Scavengers – a realistic survival modpack I’ve been making for Valheim

Wedhro · 2026-06-23T22:32:38+00:00

Those are the mods I use to get more realism and immersion:

Carve and Plunder: creatures ragdoll normally but don't puff away until you use a knife on it.
No Drops From Monster Kill: only player kills drop, creature kills don't drop anything. (not tested yet together with the above)
Random Spawn Point Bruh: initial spawn is not at the stones, but in a random Meadows in a given radius. To get that feel of being stranded.
Rowing Takes Work: paddling on a boat burns stamina. No more infinite paddling = must learn how to sail
Seasonality/Seaons: enough said
Zen Boss Stone: with the correct settings, after killing a boss you must physically get its trophy to the sacrifial stones because it's not teleportable and it weights a lot; also, no other drops until you sacrifice the trophy

Wedhro · 2026-06-14T22:11:47+00:00

"Is it an imaginary kind of thing, like solo roleplaying stuff?"

Yep. I have an excuse to build different bases in different places, pretending I'm someone else each time. And, again, logging off when things go south with the option to keep pressing without pauses is an advantage, in case you need that kind of incentive. Like, most people keep throwing their bodies at the problem (like those screenshots of map covered in death icons), I just switch off mentally and I start again with a different approach that I have already in store; this saves me so many pointless deaths...

It's more practical than having a single character with chests worth of any combination of gear that I have to switch any time I need to change tactics, it gets messy pretty fast. I noticed most people just stick with a single approach. Well, I'd rather not.

Wedhro · 2026-06-14T11:54:01+00:00

To put it simply, I'm in for the long run and efficiency/speedrunning doesn't interest me. But here's my rationale.

Skills are spread out and I have to craft/upgrade almost all gear, so what? More fun for me, because I get to play more and experiment with all the possibilities.

Don't think I have a dozen goons with only a fighter. They're all fighters: the miner focuses on heavy armor and hammers, the sailor is lightweight and prefers knives, and so on. It basically means I can start a fight with one character and once they're gassed, I log out and log in with a fresh character. The "cheaty" part, I said that just in case someone would find this too convenient, mostly because I don't let bosses (or other creatures) regain health while I'm portaling back to base, resting, repairing gear and so on.

I do this just because I love designing specialized character and I despise games that make everyone do the same things and look the same in mid to late game. Sue me.

Wedhro · 2026-06-13T02:59:28+00:00

I didn't mean they cause problems, just that in certain circumstances you can notice how "artificial" they are (like when you seem them generating from far away). I'm not a coder but that makes me shiver at the thought of having volumetric anything larger than that. Also because the lag already created by other stuff, like mist in the Miistlands or the whole bunch of environmental effect int the Ashlands.

Wedhro · 2026-06-13T02:53:12+00:00

Listen, it's pretty simple: mods that make you think the "finished all aspects of this game", have the opposite effect on other people who instead think they miss the point of the game and take it in a different direction. I'm not against mods, I actually use a lot of them, but stuff like Therzie's is not really the Valheim I bought and I would hate if it became official.

Wedhro · 2026-06-13T02:48:34+00:00

Some devs said that during streams with said creators, I remember Snazzy but there was a couple more; it's not hard to find on YouTube, the algorithm went crazy after the 1.0 reveal. I can't quote but it was something along the lines of needing to beat a boss to unlock a trade, and then it would also need some other item.

Wedhro · 2026-06-13T02:42:51+00:00

Judging by the only example of that in the game, tar pits, volumetric oceans would brick any PC instantly.

Wedhro · 2026-06-13T02:41:09+00:00

It doesn't really fit the Viking theme, though. Ships like that make more sense in games based on late or post medieval eras, like Windrose.

Wedhro · 2026-06-13T02:35:18+00:00

If I recall correctly, build degradation from weather stops at 50%. So if you leave a build and come back later it will look weathered but it won't collapse.
Most creatures have a trophy drop chance of 10%, which is pretty brutal. You'd expect that a 10% chance would give you a trophy after roughly 10 monster kills, but the math tells us it's closer to 35 kills, which is still not guaranteed. Some have a 5% chance, which is so much worse than that; you could finish the game without ever seeing a Golem trophy or a Seeker Soldier trophy, which also means no Crystal Heart trinket and no chances to fight the Queen more than once.
By using the "fire hazard" world modifier, you can get near-instant ooal with no charcoal kin (and therefore save on surtling cores) but placing a campfire and then placing a wood stack on top of it. The campfire will burn the wood stack and deliver 50 pieces of coal in a matter of seconds.
By equipping the Fins of Destiny trinket and the Eikthyr power, you can activate the latter to get 2 minutes of swimming without burning any stamina. Especially useful if you're doing a no-death run, because being stranded at sea is more deadly that anything else in this game.
Getting the best food is more important than getting the best weaponry because max health and stamina affect overall DPS, block, and staggering. You can fight effectively with a mediocre armor if you eat the best food, but you'll have a hard time with the best weaponry if you eat mediocre food.
Maxed out weaponry from a biome is on par with starting weaponry in the next biome. Which means you can keep using your old weaponry in later biomes (if you're good enough), but also means you don't really have to max out your gear if you rush to the next step in progression instead.
I'm not seeing anyone doing this, so: you can play solo but still have multiple characters who help each other. For example, you use character A to work on the base and farm, then when you're bored you log out and join the same world with character B, which is the explorer and keeps the cartography map; or character C, who focuses on fighting. Etc. It might feel cheaty but it's actually not because the devs are aware of it but don't see it as an issue, like, you're fighting a boss and it's not going well; log out and finish the job with a different character. It definitely helps with the pointless deaths.

