I would just like to thank the devs for making the Forge of P̶o̶t̶e̶n̶t̶i̶a̶l̶ Uselessness COMPLETELY pointless to use. Now I can continue to play the game, while completely ignoring its existence. Should never have been usable in the first place, what is this, a fun zone? Pfft.

So glad that I can't raise lower tiered weapons I like to be reasonably usable later on, and the I wasn't able to get my Scythe to 50 in time. Very cool and based take. Hope nobody was looking forward to cool, fun, or unique builds. We are truly blessed to have devs that care so much about us.

Its pretty simple, that thing is optional, you are not supposed to push all items to quality lvl 10. I use it to get items from lvl 3 to lvl 5 or 6 if i wanna skip some weapons, and thats great use, also there should be a risk since you are going over designated lvl 4, otherwise game is too easy. And you dont even need weapons higher than lvl 2-3 unless you are carrying weapon over 3 biomes.

I dunno whats the deal with you guys, this game is supposed to be little hard. If forge of potential becomes accessible, it would be too easy, you could skip even more stuff and the game is supposed to be chill adventure/journey, not freaking sweaty tryhard speedrun, but hey you can do it if you want.

On normal its not even needed honestly, you are fine with getting most stuff lvl 2, shield lvl 3. Honestly only those that play on hard need it and its not like they really need need it, at hard the game becomes more like cheese, no matzer how much armor you have, its not gonna helo you much, gives you 1 more hit, maybe 2.

Those that have favourite weapon also should use it if they like to carry it longer. And for all those uses, it works.

honestly. i only seed FoP posts coming by with complaints. can we just make a big thread just for the forge of potential so this reddit can be about everything in the game again?

The forge is supposed to be a way to squeeze a bit more out of equipment you have, with some downsides. Being able to get lvl 10+ equipment breaks the game, that is not the purpose.
You shouldn’t be able to mindlessly spam upgrades. I upgraded my krom twice and i was able to fight the queen with a glowy lvl5 bonking stick and was super happy about that.

I haven’t seen an idea yet that isn’t super forgiving and allows you to easily get to whatever level you want.

Also we now have a way to deconstruct items, which we have been asking for years.

If you want a level 25 item you can just use devcommands

I have seen a lot of negativity towards the forge which I really don't understand. Maybe people are losing their main weapons in the forge and getting upset as a result.

But for me, the forge seems amazing. All those old materials I hoarded finally have a use. I can also spend hours grinding mats to try to get insanely powerful weapons!

It seems in line with the rest of the game, as it rewards you for taking your time between biomes and grinding for materials.

You can also make older weapons/Armor viable in later biomes, adding a new element of strategy to the game. Maybe you want certain dmg resistance that only exists on an older armor piece. Or the bow boost from toll armor.

Don't just risk your valuable weapons in the forge! Make a second, a third, and a fourth, and then use it.

The Forge of Potential is a hot topic of discussion as of late, and a lot of people are throwing out their ideas for reworks to this mechanic, so I figured it would be cool to have a central thread for them.

I think a rework should incentivize the player to gather as many idols as they can, and not punish the player for actually using the mechanic. The way I see it, the Forge should be one of two things:

1. A resource dump:

Minimize or remove the chance for gear to break, and instead make the upgrades cost their usual resources in addition to an idol for each level. Perhaps items upgraded past their usual maximum should also require materials from the next biome to continue upgrading (i.e. a Plains-tier weapon would require resources from the Mistlands to upgrade past its maximum). As with typical upgrades, each level requires more resources.

This system would allow you continue upgrading your favorite weapon through extra biomes if you wish to grind for a ton of extra resources. By gating further upgrades with materials from the next biome, you gate that power behind a boss kill (or progression skip). This preserves the "late game resource dump" justification, minus the frustration of all of that grinding potentially being for naught.

2. An RNG roll

Alternatively, maintain the RNG elements, but make it more interesting than a simple chance for your beloved gear to break or get a basic stat boost. Instead, the risk/reward could come from rolling a random min/max stat enhancement. For instance, say I spend an Idol, and the Forge adds a "Heavy" prefix to my Krom, which adds extra base blunt damage in exchange for a higher movement speed penalty. Say I don't like that and I spend another Idol to reroll, and this time it adds a "Venomous" prefix, lowering its base damage in favor of a potent poison DoT. Maybe it adds a "Light" prefix to my Flametal Greaves, removing the movement speed penalty in exchange for a slight weakness to blunt damage. Maybe it increases the draw speed of my Spinesnap, but the arrows don't travel as far.

