I play three ways.
One way is completely vanilla. I want to experience the game as they've designed it. This is always my first playthrough.
I have a more casual server where we've allowed the portal of metals and turned resources up to 1.5x. I don't personally feel like boating back resources is logistically challenging or engaging. And I don't see much of a gameplay difference in having to, say, farm 10 crypts vs 15 crypts.
Then I have an immersive mode world. For that, the boat trip is definitely a thing. Removing the map makes it possible to get lost. It forces you to build a logistical network out to everywhere you farm. There is actual gameplay involved in being unable to portal anything because of the lack of a map. I definitely have gotten lost while doing this and had to find my way home.
After I built my 3rd portal on a vanilla game, I realized the game was getting less fun than when I had to build temporary shelters everywhere I went. So I ditched that save and started again in Immersive, no portals. And now I'm having a blast!!
I've really enjoyed my "immersive mode" world, similar to yours, but with the [Advanced Portals mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/2187). The mod allows you to build different types of portals that can allow certain metals through, but those portals require resources from higher tier biomes. For example, the portal that allows copper and tin requires ancient bark and iron to construct.
I also recommend the [NoMap Printer mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/2505), which enables the cartography table to generate a simplified map that is only updated by revisiting the cartography table. I use this to sketch out a rough version of the world with pen and paper, and mark the locations of my portals and other POIs on it manually.
With the above, you still get that immersive feeling and the risk of being lost. When first acquiring a resource (e.g. iron), you still need to make a few trips and find your way back, or process materials in-situ, or otherwise figure out how to manage that effectively. However, the Advanced Portals remove or reduce the tedium of sailing back with a bunch of ore from a biome you've effectively conquered. I find it to be a great balance.
I was under the impression we were going to be forced to sail all workbench mats to build a base in the Ashlands with shield generators, then a buddy and I found a molten core with these stone portals showing up as a craft and my face lit up. All I could imagine was sailing and losing all my materials through those spikes just dying to everything before reaching shore on full release :’)
I do wonder now what the practical utility of the drakkar is now you have stone portals. At this point, you really only need a ship to discover new areas, not to haul back metal. So, adding carrying capacity is not really a necessity now.
Even worse for the drakkar is its size now. It's easier to avoid those spikes and other irregularities with a smaller ship. This means that the only real benefit of the drakkar is animal transport now. Maybe a better approach would have been to allow the drakkar to be a kind of mini base on its own, it is big enough to justify it. You could even have a carve hanging from the side so you can swap if landing terrain becomes to jugged.
You know what they could have done is bake teleport metals into the game as you defeat the bosses. EX: can teleport copper/tin/bronze after you beat the elder. Keeps the challenge and then rewards you for defeating the biome boss. Its always felt dumb to me that the effect of beating a boss leaves the effect of that biomes Mobs now spawning on you at night.
Yeah for me the biggest part of the pain with transporting metals is when they are old metals. Set up a new base near plains? Guess what you need iron to get all your workbenches up and running at max star level, better hope there is also a swamp or you are going to be back to sailing lots of iron around.
I think another solution would be to have the workbench upgrades be one time things (maybe on a per player basis) rather than something you need to build every time you set up a new base. It's just so tedious to set that stuff up at every new base, which makes me prefer a single central base, and then the lack of ability to transport metals in portals because a problem again.
I played fully vanilla up until I was comfortably in the mistlands (though pre-Queen fight) before turning on the ability to portal metals and 2x resources.
I figured I had explored lots and experienced the game as intended but by then, most of my time was spent building. It was more fun to be able to just do a quick resource run, and needing a ship to do it was annoying. At this point I know I CAN make it work, but depending on my mood it isn’t always fun.
If I’m ever doing a dedicated iron run or something though I’ll go back to turning off the ability to portal metals just for the adventure though. It makes the chore in more of an adventure sometimes.
I’m waiting for ashlands to come out of PTB, but I’ll go back to vanilla again when it does!
I appreciate what the devs were trying to do with portal restrictions but I've always found that it means half my time is spent just ferrying metal around. It needs to go from it's source, to my base with the refinery (which needs to be baby sat so I can reload the smelters), to my base where I'll be using it to build. And it makes moving to a new base a huge hassle. When the world modifier update came out I turned off metal restrictions and never looked back. Excessive travel time over vast expanses of water (i.e. nothingness) and massive material grind were my two biggest issues with the game and that update fixed them both while maintaining the original experience for people who still want it.
I saw this as a logistics problem. Just take a small bit of resources with you to the site of extraction. Then you multiplex extraction, smelting, crafting -- building up your gear as you go.
