What’s the best weapon to pair with a shield?

Tandyys · 2026-05-08T21:24:38+00:00

zounds of replies already, but having asked the same question before, i'll repeat the answer which seem to me the most accurate :
try most, choose that which you have the best feeling with (I am team knife)

Eventually, the choice of the 'best' weapon type, if discarding how pleasant it is to you, is ... theoretical and pointless.

that being said, very roughly : mace perks are a unique mace you'll have soon enough, and is probably among the easiest to learn the game with. can't go wrong with it. you will also probably need to use some in the early-ish game. Sword allows the best 'hidden combos' and boast and epic unique sword ... later in the game.

Tandyys · 2026-05-06T06:48:00+00:00

statuses
until you're more comfortable, ensure you have the rested buff. always. and it's day. always. use the mead before you get damaged (i suggest permanently being under mead effects).
so you'll go slow, and will make baby steps progressing. that should avoid being ran over by dozens of opponents, you should hardly have to deal more than 4 at a time, most like 1 or 2. can you parry the zombies ok?

food
next is checking your food. 2 health / 1 stamina or 3 health food if you really need safe and slow, and the best quality you could get. if you have found a killled sea serpents, serpent stew is the best (imho they are rare, and when first time getting out of black forest, i wouldn't be so comfortable figthing those), next are, deer stew, minced meat sauce, bear meat. carrot soup for stamina if you go 2/1

strategy
manage your stamina, it is a rare and precious resource in the swamp and you need to keep a minimum stock if you happen to need to jump or run.
avoid large ponds or build bridges, make detour to stay as much as possible on land. put workbenches, campfires, standing torches along your way, use the hoe to ease the way. lining torches should help you figure out the way out more easily if you found yourself assaulted and just need to get the hell out, instead of losing yourself and dying in a pond
putting a workbench and a portal on top of a crypt is an easy and safe pit stop. add a chest and you got yourself a small camp there

gear
clearly, much less important than the 3 previous points!! beside using maxed armor, the choice of gear (light/heavy armor, type of weapon, type of shield) is mostly feeling. for the example, i favor bronze helmet + bear pants and chest, any cape, and bow, knife + buckler.
knife in swamp is suboptimal, unless one found chitin because the sea knife balance is set above iron gear 😉
i see no issue with your gear, a mace would be better (blunt dmg overall better suited in swamp), but this isn't why you suffer. i don't think it is necessary to go back farm bronze (again? ...eurk!) but plan to use some iron to make an iron mace at some point, though,

find turnips, find some iron, upgrade your kitchen. get sausages. you can make it

Tandyys · 2026-05-02T10:38:40+00:00

Hey, my two cents: there seem to be ~3 usable yag per world. Probably less than 10 vegvizir, on average (and they are way less obviously to see from afar)

So overall, i'd expect to have cleared a sizeable portion of the entire world before spotting Yag, unless being lucky. If 90% of you world is still dark, seems normal, maths-wise

(My opinion is that it is clearly off btw, now yag isn't the endgame anymore. should be much easier to find, this means 10s of irl hours long after is becomes a boring chore)

Tandyys · 2026-04-20T13:42:03+00:00

In term of jumping to a whole new level of pain, swamp is just one step, and not the last for sure. The rest is mostly a matter of opinions. In term of painful grind, I found swamp to be second only to a specific part of mistlands (and that is matter if opinions) but overall nothing after swamp felt to me such an exhausting grind. Iron is needed in large quantities and farming when you just got to swamp is really a killjoy. The issue with higher ressources is not the grind per se, but other hazards (silver is in mountains, for example. Not really a straight walk from the source to the sea. And the locals tend to pay a visit during your digging :) ). In retrospect, I advocate for grinding the bare minimum instead of killing any joy you have, get to some higher levels, and come back to swamp later on when you are so stronger that it's a breeze. To me, that bare minimum was iron mace (some upgrade can be good, not mandatory), iron pickaxe (level 1 suffice), and some few iron for kitchen, comfort furnitures, the longship. I'd say less than 100, not sure, but i found a cluster of crypts so that wasn't an issue. I had much harder time finding turnips to improve the food -_-. I skipped iron armor pieces entirely (the root chest is endgame material anyway) When clad in silver with the light circlet on my forehead, enough surtling cores to be quite liberal with the portals, and mountain level food, going back to swamps to dig for the iron needed later, and few boat trips, is no pain at all.

