I'm not a Hardcore player myself (I die a lot) and frankly they annoy me

Each upgrade at the Forge of Potential should have a 35% chance of deleting the world file, character file, and all backups of those files in steam cloud

We'll quickly see how "hardcore" they really are

could almost swear some folks never want things to be better

(pic for attention)

So, there's a lot of discussion and venting surrounding the Forge of Potential, especially after today's update removing the ability to "Save Scum" your way to success. As a Valheim vet with over 800 hours of gameplay, I wanted to share some thoughts about the Forge, and why I think it is a little more than just an optional item sink. 

Part 1: it stinks. 

First of all, destroying items and returning only 50% of the materials feels bad. This has been the case since the forge was introduced in 1.0. some items, like battle-axes, take hundreds of ingots to create and level to 4. These items are time-consuming and achievements in their own right especially if you play vanilla without the ability to teleport ore and ingots. The F.O.P. has a 35% chance to destroy the item outright, returning only a portion of the materials you used to make it. That's potentially (heh, get it? POTENTIAL?) hours down the drain. This can be especially crushing if the item required rare materials such as trophies to make. This I think is the main reason why people are avoiding the forge and calling for reworks. Failure is TOO painful. 

Now, *IF* you succeed, your item gets the same bonus as you got for the normal single level improvements up to level 4. So, not a lot. But it also glows purple. So that's cool!  But to make the item actually NOTICABLY better, you need to level it up multiple times. Given the laws of probability, hitting multiple 65% chance rolls in a row becomes a near impossibility by level 10. It's something like a 1% or 2% chance to accomplish that. (Don't @ me, I'm using ballpark numbers. Feel free to drops some statistics in the comments.) 

So to summarize so far; the reward of success is so small that you need to succeed many times to feel a difference, and the cost of a failure is incredibly painful. (itstoodamnhigh.meme)

Part 2: why bother? 

"Okay, random viking redditor, so the F.O.P. stinks. Just don't use it!" 

Yea that's fair. But here's why I think the F.O.P. is actually important. 

Two words: Set Bonuses. 

Valheim has a lot of really cool armor sets that both look awesome, and have great set effects. 

Patterns of the bear for berzerker damage bonus! 

Root armor for pierce resistance and improved archery!

Fenris furrs for movement speed, fire resistance, and fist-a-cuffs! 

And so forth.

These cool effects are a lot of fun, and add much to the game and character specialization. The problem is that the earlier in the game you get access to a set that you like, the faster it becomes unusable, even when upgraded, because it is simply out-classes by the stats of later-game items. 

If you try to sneak around in troll hide in the Mistlands, you're gonna get vaporized by the first seeker that sniffs you out. 

This doesn't even mention unique weapons with cool effects you are probably thinking of right now.

"But, random redditor, just use armor from later in the game!" 

Again, fair. But a lot of armor set effects are unique. With a few exceptions in 1.0, later gear sets will not have similar, much less identical, effects to the earlier game armor sets. It feels really bad to abandon the only armor in the game with a set effect for your play style just because it's from one or two biomes ago. 

This is where the F.O.P. comes in. Allowing the player to upgrade the armor rating and durability of early armors means you can (with great effort) keep your favorite set bonus relevant into late game! 

Suddenly, you can be sniping Gjal with your root armor, sprinting around the tundra in Fenris, or or going toe to toe with Fader wearing your patterns of the bear! 

This is a really cool feature, and the dream promised by the F.O.P. 

With some tweaks, the F.O.P. could be an awesome addition to the game, and even encourage revisiting previous biomes. 

Part 3: a possible fix. 

1) don't break my sh*t bro! 

We need to re-think the cost of using the forge. The 65-35 chances of the forge become absolutely fine *IF* failure doesn't destroy the item. We should absolutely not lose possibly hours worth of work for +2 armor or a tiny damage increase. 

I propose a failure should look like this: 

- consume the idol. You don't get this back if you fail. They are semi-rare, especially certain kinds. That's already painful. 

- reduce the item's current durability to 0, "breaking it" in the game's terms. You need to go repair it at the applicable crafting station before you can use it. This keeps the flavor of damaging the item. 

- increase the damage to the player by the lightening bolt to dangerous levels. Perhaps based on the tier/level of the item being forged. Make the player think about their return trip, and their HP before they attempt the craft. Death is a huge threat in Valheim. 

2) change up the price of progress

- redistribute the spawn rate of totems all the way through the game. Make the especially rare ones slightly more common (looking at you, wood.), and the ones you end up swimming in (black metal) more rare. 

