5~ years break returnee

[Juukin]

Hey peeps,

just wanted to ask, how's the game state atm? Wondering about getting back, playing a bit.

Is the game playable without much of a hassle, as a hermit?

Have there been major changes in regards to the worlds, or very important gameplay mechanics like combat, pve or pvp?

Would love to hear some feedback so I can consider if it's worth playing again.

[MightySheep]

Nothing changed

[AliExpressMerchant]

Nothing changed at all. Game is slowly dying in maintenance mode

[Regulus2424]

Game is in great state! Regular updates, developers actively engage with the community, the roadmaps, the devlogs, the quick bugfixes! We've reached 100+ different avian species, and 200+ different kinds of mine supports.

World 16.2 is breaking new records in terms of player numbers! The experiment is going great, and my certainty in the 16.2 ending on time is adamant.

And before you ask, yes, OCO is right around the corner.

I'm sure you've done this already but on the miniscule chance that you haven't, remember to buy the 12 month gold sub!

[sMartins]

You forgot to mention that the gnomes are hard at work.

[VDZ]

As you can see, the community has continued to deteroriate, and I'll probably get dogpiled for daring to say anything positive. But the game itself is in a pretty good state right now (despite reduced update frequency) and 16.2 has been a lot of fun.

The biggest change is the two-worlds system. Two worlds, world 16 and world 16.2 are running concurrently, and during character creation you select which of the two worlds to play on. The idea is that the sub-worlds are shorter (devs said 6 months, though 16.1 lasted several months longer) and more experimental, though changes aren't that radical. For 16.2 the biggest differences are that everyone can now freely teleport to the Ring of Brodgar (a safe area), hunger gets reduced based on your stats relative to the server lead and only at fixed moments on Friday rather than gradually, there's no Travel Weariness, and a lot of equipment has more gilding slots. (Also, Haven is on Steam as well now).

Beyond that, in the last five years:

• Food now only provides FEPs (and costs hunger) when above 8000% energy or eating at a table. This means you can eat garbage to regain energy at no penalty.
• Animal material quality is now hardcapped by your tool.
• The world is now divided into regions, and Thingwalls are now important objects in each region that allow you to teleport from one Thingwall to an adjacent (previously visited) Thingwall to quickly get around.
• Charter Stones have been re-added. You need to use a Thingwall to teleport to them.
• Mound Beds have been added, allowing you to ignore Winter (and plant crops) in the area around them.
• Prior to building a Minehole, you now need to light a Mine Pyre in that location. It takes 1 real life day to finish if others have already reached the new cave level, or 7 days if nobody has. This effectively gates world progress. Copper is now found only on layer 2 and below, and iron is only on layer 3 and below.
• Stack Furnaces are now the entry-tier ore smelters and smelt only soft metals. The traditional Ore Smelter now requires bars of hard metal (i.e. typically Bronze for your first smelter).
• Snekkjas are now all the same speed regardless of quality, and require a bar of hard metal to build.

There's probably a bunch of other important things I'm forgetting. The wiki has a list of updates, but world resets didn't have complete official changelogs and some of the changes have been reverted since.

[Regulus2424]

Ring of Brodgar (a safe area)

what is wrong with you?

[VDZ]

Ring of Brodgar (a safe area)

what is wrong with you?

I guess the fact that I don't fearmonger about people very rarely bringing scorpions (which are trivial to kill) into the ring makes me strange to this community. I teleport there all the time and as long as you stay inside the ring itself it's perfectly safe. I've only ever been mugged right outside the safe area (and even that only once despite leaving the safe area multiple times per day).

For the record, as the official announcement doesn't state it, a special vclaim-ish area covers the Ring of Brodgar and its immediate vicinity and disallows crime (including attacking people). The only way to stir up trouble is by aggroing an animal outside of the safe area and leading it into the safe area. Personally, I've only seen it happen twice, and both times it was only a scorpion.

[Juukin]

As you can see, the community has continued to deteroriate, and I'll probably get dogpiled for daring to say anything positive. But the game itself is in a pretty good state right now (despite reduced update frequency) and 16.2 has been a lot of fun.

The biggest change is the two-worlds system. Two worlds, world 16 and world 16.2 are running concurrently, and during character creation you select which of the two worlds to play on. The idea is that the sub-worlds are shorter (devs said 6 months, though 16.1 lasted several months longer) and more experimental, though changes aren't that radical. For 16.2 the biggest differences are that everyone can now freely teleport to the Ring of Brodgar (a safe area), hunger gets reduced based on your stats relative to the server lead and only at fixed moments on Friday rather than gradually, there's no Travel Weariness, and a lot of equipment has more gilding slots. (Also, Haven is on Steam as well now).

Beyond that, in the last five years:

• Food now only provides FEPs (and costs hunger) when above 8000% energy or eating at a table. This means you can eat garbage to regain energy at no penalty.
• Animal material quality is now hardcapped by your tool.
• The world is now divided into regions, and Thingwalls are now important objects in each region that allow you to teleport from one Thingwall to an adjacent (previously visited) Thingwall to quickly get around.
• Charter Stones have been re-added. You need to use a Thingwall to teleport to them.
• Mound Beds have been added, allowing you to ignore Winter (and plant crops) in the area around them.
• Prior to building a Minehole, you now need to light a Mine Pyre in that location. It takes 1 real life day to finish if others have already reached the new cave level, or 7 days if nobody has. This effectively gates world progress. Copper is now found only on layer 2 and below, and iron is only on layer 3 and below.
• Stack Furnaces are now the entry-tier ore smelters and smelt only soft metals. The traditional Ore Smelter now requires bars of hard metal (i.e. typically Bronze for your first smelter).
• Snekkjas are now all the same speed regardless of quality, and require a bar of hard metal to build.

There's probably a bunch of other important things I'm forgetting. The wiki has a list of updates, but world resets didn't have complete official changelogs and some of the changes have been reverted since.

Thanks for the breakdown. Looks like some interesting changes.

What happened with the whole combat revamp that was apparently on the horizon, with aimed skills like Albion Online combat of sorts? Was that scrapped completely?

Also PvP is still forced I assume? Would want to show buddies the game for the whole progression, but if they get killed I'm 100% sure they'd never play again lol, they're ragequitting Valheim already.

[Regulus2424]

Also PvP is still forced I assume? Would want to show buddies the game for the whole progression, but if they get killed I'm 100% sure they'd never play again lol, they're ragequitting Valheim already.

just play on World 16, extremely unlikely to run into ppl even if you try to do it intentionally