From the Shore to the Mountains in Valheim

Since we had polished off Bonemass it was time to turn our eyes towards the next target biome, the mountains.

We had run into mountains quite a while back, including the freezing effect that drains your hit points once you wander into that biome, the gate to keep those unprepared away.  Mountains are all over as the map tracking my explorations shows.

However, there are mountains and there are mountains.  My map also shows a bunch of small mountain biomes you could walk across and still have most of the day left to go elsewhere.

But we were in luck when it came to mountain biomes.  We had stormed ashore and set up an outpost across the water from our main starting base early on in search of a black forest biome.  That turned out to be somewhat unnecessary as there were other block forest biomes to be found closer to home, had we ventured far enough.  Our outpost was perhaps better known to us as being a place where trolls and greys wandered and sometimes a starting point for exploration.

I mined quite a bit of copper and tin out there, and had even set up a smelter and a forge in order to avoid shipping it by boat to the main base, but the base we ended up fortifying for our assault on The Elder received more attention, getting our first stone walls and a nice stone building even before our main base.  I did eventually put up some stone walls at Dieppe after an incident, but that was after Elder base and our main base had been redone in stone.

Dieppe with stone walls up front now

With focus on the swamps, that base, named Dieppe, sat neglected for a stretch, save as a harbor for exploration runs.  And then, in the prep for Bonemass I needed to get some drops to make frost arrows and of all our bases, Dieppe was by far the closest to a mountain biome. You couldn’t actually see the mountain biome from the gate of the base, but you didn’t have to walk very far to see the snow.

Me on the map maybe 50 yards from the base

I had brewed up a few stacks of frost resist meads, which give you 10 minutes of frost protection in the mountains, and headed up there to hunt for supplies.

In the mountains clad in iron

I managed to run around without dying, though the mountains come with their own challenges.  I was glad I took a pile of sausages with me, as they give both a lot of hit points and stamina when consumed, and I needed both.

I have mentioned before that stamina management is very much a thing in Valheim, but it is all the more so in the mountains, where scrambling up hills requires you to run and jump quite a bit.  You end scrambling half way up a slope then looking for a rock or flat spot to perch on to rest as you stamina bar runs down.

And then there are the wolves.  They are not as tough as I thought, though they can show up in packs at times and if they catch you unaware, you will find yourself losing hit points fast.  I was two shotted by a one star wolf who I didn’t see.  But if you see them first they pop with a good bow shot or, if they are close, a blow from my iron mace knocks them below half heath with a single blow and stuns them for a moment, so you can bring them down before they even get a hit on you if you’re careful.

There are also the drakes, which were much more of an initial terror.  They scream at you as they fly in to attack, then stop, hover, and launch their frost attack down at you, which can be quite surprising.  Fortunately, it is a frost based attack, and since you probably have your frost resist on if you’re traipsing about the mountains, it barely does any damage.  Once I figured that out, they became more of a nuisance than a threat.  You hear the scream, equip your bow, spot them, pull back, and wait for them to hover for a nice clean shot.

Lining up another drake with my bow

With iron or obsidian arrows they are down in two hits.  If I am feeling cheap, wood arrows will kill them in three hits.  I generally keep a stack of wood arrows on me for hunting deer or seagulls, and sometimes I forget to swamp.

There are also werewolves out and about at night, but they are basically wolves without any good drops.

The main menace of the mountains are the stone golems, which are basically the trolls of the mountains, except that arrows are not very effective against them.  Like trolls, they are drawn to the sound of you digging with your pick axe, so if you’re out harvesting silver or obsidian or stone… we’ll get to that last… you have a chance of waking one up or drawing its attention if it is already up and wandering about.

I have yet to work out how to attack them.  As noted, arrows do not do much damage, though obsidian arrows will chip off a bit of damage with each hit, but you would need a full stack of arrows before you committed to that.

I read that the pick axe was effective against them, but you have to get in close to use it and if you mis-time and take the full blow from the golem, you’ll lose a lot of hit points.

I did have some luck using terrain against them initially.  They cannot go down steep slopes.  At one point I managed to get one trapped down in a bit below me, so I could rush in, hit him a few times, then pull back if I was taking too much damage.

Stone Golem in a pit

I also found that worked if I had dug myself deep enough mining, only I was down in the pit and the golem couldn’t reach me.  At one dig I sat there working away with a golem just above my head flailing away, unable to get at me.