There are so many possible enhancements they could add, and it would be a simple matter of shifting some stats/damage types around. This could add so much flavor and variety to weapons that are otherwise kind of boring, similar to the awesome gem imbuement system of the Ashlands weapons.

This system could be tuned/balanced in a variety of ways. Perhaps you can only add a prefix to a weapon once rather than upgrading its stats ad infinitum, but the RNG is in trying to roll the perfect prefix on each piece of gear for your desired playstyle. Further upgrades could increase the effect of the enhancement, or you could alternatively spend an idol to strip the enhancement and continue rolling for your favorite. Devs could even maintain a chance for the item to break at any point, but at least this way it's more of value proposition than "get a lucky +10 or have to grind a shit ton"

What are your ideas for a Forge of Potential rework?

I was entering Plains after killing Bonemass and I got hit back to back "you are being hunted" event and got tilted, used devcommands to killall entities and after winding down, I realized I cant finish the game free of cheats even with the "yesiuseddevcommandsbutiwantmyachievementsanyway". Its more of a personal thing y'know to finish a game knowing yourself its free of cheating.

(Sorry english isnt my first language)

Save scumming to get around the forge system still works perfectly fine with the new patch. It its not working for you then you are doing something wrong.

First save scum isn't really the correct word to use, at least not for the most optimal method. what you are actually doing is item duplication but only cashing in on the duplicate if the FOP fails. In light of that just do the dupe first and then once you know it worked risk the item in the forge already knowing that you have a backup. When I do it I'll typically do 8 or 16 copies and then just run them all to see how high it gets and keep the best item or if I get to where I wanted to get I will stop there and toss the spares. (for example i wanted a level 10 dead raiser so i could run 2 and a half blood magic xp farms to make the leveling faster)

The process is as follows:

1. Make a chest ideally a large one.
2. Place all items you want to dupe in the chest.
3. Manually save the world.
4. Remove all items from the chest to your inventory.
5. Using Task manager end task to close Valheim. DO NOT ALT F4 OR CLOSE NORMALLY OR CLOSE THROUGH STEAM!!! you need the rapid force quit that task manager creates to bypass the state save that normally happens when the game closes.
6. Reopen the game.
7. hit enter 3 times to jump back in as fast as possible.
8. collect the items from the chest.
9. repeat as needed. you will have X*2^n-1 copies where X is how many you started with, and n is the number of times you dupe.
10. go to the forge and attempt on each item until it either fails, you get to the number you wanted, or it is the highest level of that item you have. if it is the highest level you have then level another item until the are the same before you level it up again. i.e. if you have 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 and you make it to 5, 4, 4, 4, 4 then level all the 4's to 5 before attempting to get a 6. when you have one item left you can repeat the dupe to get a new set to set a new floor for the upgrade cycling process. this drastically reduces how long the process takes.
11. throw away all the scraps from the process, or don't I'm a redditor not a cop ¯_(ツ)_/¯

As a note to Iron Gate..... If you patch this before fixing EVERY OTHER BUG AND PROBLEM WITH THE GAME then its proof you hate your players. Yes this is an exploit but its one that you need the ability to control game world save state to do so its not hurting anyone. the only reason to patch this would be to say fuck you to players who just want to have fun their way without using mods or console commands. let us relax and enjoy our free time playing your game and spend your dev time somewhere it matters.

For the mods, yes this is an exploit and if it violates rule 5 and needs to be removed the so be it but i couldn't find a solid guide anywhere and wanted to get out out for others to have an easier time. Some of us don't have a lot of time to grind out items but still want to interact with systems in the game. the exploit has to be done very intentionally and i personally don't think it adversely affects or ruins the experience.

I spent three straight days grinding Black Metal, farming linen thread, and turning my world upside down to hunt for Battle Idols.

My Mistwalker was beautiful. Max level, glowing, peak Viking performance.

So I take her to the Forge of Potential. I just wanted to give her that +1 extra spice. I put my weapon on the anvil, pull the lever, and pray to Odin.

Boom.

35% chance to destroy it. It didn't just break; it exploded into a sad pile of half-refunded scrap metal.

Now I’m sitting here in my longhouse, bare-handed, staring at a chest full of raw copper while the Forge just hums there, completely untouched, vibrating with the essence of my stolen hours.

I didn't just lose my gear. I stood there and watched a literal stone structure take the absolute best thing in my life, destroy it right in front of my face, and I paid it an Idol just to let me watch.

