Back to Valheim.
In planning for our return to the Black Forest… well, my return and a first visit by everybody else… Skronk put together a spreadsheet to calculate what supplies we would need to carry over with us in order to make a defensible base.
The biggest element was going to be wood. We would need to build a palisade wall around the camp as swiftly as possible and then some minimal shelter within that in order to hold out against the anticipated onslaught. That meant more than 300 units of wood.
50 units of wood weighs 100 pounds, so 600 pounds total. As I mentioned last time, one person can carry 300 pounds before movement is seriously impaired. With gear and other supplies it seemed we could split the wood out between the three of us and be able to get over there with almost enough to get things going. Skronk revised his shelter estimate down and under 300 units seemed viable.
I did point out that in my previous expeditions I had discovered the area was populated by fir trees, which we could chop down with our flint axes. Wood seemed to be in ample supply over there, so long as we were able to find the time to cut it down.
Laden with supplies, we gathered on the raft to set sail to the Black Forest.
Setting sail for a new land
There was some discussion as how to best ride as a passenger. Falling overboard could mean death. Skronk had already drowned just steps from the shore as I stood watching, helpless to do anything. There isn’t a “grab somebody and haul them up” command that I know of.
Skonk had read that remaining seated was a good option, and so he and Ula… Unna in our world… started. And then we got into open water and the swells started to roll the raft and water came over it now and again up to the chins of those seated before the raft bobbed up to the surface again. It wasn’t as bad as my previous rides at their worst, but it was disconcerting.
Ula opted to stand up and hold onto the mast, which you can do. If you target over the mast, there is the option E to hold on. She rode that way through the rough weather.
Unna at the mast
Also, I might take a moment to note how you can see other people’s health bars floating above them quite vividly. Your own health is tucked way down in the bottom left corner of your screen, which on my monitor puts it outside of my peripheral vision if I am focused on tasks at the center of the screen. So we’re often prompting each other about health status.
With rough seas and an uncooperative wind blowing against us, it took more time than expected to get over the water to our destination. We could see the campfire left from my first attempt and sailed a bit up the coast to a point where there was a sheltered bay and a bit of a peninsula. That looked promising, so I put the boat against the shore and we leaped off and began hurrying to set up.
There were some dangerous creatures about made worse by the fact that it was the dark of night as we landed. The initial thought was to put a palisade wall across the head of the peninsula to keep creatures out. As we were working on that a group of greys showed up and I went out to cover Skronk as he threw up a base and ended up dying. That was awkward.
When you die you go back to your spawn point, which is your bed. That put me back at our first base, where I had to scrounge about for the parts to make another raft. The one thing I was missing was wood. We had scraped up all we had to bring with us. Fortunately I had stuck my old stone axe in a chest, so was able to run out and harvest some in the dark.
Meanwhile, I could hear Skonk and Ula scrambling on coms to build their perimeter. They were also facing a wood shortage as I died with 100 units of wood on my corpse which was no longer available for them to use. I could hear the rush to chop down nearby trees as they fought off greys and avoided the crashing timber. I had the distinct impression that at least one tree fell on their work in progress and set them back.
I made my raft and sailed back to them, arriving with the dawn to find they had a palisade perimeter setup.
Arrival back at the new base
I had now crossed the water five times in that direction and only three time in the other. That is like a pilot whose takeoffs and landings don’t match.
I hopped ashore, grabbed the stuff off of my corpse, dropped half of the wood I had in a chest Skronk had built, then tried to help get things settled. We needed beds to set spawn points and a roof and a fire to be able to sleep, and more things besides.
Just to keep us on our toes we got one of those events. The signal came that the forest was moving and the greys came out of the dark to attack us. We threw up a ladder against the wall and build some platforms to stand on in order to use bows to thin out their ranks.
The forest is alive tonight
That subsided are a bit. We eventually got beds setup and spawn points set, the started working on defense some more, refining our archery platforms and clearing our the space before the gate and adding a fire to help illuminate targets. The greys seemed keen to visit over and over.
On the wall again
As we developed our defenses, we pushed the front wall out to encompass the cleared zone to give ourselves a bit more of a buffer and some space to stack wood and rock for use later.
A new fire set out to illuminate… and distract attackers
Skronk was able to setup a nice longhouse for us with beds, a fire for cooking, a storage area, and a work bench with all the upgrades we could manage.
Our new home over the water
Then it was time to strike out and see what was about.
There was copper ore right up the hill from us. Upon reaching it Hugin showed up to tell us all about it.
Hugin explains about ore and cores
There was also a neighbor up the hill. I heard some new noises… Valheim is definitely a game where you need to pay attention to the environmental sounds… and I saw the source through the woods.
A troll spotted
That was one of those moments, like when I first spotted a cyclops striding around West Karana back in early EverQuest where I said, “Wow!” and was surprised and impressed. He seemed to be content in his spot up the hill, so I left him alone.
We went up the coast to retrieve the raft that was left behind from my first failed expedition. We found lots of tin ore along the water there and I was able to grab the remaining items off of my corpse, still down in the hole, before grabbing the raft and sailing it back. We needed that raft as the greys had destroyed the one parked in front of the base in the sheltered bay. You cannot leave items unattended. Even the greylings back at our old base destroyed some of our stuff outside of our perimeter… including another raft.
Down in the other direction Ula and I discovered some skeletons guarding what looked to be a tomb of some sort. The skeletons were fighting some greys when we showed up, and seemed to get the better of them. Then we got a little too close and the skeletons came for us. But we were able to dispatch them readily. As we got closer to the tomb Hugin appeared once again to tell us all about our find.
Time for some dungeons
So we were clearing in the right neighborhood for further adventure.
Of course, it became clear to me later that this who expedition was not strictly necessary. As I noted in the comments on the last post, I had misunderstood Hugin’s mention of the Black Forest, thinking it was a specific fixed location we needed to find. Instead, the Black Forest is just one of the biome types in the game. We just had not stumbled upon one in our initial exploration, though later one was discovered back by our initial camp in a direction we simply had not explored. We could have had trolls and such there if we had looked about more.
But we had fun. It was quite an adventure and now part of our tale in the world.
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