fun game, buy it

You should expect trees that try to kill you.

its worth the money if you dont get system crashing or anything like that, or dont mind punching a tree or two.

Valheim is great, if you can persist. It will be brutal to you. You will be enjoying your time, things are going well.. the sun is shining, and you have lots of resources. You've nearly finished your first cabin, and you think you have things pretty well figured out, yet..

As you travel to a new part of the forest, something 1 shot kills you. You aren't sure what it was. Your skills all lose 5% points. Every swaying branch in the wind makes you flinch now.
You have to try to get back to your stuff, but where is that thing? What was that thing? At this point, you think.. maybe I should have a second set of gear? It might help with corpse runs.

The list of tough lessons goes on.

Most people I know in real life ragequit within the first few hours of gaming because they get killed once, and they don't think corpse runs are fair or fun.

They usually add that Valheim requires grinding out progress and farming a lot of materials, while proceeding with caution. Thesesame friends of mine are super into other action RPG that just start you with a super-hero that becomes even more ultra super, and does it all with amazing flourishes and fancy light particle blooms as you mash the A-button over and over and think they're the bestest gamer evah! You know, witcher, castelvania, assassin's creed, dragon age type players. Just mash mash win.

Valheim is not a button masher.

This is not a flashy game. It is not going to make you feel like a hero. It will make you grind your teeth in bitter satisfaction over your hard earned milestones, but with every step forward, you look back at your past foes and see them weak, and easily broken.

Having an ally will help, but also you will face more, and harder foes for it.

In sum, expect to play this game for over 20 hours before you are no longer 'wet behind the ears'.. but to see the whole game, even in early access, expect to play over 200 hours.

It's on sale now too, so go get it. Check it. Let us know how you do.

Get started with building thinking it's a bit like Minecraft only to come to the conclusion that all time spend there is of no use. Buildings can collapse, you need actual walls, a moat, a harbor, it's quite something. But once you have that base standing you feel a sense of pride. And then ranged enemies come along to wreck your base to pieces from a distance so you know you have to upgrade it further.

Also bats, screw the bats, they are the bane of my existence. It's not like they deal damage in any sort of way to me, but my poor pets, they live a sheltered live for a reason.

Might be best to watch a few youtube streams of people playing. You'll get more unbiased info that way. If it looks good to you, give it a try. It's not an expensive game.

It to be unfinished. But for an ea game it’s really fun and polished, as far as ea’s go.

It can feel unfair, it's pretty forgiving at first and then the difficulty ramps up quick. It's alot of fun, but can be tedious if you don't like the grind to get items and resources. Me and a friend started a new game for the mistland update and we just finished yersterday with like 100 hours (for that ''playthrough'') and at the end we were pretty sad it was over. I'm at like 350 hours in so far and it's great. I think it's well worth the price and a great time, the more the merrier. (The game also has big performance issue and server issues for some rigs, but it's not a deal breaker necessarily).

logging shenanigans, cart-tricks and accidental structure punching

Frustration, anger, high blood pressure and faster pulse at times.
Everything except deer, birds and fish will try to murder you and you need to survive, explore, eat and build bases. If this sounds good then go for it.

Do not watch spoilers because it´s much more rewarding in the long run to struggle a bit and come up solutions yourself

Each time you move up a biome you will feel like a newb all over again. Take it slow. Right when you feel like you own the place, you move up and have to get used to sneaking around all over again.

Building forts is fun. Make sure you build them with proper defenses. They will be tested.

It's a significant time investment - and yeah, frustrating at times. Dying can be an ordeal, and baddies coming in and wrecking your stuff sucks.

Building options are amazing compared to most survive-em-ups, and you can come up with some pretty amazing forts/houses, but the actual building process can be pretty frustrating (particularly when you first start, since enemies will constantly interrupt you).

Rain rots wood, buildings can fill with smoke, structures need proper support, campfires can set walls on fire, etc. - there are some interesting architectural challenges, and they give you the tools and creative freedom to deal with that. It's rewarding, though placement is frustrating.

The raids really force you into a defensive layout, no cozy villages unless surrounded by a big-ass wall - and that can be time consuming..

The game also forces you to travel a lot - there are portals you can build, but many high-end mats can't be taken through them (pretty much any metal, for example), so you spend a lot of time at sea hauling stuff in a boat. There's wind, and you've got a sailboat, so sometimes this is slow and tedious, other times it's just a relaxing ride.

It's sleepy and slow at times, annoying at times, and entirely awesome at times.

Originally posted by Pwincess:

[...] campfires can set walls on fire [...]

They can? I always only set myself on fire. :-o

Originally posted by Ailes:

Originally posted by Pwincess:

[...] campfires can set walls on fire [...]

They can? I always only set myself on fire. :-o

Yeah, I've never seen this either, and I recently built a stake wall right over a lit campfire. Surprised it let me do that, but I was just fencing in my garden and the fire was in the way.

Always put some kind of ledge around your fires because vikings, and wolves, and chickens, are clumsy.

Here's some tips, if you do plan on getting the game

Take it slow. Start off with a small base and work outwards. Learn the ins and outs of the game. It will be fairly easy in the Meadows, the starting biome. You might even get a seed where you have meadows and black forest

As soon as you can though, you need to load up on a lot of supplies. This is where I advise building a main base and then having some kind of portal room (you'll need 2x surtling cores per portal, some fine wood and I think 20x greydwarf eyes). I would advise you keep a random portal at your main base after you have "mob-proofed" it. Name it something easy to remember, like port1, or 80, lol.

It is quite helpful to have the necessary items on you at all times to throw down a portal. You'll need a bronze axe to get fine wood, so you won't be doing this right away...but this can save your butt. If you venture very far outward and cannot safely venture back, quickly build a shack and then drop the portal and portal back to where your important stuff is. It's better to lose a portal than all of your stuff.

So there are several stages to the game pretty much. Stone, bronze, iron, etc. And the kind of ore you need changes with each biome

So that's when outposts come in handy, because if you want to play vanilla valheim, the only thing you cannot teleport is raw or processed ore. If you make it into anything else (use iron for arrows for instance), you can portal no problem.

Don't shrug off getting a good resting bonus, and I would highly recommend keeping your hp above 100 and your stamina at around 125. This won't be possible until you get through the black forest

But yeah some of the crucial items you need, you will have to go dungeon raiding to get them. Luckily if you know what you're doing, then dungeons will be a breeze

Just try not to speedrun the game. Not on your first nor your third attempt. Base building can be fun. You'll need a lot of wood. That's why this game is really as enjoyable as it is, because of the survival and building mechanics.

It's like minecraft but not blocky and more for adults. The building physics actually account for gravity and build height. Careful chopping trees. They will fall where they please.

Hope this wall of text helps

TL;DR? I don't blame you. The game is very affordable. Look how many hours I have. I play it sparingly but it is an absolute blast with a friend. Solo is fun too but best with some homies.

I don't see how I won't surpass 1,000 hours in this game and still probably not get bored. Just don't burn yourself out too quickly on it.