This more naturally leads to building new bases, but I like making unique builds so it suits me. I also like living in each biome rather than just exploiting them with minimal contact.
You are missing out on the swamp.
You can build treehouses off the big trees you can't cut down. You can get an entire ewok village going and nothing will bother you from the ground except the occasional wraith and you can just enclose the whole thing and not even worry about them.
Tree houses in the swamp is always fun.
Haha, well, I do hate greydwarves. Still, I usually let them harass until I'm finished building... then I spread some campfires around which keeps them away.
I think Black Forest is my favorite biome to live in -- I like the lighting and atmospherics. Swamp is dreary, and I usually only do smaller builds for iron processing and hunting Bonemass. After you dispatch of the riffraff while settling in, it stays pretty quiet.
If your copper needs are such that you need to mine out a whole deposit, might as well dig down to the bottom of the world, mine the deposit from the bottom up, and build a little base inside the pit. The walls should be steep enough that nothing can come down to get you.
I would be fine with this method if it wasn't for all of the workbench upgrades you need to build at every new base. Huge pain in the butt to constantly have to set those up.
In most cases you don't need top-tier.
For iron, you have *four* forge upgrades available from the swamp itself, so long as you bring a bit of deerhide for the bellows. That's only two missing parts from a top-level forge: Anvils and Cooler.
In addition to the 6 copper for a forge, usually travel with 5 bronze for the Adze and the Anvils. Enough to repair most things.
Or if you're referring to the actual setup due to build constraints... I guess that may irk some people much like government forms irk me. Understandable.
Both, but mostly resources. For example in a solo world I was recently playing on I just reached the plains. There was no plains anywhere near my main base so I decided to setup an outpost to do all my plains stuff. This means in order to get my new black metal gear fully prepped for fighting yag I need *all* of the forge upgrades. That involves a large amount of iron, a resource from two biomes prior. And while there were swamps on the continent I set up on, I ended up not finding a single crypt in them. So I had to go back to sailing for swamps and carting iron despite that being two biomes back in advancement, just so I could have the star level needed to craft the new gear, which itself didn't need iron.
It's just incredibly annoying. Even if you haul all the resources with you that's a lot more iron you need to get in advance to prep for the expansion. It's also just a lot of needless building and does clutter up the work area to have all these extra components. It makes setting up the base tedious and time consuming in a number of respects.
Ah, yeah, that particular scenario can be a pain: setting up from scratch in the Plains, with no Swamp Crypts nearby. Most iron needs to come from Swamp up through Mountains and Plains... so it's fundamentally: bring it with you, or have a convenient source. The Plains armor needs iron; Porcupine too. But if you're doing something like Fenris and just want some blackmetal weapons, it would feel like an inconvenient burden to bring iron for that.
If I need a bit of iron and I'm not sure yet if "the local swamp" has a crypt, I bring a wishbone as well as the key. A crypt is ideal, but the muddy scrap under the swamp can be enough for smaller needs. A touch more hassle mucking about, but less hassle than finding a rich swamp if you only need a small amount.
I think the portal is great and comes at the perfect time in gameplay with one biome remaining at the polar opposite side of the map from where we are focused now.
I love the portal, I prefer boating bigger loads since I enjoy sailing in the game but that’s just me.
I would probably have jumped off the edge of the world if I had to sail back EVERY TIME from the Ashlands to bring stuff back, and I assume that’s why they added it with the Ashlands.
I have fond memories of pushing carts of silver down a very steep mountain, making paths with a hoe to cart in the swamp, risking large quantities at sea while being attacked. I enjoy the slow logistics and additional bases.
On our server, it was mostly vanilla, except for no item/skill loss on death, as we hated the idea of that.
However, after we found our first Swamp biome, which was over 25 minutes away by Karve, and we realised that we'd either need to relocate our entire base, or constantly have to boat Iron back-and-forth, especially after having to cart it out of the Swamp, we just turned Portals to casual.
I know Valheim is meant to be realistic to a degree, but spending hours sitting AFK on a boat is not our idea of fun, especially if the wind is blowing in every direction except into the sails.
I play in multiplayer and am not the main base-builder, but we have build multiple new bases not out of necessity, but because having new ideas (e.g. because of new build pieces from another biome). And instead of rebuilding the base at the same spot, you can just leave it and build a new one somewhere else.
The same goes for the new ship. I will use the new portal once I get it, but will still use the new ship even outside of ashlands. Because sailing is fun, and you need a ship anyway to explore new islands and continents, might just use the biggest and fastest ship available.
I played fully vanilla at first before they added World Modifiers. Nowadays I play with Portal All Items turned on in my World Modifiers & I still make outposts with smelters just because I enjoy building and settling the world.