Stone Golem above me as I worked

However, if you give them an opening, they will jump in the hole with you.  That generally gets them stuck in place so you can close with them and retreat as needed.

Time to finish him off

While I can divert most of their damage with my shield, their attack has such a knock-back that, unless I have something at my back to hold me in place, by the time I can close with them again I have to block once more.

You can juke their AI with the terrain by running up a slope they can’t use, which will send them off in another direction.  When you come back down and they’ll start back towards you.  Overall though, fighting them still involves trying a bunch of things looking for the best method.

Anyway, I got my supplies and enough silver and wolf hides to make the cloak that gives you frost resist and we went off to slay Bonemass.  After that, with the wishbones in hand, Fergorin, Crowbar, and I went to Dieppe so they too could learn about the mountains.

Crowbar and I considering a sleeping stone golem

Of course, hilarity ensued and everybody died.  Fergorin learned that you cannot hide in one of the many towers seeded about that mountain biome, as the stone golems will knock holes in them.

Fergorin’s corpse in a tower with a bite out of it

Before long we set up a little camp in a wooden building not too far off from that tower and decided that setting up a portal in the mountains would save us some running back and forth.  We would have to haul silver down the hard way, it being a “no portal” like other ore, but as a base camp to haul things up, and haul things down, it would be a boon.  Stone for base building seemed especially easy to find up on the mountain, it being made out of stone, so we could collect and portal it back easily.

That first portal stood for a bit, but I logged on to find it disconnected at one point.  As it turned out, a stone golem and a drake had a fight next to the house with the portal, and the golem knocked the tar out of the house, the way he did that tower, breaking the portal in the process.

But the house was only a temporary base in any case.  Fergorin had already been working on digging out a base to be fortified with stone and given a steep moat to keep the golems away.  I collected the bits and bought it down to the work in progress and set up the portal down there, then started digging some stone to help the building effort.

The fortified mountain base in progress

As for the biome itself, it is the biggest mountain area I have found so far.  While the trip to it from Dieppe is a short run, walking around its perimeter takes a full day/night cycle and I have yet to explore the whole thing.  Granted, that is due in part to the mountain terrain, which has its share of drops and steep slopes.  But there is a lot there to find.

Our mountain biome map

In the center there is also a wide are of lesser slopes to explore.

And, as I mentioned, there are stone towers around, often near peaks, several of which have the runstone that reveals the next boss, Moder.  You can see that is now marked on the map above.

One of the runestone for the reveal

I have actually been out to where the Moder fight will take place, so unlike the past two bosses, we won’t have to mount an expedition just to get ourselves set up for the fight.  There is even a tower close by, which seems like an opportune place to put another portal when the time comes.

The location to summon Moder

Also marked on the map are some locations where dragon eggs spawn.  You need three of them to summon Moder.  They also weigh 200lbs each, so they aren’t something you’ll just carry around in your back pocket.  When I found one the first time I struggled to get it back down the hill and through the portal to our main base, only to learn its sole use was to summon Moder, and for that I would need it back up on the mountain.

The comically heavy egg back at base

Well, there were plenty more back up there, so this one can just hang around the base.

Now we just need to gear up.  There is, of course, a whole new set of gear we’ll all need, and one of the prime ingredients is silver.  As I mentioned previously you need the wishbone from the Bonemass fight, the magic metal detector, to find most silver nodes in the mountains as they are hidden below the surface.  So we will be working on that.

Visiting Archaedas

As we gathered up again this past weekend, the question was what should we do.  We had taken down almost all of the bosses in Uldaman the week before, but our group, as it stood, seemed a bit wee to challenge Achaedas.  We started out on Sunday as:

• Viniki – level 43 gnome warrior
• Ula – level 42 gnome mage
• Moronae – level 42 night elf druid
• Skronk – level 42 dwarf priest

My inexpert opinion was that we probably didn’t have much of a hope unless we were all at least level 43.  Archaedas is level 47 and our past experience shows that when you are five levels below a boss they will resist your spells and abilities with alarming regularity.

However, we still had a good number of quests to finish up in Uldaman. As nobody had a better idea when it came to leveling up it seemed like a worthwhile venture to head back in.  We all had the same five on our list this week.

