After I “recovered” some supplies from an earlier game, I was well set, equipment-wise, to take on the first Valheim boss — Eikthyr, the deer god.
In the lore, which is explained to you every time you start the game unless you skip it, Eikthyr and their chums are evil entities gnawing away at the roots of the Yggdrasil, the World Tree, and defeating them opens your way to Valhalla.
It’s good that they clarified this, because each time I’d killed Eikthyr in the past, it was all I could do not to think of the slaughtering of the forest spirit in Princess Mononoke.
One thing I’ve noticed in the various Valheim boss battles is that being cautious and attacking from range is almost never the correct approach. It might never be the correct approach, except that I haven’t fought the bosses of the Mistlands, Ashlands or Deep North. Maybe those are better ranged. But for the others, pressing the attack is always the better plan. It just takes preparation.
My plan was to use a combination of fire arrows to lure Eikthyr into range, and then knife them when they got close, run from the AE attack, repeat until dead. To prepare, I spent a lot of time sneaking and killing things from range to build up my bow skills, and knifing things to build up my knife skills. It would be pointless to try and kill a god without the skills. I think this is the sort of thing that made Moder, the fourth boss, so hard at times — we hadn’t built up the skill.
While I was prepping to take on the boss, someone asked if I was the kind of person who always did things alone. “No!” I protested. “Of course not! I’m all about the grouping!”
I then continued my preparations to take on the boss alone.
I killed more deer until I had the two deer heads necessary to trigger the boss. Yes, I was also told they had plenty of deer heads. But I was having to build up my ranged skill anyway…
I used cooked dear meat, cooked neck meat, and mushrooms as food (food is vital for stats in Valheim), had two stacks of fire arrows and one stack of wood arrows, and the new flint knife. I wasn’t as skilled with knifing as I should have been; I should have skilled up more. I was skilling up during the fight.
I was surprised that Eikthyr’s attacks, when they hit, didn’t really do much damage. The fire arrows hit hard; the knife hits not so much. I forgot to use my shield to block attacks, mostly just using my Elden Ring skills to just evade them and come back from behind. My battle plan worked out pretty well. It wasn’t a quick fight, but I never felt in any danger.
This may change with the next boss, the tree god. But I have a lot of trolls to kill and stuff to mine before then. I do plan to take on the tree god from melee distance. Tree god is strong from range. Some suggested making a lot of campfires to keep them on fire which sounds like a super good idea; saves me trying to swap fire arrows and whatever the most damaging melee weapon I can manage by then.
And I am on a timer. Once someone kills the tree god, trolls will begin attacking and I have to be well away from our entirely indefensible starting village before that happens. It may already be too late.
