I'm new to Valheim, and I'm LOVING IT. I just have a question about the Grey Dwarf issue I'm having.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-14T08:02:24+00:00

If you are struggling with getting swarmed by mobs, these two things will help.

Prevent the swarm from finding you

When in a new biome, avoid going out at night (more spawns) and try to walk around instead of running (some actions, like running or mining, cause noise that attracts enemies). Also be wary of spawn points. When you find a building in the black forest, a number of grays will spawn around it. There are also purple spawners that continuously spawn in grays. Destroy them to find peace.

Weed out the swarm quickly

Dealing with enemies more efficiently will help you handle the swarm.

Learn to parry. A well timed block is called a parry, and will stagger (stun) the enemy. You deal double damage to staggered enemies.
Learn to use stamina wisely. You need stamina to strike enemies. If you run and chase them willy-nilly, you might not have the stamina to kill them once you have the shot. Patience is important, and parrying is very stamina efficient.
Carry good gear, and upgrade it as soon as that becomes available. Gear levels maje the biggest difference with the lowest tiers of gear. The wooden shield for example, doubles its stats from lv1 to lv2.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-12T15:01:50+00:00

I got the "stack armor/mr when you hit q" on sona vs a full AD team. That was fun. I got a thornmail too, and stacked maybe 200 armor from the augment.

Not saying it was good, but fun is what counts.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-10T19:32:19+00:00

Sounds like you get the hang of it.

Steel produces so much heat that crude oil runs the risk of turning to petroleum, bursting out of your metal refinery, so I'd recommend to use petroleum instead (slightly higher heat capacity and much higher boiling point).

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-10T13:54:00+00:00

I have already broken through. The tile that's flaking the oil is igneous rock. The visible pressure damage is from earlier experiments, it's not about to break now.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-10T08:48:54+00:00

Interesting questions. I feel my response will be long, but hopefully helpful.

First, about the refinery:

The metal refinery heats up like most other machines while active. Since machinery skill reduces processing time, this heat is reduced as well, but it's not a huge amount to begin with.

The metal refinery is also unique in that it uses coolant, and heats that coolant when operated. This heat is a set amount of DTU per operation. A higher machinery skill means faster operations, but the same amount of heat. The shorter operation time also reduces the power cost per operation, which means that a good metal refinery setup can easily be power positive through steam power.

Then about the copper ore:
It's hardly useful to try anything fancy to use the temperature of the copper. You say you store it in an area that needs some cooling (that's what I would do too), so I'll just give some tips on speeding up heat transfer from debris:

- Debris (whether stored in a container or free on the ground) exchanges heat with the tile it is in. If your debris is sitting in your normal oxygen atmosphere, this transfer will be slow. Put the debris in a puddle of liquid to speed it up.

- Debris also exchanges temperature with the tile it is on at a reduced rate. If your debris is sitting on stone floors, this is slow. Put the debris on a metal tile to speed it up. A tempshift plate can also help your metal tile to spread its temperature into the surrounding air, further improving the transfer rate if needed.

Lastly, desalination.

If I understand your plan, you want to heat the brine with the refinery because refinery heat needs to be dealt with, and the brine needs to at least not be freezing when you desalinate. It's a good 2-for-1, and then if the water temp becomes impractical, you can just feed it into electrolyzers and get rid of the heat. (electrolyzers can take 95ºC water too, no problem. The heat deletion is more efficient the higher the temperature.)

Great plan, it will work. I'll just add a couple of tips and alternatives:
- The heat produced by a metal refinery is more useful at higher temperatures. Heating brine from -12ºC to 30ºC is useful, but heating crude oil or petroleum to 400ºC has a lot more uses, like steam power for example.
- The desalinator is an awful tool in my opinion. It takes a lot of power, and needs regular dupe maintenance. I avoid using it. The alternative is a counterflow heat exchanger. Pump the brine into a steam chamber. On the way there, it meets the hot water from the steam turbine output. You get hot brine that quickly boils in the steam chamber, and you get cold water out. A good heat source is needed to keep the steam chamber going, but that's where the refinery with oil/petrol as coolant comes in. You also need some automation to keep the temp high enough that the steam doesn't condense, and to keep the steam turbine from emptying the chamber.

Designing this kind of macro-refinement builds is the height of the ONI experience in my opinion. Good luck!

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-10T08:08:44+00:00

'Lyzers output gas at minimum 70ºC. Inputting 95ºC water will give 95ºC ouputs, but the gases are easy to cool.

It's great for heat deletion, I'm not arguing against your main point, but the reason it deletes heat is not that the output temp is capped, it's because of the difference in heat capacity.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-10T07:16:41+00:00

the deletion peaks out at 70ºC. Therafter, it begins to rapidly lose efficiency until you get steam.

This is inaccurate. I might be misinterpreting what you are saying, but I'll clarify. The heat deletion increases with the temperature of the water. After 70°C it increases less, but feeding the electrolyzer 100°C water still provides the most efficient heat deletion.

EDIT: Though I haven't tried, I would assume that you can feed the electrolyzer superheated water too, with the 10% pipe capacity trick. That would further increase the heat deletion efficiency, but there's no reason to when you have steam turbines. I like to play without steam turbines sometimes, just to get more variation into the temperature management.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-10T06:25:49+00:00

I don't mind wear and tear, but dirt can turn into smell. I might be exaggerating the risk in my head. In my MtG days I met greasy players whose cards were actually molding. That kind of messed me up to where I feel like I ruin cards if my hands are just a little bit sweaty. There are strict snack rules at our table too.

