4Game

This is the 10th and final in the series, it was a good run.

I came home yesterday and my son was bored with our game. I pointed out that when you trivialize the game with a 100 bow skill, you might create your own boredom. He said he had 400hrs in, and little of it was AFK. My own total is over 300, with a good amount of AFK.

We aired our complaints. He felt like he was stuck on building projects, I felt like I was stuck in harvesting and mining. We both wanted to play more with each other, and spend less time running around solo. I felt like we were always rushing to the end game.

Our best times were when we were doing things with each other, such as our silver mining operation, or the early build stages.He started to agitate for another game, or drive us towards creative mode in this one. I pushed for Valheim with survival, with full on invasions, and us not cheesing stuff but instead learning how to melee properly. I wanted to restart without portals, and build an empire with roads and outposts…really conquer the map one continent at a time. He said the survival game leads to nothing beautiful in builds. I said we can make it hardend and beautiful…that is the challenge.

We tossed around the idea of using mods. He wanted a mod that can up the difficulty. My guideline- use mods that reduce the grind part, but do not decrease the difficulty.

So we are running Valheim+ to pull and push from nearby chests. We are running with a clock mod. We are running a planting mod. I like the hold attack mod, since it means my hands hurt less. We are running a map synch so we can see what each other has found. And we are running a mod to increase the enemy difficulty up to 5-stars, with other attributes like aggressive, inquisitive, armored, splitting etc.

The resulting game is much more challenging, we have to stick together, and the tedium part like hours harvesting crop is reduced.

We are back in the stone age, building wood houses, paths, and exploring. He is going to go with dagger this time. I am not sure which weapon I will use, I wanted to learn how to master a 2 handed weapon, which means learning dodge rolling and line of sight tactics. We have had a few really tough fights against splitting enemies (when they die they split into more, and it can chain for quite a bit), and when we see a 3-star or higher, we run to each other to support each other on it. We built a round house. I built a dock and storage rack. I am thinking of a house on stilts in the water.

And so I thought I would drop this little note to those who had read the series. We have had a lot of good hours in this game, and it looks like it will go even further. The thing I am happiest about is how we both had an honest discussion of what we want in a game, and made that happen. And I think the big takeaway is a renewed appreciation for playing together. That is what this series has really been about, not so much about what we have done in game, but how the game affects us. Thanks for the support. Such a good community.

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