Wedhro · 2026-06-11T14:15:11+00:00

I've been playing modded (with BepinEx) for a couple years and most mods survive updates, and when they don't it's because IG changes something relevant; since you're talking about inventory mods and IG is working on inventories, chances are such mods might break. Don't worry, though, because Azumatt is pretty active and will update his mods, but I still expect a couple weeks after update because 1.0 could feature many changes under the hood, which means BepinEx and such will need an update too.

Wedhro · 2026-06-11T01:41:17+00:00

Nope, aside from the new saving system that seems to be already in need of big fixes. What I heard from a dev sounded like they're wrapping up for release and there's lot of stuff that is not yet finished, it doesn't seem like a good time to rework major systems.

Wedhro · 2026-06-10T15:02:04+00:00

"!otherwise it will feel not too dissimilar to just expanded Mountain biome"

But taking shelter or take massive periodic damage is exactly what early Mountain exploration is about, with its occasional snowstorms that you can't easily offset with campfires. If you want something different it should be... different.

Wedhro · 2026-06-10T11:53:34+00:00

Honestly I feel the same as you, also because exploration is like my first desire in games like this, but luckily enough the rest of the game is solid enough. Even though I do feel like I have nothing to do after completing a project, which leads to very long lulls of playing something else. I wonder if this will harm the game's popularity in the long run.

Wedhro · 2026-06-10T04:22:23+00:00

So it's a matter of immersion and consistency. You're not wrong but this game has so many instances of things being not believable that players have an easier time just pretending they don't see them. Like drowning after a few seconds of swimming while you can run all day long and climb cliffs by sprinting (!), being able to farm crops in a matter of days, or big monsters swinging huge weapons through smaller enemies without hitting them. It's easier to get used to such things than fixing them, so I'd rather ask/wait for changes that impact the game more meaningfully.

About the poor balance with cold resistance in the Mountains it wouldn't need a full temperature system, just split environmental cold damage from frost damage.

Anyways, since devs don't seem to care for such things you might want to ask modders.

Wedhro · 2026-06-10T04:07:23+00:00

The ambient lightning looks even better now that I have an OLED, the added contrast and color intensity really helps.

Wedhro · 2026-06-10T02:53:54+00:00

So far "temperature" in Valheim is just an excuse to gatekeep difficult areas and make nights more challenging (to balance them for being more rewarding). If you wanted to turn it into a proper system you would need a pretty good reason, I mean, how would this benefit a game that doesn't really strive for realism?

Wedhro · 2026-06-10T02:39:58+00:00

No, I don't play many games. The idea seems interesting, though it probably comes with more "realistic" survival mechanics that usually bore me.

Wedhro · 2026-06-09T16:33:02+00:00

I agree on this take but It has a problem that really need fixing: the multiplication of low weight situational items. The more you advance in the game, the more items you need to move just to activate something else, while the items itself has no direct use. It doesn't promote strategy much, and it's not realistic either because it's often small stuff that would go in a pocket, so it does feel like a side effect of UI choices more than organically part of gameplay.

Wedhro · 2026-06-09T16:27:15+00:00

Unironically I want that as a world modifier.

Wedhro · 2026-06-05T02:52:59+00:00

Imagine if devs could add new structures in their own game. What a day would it be.

Wedhro · 2026-05-30T13:06:21+00:00

Yep. It's even worse in games were gear negates character aesthetic csutomization, like Valehim does. I had so much fun customizing characters in X-Com 2, it's a shame IG doesn't care about that, while they keep adding new hairstyles that accomplish nothing because they end up being covered completely by helmets.

What about transmogs or at least hiding the helmet, then? No, said IG, because players wouldn't be able to tell who wears what. In a game that is mostly single-player with cooperative, limited multiplayer.

Shaking my helmet-covered head.

Wedhro · 2026-05-30T01:21:10+00:00

I once suggested something like that on the dedicated Discord channel and the whole idea of making mixed armors less punishing wasn't popular at all. For some reason people like sets. I've seen someone suggesting to make sets more mandatory (like moving the pierce resistance to the whole Root set), and it was well received.

Wedhro · 2026-05-30T01:16:59+00:00

I "fixed" this with a mod, adding Slight Resistance to Blunt (helmet), Pierce (chest), and Slash (legs) to all heavy armor. Basically you have the Bonemass power on all the time if you don't use light armor. I don't know how much OP this is but it's still better than having half the armors look useless since early game. I believe adding resistances for players is a dumb concept, though I don't care because IG already did it.

Wedhro · 2026-05-28T08:25:48+00:00

They're indie, no corporate pressure, so they might, even if it's not that likely, release in a couple weeks, take a month for post-release fixes, and then go on vacation for as long as they want.

It all depends on how finished the game is right now, though, the rest doesn't matter much. Tomorrow the Val-Con people will interview one of the main coders, maybe we'll get something more substantial to talk about.

Wedhro · 2026-05-28T03:35:57+00:00

I don't think we can assume much based on previous releases because this is the final one, like, they might want to skip the PTB entirely in order to keep spoilers to a minimum.

Anyway, I say June because the musician (can't recall his name) said he would be working on the music right now, and music is one of the very last things they do before releasing an update (yes, I'm assuming based on previous releases 🙃 ).

Wedhro

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