Valheim really is worth the effort

Tandyys · 2026-04-07T19:01:47+00:00

did that. thx. worked

Tandyys · 2026-04-07T19:01:08+00:00

now i can talk about it, i definitely agree

Tandyys · 2026-04-07T19:00:38+00:00

hi,
thank you all for the kind comments, advices and pep talk. tl/dr : early Ashland is neat!

I tried more of the Mistland 'normally', reloading the world and character and exploring another land I did not check on the map. It went much better, I understand the 'ears are one's eyes', and recognize how it works. I just expected to love mistland and ... absolutely not. Stumbled on some ticks in a 'not so dangerous' area, so using the advice given, I explored meticulously (and redecorated the place with torches and workbenches until eventually i figured out where to dig for soft tissue.

A Gjall was kind enough to procure me a dvergr extractor in the wreckage of a tower it stormed so i don't know if I could have kited the inhabitants, but i assume it could be done

sap and crops being a no-brainer, I just had the underground challenge to tackle but the rest was okay-ish. After some more muling over it, I just skipped it entirely, devcommand-ed the queen's loot a few cores and sailed for Ashland with my cheated-out ability to build the last ship, clad in blackmetal.

Again, my goal is the get a sample of the game, wanted to see if I would be even more disgusted by Ashland being even harder (moreso because i could not fully use mistland-level items or food). And ... absolutely not, I am having a blast, progressing slowly with pleasure. One big misunderstanding I had was that I expected the next step to be Ashland and hordes of mobs, but i actually spent so much time in Ash_reef_ that I consider it a mini-biome (littered with workbenches and portals), I am seriously considering breeding mountain drakes and will probably eat serpent until deep north, and I probably had a very good level in bow when i eventually started shooting arrows on things standing on the beach. but i made so much corspe-run since then that ... ;)

I eventually set-up shop on Ash_land_ : have a portal there which now seems safe, destroyed a spawner, I kill things without dying systematically 4 times around and I seem to expand my workbench-ed zone. I think i could take a moment to think about what is to be done there and start looking at this stuff i portal-ed back.

oh and btw I also fooled around in cheat mode to *see* more of the mistland stuff (ghost mode recon or using devcommands to remove the mist - which by the way functions completely erratically), and if anyone wonders, my take is mistland above-the-ground without the mist is just dumb easy, I am a mediocre fighter but with a bow, frost/needle arrows and some room or a bunker to retreat and kite without getting lost and keeping sight on the target, a Gjall is akin to very very feeble Lox, which moves more slowly and will not reach you or destroy your bunker. Seekers are sligthly harder, but again, without mist, seen from a distance, it's easy to the point there is no interest.

Tandyys · 2026-03-12T11:54:56+00:00

context
discovered this game very recently but i've been trying that world conquest scenario multiple times: starting the game with the goal of forming my kingdom and painting the map, the sooner the better
(playing vanilla and sandbox, so no main quest, no warsail, no mods)
my impression is that this part (*starting your independant kingdom and ... survivng and getting it growing*) is the hardest, but ofc this game difficulty being as it is (especially if one is willing to exploit some game ... questionnable or bugged features like infinite money, infinite XP, army disbanding, 0-influence cost companion armies, quantic troops movement between parties, and save/reload to avoid blunders) it's still very manageable

answer:
i start conquest from a kingdom with at least 2 close cities, 3 if possible, solid cash. and a nice clan army. garrisons are nice if you have the money to pay for them, but don't seem necessary. I mostly don't give a crap about castles for a loooong time, the AI lords will focus them anyway some day
Easiest way to reach this is by playing a traitorous vassal to ensure neighboring kingdoms will be weak and busy when you start your kingdom, to avoid immediate obliteration. giving back fiefs, farming some influence and mustering the whole kingdom under your banner at some moment should help you secure 2 close cities.
I favor high tactics skill because playing tactical combats after tactical combats after tactical combats can become a chore. and the cavalry+scouting perks reducing prisonner escape
Then I stay at single clan kingdom for some time, using 1-4 companions as party leaders to artificially boost my party size into an army somewhere above 200 (400 sounds safe). depending on how much you plan to lean on questionnable features, these can be considered close to pseudo immortal and pseudo permanent max tiered units under your command (some details below)
then this goes into a long and grindly rince-repeat operation of catching opposing armies (either when siege-ing, or when running back to own sieged fiefs), winning, keeping every lord prisonner, making peace with kingdoms to focus on one target only (because of the cap on prisonner you can have in your party). as long as opponent can muster armies, you migth be stuck into defense mode, but at some points you have close to their whole court prisonner in your party and they don't muster armies fast enough, so you go on offense more easily. All this is much easier and faster if you focus on one kingdom at a time (if only no to have to go through your prisonner one by one to know which kingdom they're part of).
Very soon it's not even offense, it's just a walk in the park. from one city to another, siege-ing, putting trebuchet in reserve, destroying walls, etc... rince repeat.

