Valheim

Soldato
Joined
5 Feb 2009
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3,814
Built myself a first house last night. Boy, that was slow going. Very different from Minecraft building. I had to build ladders and scaffolds to reach the roof. Fell off the scaffold and died when finishing the chimney. Then I accidentally demolished one wall when taking the scaffolding down.

To be fair, that is pretty much how it would go in real life if I tried to build a house (well, apart from the dying and then taking down the scaffolding, I guess...)

I still don't really know what all the different build pieces are for.

So my base is basically a barn. Barn-shaped, no windows, looks ugly. But it's home.

Also I then found that the door of the house is too far from the fire to get the rested buff. Not that it matters since most of the house is warm enough, but it's going to rankle with me a bit.
 
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Built myself a first house last night. Boy, that was slow going. Very different from Minecraft building. I had to build ladders and scaffolds to reach the roof. Fell off the scaffold and died when finishing the chimney. Then I accidentally demolished one wall when taking the scaffolding down.

To be fair, that is pretty much how it would go in real life if I tried to build a house (well, apart from the dying and then taking down the scaffolding, I guess...)

I still don't really know what all the different build pieces are for.

So my base is basically a barn. Barn-shaped, no windows, looks ugly. But it's home.

Also I then found that the door of the house is too far from the fire to get the rested buff. Not that it matters since most of the house is warm enough, but it's going to rankle with me a bit.

Basic barn is fine to start with, I went way too ambitious on my first build and couldn't get the roof on or supported as it was too big.

You can always take a wall piece out, use the half wall and 2m beams around to make it look like a window.
 
Soldato
Joined
5 Feb 2009
Posts
3,814
Basic barn is fine to start with, I went way too ambitious on my first build and couldn't get the roof on or supported as it was too big.

You can always take a wall piece out, use the half wall and 2m beams around to make it look like a window.

Yeah, I guess I could. To be honest, it was such an effort to build, I might have to leave it a while before I can face even modifications.

I made lots of mistakes but I did end up with a slightly better handle on the process. Just need to experiment with some more complex structures when I feel the motivation return.

It's probably time to take on the first boss, really. I have a level three bow and level two armour, which I guess is the best I can get at this point?
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Dec 2002
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23,299
Location
In a cowfield, London, UK
Yeah, I guess I could. To be honest, it was such an effort to build, I might have to leave it a while before I can face even modifications.

I made lots of mistakes but I did end up with a slightly better handle on the process. Just need to experiment with some more complex structures when I feel the motivation return.

It's probably time to take on the first boss, really. I have a level three bow and level two armour, which I guess is the best I can get at this point?
House building gets a lot better as you learn how to properly build (structural integrity system) and get additional build bits. You just need to give it a bit of time - my first house looks like a messed up barn but I haven't cleaned up the build as its a nice reminder to how I began in the world. I live elsewhere now.
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Dec 2002
Posts
23,299
Location
In a cowfield, London, UK
I 2 hit killed a troll last night testing out the porkypine. I just stood there in utter shock. These things I hunted for ages with a bow, head shotting them at every opportunity. Now they've been put in their place!
 
Man of Honour
Joined
5 Dec 2003
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20,997
Location
Just to the left of my PC
Hmm...my plan is borked and I don't know why.

I gathered thousands of stone and set out with my hoe that does everything to build an island and a causeway. With a workbench every 6 inches to satisfy the game's annoying restrictive building rules. I really should get around to installing some mods. Anyway...it started OK. I was using the "raise land at the corner of existing land" method to reduce stone use to less insane amounts, which had the expected effect of making the created land higher and higher. Not a big problem - I just switched to pickaxe and reduced it when it got higher than I wanted. After I'd made a very small island things started going wrong. The height to which created land was made kept going down rather than up. Any attempt to use the hoe to raise land on the artificial island (rather than making new land on the edge of it) caused the level of the land to go down as if I'd used a pickaxe. Attempts to use the hoe to level the land while standing on a higher point did nothing apart from drain my stamina. So I'm left with a useless little island with some pits in it that is swamped when there's a storm.

