Originally posted by Mozzy:

At OP - you are missing something, specifically how combat dmg mechanics work in valheim. This is not ding at you, game doesn't spell out lots of things.

Can check wiki explaining this in full https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Damage_mechanics

But in short, armor works on diminishing returns curve where the tier you are calculated at can be using just one example, almost 30% less HP dmg actually taken than if you were 1 single armor point below that tier threshold.

1 - if zero armor, butt naked, HP dmg = hit dmg. Mob whacks you for 50, take 50 HP loss. Easy.

2- if armor < or = to 50.0%, you get the full value of that armor, kinda the newbie threshold. HP dmg = hit - armor
50 dmg hit - 20 armor = 30 HP loss. Still easy.

Now comes diminishing returns but why upgrading just 1 tier of armor helps you take reduced total HP dmg.

3- if armor is more than half (>50.0%) of total dmg hit, then you use formula ( Dmg / [Armor x 4] ) x Dmg

This means in a way armor is worth less than the newbie tier because you got full value of armor reducing dmg when it was less than or equal to 50%. But this also means each tier you get higher than the dmg hitting you shaves off good amount more than the prior tier.

Wiki has a table so will just summarize a key example - say you have 20 armor, take 40 dmg hit. You lose 20 HP (40 - 20 = 20)

Now you upgrade to next tier of armor and with couple upgrades, not max level 4 but say level 2 or so, now you have 30 armor. That same 40 dmg hit now only does 13.33 dmg to you.

40 dmg hit taking 20 HP by prior tier armor now only takes 13.33 HP. If you do the math, that is whopping 66.6% less actual HP dmg by being just 1 armor tier higher on this curve than wearing prior tier armor.

This diminishing curve starts going down, 33% less, then 20%, 8.3%, etc. But main point and TLDR is just being a few armor points higher than the threshold for prior dmg tier can mean 30-66% less actual HP dmg taken. Depends how far down diminishing returns curve you are, but it isn't just the few armor difference, it is whether you are 1 point more than bare minimum needed to be in the new tier.

Thank you for that insightful post, do you by any chance know the amount of damage the seekers do? Would be interesting to know how big a difference 106 armor vs 100 armor makes^^

Originally posted by avatar.zero:

There are six upgrades for the Forge. Only 2 of them are available in the same biome level as the one that the Forge becomes available at (Black Forest). The other 4 all require materials from the next biome up (Swamp).

Likewise, the Workbench has 4 upgrades, only 2 of which can be made from materials in the same biome that that Workbench is first available at (Meadows). 1 of the remaining upgrades requires materials from one biome up (Black Forest) and the other requires materials from three biomes up (Iron from Swamp and Obsidian from Mountain).

There is already plenty of precedence to warrant waiting for more biomes to be developed before the Black Forge gets more upgrades. It only first becomes available at Mistlands, making Mistlands the low level base biome.

Yeah true, but once you reach the Swamp biome you can upgrade every armor within the tier you get the armor in. You can upgrade the iron armor in the swamp to max level, you can upgrade the silver armor in the mountain biome to max level etc etc.

I don't know much about the patch history of the game, but if I remember correctly the release version of the game had every biome up to, including, the swamp in it. Maybe the mountain as well, but I'm not sure on that. And since the swamp was in the game from the beginning, you never had to wait for the next patch to upgrade your armor to max level. This is the first time this happened. I think. Please forgive me if I got this wrong.

Originally posted by avatar.zero:

Be patient, or use mods - those are your only reasonable options at the moment.

It's not about having an option, it's more about trying to point out (IMO) perceived flaws of the game in hopes of either understanding what's going on and why it's not a flaw at all (which Mozzy helped out a lot with) or if others agree as well, hoping that the Devs might take note of it and may try to do fix the flaw.

It's a great game and I don't want this thread to be a QQ or rage thread. The Mistlands patch is overall good and I enjoy the added features. I don't want to punch down or make the game look worse than it is. I just found this one decision weird and wanted to talk about it and see what others think. At the end of the day I will keep playing the game as it is, because so far it is a good game.