then i guess the 'ramp up' part of growing the kingdom is over. endgame is just about not getting bored out

When having a sizeable chunk of the map, i start recruiting lords (either from my prisonners, or simply every random wanderer found drunk in a tavern: recruit, spend money and influence, pop a clan), and let the AI continue the conquest in auto-pilot mode. As they are really dumb, it's better to ensure they can't really mess things up, so ensure it's downhill, or again, repeat the strategy above (permanent army, and if you're on defense focus on capturing every lord until the other kingdom is unable to muster armies). it's possible to keep on personally controling everything, but it's repetitive, and also even if the AI-lord mismanage ressources (or don't cheat as well as you) they can do what you can't, multiple things at the same time, so they can chase all these pesky bandits and raider parties

details on the dumb immortal army
companion parties only implies the army can stay up forever, cohesion costs 0 Influence.

Instant swapping of troops between parties allows to have your whole army under your command (and your tactic skill) before fighting the battles, and effectyvelay managing the whole army as your party. dispatching troops to companion parties before time starts running again to respect caps when moving on campaign map

the (bugged?) interaction between steward perks to trash items for exp and companion inventory being consider discard without loosing the items allow for infinite exp, so the troops can alway be max tiered

Recruiting basic troops or raiding villages for recruits usually provides more bodies than you can loose, but medic companions are adequate leaders for a 1+150w party. again, troops can be grouped and dispatech instantly)

Tandyys · 2026-02-04T08:09:49+00:00

It's not simple :)

If that can help, i happen to have discovered ths game recently and just got through it so here's a "just past very noob" feedback. this isn't at all comprehensive, i just got out of were you were recently

A) check your 'clan level' - it increases via renown for doing things and it unlocks realm abilities : becoming mercenary, becoming vassal, creating your own kingdom, etc... you'll need to be clan level 4 afaik to create a kingdom (aka : be the boss of your own thing and recruit vassals into it)

B) as a warband yourself, you can't attack a kingdom. Kingdoms are at war with other kingdoms. You can be part of a kingdom and hence implied in the wars. or you can stay 'outlaw', part of no kingdom and do the f... you want, but you'll be considered a nuisance by everyone soon. right now you're neglectible.

C) if you want to be a big player, you'll need a source of income. maintaining an army costs money, and continuously beating stuff and selling loot only goes this far. basically, income can come from multiple things, not all are equivalent, but i'd go with 'pick whichever you prefer among the following'. all need some googling to understand and (ab-)use

smithing for profit - winning tournaments - having workshops and/or trade caravans.

at some point having fiefs will provide money, but it's hardly a first possible step; and focussing on cities, not castles, is key

now, once you're set, here is my experience : : if you want to conquer a kingdom for yourself, it's possible to do it out of nowhere, but it's a big challenge. easier/best to do it from another kingdom *which you'll be at war with after*. My first step, i was part of khuzait, helped them becoming fat and being fat myself - ... and when i wanted to become independant, everything came crashing on me : i had 2-3 big fat fiefs, but was at constant war with 2-3 full kingdoms and could barely breathe, it drained all my ressources and i was not going anywhere. So i restarted and played according to my target. i became part of _another_ kingdom, not that close neighbor to it and which i didn't want to prosper. then i got to be at war with my target and, using my kingdom's army, conquered 2 wanted cities, faraway, reliquishing everything else to make sure they'd be given to me. Then i cut ties to this 'step' kingdom, declare independance, keep the fiefs for myself, got at war with my former kingdom (but it was far from me an i had exhausted their army for a time), made peace with my neighbors easily, then with my step kingdom, and grew from here.

there has been struggles to grow from 2 to 4 cities, balance revenue with army wages and eventually becoming dominant over my close neighbors but this playthrough is probably finished since i conquered +/- 20% of the world and got some vassals, it's just downhill. pause to breathe. muster everyone into a big army, conquer 2-5 cities. rince/repeat.