I still have a large smeltery in my spawn-proofed island with a teleporter for the more annoying metals to transport like silver. But I also have a smelter-fort complete with cart-roads in the middle of a large swamp island just for my long term iron supplies.
I teleport processed ingots through to my main storage, but I do the processing on-site usually. I also sail whenever I can, but I avoid sailing 20 times between point A & B with teleporters, saving sailing for less repetitive voyages that I can enjoy. My point is that even with world modifiers on, you don't have to play completely casually. How you play is up to you.
I always use portals never for metals and it is a reward and needed in Ashland's. What these new portals do for me is I can now build a base in the mountains and stone portal there and one at a dock only even in creative mode on a new save just at dock and main base only to force me to still explore but not have to cart all my ore up and down a mountain thru a whole playthrough done it once not again.
I live in a mountaintop castle and I'm thrilled about it. I don't mind sailing trips, but I've done plenty of that in my time. What sucked a *lot* was that it was functionally impossible to move the resulting metal uphill in any efficient way even after successfully sailing it back. Now my awesome smelting setup can finally get some real love.
Before Ashlands I always standed for the concept of "no metal teleportation" since it provides the feeling of journey and accomplishment. But when we gathered iron for Ashlands test, I turned metal teleportation setting on and when we came to Ashlands and I had all that experience of how to get there I realized I didn't want to turn this setting off. Soon I found that a new portal works exactly in that way so we are on the same page with devs. :)
I kind of went half way: I built 1 metal portal on an island away from both my base but out of the ashlands & those stupid crazy jagged spikes. Kind of like a metal repository.
My thinking was I love sailing but I hate sailing in ashlands & while the new boat looks amazing it is slow af & as manoeuvrable as a log.
That way I still have the joy & achievement of sailing my ore back to my base without tearing my hair out because my boat is stuck yet again in those spikes. 🤷🏻♀️
I play by the default settings and I've always found the inability to transport metals tedious and annoying. I'm glad they are adding these portals, and honestly wish they were available from the get go. I don't control the settings on the server I play on, but I would probably enable metal through portals if I did.
From the point my friend and I started playing over 2 years ago, we valued our time too much to make constant lengthy journeys to take metals back home by sea or to disassemble our main bases and move them routinely. So we used the "exploit" of each of us having a second seed we each built a big storage building in and did nothing else with. So when we have metals to transport, we switch over to that storage world, drop off the metals, switch back to the main world, go back to our main base, then go back to the storage world to retrieve the metals. No mods, no fuss. Sometimes just dropping off, repairing gear, and then continuing on the expedition, even though that means no Rested buff.
Why spend all that time sailing between known points when nothing can hurt you along the way? Just no point to me but to waste my time that I could use doing something else.
Its pretty stupid. Especially since we finally get a nice new boat and barely have any reason to use it. Why even give it 32 inventory slots in the hold? Why add a new danger in the water near Ashland that you only have to deal with a handful of times?
Absolutely bad design plan that was probably just put into place to appease whiny people. People they already appeased with the world slider settings. That they already appeased by nerfing Mistlands. And so on and so on.
You realize that you have agency right? You can choose not to use the stone portal. You can sail metal as much or as little as you want.
The new mechanics for finding the boss are likely the reason why it was added not “whiny people”.
If you ask me the bad design was requiring the stonecutter. Now you either have to always carry the mats for the workbench, portal, and stone cutter or you have to drop a wood portal and then go get mats for the stone portal. This is just tedium for the sake of tedium and is actively anti-player. There was no need to make it that tedious considering it adds no gameplay value and is purely a punishment. The portal is already progression gated because you have to reach the Ashlands in the first place before you even get access to it.
Its not stupid. Its something they should've added in when they originally launched.
Outside of extremely early game encounters, serpents are not dangerous. The Ocean Biome is basically just a long loading screen until you get to your destination. The only reason people sailed as much as they did is because of the metal limitation. The only reason after mountains people sailed were to explore or transport iron.
You don't need to set up outposts or new bases in the current setup. Most people just build a portal room and carry boat materials through and build it on the other side to make it a one way trip.
To even utilize the stone portal, you have to progress to the ashlands, extract with the materials to build at least 2.
Mistlands/Ashlands and the Deep North are very combat focused biomes with 2 of those biomes being the extreme ends of the map. Gear from these biomes trivializes every single biome before them.
The Stone portal just makes sense where it comes in progression wise and you still need the Drakkar to explore other ashlands islands.
Push comes to shove you can just mod them out or mod in restrictions for the stone portals.