- items start with requiring totems from the biome they are from. I.E. wood totems to upgrade leather armor, but black marble to upgrade your Mistwaker. This is more or less how it works now, with some exceptions like the Early Axes and Draugr Fang needing changes. 

- as items are leveled up with the F.O.P., increase the type of idol required to upgrade them farther. I.E. when leather armor starts to have similar stats to Troll Hide, it will now require a bronze idol to level up. When it is similar to root armor, it now requires iron, and so forth! A Frostner starts with needing silver, then as it matches power with a porcupine mace from the Plains, it now needs black metal. And so on. This means you need higher and higher level loot to improve your armor or weapons further into the game. This also prevents items from becoming broken early in the game by using 50 of a low level totem on them.

- Bonus idea: perhaps even have the F.O.P. require some materials used in the base item to continue upgrades. I.E. 10 of the metal/wood involved. Whatever the 'main' material of the item is. This would provide and item sync and grind beyond just idols, encouraging revisiting areas and adding more to the gameplay loop. 

3) cap the maximum 

This one might be a little spicy. But I think item growth shouldn't be infinite. The F.O.P. should stop letting you upgrade an item when it's power is equivalent to an endgame (currently deep north) item that is upgraded to 8-10. This prevents making items insanely OP at endgame, but allows you to use anything AT endgame with enough effort. I haven't done the math, but this means that early game items would have a max level of probably +30 or +40, where endgame items would stop around +10. 

This is simply for balance. 

Conclusion and TLDR:

"Holy wall of text batman!"

Yea I know. TLDR:

1) the F.O.P. allows the use of unique armor sets (and weapons too) throughout the game. This is good. 

2) don't break stuff. Zap the player harder, consume the idol and set durability to 0, requiring a repair at a crafting station. 

3) as items level up, change the idol required based on the items new stats. Prevents early items from becoming brokenly strong. 

4) cap items level to prevent them from being O.P. at endgame. The level this happens at is based on stats, not levels. 

Thanks for coming to my ted talk!

The Aura is just unmatched I don't care if the ask set is objectively better.

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.

Decided to make a new world to start fresh for 1.0 and it's been a ride. This is probably one of my favorite games of all time

The main building is based on one of Versaugh's medieval-style houses, mixed with my own interpretation :)

Trophies drop have been fixed !

No longer reset when you log out, and star monster have an higher chance of dropping trophies

I went over prepared in case something went wrong, I built my crop farm close to Yagluth and brought 2 star wolves to breed there while I spent my time farming

Me and my buddies have been at this since 1.0. Probably my favourite play thru so far.

Hello everyone! I made a post here a few months ago about a game I'm working on, UAZO, and got some great feedback! Like last time, moderators of this is too off topic, feel free to remove it.

Essentially, my aim is to make a more "chill" Valheim, so sandbox survival exploration game, but with birds (it will still have combat and require to survive the weather and environment).

So the reason for this post : Valheims is a gorgeous game IMO. I love how it blends low-poly models and low-res textures with modern lighting and atmosphere, and I'm trying to do something similar.

I don't want a 1:1 copy of course, mainly I want to emulate the "vibe".

However, I feel like I'm not quite there yet and can't seem to pinpoint what's missing. Is it the colors? The fog? The textures?...

So I'm asking you, the Valheim community, what make the atmosphere of Valheims great to you?

EDIT: thank you all, as usual the Valheim community really delivers! It's hard to keep up, but I'm trying to answer all the comments, this is great feedback!

The game does have a steam page you can wishlist, for anyone interested, although it is is somewhat outdated, so the visuals there fit even less what i'm going for now haha.

I see a lot of negative comments in the post about the latest patch, and I know people are loudest when complaining, but I honestly think there is a point.

I don't know if Iron Gate might have some statistics we peasants lack, and see good engagement with the Forge of Potential, but as someone who has played the game *multiple times*, and in general likes the grind of it, I find a deadly difference between grind and waste.

Between my personal world and a server we set up with friends to replay the whole game after 1.0 game out, we have used the forge *twice*. Once we had our first fluke, we backed out immediately, and are sitting now in about two full chests of idols with no propect of being used. The penalty for failing is too big, and the reward not even nearly enough. Right now, when I find an idol it's more of a "oh.. into the chest" than an exciting treasure find.

I don't have an answer, there's many ideas out there, but my main ask for Iron Gate is to please just consider that the Forge as-is is not a fun and engaging mechanic, and be open about it, just tell us they are evaluating options so we know they acknowledge the problem.

