709 Hours Played – Just Entering Mistlands

I am not complaining about the difficulty of Mistlands, but I understand why such complaints exist. This is more a story of what it's been like for me, and what it's like trying to experience the game without spoilers.

I love this game. I vibe with this game harder than any other game I can remember. I like crafting, fighting, foraging. I've spent a lot of time playing Valheim, and recently, my group of online buddies have been playing with me again.

This week, as a group, we beat Yag and immediately moved on to the Mistlands. Most of the people I'm playing with are into the thrill of discovery, so we've been avoiding spoilers.

Our first push into the new biome, we went slowly. Then things got intense. We had a couple of quick deaths. Didn't make a lot of progress. Brought back some meat we never saw before.

Last night, one of my buddies and I went back in. We found a mine, went in, and were greeted with a 2 star seeker just inside. I was trying to poke him with my atgeir, but he was a step down and I couldn't hit him. I switched weapons so I could get a deeper swing, and that worked okay, but I wasn't doing enough damage. Then, the seeker did something, and effectively one shot me and my friend. We were both hopped up on the best food we had access to at the time.

That was… surprising.

We prepped, got back to the mine, got our stuff, and tried to troubleshoot the problem. We weren't making a lot of progress. We were right near the door, though, and we shifted our food so we could take one hit without immediately dying. We'd get hit, step out, recover, then go back in and fight some more.

Night fell, and another 2 star seeker appeared just outside the mine. We discovered this while trying to recover. I escaped. My friend died.

That's when we broke our no-spoiler rule and looked up what to do. I had the answer in my inventory — the atgeir. I hadn't been using the spin attack because of the stamina cost. With the spin attack, I solo'd the outside 2 star seeker, allowing my friend to recover his stuff. Then we went into the mine, finished off everything inside, and walked away with our first 4 cores. Actual progress.

One of the things I love about Valheim is all of the possible ways to play. Some ways are more optimal than others, sure, but there can be a lot of fun doing sub-optimal things.

My takeaway at this point is that Mistlands really punishes the player that tries to discover the game naturally. Maybe my friend and I were really unlucky having to deal with a pair of 2 star seekers in our first mine, but I can see people in similar circumstances walking away frustrated.