Originally posted by c0mad0r:

Just wait til you get to needing iron lol.

Regardless, it's been hinted the devs are considering a difficulty slider in the future, which may help for people such as yourself who want less grindy time.

For now, it's a survival game and it requires a lot of travel and/or time/patience to get everything you need.

was going to make the exact comment about Iron :)

Most grindy crafting item in the game atm. It was because of all the Iron that is needed at all tiers that I installed the UnrestrictedPortals mod so I didn't have to mule it all over the place all the time.

A difficulty slider will probably only effect how hard the mobs and bosses are. I strongly doubt it will do anything to make the Iron farming any less of a grind beyond the trash mobs being easier to kill.

As the devs have made it quite clear that they want to "encourage exploration" by making Players travel all over the map looking for and hauling metals I just can't see them doing anything to make getting all the Iron needed for Swamp and Plains tier gear easier to get.

Originally posted by Streylok:

Just download valheim plus mod problem solved

Or just the UnrestrictedPortals mod. For those who prefer the single purpose mods to the do-every-thing-in-one-package mods.

Valheim+
https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/4
login required to download

UnrestrictedPortals
https://valheim.thunderstore.io/package/xAfflict/UnrestrictedPortals/
guest downloads allowed.

I actually think it's refreshing to have some grinding to do, to many games nowadays give you or make you pay for everything to be served up on a plate.

I will always recommend mods. You want the best experience, use mods and tweak to your liking. When I played back in the days, I found the best tweaks that made the game more balanced and enjoyable. Keep begging the devs. They will do nothing but add more .... food.

It's so temporary.. I would just skip the leather armor.. go from rag to troll.. soon you will be throwing away dear leather by the bag fulls..

Originally posted by DarthTanyon:

It's so temporary.. I would just skip the leather armor.. go from rag to troll.. soon you will be throwing away dear leather by the bag fulls..

This i second and it's what I do every game nowadays. Trolls seem big and scary, and they do hurt if you get hit, but if you eat 3 meats you can survive a blow, maybe two and they are weak to fire so just running around peppering them with fire arrows when they stop burning makes them pretty easy even near the start so you CAN skip the leather armor. Just avoid the dungeons until you do get your troll armor set up, maybe even upgraded a bit if you are nervous because the trolls and those skeletons are the only significant threats that early on (as long as you dont get ambushed or surprised by a raid).

You can cheese dungeons too.. you don't even need armor just like a bow and a LOT of arrows/fire works best.. nothing other than the archer skeletons can attack you on the beginning platform.. if you lure mobs there then you are 100% safe and can just shoot the enemies.

Originally posted by c0mad0r:

Just wait til you get to needing iron lol.

Regardless, it's been hinted the devs are considering a difficulty slider in the future, which may help for people such as yourself who want less grindy time.

For now, it's a survival game and it requires a lot of travel and/or time/patience to get everything you need.

was going to make the exact comment about Iron :)

Most grindy crafting item in the game atm. It was because of all the Iron that is needed at all tiers that I installed the UnrestrictedPortals mod so I didn't have to mule it all over the place all the time.

A difficulty slider will probably only effect how hard the mobs and bosses are. I strongly doubt it will do anything to make the Iron farming any less of a grind beyond the trash mobs being easier to kill.

As the devs have made it quite clear that they want to "encourage exploration" by making Players travel all over the map looking for and hauling metals I just can't see them doing anything to make getting all the Iron needed for Swamp and Plains tier gear easier to get.

Just download valheim plus mod problem solved

Originally posted by Streylok:

Just download valheim plus mod problem solved

Or just the UnrestrictedPortals mod. For those who prefer the single purpose mods to the do-every-thing-in-one-package mods.

Valheim+
https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/4
login required to download

UnrestrictedPortals
https://valheim.thunderstore.io/package/xAfflict/UnrestrictedPortals/
guest downloads allowed.

Just wait til you get to needing iron lol.

Regardless, it's been hinted the devs are considering a difficulty slider in the future, which may help for people such as yourself who want less grindy time.

For now, it's a survival game and it requires a lot of travel and/or time/patience to get everything you need.

I find boar to be more of a grid than deer in meadows. Deer are good for building up your bow skill, which is useful later.

In my experience the spawn rates are more than satisfactory, especially compared to other games of similar genre. After a patch which occurred around September 2022, I noticed not only an increase of the spawn points of boar & deer, but also an exponential increase of the frequency of those spawns.

Compared to prior of the aforementioned patch, now when I am out gathering the frequency of spawns seems to be directly related to my presence and activity in any given area. After spending a few minutes in any given area, the Ai seems to make an adjustment initiating the frequency of spawns, especially of deer, boar not so much. The trick is to go back over area one has previously occupied. It has become extremely commonplace for deer I have just killed to respawn in the exact same location, so much so that at times all I have to do is turn around after picking up their materials to see them reoccupying the same area. Last night as I was moving down the coast in a meadows biome I was fishing, I spotted a deer on a small isthmus of land along the coast. I shot it, picked up the dropped materials, travelled around 80m, then heard a deer bark. I turned around and saw that there was 3 deer occupying the exact same isthmus. Try moving through an area, then retrace your path, paying special attention to traverse areas previously inhabited by deer.

At the very start, deer felt really scarce, but that was when I was clomp-clomp-clomping through the woods. Prioritize getting a bow, wooden arrows are more than sufficient for hunting, then build up that sneak skill. Sneak until depleted, walk until recharged, sneak again. You'll be surprized just how many dang deer there are around the meadow wooded areas. Often they are 2 or 3 in a group so don't just run up if you snipe one. Sprint and jump through the grassy open areas. Having a high sneak skill is definitely helpful in other biomes. (Take some time to swim as well.)

its better when you move around, but in the same area it can be low or if you sleep at all.
More stamina foods and faster to go around + buffs, else it sucks with boars later on anyways, until you find "those spawns" that will give a ton of resources over time.

At times boars can seem like a pain, and same with ore spawns when you need a good amount of it. Which mashed together with the traveling system... eeh.
Iron can be easy to get, feel like its a bit better than copper when you first found some dungeons, but after that and with no respawns? that kind of sucks.

But very forced way to get iron, but like the option of dungeons giving ore, also a lot of ore from the one I found.

Also deer suck if you dont get an bow early on, throwing spear could work too.

Valheim is amazing despite itself. I mean, even with all the BS CHORES we are forced to do endlessly. Blah hate it.

Bow is the easiest way to hunt deer in my opinion, but if you dont have one you can sneak up behind them and any sufficiently fast weapon can murder them if you get close enough to hit before they spook. Just be sure to stay behind them, line of sight is apparently a thing.

When it comes to grind, I haven't checked out all the newest stuff yet (stopped playing for a bit so there would be new stuff to check out when i came back) but in my experience so far its specifically the bronze age that feels the most tedious. Iron can be tedious to, but theres also a lot more you can do with it that will likely remain useful for more than just the next few days after you get it, some iron stuff you will likely use for the majority of the rest of the game (like the longboat) whereas bronze just feels like a part you have to slog through to get to the actually good stuff.