Its balanced, its just that you can't just run into the swamp and flee from everything like you could in the Black Forest. If you can handle a troll, you can handle the swamp.

Originally posted by Cap'n Bells:

Stay alive first and kill second. Run n gunners die "brutal" deaths in Valheim

im might just say this again :-) sorry moderators :-)

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Get your mead on; poison resistance is important. Also, swap in an extra red-fork food for more health; the rain kills your stamina regen, but everything else kills you.

Go sneaking around in the swamp until you find a turnip seed flower, then go home and farm for a week or two; the cauldron upgrade and the better foods are well worth the time investment getting your equipment set up well.

The difficulty spike is intentional; much like the spike between meadows and black forest when you're not prepared... it's just that the preparation in this case isn't only about "gearing up".

^^^This

The swamp is flat except where it borders other biomes. Poison resist meads make you pretty much inveulnerable to leeches and you'll need the drops from the leeches for upgraded goods.

You need the drops from the dragurs for the same reason so play around on the edges of the swamps until you get all the things you need to upgrade. If you get swarmed head back to the previous biome. The stuff chasing you will stop to attack the stuff in the other biomes giving you a chance to thin out the herd or run away.

Eh, you cannot just waltz in unprepared, poison resist and rested buff up 100% of the time. Work on your farms and food, save Eikthyr for when you need to Wilson. Avoid aboms and 2 star draugrs until you have swamp tier gear. At night there will be Wraiths flying around in the trees, so be prepared for that.

You are just looking for some turnip seeds and the ability to sneak into a few sunken crypts for some iron. Once you start rocking some swamp tier(iron age) gear and food it becomes a lot easier.

Then you go to the Mountain biome and run into a 2 star wolf and it's the black forest to swamp curve all over again.

Originally posted by Tet:

Isn't there a balancing issue when going from forest to swamp ?
I feel that the difficulty increases really too high.

Whereas in the forest I can deal with 2 trolls and as many Greydwarfs that spawn, I can't deal with swamp creatures at all, with bronze equipment.

As soon as I go to the swamps, I die...

The short answer is "Yes."
The long answer is there is a massive difficulty spike whenever you go to a new biome. It can be mitigated somewhat by maxing out gear and stocking up on various meads, but it's still not the smoothest transition... Savanna is worse.

yes the swamps are unbalanced with respect to the passage from the black forest. Terrain with water that slows and wets the character, very low visibility, and very tough enemies, even with full armor and shield, a level 2 draugr can kill you. Not to mention the abomination.

in general it would be necessary to advance slowly leveling the ground with the hoe, and to put some lights every now and then (knowing that in any case they will be destroyed by the mobs), a good way to prevent the lights from being destroyed is to put them on a wooden pole, in this way only archers will be able to hit them and it will be more difficult. Another suggestion is to take advantage of the indestructible ancient trees, as a point both for building and for escaping from enemies and hitting them from above

It's balanced. You just need to be mindful of the new difficulties. Always raining, -15% stamina regen from wet effect. Running out of stamina is deadly, draugr archers are far more dangerous than skeleton archers. Poison without the resistance mead is going to hurt badly with forest level food.

A good strategy for any new biome is to try getting the new food rolling ASAP. In this case, turnips. Once you are rolling sausages and turnip stew with deer stew it becomes a lot better. (protip: I don't find the blood soup worth it using blood bags and lasting 5 less minutes than deer stew for only 5 more hp).

Upgraded bronze buckler can parry anything in the swamp, stamina management and patience will make it seem easy. Try not to aggro too many things at once, and when you get to 1v1 new mobs try to learn their parry timings. Abominations are a total joke when you know how to parry them.

Those 2 stars Draugar are tough when in troll armour, though, and the chain bearer is better attracted into friendly and prepared territory at night, than fought under the rain with a risk to be mobed up.
Always prepare a return path.

if you haven't already, build the stagbreaker to deal with the undead.

the reason for a lot of the spike in difficulty tho is due to the wetness debuff from the swamp, so because of that you should be prepared in a multitude of ways when getting ready to leave the forest ie defeat the elder.

you need your base to be completely surrounded by walls, far enough out so that it spawns the raids from trolls with distance from your main buildings, (you unlock troll raids after fighting the elder and they can destroy your base quickly,) and you need to be able to fight trolls with clubs.

you also need a working farm to get carrots to make deer stew plus later foods once you get turnips from the swamp.

you need the fermenters to make healing meads and poison resistance meads.

and on top of all of that your base needs a comfort rating of at least 8 in my opinion, because the rested benefit is what's going to determine whether you live or die in the swamp.

the longer you are rested, the longer your stamina bonus lasts and the less stamina it takes to do things like fight and run through the wet swamp.

and lastly, have a portal connecting to the swamp located in a treehouse on one of the indestructable trees.

once you have all of that you should feel a lot more confident in the swamp, iron armor isn't actually needed and the most you will need for bonemass is just the iron mace + troll armor and a good dodge skill.

The balance of the game is that every time you enter a new biome, you are a noob all over again. Your previous gear should enable you to kill the trash mobs of that area, and anything higher should be avoided until you upgrade.

Do you remember entering the black forest and getting stomped in your leather gear? Conquering the black forest gave you a false sense of confidence. This jump will take place in every biome, just that the swamp is the first time it really sinks in.

Go slow, use caution and run if necessary. Using the hoe to make dry paths will make it easier to run if you need to. You can outrun everything in the swamp except for arrows, and there are lots of trees for that.

Don't go in there without poison resist mead and your trusty hoe. Snipe things with your bow before they become a problem.

Get your mead on; poison resistance is important. Also, swap in an extra red-fork food for more health; the rain kills your stamina regen, but everything else kills you.

Go sneaking around in the swamp until you find a turnip seed flower, then go home and farm for a week or two; the cauldron upgrade and the better foods are well worth the time investment getting your equipment set up well.

The difficulty spike is intentional; much like the spike between meadows and black forest when you're not prepared... it's just that the preparation in this case isn't only about "gearing up".

While it is true that the swamp is a difficulty spike compared to entering the black forest, it's mostly about knowledge and experience in my opinion. If you will ever play the game fully for a second time, I'm quite sure that you will revise your opinion. At least that's how it was for me. I died a lot in the swamp when I first entered it, now it is very manageable.

Never go at night, get the best gear and food possible, use healing and poison meads a lot, don't run constantly, keep some stamina to get out of tricky situations, learn to block with shields, avoid the water and choose your fights wisely. I'm sure you'll be fine soon.

To put it another way: If you slow down and play this as a "brutal survival game" instead of an "action RPG", then you will fare much better. Learn the mechanics, and upgrade everything about yourself that you can before tackling each new biome.

You'll need to do the same thing once you move into the mountain biome, and again at the plains... you have quite a few tools at your disposal; learn to use all of them.

Stay alive first and kill second. Run n gunners die "brutal" deaths in Valheim

If it is your first experience in a new biome don't feel guilty using console commands to go into ghost/god level to at least look around. Maybe even visit the wiki to learn what the new biome can offer for its own upgrades and then spend your first actual visit to locate the minimal pieces of new material to do those upgrades. Many new players may prefer to do neither but are more comfortable with multiple deaths and corpse recovery. When visiting the swamp for the first time it might become clear to either style of player that the best weapon when first visiting the swamp is not a bow, club, axe or sword but a hoe.