I'm a Viking Failure

I've been striking out with games lately--I've been trying to play through several games from my wishlist that I snatched impulsively (they were on sale...you know how it goes) and I just haven't found anything that has managed to grab my attention in a big way.  The best of the batch has been Valheim, a Norse mythology/Viking themed survival game.  It has been a surprise hit, but I'm still feeling a bit on the fence about it.

There's not much of a story in Valheim--you play as the resurrected spirit of a fallen Viking warrior whose task is to rid the world of some corrupted, boss-kind of spirits.  Find baddies, kill baddies--got it.  The real magic of the game lies in the survival and exploration aspects.  Your character starts off barely clothed, with no weapon, and no shelter (and no idea what you're doing).  Fortunately, the controls are intuitive and easy to figure out (and you get some helpful tips from your raven guides).

Check out my impressive Viking home!

My first task was to figure out how to craft literally anything.  Once I had built a work bench, I got to work trying to cobble together an impressive Viking abode (see picture for the ultimate "impressiveness").  I learned quickly that my little Viking house needed ventilation so the smoke from my campfire had somewhere to go (makes sense).

Now that my character had some shelter, I decided to focus on trying to get her some upgraded gear.  This entailed a lot of running around, picking up flint, and tracking down wild boars for leather scraps.  Getting enough leather scraps to create a new leather tunic, leather pants, and a leather helmet was a bit of a chore.  I had several moments of genuine frustration (finding wild boars means trekking all over the map and locating roaming individuals or small packs--if you're lucky).  I also discovered that some gear would require deer skins--killing deer with a melee weapon was rough because they run away, so I had to figure out how to craft a bow and arrows.  More leather scrap hunting.  Finally, I had my bow...and I couldn't hit anything!  I had to Google why that was happening and found out that you have to aim ABOVE your target because the arrow flies in an arc.  Sheesh....

I spent some time penning and taming some boars (which turned out to be pointless in the early game...you can't kill them until you've crafted a butcher knife which requires components in a different zone that I couldn't access yet) and was still hesitant to go after the first boss.  If you die in Valheim, you lose all your gear (your character is resurrected with nothing--but can retrieve all items by corpse running back to the marker where you died) and suffer a small skill loss penalty.  Once I had upgraded my gear a little bit, I decided it was time--I summoned the first boss, a giant, evil looking stag that charges and can summon various lightning attacks.  I managed to defeat it (mostly by running away and shooting it with arrows from afar--plus, it sort of got stuck and I could just stand and shoot it--a bit on the cheese side, but it counts!) and got the message that I was ready to head into the next zone.

The Black Forest biome has been quite an adventure, there are burial chambers scattered throughout the zone which are filled with skeletons (who hit pretty hard).  Exploring these chambers is necessary to find materials required to utilize metals that you can mine (if you can find them...I've found some tin, but no copper so far).  I've managed to die a lot in those chambers (but I've figured out the evil bone piles) and spend too much time trying to fetch my corpse and fend off skeletons.  I also had a tragic run of bad luck--while running from a pair of starred skeletons who were kicking my ass, I managed to run straight into a troll who smacked me dead.

I've been feeling a bit torn by Valheim--I've had moments of genuine frustration (farming leather scraps), but I still find myself wanting to continue exploring and upgrading my potato-faced Viking.  Maybe someday she will be worthy of Valhalla?  For now, I'm content just to survive the latest trek into a burial chamber.