This is the first of the house rules I'm developing to create an alternate progression, a longer voyage through Valheim. The house rules are designed to be usable in conjunction with other options such as /noportal, /nomap, and is inherently a variation of "no-bosses".

The background lore for these rules is that Hugin has been interfered with by Loki, what he is telling you is true for the most part but will lead to disaster. Your Viking becomes aware of this through a dream sending by one of Freyja's students, a rune master of great power. In these dreams, your Viking is instructed how to prepare the runic rituals for each item used to unlock the next biome. Your Viking is told that the Forsaken are much more powerful than Hugin has led them to believe and to have a chance of success, your Viking must first master all the biomes.

The first ritual will create a Hard Antler (same as dropped by Eithykr). You must gather the following: one piece of core wood upon which to carve the runes, five each of deer trophy, boar trophy, and flint pieces which embody the necessary qualities, and finally fifteen pieces of gold to be melted and poured over the other items and into the runic carving to activate the spell. The ritual must be performed at night upon a campfire in the center of one of the power places in the meadows - a circle of stone resembling the point your Viking first touched the 10th world.

In actual play, until/unless some helpful modder someday makes it easier, to use the house rules you will need to have unlocked the console commands and use the following:**[1]

First drop all the materials in the recipe as listed above.

press F5 (brings up console)
type devcommands and hit enter (enables developer commands)

type forcedelete radius=5 and hit enter (destroys the dropped items)

type spawn HardAntler 1 and hit enter (creates the HardAntler material for making the antler pickaxe)

type devcommands and hit enter (disables developer commands)

hit escape to exit console

If it works you can now create one Antler Pickaxe following the recipe you should get when you pick up the HardAntler item.


Suggestions, critiques, all welcome! I'm currently doing a run with a Viking who is trailblazing this alternate path. Additional house rules in this series to follow. Thanks for reading.

**[1] alternatively instead of using devcommands, you could use one of the alternatives suggested by @SLOWpoke below. (Transfer item from another character, or kill boss on another world - just don't hang the trophy as that would grant your Viking the forsaken power even if done in another world.)