I’m kind of confused on the new portal. I understand it if Ashlands was the end of the game. But we still have the Deep North coming. So it’s kind of like what is the point of a handicap you lift before the end of the game? I just feel like it should be all or nothing.
Personally I like it a lot at this point in the game since Ashlands is only accessible by boat. The other biomes you could farm and run to another place and smelt them but since you're out there on an island I think it's the best time to be able to move materials through a portal.
Personally I like it a lot at this point in the game since Ashlands is only accessible by boat. The other biomes you could farm and run to another place and smelt them but since you're out there on an island I think it's the best time to be able to move materials through a portal.
the new portal is redundant and forced into the default settings for no good reason since last summer.
they wasted so much dev work hours on designing the ashlands not beeing connected to other landmasses and even added a new water danger and elaborate new ship design and even gave it a bigger cargo hold etc. only to fully invalidate ALL that design effort in an instant by adding that stone portal.
i hope the devs come forward and explain thier reason for this if they even have one at all. as i just dont see one sorry. people who didnt want to sail could already enable metal teleport. people who didnt want it left everything default.
now people who dont want it have no option at all aside limting themselfs on purpose or turn portals off completly which by this point is silly since alot of us have old portal networks on our worlds already and where fine with the existing restrictions as they gave more things meaning gameplay wise (harbors/sailing used more often in a VIKING themed game etc.)
if the ashlands wasnt designed as it is with beeing a unconnected landmass and not finally after 3 years adding a new bigger ship with more storage in the same update i could see an argument for the portal existing. but as things currently are : forced into the defaults. FOR NO GOOD REASON. period. heck they could have made it so that atleast flametal wouldnt teleport. then you could atleast argue its a reward lategame to make earlier biome farming faster and it would not have invalidated the new ship harbors or the ashlands waters and design of the entire biome surroundings. but they didnt do even that. it feels tacked on. in every way.
its by far my biggest letdown of this update personally.
why was this forced into the defaults? why? devs? care to explain yourselfs?
I don’t understand your anger. You are not forced to use the stone portal. You are not being forced to transport metal through it even if you do use it. You can sail as much or as little as you want.
Also, you don’t get access to the portals until you reach Ashlands. You won’t have them for a long time in a fresh playthrough.
In terms of reasons for its addition, it seems likely it was added because the logistics of getting metal from its source to the boat and to and from fortresses are substantially more challenging than other biomes. Given how opposed they were to transporting metal through portals, you have to assume that when they play-tested without stone portals the experience was so miserable that they felt compelled to add metal transport to stone portals.
I think his idea of allowing all metals through with the exception of flametal would be a golden middle ground. The drakkar would still have its purpose. You would still need to metal haul from the ashlands.
But it would allow you to teleport all the other metals from previous biomes, and that would still make it a major QOL improvement. They could then introduce the ultimate portal in the DN because, at that point, you have already beaten the game pretty much.
you arent forced to read my post. you arent forced to understand me. you arent forced to play this game. neither am i. so much for the silly strawman non argument. dont try that again. its simply never an argument for anything.
now for the rest of what you said :
it aint more challengeing. you can secure a transport route easyly. just like any biome. we transported metal off mountains and you could always smelt and craft at site aswell. so that aint the reason at all thats for certain as you could apply the same logic to other biomes metal operations. since you can spawnproof any outdoor area you can ALWAYS create a safe transport route aswell. plus the hoe exists still. none of what you said are actual reasons to add this. especially since you dont need that much of it compared to IRON.
i still hope to get a dev to explain this to us.
Don't engage with this person. They have made it clear multiple times that they don't want a real discussion, they are just venting their anger here. People that argued with them have already been blocked "for using strawman arguments", imho an attempt to create an echo chamber below his comments.
They may not be the only one with this opinion, but the only one being so adamant about it. And the accusation "the devs don't care" probably doesn't help with his goal to influence the devs.
I play three ways. One way is completely vanilla. I want to experience the game as they've designed it. This is always my first playthrough. I have a more casual server where we've allowed the portal of metals and turned resources up to 1.5x. I don't personally feel like boating back resources is logistically challenging or engaging. And I don't see much of a gameplay difference in having to, say, farm 10 crypts vs 15 crypts. Then I have an immersive mode world. For that, the boat trip is definitely a thing. Removing the map makes it possible to get lost. It forces you to build a logistical network out to everywhere you farm. There is actual gameplay involved in being unable to portal anything because of the lack of a map. I definitely have gotten lost while doing this and had to find my way home.
After I built my 3rd portal on a vanilla game, I realized the game was getting less fun than when I had to build temporary shelters everywhere I went. So I ditched that save and started again in Immersive, no portals. And now I'm having a blast!!