Our quest list

So off we went to the Badlands.  Ula and I got there first.

Waiting for the group

I had sold everything not nailed down and scrounged gold from my alts to get a mount for Viniki, which felt like a necessity after I had run back and forth across the Badlands a few times.

As it turned out, somehow Moronae never obtained the flight point at Thelsamar in Loch Modan, so he had to run out from Ironforge.  I was less concerned about the delay than how he managed to get this far without that flight point.  Anyway, he got it this time and joined us out in the Badlands.

We figured we could work on some of the quests that require drops outside of the instance, but it was a busy Sunday around Uldaman and the mobs were being hunted by several groups besides ours.

Into the tunnels

Even inside the tunnels it was slim pickings.  We did go update one quest and, after a bit more hunting, decided to just head on into the instance and carry on there.

The area around the instance was bare

There we made our way to the dead paladin, which in turn started another quest that required us to pick up three gems.  That required killing a few bosses, so we figured we might as well clean out the ones we did last week one more time.

We did stumble a bit at Ironaya.  We forgot to get the bits to make the staff to unlock her.  We could have just passed on by, but that seemed wrong, so we headed back, got the items, made the staff, and went through the summoning routine again.

Staff in place to call her

The fight went smoothly.  The whole run through the first part of the instance.  The scorpion traps and such did not cause us any real problems.

Scorpions! We’re Back!

We worked our way around and took down Galgann Firehammer hammer again without issue.

Galgann gets it again

For the quest we needed to go take care of Grimlok as well, so we cut our way into the troggs and got set up for that fight.

Eyeing Grimlok

This time around we put Grimlok third on the list, with the basilisk taking second position since it caused some problems last time.  Grimlok went down pretty easy with that ordering and we were able to update the quest.  The update had us pointed at the vault guarded by Archaedas, so it was on the list for later.

That done, we took a side trip over to the Ancient Stone Guardian, managing to keep Ula alive in the trash this time around.  He was another quick fight, after which we still had some time.  So we figured we might as well see how far we could get on the path to Archaedas.

First there are the troggs outside the Hall of Crafters.  They come in groups of four and are a step up from a lot of the earlier trash in the instance.  Early on you run into a range around 38-42 or so.  Now it seemed to be 43-45.  Still, we managed to get them cleared out and made our way to the big door.

The Hall of Crafters door

Past the door we faced a room with three groups each made up of an elite and four or five non-elites.  However, the non-elites were where we had fallen down in the past and they caused us problems again.

Looking into the room with the groups

The opening idea was the old plan of I hold elite and the rest of the group does AOE to burn down the little guys.  Only the little guys were now our level or higher and one or two of them were casters, so tended to stand back out of the AOE and pelt our own casters.  Ula went down with the first group, though we were far enough along that we finished them off.

The second group saw Skronk go down, and from there it was a near run thing to finish off that group.  Also, to get Skronk back Moronae had to use his combat ress, which has a 30 minute cool-down.  So we were a bit on edge and decided to change up out plan.

Instead of me holding the elite, I would grab the group and pick a non-elite to focus on.  Everybody would target off of me and we would quickly burn down all the small guys with single target damage, after which we would take on the elite.

That seemed to go much more smoothly and we cleared the final group in the room.  But now we had an event to pass through, involving the four golems in a circle.  Again, vague memories were with us, but we were not solid on how the event really ran.

In the room with the Golems

You get three people to click on the pedestal in the middle, which starts the event.  That much we remembered.  But how would the fight run?  We decided to press the button and find out.

As it turned out, the golems activate one by one.  You kill one and the next one goes live.  Four single target mini-boss fights was no big deal.  It helped that Skronk leveled part way through the fight, so got a refill of mana, but we were on it either way.  Soon they were all down and the far door had opened up.

Golems down and the door open

On the far side of the door was another group based on an elite.  But he had six non-elites.  Or maybe it was seven.  I know we had to use all of the target markers to mark them.  That proved to be a couple too many mobs for us to handle.  We ran down the little guys like last time, but eventually damage builds up and Skronk has to start laying heals on me, which then pulls aggro.  I have a taunt to get everybody back on me, but it has a ten minute cool down, so it is a once a fight deal, and after I used it the wheels came off anyway and we had a wipe.

We released and decided to try and run back in via the back door, which we managed to find.  I am not sure how.