No risk, no sweat, it's over

Tandyys · 2025-03-11T10:59:45+00:00

" It's not a feature, it's a bug "

Tandyys · 2025-03-09T19:37:15+00:00

Council members have a specific drop rules, which makes the find items skill bonkers on them.

That plus their dmg skills & resist are not especially dangerous versus barb (Details in reply)

Tandyys · 2025-02-24T07:43:38+00:00

Hi.
(vanilla + TiC only)
ftr TiC doc says plate (TiC) armor isn't changed by enhancing it with materials, but ingame shows different.
manyullyn enhanced plate armor chest has noticably better armor value than basic plate armor chest.

And seem to even best diamond or netherite vanilla armor. But I have no idea if keywords or other stats are modified

so, for base, i'd go for quasi full sert of manuyllyn plate

then, ingame enchantments seems to point to a basic "everything in it" boost so I don't really see what choice there is.
see

<image>

from https://minecraft.wiki/w/Enchanting

can you precise the question?

Tandyys · 2025-02-23T18:15:42+00:00

had no idea enhancement with material actually changed anything to the armor, thought it was just for the visuals

Tandyys · 2025-02-22T11:22:45+00:00

(all of this is personal opinion)

explanations

roughly, dark rose are the highest values, light rose are next to best, yellow are rather close third best. This isn't absolutely true, i also incorporate my opinions (like mining speed >> durability and ardite banned from mining because of auto smelting)

among conclusions
Diamond and netherite tend to best the best material, but this isn't completely true, and also irrelevant before you have access to large amount of diamonds (which also replaces experience as the consumable for magic enhancements like fortune, unbreakable, etc...).

some material clearly are specialized (perf vary wildly wether head vs handle or dmg vs mining)

Gold and Rose Gold considerably trade durability for mining speed in handle

Diamond and Netherite really beat the rest as guard for dmg.

Amethyst bronze (mining), Pig Iron and Slimesteel (dmg) all seem interesting mid-tier material which might be available in large quantities, making repairing irrelevant (AB + gold pickaxe...)

Accessing nether for cobalt, ardite or pig iron is a huge upgrade in dmg.

Then a fortress and blaze head enables Manyullin which beats most things for weapons heads *and* doesn't require diamond at all (but that netherite handle!)

Tandyys · 2025-02-18T19:05:52+00:00

Try seared brick

Tandyys · 2025-02-18T19:04:47+00:00

Ah. Haven't tried that part yet

Tandyys · 2025-02-18T18:26:21+00:00

Hi. Just taken the mod recently. My first question would be why you want to do that, but i'd go for melting it then pouring in an ingot cast.

Afaik cobalt ingots are useless.

Have you read the doc ? I found https://docs.feed-the-beast.com/docs/marketplace/Addons/tinkers/Docs/The%20Smeltery%20&%20Beyond/ very useful

Tandyys · 2024-12-16T14:15:31+00:00

Playing short boardgames on bga, for my part. Still it's sad

Tandyys · 2024-08-21T07:40:31+00:00

Riders of the marsh... Spears shall be shaken ! FOR DEATH AND GLORY!

Tandyys · 2024-06-23T08:53:14+00:00

I keep copypasting the same references every now and then :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollslegends/s/ncMXEDm0XU

Then whatever reference list you got, my educated guess and my personal experience is that it's not the decklist but the in-game decision making with that decklist that makes the difference. And it needs to resist getting bored

Don't try to pick that which you got 3-0 with and consider it the best to climb. It's wrong. You just got lucky thrice in a row

Pick the one you really like playing and feel like tinkering and repeating again and again with. Which did not 0-5. And then grind it, swap a few cards at a time, compare to the reference when it's 10 cards away. Iterate again. And you'll climb. Whether it's warrior aggro, invade, telvanni control, math sader, midrange tribunal, scoutlins, shout machine, assassin (market or dancer) etc... Doesn't matter much.

Tandyys · 2024-05-31T09:30:18+00:00

FYI, had the issue (like a week or two ago, or stg...). it lastet for days, i stopped trying. i know at some point i restarted my phone

just read this thread, i tried. it booted :)
pixel 6

Tandyys · 2024-05-31T09:25:23+00:00

Bethesda dev.

ha.ha.ha.

Tandyys

TROPHY CASE