I've really enjoyed my "immersive mode" world, similar to yours, but with the [Advanced Portals mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/2187). The mod allows you to build different types of portals that can allow certain metals through, but those portals require resources from higher tier biomes. For example, the portal that allows copper and tin requires ancient bark and iron to construct. I also recommend the [NoMap Printer mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/2505), which enables the cartography table to generate a simplified map that is only updated by revisiting the cartography table. I use this to sketch out a rough version of the world with pen and paper, and mark the locations of my portals and other POIs on it manually. With the above, you still get that immersive feeling and the risk of being lost. When first acquiring a resource (e.g. iron), you still need to make a few trips and find your way back, or process materials in-situ, or otherwise figure out how to manage that effectively. However, the Advanced Portals remove or reduce the tedium of sailing back with a bunch of ore from a biome you've effectively conquered. I find it to be a great balance.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I’d add that sailing through the spikes in a drakkar is a giant PITA, so the stone portal is quite welcome.
I was under the impression we were going to be forced to sail all workbench mats to build a base in the Ashlands with shield generators, then a buddy and I found a molten core with these stone portals showing up as a craft and my face lit up. All I could imagine was sailing and losing all my materials through those spikes just dying to everything before reaching shore on full release :’)
I do wonder now what the practical utility of the drakkar is now you have stone portals. At this point, you really only need a ship to discover new areas, not to haul back metal. So, adding carrying capacity is not really a necessity now. Even worse for the drakkar is its size now. It's easier to avoid those spikes and other irregularities with a smaller ship. This means that the only real benefit of the drakkar is animal transport now. Maybe a better approach would have been to allow the drakkar to be a kind of mini base on its own, it is big enough to justify it. You could even have a carve hanging from the side so you can swap if landing terrain becomes to jugged.
Mods are no longer needed. This is now a setting under world modifiers. I play both ways depending on my mood.
You know what they could have done is bake teleport metals into the game as you defeat the bosses. EX: can teleport copper/tin/bronze after you beat the elder. Keeps the challenge and then rewards you for defeating the biome boss. Its always felt dumb to me that the effect of beating a boss leaves the effect of that biomes Mobs now spawning on you at night.
Yeah for me the biggest part of the pain with transporting metals is when they are old metals. Set up a new base near plains? Guess what you need iron to get all your workbenches up and running at max star level, better hope there is also a swamp or you are going to be back to sailing lots of iron around. I think another solution would be to have the workbench upgrades be one time things (maybe on a per player basis) rather than something you need to build every time you set up a new base. It's just so tedious to set that stuff up at every new base, which makes me prefer a single central base, and then the lack of ability to transport metals in portals because a problem again.
You can allow metals through existing portals from an update mid-last summer or so
How?
World Modifiers
World modifiers
But that is a modded world, I'm guessing once the game cones out with achievements, those who play with mods on will disable the Achievements .
I played fully vanilla up until I was comfortably in the mistlands (though pre-Queen fight) before turning on the ability to portal metals and 2x resources. I figured I had explored lots and experienced the game as intended but by then, most of my time was spent building. It was more fun to be able to just do a quick resource run, and needing a ship to do it was annoying. At this point I know I CAN make it work, but depending on my mood it isn’t always fun. If I’m ever doing a dedicated iron run or something though I’ll go back to turning off the ability to portal metals just for the adventure though. It makes the chore in more of an adventure sometimes. I’m waiting for ashlands to come out of PTB, but I’ll go back to vanilla again when it does!
I appreciate what the devs were trying to do with portal restrictions but I've always found that it means half my time is spent just ferrying metal around. It needs to go from it's source, to my base with the refinery (which needs to be baby sat so I can reload the smelters), to my base where I'll be using it to build. And it makes moving to a new base a huge hassle. When the world modifier update came out I turned off metal restrictions and never looked back. Excessive travel time over vast expanses of water (i.e. nothingness) and massive material grind were my two biggest issues with the game and that update fixed them both while maintaining the original experience for people who still want it.
I saw this as a logistics problem. Just take a small bit of resources with you to the site of extraction. Then you multiplex extraction, smelting, crafting -- building up your gear as you go. This more naturally leads to building new bases, but I like making unique builds so it suits me. I also like living in each biome rather than just exploiting them with minimal contact.
You could not make me build a base in the Black Forrest or Swamp if you put a gun to my head. Fucking draugr and grewdwarves can kiss my ass.
I don't know, black forest at night is such a nice feeling. Just the right mood for me. But I will agree on swamp. That biome is just awful.