I'm wondering if the game is counting the land level from the sea bed. That would explain the created land getting lower the further I get from the shore, but it wouldn't explain the "raise land" action lowering the land or the failure of the "level land" action.

I've used up the ~3000 stone I had. Also (for no reason I could see) my bee hive, charcoal kiln and smelter were mysteriously destroyed. Inside an undamaged fence and undamaged gate. With no damage to anything else.

Maybe I'll pick up what I can and move to a new world.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
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20,997
Location
Just to the left of my PC
Yeah, I guess I could. To be honest, it was such an effort to build, I might have to leave it a while before I can face even modifications.

I made lots of mistakes but I did end up with a slightly better handle on the process. Just need to experiment with some more complex structures when I feel the motivation return.

I did the same, most notably finding out how the snapping works (you need to point the cursor at the snapping point, not try to position the item correctly). Then I watched some building tutorials on Youtube and realised some more of what I'd been doing wrong. Possibly the best tip I saw was to generally build from the inside out. Make a huge floor, place your furniture, workbenches, etc, first and then build the building to fit the contents. Remove excess floor if there is any. Much easier than building the building and then trying to fit your stuff inside it, which would probably result in repeated demolition and rebuilding.

It's probably time to take on the first boss, really. I have a level three bow and level two armour, which I guess is the best I can get at this point?

Not necessarily, but getting better would involve some risk. You could venture into the black forest biome and go along the shores looking for shipwrecks in order to salvage the wrecks to get fine wood to make a finewood bow (much better than the crude bow you have), but the mobs in there are much more dangerous than the ones in the meadows. You could venture into the black forest biome to try to kill trolls to collect trollskin to make trollskin armour (much better than the rag armour you have), but trolls are far more dangerous than the first boss.

I went for the first boss with L1 trollskin armour, L1 finewood bow (with ~L30 bow skill) and a flint axe. I killed it in maybe 30 seconds with flint-headed arrows. It looks very imposing, but it's not as hard as it looks.
 
Soldato
Joined
5 Feb 2009
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3,814
Not necessarily, but getting better would involve some risk. You could venture into the black forest biome and go along the shores looking for shipwrecks in order to salvage the wrecks to get fine wood to make a finewood bow (much better than the crude bow you have), but the mobs in there are much more dangerous than the ones in the meadows. You could venture into the black forest biome to try to kill trolls to collect trollskin to make trollskin armour (much better than the rag armour you have), but trolls are far more dangerous than the first boss..

Ahh. Good to know. Thanks. There is some Forest just a short distance from my new house, so it might be worth having a wander along the coast.

I hope my next encounter with a troll goes a bit better than my first, mind...
 
Man of Honour
Joined
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Just to the left of my PC
Ahh. Good to know. Thanks. There is some Forest just a short distance from my new house, so it might be worth having a wander along the coast.

I hope my next encounter with a troll goes a bit better than my first, mind...

Mine didn't. You can kill a troll with a crude bow and wooden arrows, but it's a chancy business making sure you stay out of range at all times and don't get blocked by terrain or swarmed by greydwarfs.

If you want to have a go at gathering finewood for a finewood bow, your best bet might be to make a raft. The shipwrecks are, of course, always on the coast. I just ran in overland and got to one that way, but it's probably better to sail in along the coast so you can get an idea of dangerous mobs in the area before landing. Also, taking enough wood to build a workbench near the shipwreck would be a good idea. If you do, you can disassemble it using the crafting hammer (middle mouse button by default) and that's both faster and quieter than using an axe.

