You're not making any sense.

Anyways, one issue I have with the armor system is mixing sets, ie: carapace w/root chest, Fenris leggings. Though I love the genuineness and nostalgia feeling it gives, mixing sets make the other armor pieces that are not equipped rendered completely useless and give no purpose to them.

Death is 100% avoidable in this game.. IF I go into a dangerous biome.. why would I be at low health or under prepared.. 90% of the time I die in this game.. which have only been about 10x in 500 hours is because I made a mistake. I was low on food, I went somewhere I shouldn't have, I jumped off my roof and had no food lol, I did not prepare enough etc.. death is avoidable and generally should not happen if you know what you are doing. Also potions exist. Healing potions and stam ones can save your life.

The magic system as well as adding some of the more recent armors was done exactly to address that.

Players that need the metal armour have choice to use it, but the more useful armors still leave you open to taking bigger hits from mobs of earlier biomes.

I do agree thou, would like the diminishing returns on be a little more aggresive so that we actually take damage from Black Forest mobs in later armors... but then they die fast anyways, and with the health from late game food you can fight hordes of them naked without dodging/blocking and they still cant make a dent through your regen. So "fixing" armor would not change a thing.

In these kind of games, its either or: get meaningful progression or have meaningful fights in early biomes. Which is fine IMHO, we dont need every game to tick all the boxes, especially when they are mutually exclusive.

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

I don't know why, but there seems to be some confusion about this, so I tested it just to make sure my math was right above, Even at only 100 health, with max iron armor, the wolf attack does, in fact, do only about 20 damage, with no chance of stagger:

https://youtu.be/W0clZPxMZeQ

Wolves do attack very fast. If you do, get staggered while being attacked by a wolf, you many not be able to recover, which may be what the OP is describing, but that's bad with any armor, and the question that hasn't been answered is what caused the stagger.

This is probably what i was remembering, then (I'm in mistlands now). I do know that multiple times i've been, essentially, stunlocked by a single wolf with absolutely no way to recover, but it's possible i wasn't at full health at the time of taking that first hit - stagger seems to scale with your current health, as many times when i'm low on health i completely fail a block i know i have timed right.

Another issue with wolves specifically is their terrain traversal. They can follow you up any degree of slope, it seems, and you can only stay ahead of them so long as you have stamina to sprint, so if you're not in a good position to deal with one (low health, for example), aggroing one can basically be a death sentence. I'm a big opponent of unavoidable death in any game, i think that the player should always have the ability to either succeed or escape.

Originally posted by Narrrz:

Another issue with wolves specifically is their terrain traversal. They can follow you up any degree of slope, it seems, and you can only stay ahead of them so long as you have stamina to sprint, so if you're not in a good position to deal with one (low health, for example), aggroing one can basically be a death sentence. I'm a big opponent of unavoidable death in any game, i think that the player should always have the ability to either succeed or escape.

You always have that choice. You can exit the game, recover in another world, come back and finish the fight, but that makes the game mostly pointless.

I don't know why, but there seems to be some confusion about this, so I tested it just to make sure my math was right above, Even at only 100 health, with max iron armor, the wolf attack does, in fact, do only about 20 damage, with no chance of stagger:

https://youtu.be/W0clZPxMZeQ

Wolves do attack very fast. If you do, get staggered while being attacked by a wolf, you many not be able to recover, which may be what the OP is describing, but that's bad with any armor, and the question that hasn't been answered is what caused the stagger.

The bottom line is that there is no issue with armor progression, especially from swamp to mountain, which many (myself included) consider a step down from swamp, especially starting out.

The transition from black forest to swamp is a major step until you get iron armor, and from plains to mistlands is another major step, and carapace armor provides very little improvement, both due to the flattening of the armor progression curve and due to only having one upgrade currently.

You're not making any sense.

Anyways, one issue I have with the armor system is mixing sets, ie: carapace w/root chest, Fenris leggings. Though I love the genuineness and nostalgia feeling it gives, mixing sets make the other armor pieces that are not equipped rendered completely useless and give no purpose to them.

u can die very fast by just stepping accidentally into the wrong zone, for example the mosqitos

Fully upgraded iron gear and you were 2 shot by a wolf? Definitely not an armor issue.. that is a health issue.. Iron gear is literally made for exploring and conquering the Mountains. Sure you can replace it with silver.. but that is the gear you will be starting with and should have zero issues with the Drakes, wolves, golems or boogy men in the caves.

The custom settings that are coming sound nice but I doubt it would let you adjust the steep power curve. I can't think of a game that has done it that way.

It does not need to be as extreme as it is to convey that sense of growth. The current scaling reminds you that only one biome is ever relevant at a time. Earlier areas too boring. Later areas too tedious. It makes the world feel guided in that way. There are better methods of deterring players from staying too long in a later biome and the game already uses a number of them.

In most cases, progressing to the next material is a lot less practical if not impossible without the previous boss drop. Sometimes you need a new crafting station or a new outfit to ride out the unique hazards of a respective biome. Those seem like sound ways of nudging players to where they are supposed to go. Much more sound than nuking the player for wandering into sniffing distance of the wrong territory.

There is no problem here.

A wolf does 70 damage. If I'm doing the math correctly, only 20 of that should get through fully upgraded iron armor, worst case (not staggered), and you would have to have a max health of 50 to be staggered by 20 damage.

The only way that what the OP says makes any sense if if he was staggered by something else prior to being attacked by the wolf, but that's still not the fault of the armor.

Armor has diminishing returns once you hit iron. You can finish the game in iron armor without too much added difficulty. What you eat and your max health are much more important at that point than what armor you wear.

I see your problem, but the other problem is that gear and weapons basically have to scale exponentially to make the players feel like they are progressing. And exponential growth does exactly what you describe. If it would grow linearly you would get complaints about a percieved lack of progression.

In fact this was one of the main complaints about carapace armor, that it provided limited extra protection compared to padded. That is mainly because the extra armor is small as a percentage of padded as a whole. In an earlier part of the game that jump would feel satisfying.

In the end we will have 8 biomes. From each biome to the next players are going to want to feel they made progress, and progress as a significant percentage of the previous stats. If you go from 10 to 20 slash that feels a lot better than going from 100 to 110.so you have to go from 100 to 150 or so. This constant demand for extra power leads to the power creep you described.

The armor growth is far from exponential. In fact, it's sublinear, as seen in the plot (and equations) on this page: https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Damage_mechanics

Not a super fan of how armor and health works in this game due to exactly what you mention in your first paragraph, but I think it's too late to change it without pissing many people off. It would dramatically alter the feel of the game to change it. Besides, you would have to convince the devs of it. :-) Then again these things can be modded presumably.

If you're in fully upgraded iron armor and get staggered by a no-star wolf, it's because of your health, not because of the armor.

the best combo armor for mistlands is not full mistlands gear actually. its 2 pieces carapace and the root chest due to its pierce resistence. just bring fire resist mead.

the zone armor progression system wont be changed till the deep north is released tough. its set in stone for now. maybe for the 1.0 release some changes might be done.