 meters. These are also applied to tamed creatures. This scaling caps at 5 players.

Internally the effective health increase from additional players is implemented as a damage reduction so that it can be scaled dynamically. The reduction doesn't apply to shown damage number so it's not visible to the players. For practical purposes, it can be considered as a health increase.

A big factor of this game is preparation and not rushing into doing everything without working to get the appropriate tools, food and gear. The only trouble I've had with a boss is the last one - that's crap for me, I never seem to be able to hit that in the right way. Other than that, they are fairly simple to figure out. On the plus side, you don't NEED to do the bosses if you don't want to. The only one you particularly need to down is Modor so you can build the artisan table.

Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

You don't even need to prepare that much.
Just use poison potion and stand on his summon skull. Frost arrows and finewood bow.

You are right. You do not have to prepare that much. If you are woefully unprepared it'll just be a tougher fight. I can say I've been there and done that - more than once.

My bow broke when I fought Moder because I didn't have it upgraded enough, wasn't using the best arrows I could make, and didn't have it fully repaired when the fight started. I finished that fight with melee which is all kinds of fun when the enemy flies around most of the time. Not easy, but not all that hard either.

I had a long fight against the Bonemass the first time I tried that fight because I didn't gear up much after taking out The Elder so my damage output was poor. I still won but it would have been much easier had I taken the time to get better gear, and do some preparation (building) in the area first.

I used no healing potions for either of those battles. I only used the anti-poison mead for the Bonemass fight. No other meads were used. No boss powers either.

So, if it's possible for someone with a moderate skill level to go into these fights with little preparation and gear that is far below what's possible to obtain at that point in the game then anyone who puts in the time and effort to properly gear up, and prepare, will absolutely be able to win these fights solo. I guarantee it will be even easier if they bring a friend or three.

The first time I fought Eikthyr with a new player, first time I'd fought that boss as a duo, we dropped it so fast that we decided to fight it again right away to get more antler from it.

People in this thread are encouraging cheating and people are complaining that they had to try fights more than once. This game isn't presented as an easy game. Read the store page description if you haven't because if you don't know what you purchased maybe that's part of the problem. Once you understand the kind of game you bought please do yourselves a favour. Do not give up and do not cheat when things get tough. It's okay to fail a fight and try again later. It's okay to slow down and gear up more if you're not that good at fighting. It's okay to find some fights difficult. Take the time to get better and try again. Failure isn't the end of the journey here, and while it can be frustrating it's not something you can't deal with. That said, except for bugs nearly every time you fail it's going to be because of you, not because the game or any particular area or enemy is too hard.

Story time.

I recently had a karve sink (and I was on the darn thing with another player) because a sea serpent smashed it and it was entirely our fault. It was due to the decisions we made when we spotted the serpent, and prior to heading out on the ocean. One of us (them) had neglected to bring a bow and the other (me) had only wooden arrows. What happened was absolutely not the game's fault for being too hard and not the serpents fault because they are not too difficult. It was our fault, and mostly me because I'm the more experienced Valheim player.

Here's why I'm saying that it wasn't the game. We made poor decisions. We should have each had a bow and no less than 100 arrows per person before we started sailing. We could have sailed to a nearby shore instead of trying to kill the serpent with one bow but we didn't. We also could have tried to outrun the serpent instead of only one of us trying to kill it with a bow and the worst arrows in the game but we didn't. The two of us that were on the boat lost everything because it was too far from shore when the boat sank. Did we cheat, or give up? Nope. We built another Karve, got another bronze axe after mining in the Black Forest, and are going after The Elder again as soon as we have decent bows and enough food and arrows.

Why is that story relevant? Because it's the same with boss fights. If you're struggling with boss fights it's not the game's fault. It is yours. It's because you did something wrong, or failed do to something, or both. Or multiples of both. The bosses don't come after you, you go after them. They aren't waiting for you, you summon them. If you do that and aren't ready for the fight no matter the reason then that's 100% on you, not the game.

The serpent only came after us because we were in the ocean. Had we been prepared we would have killed it. Had we tried to outrun it we may have been successful, but if we went to shore we definitely would have survived. We may have lost the boat if we went to shore but we could have recovered the parts and rebuilt it, or slapped up a quick workbench and repaired it.

Our choices were our downfall, and it's exactly the same with anyone who's struggling with boss fights. Learn from any mistakes or failures, recover, improve, make better choices or try different plans and try again. Don't give up. Don't cheat. Work for it. Earn it. Then tell the story and bask in your well earned glory!

Bonemass isn't all that difficult. You only need a tree house that is high enough, several bows and enough arrows. The rest is a matter of time.

All the bosses can be beaten solo - yes they are tough but honestly who wants an easy boss (at your level) if you stuck on Bonemass go back and kick the Stags head in a couple of times to practice should be easy at iron level.