The cave to the back door as seen in dead-o-vision

Going in via the back door mean we had to kill the Obsidian Sentinal, a boss we bypassed because it only has a drop for the mage quest and we got that last week.  Again, not a tough fight and we were soon back in the Hall of Crafters.  Fortunately we had pared down the group that we wiped on, so were able to finish off the rest.

There were two walkers going up and down the halls, which we managed to get solo.  Then there were more groups, the last of which was another “use all the target markers” in size.  Somehow though, we managed to get through them with a wipe, or even a death.

Which left us standing at the door of Archaedas.

There he is!

We had gone all that way, we were certainly going to give him a shot.  Again, vague memories and the layout of the room suggested how the fight might go, but we were not certain.

Standing in the room

He has a series of inanimate dwarves around the edge of the room, then some bigger ones in the circle around him, and then two more even bigger ones at opposite ends of the room.  We had out theories as to what might get activated when, but decided to figure it out by kicking off the event.  We got three of us on the pedestal to start things going.

Waking Archaedas, or whatever it is we are doing

The basic plan was to tank Archaedas, focus on him when we could, but kill any add as it appeared.  And there are a lot of adds.  Archaedas starts lighting up the outer circle of dwarves one by one.  They are non-elite, so died pretty quickly, but there are a lot of them and they just keep on coming.

That seemed to go okay.  When his health was down by about a third he woke up that inner circle of dwarves, which we managed to get through.  But even as we were working on that, more of the outer ring dwarves were getting lit up.

A lot of animated dwarves down

We were not doing bad, but we were falling behind.  And then a little too much healing landed on me and they began going after Skronk and the wheels started coming off the wagon.  We had Archaedas about half way down at that point.

Last health check on Archaedas

But then we wiped.  If the boss is on Ula it generally means we’re about done.

After the wipe

It wasn’t a horrible wipe.  Three out of four of us were level 43 by that point in the run, Ula having leveled up as well, but Achaedas was still resisting attacks fairly regularly.  And, again, there is a DPS check aspect of this that we, as a group of four, are going to have to work hard to get past.  But I think we might manage it.  We may have to be 44 or even 45 as a group to ensure success, but our one run at him didn’t feel like it had no hope.

Still, we were not going to go again.  It was getting towards dinner time and home life was calling, so we released, ran back into the instance to revive, then recalled back to Ironforge to call it a night.

With all of that, plus the grinding he did to buy that mount, Viniki is close to 44.  Ula shouldn’t be too far back from that and Skronk is at least a ways into 43.  We might need to look into getting the group a level or two next time.  But the best way to do that might just to be to head back into Uldaman.  We still have quests to finish after all.  We all need some more power core drops and nobody is close to done with the fungus harvesting.

Fiddling About in Eregion

Eregion.  Shit.  I’m still only in Eregion.

-Opening lines, Moriapocalypse Now

Not the there is anything enormously wrong with Eregion.  It is something of a middling zone.  Nothing much stands out about it.  The geography, the mobs, and many of the quests could have been copied and pasted from earlier zones.

It does, however, suffer from one big problem.  It stands between you and Moria.

Moria is the legend I want to find

Eregion is like a middle episode in a television season that doesn’t move the overall story arc forward much.  Sure, it lays down some ground work and probably provides some key details you’ll need to know for later, but it still feels like it is hanging about and going on longer than it should with its own little side tales.  Moria is the big event of the season, but first you have to muck about in the back story.

While the EverQuest progression servers were bogged down by the usual rush to get in, the LOTRO Legendary servers of Anor and Ithil were not under any similar strain.  Getting through to the first expansion had already weeded out the half hearted and the day trippers, leaving only the dedicate adventurers and the more hearty of the tourist class like myself.  So I nailed my colors to the mast… in the form of choosing a title… which I could change at any time… so not really nailed… but then again pulling out nails isn’t a huge effort either… and headed to Eregion.

Not sure why I was in Ost Guruth, but off I went

I had started in on Eregion a bit already while finishing up the volume I epic quest line.  You need to get in the initial quest count deed to be able to use swift travel to get to any of the hubs in the zone.  There are four such deeds, each unlocking swift travel for one of the quest hubs.  I had done enough quests to unlock the first two, which was enough to keep from having to take the long ride from Rivendell each time I needed to get back to Bree or Thorin’s Hall.  And you need to do that a few times.

