Originally posted by Rhapsody:

Originally posted by Gisbert:

In Mistlands you no longer have rewards, you just collect and hoard everything. We were facing the Queen and didn't even have 5 cores yet. Then at the end of the biome you unlock stuff you don't need anymore.

Sounds like case of poor RNG or poor exploration efforts. Doing away with the Queen doesn't unlock anything "you don't need anymore" except the Forsaken power. Everything in each existing biome can be found, gathered and farmed before defeating the boss, so your version of the "core mechanics" is pretty colored, to say the least, and doesn't have anything to do with the inconsistent changes implemented in the post-Mistlands patch.

I agree with your first part. We really had bad luck. The first infested mine we explored gave as the location of the queen which was nearby without any cores.

But aside from that, we needed to explore another mistlands area and 4 more mines to get a total of 9 cores. We crafted the smithing table first, because that seems to fit us the most, at least if you have not let yourself be spoiled (better weapons and stuff).

Maybe it's our playstyle but we don't dismantle buildings to use ingredients for other stuff and then convert back again over and over. So we built a nice place for the new smithing table, but all we could craft was the spear and a crossbow of what had practical use for us. All other recipes were hidden behind Eitr, which we could not know at that time.

So we discovered a third mistlands area, before we even saw the refinery. And even then we didn't know about the feather cape which would make exploring so much better, because we built the workbench last (what absolutely makes sense, if you don't know the feather cape exists), when we had already conquered 4 mistlands completely and the other players were standing impatiently in front of the queen.

Compare this to the previous biomes and you will find that with a small patch of dark forest that has 1-2 copper deposits and some tin on it, you can already make all the basic equipment without upgrading, craft a plow and plant fields, etc.

You gather more of the ressources and upgrade your gear while exploring and conquer more area of the biome and while searching for the boss which felt like natural progression. Iron, silver, black metal the same.

This can be considered a core mechanic, as this flow of progress is present throughout the whole game, but stops when you reach the Mistlands which was added last.

We've never had so much stuff flying around in our chests that we didn't know what it was for and didn't learn about its use until just before we bossfight and had already conquered practically all of the mistlands we found at that time.

So in Mistlands there is in fact a blatant lack of a steady flow of progress compared to the previews game, regardless of whether we have been unlucky or not, especially since it is not that hard to get the same unlucky we had. We played from scratch so we felt this stop of progression in direct comparison.

So Valheim was always difficult when entering an unknown area the first time. It was always hard like Mistlands - we all felt this a good thing. But give that boys a cookie instead of nerfing the difficult.

Take out the difficulty level with a patch to compensate for the missing progression system is the wrong way.
Or to put it more clearly:
Taking out another part of the core mechanics to compensate for an already missing part, is like amputating a broken arm.

That the developers don't understand what the community wants anymore is one thing, but what shocks me more are the players themselves. In our group it was clear, we didn't even talk about it much - everyone noticed it immediately, there was no discussion about it in relation to this forum. It is so obvious what mistlands has on offer and what is lacking in comparison.

It seems to me that many of those who cried about the difficulty were simply looking for a scapegoat because they don't care why it's less fun, they just realize it is. This is just my opinion, but if this update had a steady flow of progression, much players would have cried less about the level of difficult.

First time Mistlands was maybe a little bit harder as first time swamps. You also get 2 star elite draugr at spawner in bronze gear and you are always wet - I can tell you how much fun this was... but overall it felt worth it after the first crypt nearby.

It's more fun to die in the first crypt when you unlock your first new gear and the stone cutter.