I am a cuck to a procedurally generated RNG rock. 10/10 game mechanic, ready to go grind it all over again.

Feels like the forge of potential is way to powerful. Odds of your item breaking need to be at least 67% and you should be required to fight an escalatingly powerful challenge boss before every use, with only your unenhanced item. The way it currently is makes the game incredibly easy, the entire community seems to be in consensus on this.

Also, feels like iron is to easy to get in excessive quantities, crypts should have less so you're required to explore even more of the map before making an iron buckler.

Trophy drop rate is also crazy high but we can't have everything improved at once.

So I know there's probably going to be loads of posts about the forge but one thing I've not seen anyone mentioning.

Is that they patched out the save scumming which is whatever. There's mods that fix that.

But isn't the forge bugged still that it has a 35% chance to break. and not the 10% chance like intended and 20% chance to downgrade.

I find it so strange that they went to all the effort to fix the exploit but not the fact that the forge is actually broken. Or was it always meant to be a 35% chance to break?

I'm not here to complain about game balance or say they're OP, I'm just a bit baffled by the design choice is all.

These are just... normal wolves, right? Like dogs, but larger? I know we're in a fantasy world post death, but evidence points to the animals being normal.

Between bears, boars, and wolves, wolves are actually be considered the least dangerous of the three. Contrary to what the game would have you believe, a wolf biting someone in iron armour would do about 0 damage, not remove a third of your existence.

Their HP values seems alright, but the damage is absurd, and in any other game I'd think it's because someone misplaced a decimal value.

It's pretty funny that a monster truck sized blue behemoth doesn't do nearly as much damage as dog.

The uncut version will be available tomorrow.

The problem with the Forge of Potential isn't that you can't upgrade shit to level 10. Why would you think you should be able to upgrade shit to level 10 in the first place?

The problem with the Forge of Potential isn't that you risk much of the item's materials. Of course you should risk something for an easy upgrade.

The problem with the Forge of Potential isn't that you can't save-scum it, of course you shouldn't be able to easily cheat the game. If you want to cheat, install mods and accept that its what you're doing.

The only real problem I see, is that some items get significant upgrades when using the Forge, and others get very little.

As an example:

Dead Raiser 4 -> Dead Raiser 6

50% chance of destruction, two extra skeletons (a 50% bonus), significant increase in experience gain for the Blood Magic skill, which leads to higher damage for the skeletons and stronger bubbles for the skeletons and the player.

VERSUS

Frostner 4 (45 blunt + 30 frost + 30 spirit)

Frostner 6 (45 blunt + 42 frost + 30 spirit)

Its pretty obvious that leveling a Dead Raiser is --FAR-- better than leveling a Frostner. It an 11.5% increase in power, compared to a 50% increase in power.

And perhaps this difference should be reflected in the break chance. If you get a 33% chance of breaking a Dead Raiser, You should probably get a lower break chance for leveling a Frostner.

To make all weapons worth using with the Forge, perhaps the break chance should be set per item.

------------------------

I think that's legitimate criticism. Weapons scale differently through leveling, and some things, like a Bronze Atgier, gets way less of a buff than say a Staff of Fracturing - which gets a massive buff through the use of the forge.

The rest of this is I think just community hysteria coming from people that are too risk averse to ever use a forge and just want a set price for all upgrades, and people that just want to be able to cheat more easily when they play.

The first time we played Ashlands, which was after the first nerf on PTR, it went like this:

We sailed Drakkar as a group into a Hellish storm and 50ft high waves, grazing spires and having all hands on deck to fight off bonemaws before we finally landed. We then spent an hour establishing a foothold, building a Helm's Deep wall of black marble along the shore and putting ballistae on it to defend our hard-won spot with a shield generator to protect from the elements, before we were slowly able to creep forward. It took us a long time to find Flametal, and even longer to forge it, before we could make a Battering Ram and finally conquer a Charred Fortress and transform it into a base of operations.

Here's what happened in 1.0:

We sailed Drakker directly into the Ashlands with no storm, no waves, and basically no spires. Within 30 seconds of entering the Ashlands water we landed, never saw a single Bonemaw, and disembarked completely unharmed. We killed a couple enemies, put down no fortifications at all, and then immediately found a Charred Fortress which we were able to use the Grappling Hook to get into and take over. It had Molten Cores inside and we were now fully established in Ashlands with basically zero teamwork, zero siege, and most of the mechanics of the biome skipped. In thirty minutes.

