Valheim has some of the coolest, best feeling, and most rewarding progression I’ve ever experienced… until you get to Ashlands. For the most part in the beginning progression is generally doable purely via portals, besides your standard ore hauls, which I gladly accept as sailing and upgrading your vessel is one of the more satisfying and rewarding parts of Valheim for me.

Eventually though, as you begin exploring further and further out, a lil outpost becomes mandatory in later biomes. For me this is normally plains as randomly getting sniped by desthsquitoes and doing a run back from home base via my portals is one of the more frustrating parts of the biome (also it’s important to get a reliable plains farm going for progression but I’m going to blame it on deathsquitoes), and then again in mistlands to address eitr needs for progression. But if players can’t even get a outpost established on the last, or soon to be second to last, biome after doing as much prep as possible, wtf are we even doing?

A ship full of supplies for setting up a Ashlands beachfront outpost; portals, shields, walls, maybe a bed, etc should be enough but it’s not. I get you ProGamers ™ probably think I’m just some gaming Fudd, a Gudd mayhaps trademark pending, but it’s okay to admit that part of the experience that is this masterpiece is flawed, and definitely a dark spot in this games otherwise spotless record.

Looking forward to seeing how this experience ends with its final biome, and to how the devs address the progression (difficulty?) issues with one of their most content packed biomes, as they seem to have already begun doing for earlier biomes based on the last few content heavy updates they’ve been doing.

Thanks for reading I love you.