Valheim: The Endless Corpse Run

I have a little outdoor shed in my Valheim base. It has four chests that are locked away behind a decorative trellis.

The boxes are full of armor and weapons. Some of them are padded armor from the plains, some wolf armor, some iron, some… whatever I can make.

I don’t keep all this armor from some sort of nostalgia, I keep it because too many times I have died far from home, then died again trying to get my stuff back, and then died again trying to get that back, and…

Every time I die, my skills degrade, so it actually becomes a little harder to stay in the fight, each time.

Killing Yagluth requires farming five goblin totems, which are dropped rarely by goblin berserkers and are uncommonly present in their camps. Those camps are full of goblins that must be killed a few at a time, usually by sniping one dead from a distance, and then taking on their friends when they come from revenge.

But sometimes they bring along a berserker, two shaman, a couple death mosquitos and a pissed-off yak. I, surprisingly made it halfway back across the island to my portal. Whenever I got a little ahead, I’d take the time to kill a goblin or a skeeter. But I can’t kill berserkers or yaks unless they are alone, as you have to stagger them and that takes positioning and timing.

I made my way back through the portal and managed to make it to the last goblin town on the island, where I tried to stagger a 1 star (elite) berserker and failed and was killed. I died a couple of times trying to recover from that. But yay, five totems!

I placed the totems, and just then, a hunt started — wolves, in packs, coming for us. One of the guys didn’t notice and summoned Yagluth, so… we were being attacked from all sides by wolves while the Goblin King was being torn from beyond the grave. Yagluth’s first meteor storm killed them all, though.

The actual fight wasn’t bad. We had Frostners — silver and ice weapon twice as deadly to a fire based undead. We had the Bonemass and Eikthyr buffs, we had fire resists, we had bows with frost arrows, and it went pretty smoothly. We’d back out for meteor storm, move in for the other attacks and just keep whacking at it.

All through this run, the common element to boss fights has been taking the fight to the boss. Plinking away at range really doesn’t work.

I’d wanted the guys to bring their tamed yaks and have them smash Yagluth to bits, but they didn’t, and that’s okay, because we run.

With that under our belt, I was invited to join them in their Mistlands base. We ran around for awhile mining and stuff.

So, today, I thought it would be super fun if I took a ship and a portal and struck out for the far northern reaches of the map, to find a Mistlands that would mirror the southern one the guys had made.

It’s hard to tell how big a Mistlands any particular one is, and this is due to the mist. You can’t see anything. Killing Yagluth gives you an item you use to make a wearable wisp that dispels the mist in a small area, but that hides much more than it shows. The whole place is just unnavigable. But, though I can use the guys’ base to make gear, I’m trying to make my own base self-sufficient, and this means I need to be able to find the Mistlands dungeons and mine the black ore I need. I have never found any of these, and today was no different.

I was, however, killed twice. The first time by a swarm of bugs. I’d make a portal, no problem. The second time, I died to a fire blimp that tossed ticks and nukes at me. I was trying to arrow it down, it was almost dead, but I couldn’t keep my footing on the slick rocks. It nuked me when I was sure I had it down. When I gathered together some CR gear, I found it had destroyed my portal. Maybe the boat, too.

I didn’t have enough deer hide, of all things, to make a new boat, so I had to spend an hour or so killing deer nearby. I’d left the base without food, so I was doing all this with very little health or endurance. Since we’d killed Yagluth, that meant goblins could patrol freely anywhere, and yes, I met a goblin patrol… with very little health and stamina. Luckily, I did have a weapon and shield, and I am getting very good and blocking and parrying.

I eventually was able to get the boat makings together, portaled to the plains that killed me so many times, dodged the yaks, built a ship, and set out for the Mistlands.

I had to stop at a black forest along the way to get some arrows — made a portal home, got arrows, portaled back, destroyed portal for the components, repaired boat, continued on my way. Good thing, too, as I was attacked by a sea serpent on the way back. I knew that was going to happen. It was that sort of cursed day.

Finally back to the Mistlands, I noticed by first ship was still alive. No sign of the components of the destroyed portal, though. Happy to say that I did not immediately die. No idea where the fire blimp went off to, but I was able to do my CR and get my stuff back.

At this point, I really have very little desire to continue with the Mistlands, or even to see the Ashlands. But… I suppose I’ll get through it, somehow.

Not for awhile, though — off on vacation. Give the fire blimps time to forget me. Then I’ll show them. I’ll show them all.