This is not what Ashlands is supposed to be like. I get that it was way too difficult on launch. It was hard even for me and my playgroup who I'd consider quite good at the game. And that's fair and I don't think the biome should wall people off from progressing.

But everything about the feeling of earning conquering Ashlands is gone and the systems added to the game in 1.0 completely destroy the pacing and gameplay loop of the biome. It is fundamentally broken from both an aesthetic standpoint and a mechanical one.

I know a counter-argument against part of this will be "just don't use the grappling hook!" and I get that. But I should not have to purposefully avoid using the tools the game gives you in order for the biome to function as intended. I don't think Ashlands had the best gameplay loop, but it had one, and now it doesn't unless you pretend parts of the game don't exist.

And, as importantly to me, the feeling of conquering Ashlands is gone. In one play session it feels like we're completely established and just kind of chill. It took days in our pre-1.0 playthrough to feel safe in the Ashlands. I died dozens of times, I ran out of food, I barely scrounged together enough Flametal. Ashlands doesn't have to be that brutal but it needs to have some sense of reward. Right now I'm still walking around with Mistlands armor and weapons and Mistlands food and I haven't died once and I barely feel like I need to upgrade my gear. The first time we played I strove to get full Flametal armor, and bloody Berserkir axes, and farmed the shit out of Askvin and Vineberries and such to get full Ashlands food and finally when I had all of that I felt like I'd won and I finally beat the Ashlands at its own game.

That just doesn't seem to exist now. I don't feel like upgrading my food or armor or weapons is going to make any difference at all or that I'm going to need them to feel safe in the biome.

Ashlands was never my favorite biome but at least it felt unique. It was difficult and rough but you felt super rewarded for conquering it. It actually felt like you went to war and won. And people asked, is Deep North going to be even harder? And the answer was no, Ashlands was going to be the War biome and Deep North would be something else. But now Ashlands is just another biome, the constant danger, the atmosphere, and the gameplay loop are gone, like Iron Gate just got tired of all the complaints and decided to just make it a non-biome.

And I'm super sad because I was really looking forward to winning the biome as the last great hurdle before Deep North and it's just kind of a nothingburger now. The waves and spires are gone, the war is gone, the gameplay loop has been removed, I just don't really get the point of it all now.

This is more of a rant post than a suggestion post, but if I had to make some suggestions I guess at the very least make it so you can't grapple on/into Charred Fortresses so you still need to siege, and also bring back the spires and waves and storms when you're going into the Ashlands. If Flametal sinking (which it still does but much more rarely) and endless waves of enemies are considered cheesy that's fine, leave them out, but the first impression (the sail there) and the gameplay loop (land -> flametal -> ram -> fortress) need to be restored if nothing else is.

I just lost four days of save data because the developer decided to fight "save scumming" in a single-player sandbox game.

I simply wanted to revert to version .17 on Steam, but since my character is already on .20, the game refuses to load it.

My plan was to collect idols and endlessly power up my character in hardcore mode. I thought that would be a fun way to play.

Now, all I can do is roll back the progress I made yesterday after spending seven hours exploring. Because hardcore mode already resets my progress so often, doing the exact same things over again is completely out of the question.

Honestly, I’ve had enough. To me, this feels like some kind of psychological experiment. It is as if someone were standing over my shoulder, insisting I’m reading a book wrong and acting like they have every right to dictate how I enjoy it.

I expected to play a game and have a good time. Instead, it feels like I’m playing an MMO packed with arbitrary restrictions and casino mechanics.

MMO games feature casino mechanics to generate revenue, whereas Valheim uses them solely to frustrate you. Perhaps the developer lost interest in making a good game and decided to pivot to pure ragebaiting instead.

I don't know what I'll do next because I'm way too furious about wasting a few days of my time off. Right now, I see two options: either I delete this shit entirely, or I mod the hell out of it to make the game actually playable. I'll make up my mind once I calm down.

Allows you to easily get to Ashlands without needing to kill the queen by rock hopping with ease.

Allows you to easily navigate around the Ashlands without needing to fight most enemies.

Allows you to move when overweight.

Allows you to easily get into and even out of forts.

Allows quick and easy scaling of ruins in the Ashlands.

Flametal mining? Only noobs use bombs; grappling hook to the spire and off when done.

Prevents fall damage.

Am I missing anything?

Don't get me wrong, the Grappling Hook is fun. But imho it is just the most powerful item in the game.

A few ideas that they could do to at least provide an opportunity cost.