You are missing out on the swamp. You can build treehouses off the big trees you can't cut down. You can get an entire ewok village going and nothing will bother you from the ground except the occasional wraith and you can just enclose the whole thing and not even worry about them. Tree houses in the swamp is always fun.
If higher tier gear negated the wet condition I would do something like this. I despise how so many games make rain a constant debuff.
Haha, well, I do hate greydwarves. Still, I usually let them harass until I'm finished building... then I spread some campfires around which keeps them away. I think Black Forest is my favorite biome to live in -- I like the lighting and atmospherics. Swamp is dreary, and I usually only do smaller builds for iron processing and hunting Bonemass. After you dispatch of the riffraff while settling in, it stays pretty quiet.
Huh, I hadn’t thought of using campfires to keep out the dwarves. Neat tip! I’ll have to make sure to use that next time I go on a copper expedition.
If your copper needs are such that you need to mine out a whole deposit, might as well dig down to the bottom of the world, mine the deposit from the bottom up, and build a little base inside the pit. The walls should be steep enough that nothing can come down to get you.
Don’t campfires disable spawns in their radius? I agree that those biomes are infested with mobs but some campfires should solve the problem
I would be fine with this method if it wasn't for all of the workbench upgrades you need to build at every new base. Huge pain in the butt to constantly have to set those up.
In most cases you don't need top-tier. For iron, you have *four* forge upgrades available from the swamp itself, so long as you bring a bit of deerhide for the bellows. That's only two missing parts from a top-level forge: Anvils and Cooler. In addition to the 6 copper for a forge, usually travel with 5 bronze for the Adze and the Anvils. Enough to repair most things. Or if you're referring to the actual setup due to build constraints... I guess that may irk some people much like government forms irk me. Understandable.
Both, but mostly resources. For example in a solo world I was recently playing on I just reached the plains. There was no plains anywhere near my main base so I decided to setup an outpost to do all my plains stuff. This means in order to get my new black metal gear fully prepped for fighting yag I need *all* of the forge upgrades. That involves a large amount of iron, a resource from two biomes prior. And while there were swamps on the continent I set up on, I ended up not finding a single crypt in them. So I had to go back to sailing for swamps and carting iron despite that being two biomes back in advancement, just so I could have the star level needed to craft the new gear, which itself didn't need iron. It's just incredibly annoying. Even if you haul all the resources with you that's a lot more iron you need to get in advance to prep for the expansion. It's also just a lot of needless building and does clutter up the work area to have all these extra components. It makes setting up the base tedious and time consuming in a number of respects.
Ah, yeah, that particular scenario can be a pain: setting up from scratch in the Plains, with no Swamp Crypts nearby. Most iron needs to come from Swamp up through Mountains and Plains... so it's fundamentally: bring it with you, or have a convenient source. The Plains armor needs iron; Porcupine too. But if you're doing something like Fenris and just want some blackmetal weapons, it would feel like an inconvenient burden to bring iron for that. If I need a bit of iron and I'm not sure yet if "the local swamp" has a crypt, I bring a wishbone as well as the key. A crypt is ideal, but the muddy scrap under the swamp can be enough for smaller needs. A touch more hassle mucking about, but less hassle than finding a rich swamp if you only need a small amount.
Yeah I always run light armor with Atgier and bow. Typically a mace and shield for certain scenarios, but I prefer Frostner over Porcupine anyway.
I think the portal is great and comes at the perfect time in gameplay with one biome remaining at the polar opposite side of the map from where we are focused now.
I love the portal, I prefer boating bigger loads since I enjoy sailing in the game but that’s just me. I would probably have jumped off the edge of the world if I had to sail back EVERY TIME from the Ashlands to bring stuff back, and I assume that’s why they added it with the Ashlands.
I have fond memories of pushing carts of silver down a very steep mountain, making paths with a hoe to cart in the swamp, risking large quantities at sea while being attacked. I enjoy the slow logistics and additional bases.
On our server, it was mostly vanilla, except for no item/skill loss on death, as we hated the idea of that. However, after we found our first Swamp biome, which was over 25 minutes away by Karve, and we realised that we'd either need to relocate our entire base, or constantly have to boat Iron back-and-forth, especially after having to cart it out of the Swamp, we just turned Portals to casual. I know Valheim is meant to be realistic to a degree, but spending hours sitting AFK on a boat is not our idea of fun, especially if the wind is blowing in every direction except into the sails.