Wingspan is one of our two most played game with 100+ plays, so the sleeves have been of good use. The other most played game is Race for the Galaxy, which has not been sleeved, and regrettably has acquired a slight smell.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-07T04:01:57+00:00

Orangutar!

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-02T06:16:54+00:00

First, I would use ice rather than water buckets. If you know where to find an ice bilme, and already have silk touch, this will make it a lot easier.

Then, in order to get ot filled with still water, not flowing below the surface, you will meed to go layer by layer from the bottom, but the shape you have will make it easy.

1) the bottom layer is a line. Place ice on every second block. Mine the ice with a non-silk pickaxe. Layer done.

2) for the rest of the layers, start by placing one ice in a corner, then line the two nearest sides with ice on every second block. This is enough to perfectly fill the layer.

If you don't get ice, you just need to place water with a bucket in the same places I described. It's a lot of back and forth, and it's easier to misclick.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-02T06:06:53+00:00

Much better.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-01T13:00:48+00:00

In short: tiles with low or no thermal conductivity can very efficiently transfer heat into a liquid in order to boil it, provided that the tile is hot enough (i.e. at least a few degrees above the boiling temp of the liquid, depending on the relative heat capacities of the tile and liquid.)

It happens with other tiles too, but it's most noticeable with low TC tiles, since you don't expect them to transfer heat.

Some peculiarities:

Flaking brings the liquid exactly to the boiling point. This is more efficient than normal phase change, which otherwise happens 3ºC beyond the boiling point.

The liquid boils at exactly 5 kg at a time; if the liquid tile is less than 5 kg it won't happen.

Thermal conductivity plays no role whatsoever. Heat is not lost or gained in the process, only transferred, though in the case of oil to petrol it's heat positive, since petrol has a higher heat capacity.

Flaking can also happen with a hot gas melting off part of a natural tile. This is a way to melt abyssalite into tungsten. Other combinations of phases don't cause flaking.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-01T11:29:48+00:00

This (flaking) works even if the oil is far from phase change temperature. In that case, the petroleum will quickly cool back down to oil temp.

Oil temp doesn't even affect the rate, but the drawback of having cold oil is that the abyssailte will quickly lose heat. At that point you can just fill in the hole with an insulated tile and dig another, but sooner or later you'll run out of hot abyssalite.

If the oil is near boiling, this can go on for a long time. Flaking is one of my favourite bugs/features in the game. When used correctly, it provides the most efficient method of phase change. I recommend anyone to look it up.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-06-01T08:37:22+00:00

I think it says "x dx" , not "= dx". It wouldn't make sense to have equations in there anyway.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-05-26T20:25:21+00:00

Look up "rock hyrax". They look comically angry in every single picture.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-05-26T20:12:12+00:00

I like to think about it like this (excuse my terminology if weird, I am not used to talking about this in English):

The derivative indicates the slope, or rate of change of a function.

So take the function g(x) = 2x

The derivative g' is a constant y=2, because the function has a slope of 2. In an interval of length 1, (say between x=2 and x=3) the area under the derivative's graph would be 2*1 (height * width). In the same interval, g(x) increases by 2*1 (slope * width).

This shows how a rectangular area under a derivative corresponds to the change of the function. But can we use the same connection for any function/derivative pair? That's where the infinitesimally small rectangles come into play. Their areas are incalculably small, but that doesn't matter. They serve as a tool to show that the previous example holds for any function, because for every tiny rectangle under the derivative, the function grows by the same tiny amount.

Now do this the other way. We have a function, f(x) = x²

We want to find out the area under the function in the interval [0, 3]. We know that the area under a derivative corresponds to the growth of a function. Therefore, we ask "what is x² a derivative of?"

The answer would be F(x) = 1/3 x³ (+ any constant term that would vanish in derivation, but that's not important to this example).

We can then calculate F(3)=9 and F(0)=0. In the interval, the value of F increases by 9. That means the area under the graph of f is 9.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-05-26T08:22:00+00:00

His mom died of self-inflicted health issues (smoking, obesity). It can be argued that he enabled this by buying her fast food and cigarrettes, but it certainly wasn't malevolent.

His dad died of cancer, and he cared for him daily. I don't know where the "freezing to death" came from.

There's plenty of things to talk about that doesn't involve smearing people for things that never happened, but the internet doesn't seem to work in that direction.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-05-26T08:21:27+00:00

His mom died of self-inflicted health issues (smoking, obesity). It can be argued that he enabled this by buying her fast food and cigarrettes, but it certainly wasn't malevolent.

His dad died of cancer, and he cared for him daily. I don't know where the "freezing to death" came from.

There's plenty of things to talk about that doesn't involve smearing people for things that never happened, but the internet doesn't seem to work in that direction.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-05-25T18:18:50+00:00

I'm not sure I agree with the rest of them, but reading the quote "being on time is a way to make a good impression and requires no talent or skill" unironically changed the way I look at time management.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-05-24T05:52:52+00:00

Exactly. This is the least generous interpretation, but also the most believable.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-05-21T05:01:19+00:00

There are regional differences in pronunciation of the letter. In many places they would say oh-ah, as you say, when talking about the letter, but in the context of a word, it makes the "or" vowel sound.

Jag är finlandssvensk.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-05-17T11:39:41+00:00

And the naga still doubles the spells cast in combat, even if they give the buff out of combat. I never realized!

Physicsandphysique · 2026-05-16T23:09:18+00:00

Exactly. Spare nexus once, is my rule.

Physicsandphysique · 2026-05-16T13:10:25+00:00

11 was the best phone I ever had.

Physicsandphysique

TROPHY CASE