But you could kill the first boss with the crude bow you have now, make pickaxes from its antlers and then go into the black forest area to start gathering the materials to make bronze. With a bronze axe you can cut down the other trees in the meadows area and get finewood from them. The ones with white bark that are too hard for a stone or flint axe. Birch, maybe. I think it's worth killing the first boss in order to unlock pickaxes. Pickaxes are needed to mine ore and to break up rocks for stone and for some landscaping. They're very useful.

If you want to be on the safe side, you could make fire arrows for the first boss. But you should be able to do it with plain wooden arrows with a L3 crude bow. Or you could do it Josh (Let's Game It Out channel on Youtube) style and use campfires as weapons. I find their "I'll play every game in a creatively wrong way" approach entertaining. But in this case it is quite effective.
 
Soldato
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3,814
Yeah, maybe I'll chance it with fire arrows. I have loads of resin, so why not?

Or you could do it Josh (Let's Game It Out channel on Youtube) style and use campfires as weapons. I find their "I'll play every game in a creatively wrong way" approach entertaining. But in this case it is quite effective.

Although this... this does sound a great approach. Having accidentally run into my own campfire many times I like the idea!

(I probably won't do this, but I am definitely going to watch that video...)
 
Man of Honour
Joined
5 Dec 2003
Posts
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Location
Just to the left of my PC
Heh, I've just made classic noob error number 2. I moved my character (and as many of the more valuable resources as I could fit into their inventory) into a new world following the failure of my plan to build an island. I found a site that I've earmarked for my castle, which I've left alone as I can't build in stone yet. Nearby was a reasonable area for a wooden hall to use until I can work in stone.

So I started building a wooden hall. Bigger than my first one. Too big. I'm going to need to build a forest's worth of scaffolding just to be able to get high enough to put a roof on it and approximately a bazillion pillars to hold the roof up. Also some internal chimneys in the middle of the hall as the hall is too wide to be heated by fireplaces on the walls. I had to spend 3 nights doing nothing because 3 days wasn't long enough to build the place up enough to get shelter for a bed :)
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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7,781
Location
Surrey
Heh, I've just made classic noob error number 2. I moved my character (and as many of the more valuable resources as I could fit into their inventory) into a new world following the failure of my plan to build an island. I found a site that I've earmarked for my castle, which I've left alone as I can't build in stone yet. Nearby was a reasonable area for a wooden hall to use until I can work in stone.

So I started building a wooden hall. Bigger than my first one. Too big. I'm going to need to build a forest's worth of scaffolding just to be able to get high enough to put a roof on it and approximately a bazillion pillars to hold the roof up. Also some internal chimneys in the middle of the hall as the hall is too wide to be heated by fireplaces on the walls. I had to spend 3 nights doing nothing because 3 days wasn't long enough to build the place up enough to get shelter for a bed :)

A good way of creating additional support structures higher up is to raise a small, circular section of ground up as high as you can then place wooden supports into the raised area - they'll all be blue so can support as if they're on the ground. I've done this in one of my larger buildings and surrounded the earth mound with wooden walls acting as a trophy feature
 
Soldato
Joined
21 Oct 2012
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10,830
Location
London/S Korea
Heh, I've just made classic noob error number 2. I moved my character (and as many of the more valuable resources as I could fit into their inventory) into a new world following the failure of my plan to build an island. I found a site that I've earmarked for my castle, which I've left alone as I can't build in stone yet. Nearby was a reasonable area for a wooden hall to use until I can work in stone.

So I started building a wooden hall. Bigger than my first one. Too big. I'm going to need to build a forest's worth of scaffolding just to be able to get high enough to put a roof on it and approximately a bazillion pillars to hold the roof up. Also some internal chimneys in the middle of the hall as the hall is too wide to be heated by fireplaces on the walls. I had to spend 3 nights doing nothing because 3 days wasn't long enough to build the place up enough to get shelter for a bed :)
Your not going to be able to build too high with normal wood. You may find it tricky with the roof. For moderate sized buildings you will need to switch to core wood and for really big structures stone and iron reinforced wood is best.
 
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