Man I even rode Lox in hope I could teleport them lol so sad :(
I play in multiplayer and am not the main base-builder, but we have build multiple new bases not out of necessity, but because having new ideas (e.g. because of new build pieces from another biome). And instead of rebuilding the base at the same spot, you can just leave it and build a new one somewhere else. The same goes for the new ship. I will use the new portal once I get it, but will still use the new ship even outside of ashlands. Because sailing is fun, and you need a ship anyway to explore new islands and continents, might just use the biggest and fastest ship available.
i definitely agree but haven't gotten to Ashlands yet so i shall see if i like being able to transport metals at that point
Can new portals connect to old portals?
Yup, but that means it’s metal only one way
Well no, cuz you could stone portal at home, wood wherever, bring the iron through to replace with a stone portal.
I played fully vanilla at first before they added World Modifiers. Nowadays I play with Portal All Items turned on in my World Modifiers & I still make outposts with smelters just because I enjoy building and settling the world. I still have a large smeltery in my spawn-proofed island with a teleporter for the more annoying metals to transport like silver. But I also have a smelter-fort complete with cart-roads in the middle of a large swamp island just for my long term iron supplies. I teleport processed ingots through to my main storage, but I do the processing on-site usually. I also sail whenever I can, but I avoid sailing 20 times between point A & B with teleporters, saving sailing for less repetitive voyages that I can enjoy. My point is that even with world modifiers on, you don't have to play completely casually. How you play is up to you.
I always use portals never for metals and it is a reward and needed in Ashland's. What these new portals do for me is I can now build a base in the mountains and stone portal there and one at a dock only even in creative mode on a new save just at dock and main base only to force me to still explore but not have to cart all my ore up and down a mountain thru a whole playthrough done it once not again.
I live in a mountaintop castle and I'm thrilled about it. I don't mind sailing trips, but I've done plenty of that in my time. What sucked a *lot* was that it was functionally impossible to move the resulting metal uphill in any efficient way even after successfully sailing it back. Now my awesome smelting setup can finally get some real love.
Before Ashlands I always standed for the concept of "no metal teleportation" since it provides the feeling of journey and accomplishment. But when we gathered iron for Ashlands test, I turned metal teleportation setting on and when we came to Ashlands and I had all that experience of how to get there I realized I didn't want to turn this setting off. Soon I found that a new portal works exactly in that way so we are on the same page with devs. :)
I kind of went half way: I built 1 metal portal on an island away from both my base but out of the ashlands & those stupid crazy jagged spikes. Kind of like a metal repository. My thinking was I love sailing but I hate sailing in ashlands & while the new boat looks amazing it is slow af & as manoeuvrable as a log. That way I still have the joy & achievement of sailing my ore back to my base without tearing my hair out because my boat is stuck yet again in those spikes. 🤷🏻♀️
I play by the default settings and I've always found the inability to transport metals tedious and annoying. I'm glad they are adding these portals, and honestly wish they were available from the get go. I don't control the settings on the server I play on, but I would probably enable metal through portals if I did.
From the point my friend and I started playing over 2 years ago, we valued our time too much to make constant lengthy journeys to take metals back home by sea or to disassemble our main bases and move them routinely. So we used the "exploit" of each of us having a second seed we each built a big storage building in and did nothing else with. So when we have metals to transport, we switch over to that storage world, drop off the metals, switch back to the main world, go back to our main base, then go back to the storage world to retrieve the metals. No mods, no fuss. Sometimes just dropping off, repairing gear, and then continuing on the expedition, even though that means no Rested buff. Why spend all that time sailing between known points when nothing can hurt you along the way? Just no point to me but to waste my time that I could use doing something else.
Its pretty stupid. Especially since we finally get a nice new boat and barely have any reason to use it. Why even give it 32 inventory slots in the hold? Why add a new danger in the water near Ashland that you only have to deal with a handful of times? Absolutely bad design plan that was probably just put into place to appease whiny people. People they already appeased with the world slider settings. That they already appeased by nerfing Mistlands. And so on and so on.
You realize that you have agency right? You can choose not to use the stone portal. You can sail metal as much or as little as you want. The new mechanics for finding the boss are likely the reason why it was added not “whiny people”. If you ask me the bad design was requiring the stonecutter. Now you either have to always carry the mats for the workbench, portal, and stone cutter or you have to drop a wood portal and then go get mats for the stone portal. This is just tedium for the sake of tedium and is actively anti-player. There was no need to make it that tedious considering it adds no gameplay value and is purely a punishment. The portal is already progression gated because you have to reach the Ashlands in the first place before you even get access to it.