Most of the quests tend towards the usual slaying of the local fauna.  Wolves and lynxes and such.  I think they straight up copied the lynx pelt quest from the Lone Lands.  And then there are the locals, the Dunlendings.  When I say that word aloud it sounds like the bank cutting off your credit line.  “Done lending!” said the bank manager.

Pretty sure I saw her at a Romeo Void concert in the 80s

They inspires neither fear nor passion.  And then there are the half orcs hanging about and the usual lying NPC escort quest.

As he walks slowly straight into some half orcs

Anyway, I ran the quest lines down to unlock the rest of the swift travel options and to get the invite to Echad Dunann, which is the stop just outside of Moria.

Map of Eregion

There you pick up the epic quest line again, which takes you into the Walls of Moria mini-zone.

Walls of Moria Map

There you piddle around with the dwarves, who are busy trying to get into Moria.  As we will see later, they are out in force and ready to infest Durin’s domain with quest givers, vendors, bankers, stable masters, and various other amenities of civilization.  But for the moment they are working on the door.

Somebody left a bunch of trash in front of the door

My job was to deliver lunches, collect wood, investigate various side quests, and warn the dwarves to stop throwing rocks in the mysterious black pool outside the door.  This last bit always makes me laugh as the dwarves in question are hurling stone after stone into the water like they were trying to fill the whole thing in before dinner.  At least they listed to reason, if too late.

Then why did I have to ask you to stop?

Eventually they all settle down, the doorway is cleared, and the work party has to stop for a moment to say some words before, you know, actually opening up the damn door.

Do you have to use that foreboding tone of voice?

And that is when the lurker shows up to start picking out dinner from the dwarf buffet table.  So it was time to run away, leaving the freshly cleared door behind.

All of which was the apparent necessary fore effort required to get you to Hundi, who has access to a cache of weapons of old, which are just the ticket for things like monsters lurking in deep pools outside of ancient dwarven ruins.

Hundi’s discount legendaries

Of course, Hundi’s gift loses its special nature when you find legendary weapons dropping like leaves in the autumn. I actually already had three in my bag from just running around Eregion.  As I said previously, I think WoW did the legendary thing better, making you do a little quest for a specific item then having you stick with it.  And I also think Blizz was smart to make that a one expansion exercise rather than trying to drag it along forever after.  But for a brief moment you can pretend that you’re getting something special Hundi.  At least you don’t have to go back to Rivendell and have Elrond and Glorfindel examine your new toy to give it their blessing.  The bureaucracy of the eldar is unending.

As a dwarf with a trait that boosts axe damage, I was kind of hoping to see an axe among the options.  However, for a shield bearing guardian you have only a sword and a club as an option.  As much as I like beating things with a club, I went with the sword.

So I had done it.  I had gotten my legendary weapon!

Only, as one does not just walk into Mordor, one also does not simply equip a legendary weapon.  First you have to go back to your home town and speak to somebody about the weapon.  It must be identified.  You then have to put some stickers on it or something.  Then, once they say you’re ready, you can actually wield the weapon.

So, weapon in hand, I took the swift travel options back to Eregion… you have to pass through the Rivendell travel hub of course… it is like the Atlanta of Eriador… to carry on questing. I wanted to put some levels on the weapon and so started in on the regular alerts.

Hey mister, your weapon leveled up again!

The alerts UI already loves to get on you about every little thing, so adding another did not thrill me.  And it is really bad at first because your weapon gets the first few levels nearly every time you hit something, at which point you have to stop and see how many points you have to spend on things to make the weapon better.  My usual first choice is raw DPS.  By default the weapon was worse than what I already had equipped.  Then I went after enhancements to bash related damage since about every other guardian skill involves you hitting somebody with your shield.

And then you get ten levels in and the alert says you have to reforge the weapon.

Every ten levels it is back to the shop

That means another ride back to your home town, some more instructions, and then back to Eregion again.  At least you get to give your weapon a custom name when you reforge.  I went with Cheese Slicer.

Back in the fields of Eregion I kept on going until I had the last swift travel deed unlock and had gotten a few more levels on the weapon.  Next up is a return to the walls of Moria and a bout with the lurker before heading back to Durin’s Door.

I’ll take what’s behind door number one

That is when the Mines of Moria expansion actually starts in earnest.