You will get over the Bonemass hump and eventually he'll be as easy as ol's Stagfeatures is to you now.

Check what the bosses are vulnerable to and use those weapons. Anything can be a shot to death as Brock said above with a good vantage point and enough arrows. But keep at it and maybe you'll find a way that nobody else has or a combi of methods. Luck to you Viking!

You can take your hoe and a ton of stones and create a pillar of earth as high as it will go. You just stand at the top and kill him with range. Make the sledge hammer from the vendor too so you can just blast his adds away when they occasionally get summoned up there with you.

Anyway, I completely agree. The boss battles are something I dread because it feels like they are unfairly hard compared to what you can do and what you've been facing. The first boss is the only one I actually fight. Everyone else I cheese with the cheapest cheesiest methods known. Look up the boss fights on youtube and try out some of the strategies there.

Sadly I have to agree. They aren't biome graduation exams, they're progression roadblocks that drop some doohickey you need to advance. Now if you only had to kill them in order to gain their forsaken power it'd be a bit better, you could wait until you didn't have to choose between bland boring cheese and chain deaths. Unfortunately the 'git gud' crowd seem to enjoy that kind of combat so we're likely stuck with it as is.

Only alternative is console devcommands Kill or whatever the debug/cheat code is. I am extremely tempted to find out.

Originally posted by Brock 42:

Bonemass isn't all that difficult. You only need a tree house that is high enough, several bows and enough arrows. The rest is a matter of time.

That is kind of a part of my issue. Time. It takes ages to work through that HP-bar and he regenerates. I want to play and have fun. Not grind.

Originally posted by Wyrm:

Originally posted by Brock 42:

Bonemass isn't all that difficult. You only need a tree house that is high enough, several bows and enough arrows. The rest is a matter of time.

That is kind of a part of my issue. Time. It takes ages to work through that HP-bar and he regenerates. I want to play and have fun. Not grind.

You picked the wrong game if you want to rush through without a lot of grinding and preparing... This isn't a "casual" type of game...

That being said, bows are definitely the absolute slowest way to kill bonemass because he is extremely resistant to pierce damage... He is weak against BLUNT damage, which means you need to get in there and melee that sucker with a mace or Stagbreaker, but you can't just rush in and continuously hit him you have to watch his fighting patterns... he telegraphs when he's ready to attack so you have to move out of the way while he attacks, then get right back in there to hit him a few more times with blunt weapons.... back and forth like that until he's dead.

Also you need to prepare the area before you summon him.... use the Hoe and raise all the ground around his altar, getting rid of any puddles in a wide area (wherever the fight is bound to occur).... This eliminates leeches from getting involved as well as gives you solid ground for best movement speed (instead of wading in water throughout the fight).

Also make sure to clear all the mobs in the area prior to the start of the fight.

Bring lots of poison resist mead and the best foods possible that you can make.

Make sure you have a nearby portal set in a safe spot such as on top of a crypt or up in one of the indestructible trees, so you can easily get back if killed.

Being overly prepared (grinding) is the key to almost everything in this game.... you need to put in the time to be as prepared as you can otherwise you are going to have a hard time, die a LOT and end up blaming the game when it's actually the players' lack of preparation.... Ive solo'd Bonemass at least a dozen times (vanilla gameplay) so I KNOW it can be done.

BTW every creature / mob / Boss in the game has strengths and weaknesses and you will be better off learning what they are so you know the best way to kill stuff (most things in the swamp are weak vs. blunt)

Good luck

All bosses are easy if you are well prepared. For bone mass you just need poison resistance and an iron mace. He has slow attacks that can be dodged easily. WIth a decent amount of stamina and by running away everytime it gets low you can beat him without getting hit even once (except for the poison which is not worth evading with resistance potion).
If you play with a friend, one of you can take care of his minions and the other one can hit him meanwhile. Everytime the one hitting the boss runs low on stamina you switch and regen. Bring some stamina potions for emergencys.

It should be said that the bosses are tougher the more players are in the game, at least I believe this is the case.

I helped out a friend vs the Elder some while back, and he wasn't exactly carrying is own weight. My gear wasn't the best either, but the point is that soloing a boss that is buffed for two or more people is a lot tougher than soloing him when you're single. I think it's the case anyway. Bonemass can be very tough as it is, but it may be something to consider if you or your friend aren't very good at the game.

One way to solve the issue is to mod or just plain cheat your way through. As long as you're having fun.

I maxed out iron armor, and mace, used buff foods, from the cooking pot and potions, and just went toe to toe with solo, now if its x2 he will be a tad tougher but, good food, and maces do more dmg to him, make a spiked wall strong hold not to far away and yes Hoe the place up

I don't find them hard, they are just not any fun. Shoot 200 arrows.....yeah that's a blast. You can only rinse and repeat so many times.