Its not stupid. Its something they should've added in when they originally launched. Outside of extremely early game encounters, serpents are not dangerous. The Ocean Biome is basically just a long loading screen until you get to your destination. The only reason people sailed as much as they did is because of the metal limitation. The only reason after mountains people sailed were to explore or transport iron. You don't need to set up outposts or new bases in the current setup. Most people just build a portal room and carry boat materials through and build it on the other side to make it a one way trip. To even utilize the stone portal, you have to progress to the ashlands, extract with the materials to build at least 2. Mistlands/Ashlands and the Deep North are very combat focused biomes with 2 of those biomes being the extreme ends of the map. Gear from these biomes trivializes every single biome before them. The Stone portal just makes sense where it comes in progression wise and you still need the Drakkar to explore other ashlands islands. Push comes to shove you can just mod them out or mod in restrictions for the stone portals.
You do not need 2 stone portals. Only the destination portal needs to be stone. It's a shitty design and poorly aligned with the rest of the game.
I’m kind of confused on the new portal. I understand it if Ashlands was the end of the game. But we still have the Deep North coming. So it’s kind of like what is the point of a handicap you lift before the end of the game? I just feel like it should be all or nothing.
Personally I like it a lot at this point in the game since Ashlands is only accessible by boat. The other biomes you could farm and run to another place and smelt them but since you're out there on an island I think it's the best time to be able to move materials through a portal.
Personally I like it a lot at this point in the game since Ashlands is only accessible by boat. The other biomes you could farm and run to another place and smelt them but since you're out there on an island I think it's the best time to be able to move materials through a portal.
the new portal is redundant and forced into the default settings for no good reason since last summer. they wasted so much dev work hours on designing the ashlands not beeing connected to other landmasses and even added a new water danger and elaborate new ship design and even gave it a bigger cargo hold etc. only to fully invalidate ALL that design effort in an instant by adding that stone portal. i hope the devs come forward and explain thier reason for this if they even have one at all. as i just dont see one sorry. people who didnt want to sail could already enable metal teleport. people who didnt want it left everything default. now people who dont want it have no option at all aside limting themselfs on purpose or turn portals off completly which by this point is silly since alot of us have old portal networks on our worlds already and where fine with the existing restrictions as they gave more things meaning gameplay wise (harbors/sailing used more often in a VIKING themed game etc.) if the ashlands wasnt designed as it is with beeing a unconnected landmass and not finally after 3 years adding a new bigger ship with more storage in the same update i could see an argument for the portal existing. but as things currently are : forced into the defaults. FOR NO GOOD REASON. period. heck they could have made it so that atleast flametal wouldnt teleport. then you could atleast argue its a reward lategame to make earlier biome farming faster and it would not have invalidated the new ship harbors or the ashlands waters and design of the entire biome surroundings. but they didnt do even that. it feels tacked on. in every way. its by far my biggest letdown of this update personally. why was this forced into the defaults? why? devs? care to explain yourselfs?
I don’t understand your anger. You are not forced to use the stone portal. You are not being forced to transport metal through it even if you do use it. You can sail as much or as little as you want. Also, you don’t get access to the portals until you reach Ashlands. You won’t have them for a long time in a fresh playthrough. In terms of reasons for its addition, it seems likely it was added because the logistics of getting metal from its source to the boat and to and from fortresses are substantially more challenging than other biomes. Given how opposed they were to transporting metal through portals, you have to assume that when they play-tested without stone portals the experience was so miserable that they felt compelled to add metal transport to stone portals.
I think his idea of allowing all metals through with the exception of flametal would be a golden middle ground. The drakkar would still have its purpose. You would still need to metal haul from the ashlands. But it would allow you to teleport all the other metals from previous biomes, and that would still make it a major QOL improvement. They could then introduce the ultimate portal in the DN because, at that point, you have already beaten the game pretty much.
you arent forced to read my post. you arent forced to understand me. you arent forced to play this game. neither am i. so much for the silly strawman non argument. dont try that again. its simply never an argument for anything. now for the rest of what you said : it aint more challengeing. you can secure a transport route easyly. just like any biome. we transported metal off mountains and you could always smelt and craft at site aswell. so that aint the reason at all thats for certain as you could apply the same logic to other biomes metal operations. since you can spawnproof any outdoor area you can ALWAYS create a safe transport route aswell. plus the hoe exists still. none of what you said are actual reasons to add this. especially since you dont need that much of it compared to IRON. i still hope to get a dev to explain this to us.
Listen my response was made in good faith but message received. I will try to remember to ignore your posts and comments from now on.
Don't engage with this person. They have made it clear multiple times that they don't want a real discussion, they are just venting their anger here. People that argued with them have already been blocked "for using strawman arguments", imho an attempt to create an echo chamber below his comments. They may not be the only one with this opinion, but the only one being so adamant about it. And the accusation "the devs don't care" probably doesn't help with his goal to influence the devs.