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

Now, it would be weird if I didn't put a name in the hat, so as a simple solution I'd suggest:

Make the Forge only work with both items and idols crafted in this same world. I don't know if they have that data backed into the items right now, but its probably easy to do.

Then, given there's a limited number of Idols per world, just make it 100% of the time.

Though honestly? that still sounds a little "lame" to me, I would want something more Majestic from a "Forge of Potential".

I was curious what approach they took to patch out savescumming the FOP, so I took a break from my 1.0/ vanilla character and jumped over to my character that uses devcommands to gather some data.

Long story short, savescumming isn’t really dead, it’s just more complicated. I think now “save mapping” is the better term. When you craft a weapon, the number of potential upgrades you can do at the forge is hard coded.

I crafted 5 new weapons and left them at level 1, and tested how many improvements I could make to each. I ran this several times and always get the same result for each after restoring a backup save, confirming that savescumming is now dead.

I tried several things to see if they could change the number of max improvements that didn’t work. For example, the order in which you improve weapons at the FOP doesn’t matter, and neither does crafting new items in between. So doing these things won’t change the max number of improvements you can do for a particular weapon, it seems to be a hardcoded value that’s saved with the weapon and determined when you craft it.

HOWEVER

When you upgrade a weapon (like at a regular crafting station) it re-rolls this hidden value. So when I upgraded the 5 new weapons from level 1 to level 2, all their hidden values changed, and the number of maximum improvements at the FOP was different. I suspect this is because the upgraded weapon counts as a new weapon.

What are the implications of this?

When you make a weapon (or armor presumably) it has a hidden potential (ironically, “Forge of Potential” now seems like a better name). You can map this out by testing it to see where the weapon breaks, then restore a backup save with that knowledge. You can also do a regular upgrade to reset this value and try again.

It is fairly likely to create a level 1 weapon that can be upgraded 3-4 times, meaning that you could save massively on normal resources and spend idols instead. For example, I made a level 1 Draugr Fang and mapped out that it could be improved 4 times at the FOP, meaning that if I found 4 iron battle idols in the swamp, I could immediately get a level 5 Draugr Fang for very low material cost.

Is this good? No, probably not. It is no longer very realistic to make level 20 weapons or things like that, which is probably good, but it is still very realistic to avoid the negative consequences of the forge while getting some benefit, by exploiting backup saves.

Overall I still feel fairly negative about the Forge of Potential, Valheim is one of my favorite games of all
time and I usually stand on the side of the devs but this feels like it needs a total re-work, or to be removed from the game completely and replaced with a totally different mountain point of interest that does something else entirely.

EDIT: I posted this as a comment but I think it’s important enough to put it here also, since some people misunderstand why all this is bad. This isn’t about entitlement, or wanting the game to be easier, or not being willing to engage with a game which is long and grindy by design. This is about a min/maxing mindset and what it does to you.

To clarify my stance, I don’t think savescumming the FOP is a good or fun way to play the game in general, I’ve been avoiding savescumming in my 1.0/vanilla playthrough, and I am trying to find ways to make the FOP good because I want to engage with the new content and try to understand it.

But, like many people, when I do go to use the forge, the knowledge that an item might break, and then the knowledge that I can change the outcome by just restoring a backup makes it incredibly tempting and frustrating. I really don’t like that feeling, and I tend to avoid games that create it, so I don’t like to see that kind of thing come to Valheim. If the forge stays like this I don’t see myself using it in future playthroughs, which is kind of a bummer.

So I was hoping that they would have removed that temptation, but they didn’t. It’s still super easy to game this system, which makes it super tempting, and when you do it pulls you out of the game and into this gross meta gaming space that’s far outside of intended play. It’s that min/maxing mindset which creates the frustration and pushes people to do stupid stuff like spend 6 hours mapping out their save so they can get a high level version of their favorite weapon, instead of just playing the game. I just don’t want that to come to Valheim, personally.

It's just too good for not to share

Credits go out to Bag Raiders and u/Obvious_Bid6066.

OP

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.

(See image 2) The boys hunger for the tree juice

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.

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

Thats it, a chest full of idols that I dont even know how to use.

Pre Eikthyr because bosses should be done together.

Can you guess from the layout?

My group just beat final boss in the Deep North, and all just logged off gg. They'd played in early access before back pre-Mistlands, but this was my first time playing Valheim and I loved it.

But I've just got my base to a place I like it, good storage, farms going etc. good comfort and aestetic... and now it's over? I guess I'm maybe used to playing more live service games, or with a good patch/content update cadence, but it feels wrong to just... stop? Like I'm actually mildly emotional stood in the middle of our main hub, everyone's gone...

What do now?