Increase weight from 1.5 to 15.

Decrease range.

Increase load time.

Make it unable to latch onto fortresses without an upgrade.

Make it cost substantial stamina to use it.

Make it not work when overweight, or make it take a lot more stamina.

IMHO, they should make it an upgradable item and have each of the perks unlock with more upgrades. IE:

Level 1: the hook can only catch on wood and rocks.
Level 2 enables the hook to catch on Black Marble.
Level 3 enables the hook to catch on Grausten
Level 4 enables the hook to catch on Forts.

What determines the amount of HP when drowning? At first I lost 5 hp, but I saw it raise progressively all the way to 10 so far (currently in the Mistlands). I saw it go from 9 to 10 in the same day. Is it because of my armor weight? or inventory weight? or something else entirely?

My swimming skill also increased, but I doubt levelling up increases the HP loss. It should be the other way around in any case.

A genuine complaint.

So I got killed in the Deep North by a Barka, no big deal.
When I went to take the portal to the Deep North again, to my dread, it had been destroyed.
So I hopped into my spare boat and sailed back to the Deep North. Which took about 45 minutes.
I sprinted to my corpse, got my stuff. And the mats for the portal had despawned. The stone cutter had also been destroyed and the mats despawned.

So, I have to take a boat and sail back, 45 minutes. Get the mats for a new portal and stone cutter, sail back. That's 90 minutes of just the joy of sitting in a boat with the wind perpetually in my face whenever Moder buff ain't active.

How can the mats despawn that quick?

My first playthrough of this game, genuinely enjoyed the enitre experience thus far. Everything felt pretty good and addictive, but when I got to the mistlands that enjoyment slowly dwindled away. Gave it a chance, genuinely. I dislike this biome, even when getting all the upgrades it still isn't exactly my thing. Getting the seal breaker felt like such a slog alongside finding this boss spawn, prepared with a hefty amount of supplies. At this point I've pretty much mastered parry and dodging attacks.

This boss felt cinematic and cool at first, I fully expected her to summon enemies since it's a queen and all that. However... quickly it felt extremely tedious to fight, the amount of mob spam was pretty obnoxious and there's nothing I enjoyed about it. Felt like whenever I'd deal with the swarm of seekers, she'd run away, then more seekers popped up. This lasted for over an hour on loop where I finally got her health so low it was barely visible, then my armor shattered, instantly took a bad blow. Retreated, parried everything, saw that she... REGENS then died because she regened her health, couldn't finish her off.

I know I've probably could've done things better, or made more sharp reactions to things. But I'm playing blind and this was my first time but... that experience alone made me not want to continue. The fight took so long, felt like a chore, and wasn't fun at all. Felt miserable in the mistlands in general, the boss was cherry on top. If this experience was making me so frustrated then I'm positive whatever the next biome is probably much worse, I understand the game is a challenge, meant to be conquered but my motivation to both obtain my items and prepare for this again is extremely low to none. Which is extremely puzzling because the boss before the Queen was the most fun boss fight in my opinion, the lich guy who used spells was very cinematic and fun compared to this fight. I'm unsure if I should continue or not.

Wanted to give my input on this while others are talking about it.

So for example: Want to upgrade Fenris gear to have plains level defense? Kill Yagluth. Want it to be Mistlands level now? Kill Queen.

Most people I've seen talking about using the Forge just want to use it to keep their lower tier gear with cool effects viable into later biomes, nobody wants to gamble with the possibility of losing their gear and all its overmaxxed levels, and while I cant speak for others I personally dont care about keeping the possibility of making OP gear that breaks the game.

This change would eliminate the worst problem of the Forge while allowing the thing most people want from it to be more doable and in a way that still gives them incentive to use the new biomes gear since it may serve you better for progressing through the biome because your current gear is limited to the strength of the last biomes gear.

Also a renewable idol source would be appreciated. And no more upgrade glow on weapons please, kinda ruins their intended appearance.

Feel bad for new players coming in here, they probably feel like FoP is an absolute must (it’s not.)

Been currently playing through The Adventure Map, this thing

https://youtu.be/ScPTAG49Q8A?is=MOp7YBCCmVfQUmSV.

It's truly been teaching me how to play the game. I'd really like to journey with another Viking or two at least tbh tho. I'm a noob, but I'm used to survival games like Ark or Conan.

Willing to try different servers. Since I've been solo, I have admittedly been playing with the combat on easy, but I could adjust to normal.

Working with an EST time zone, but I work night shifts so my schedule is all over.