4Game

Preemptive "Git Gud, stay out of plains, block and parry Deathsquitos, stop making my hard challenging game for easy casuals".

Right, so, with that out of the way, I'd like to open up a discussion about how Valheim handles it's application of Damage, with a special note on how the Plains is an absurdly hostile environment, without even setting foot on it.

Valheim has 3 Damage types, and Tool Damage, which allows different interactions when, say:

• You swing a pickaxe at a rock
• You swing an axe at wooden objects
• You try to stab a Troll
• You smash a skeleton with a mace
• You swing a sword at anything else

Which promotes a varied approach and a toolkit. Good, yes?

All of this just kind of… flies out the window, when it comes to the Plains. Something I thought would have occurred to someone after a year, but I guess not.

Fulings can be a part of this, especially with higher star tiers just smashing through your fortifications, but my main problem is how, apparently, Deathsquitos stinging buildings, boats, what have you, damage them as though they were creature entities. I guess they just… actually swing with that much force? Are their stingers so razor sharp that they behave like nanofiber thin blades? Do their innards spit hyper superacid?

Once the accidental death spiral starts, all your junk may as well be forefeit. Unless you're okay with enabling god mode to quickly run over and grab your gear, you've essentially been told to eat shit and start your gear collection over, and probably whatever boat you were on was lost at sea, if not destroyed due to a flying buzzboi, who you can't actually outrun, and have FAR too sensitive detection abilities. It's like they're not natural creatures, but instead video game hard enemies because it has to be hard.

You COULD just do a naked mad dash through the territory, grab your gear if it's on land, and get out, but the slightest slip up in your defenseless, low HP state ( You're running stamina to get this over with, no? ) means you do it again.

Hope you set up a portal beforehand, or have some kind of nearby spawn.

That said, I can see a few reasonable alterations that keep Deathsquitos, Deathsquitos, while not making the Plains a stupid meat grinder masquerading as a natural environment.

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• Significantly reduce the damage non-siege enemies do to constructs, relative to their physical size. A Troll should be able to punch through your one wall thick house, or completely smash your Longship into the water. One Mean Green Pointy Eared Throwing Machine should not, unless he has like 5 hours to do it. A literal insect should not period.
• Have Plains entities interact with each other more. Deathsquitos aren't "Fulingsquitos", they should be equally dickish to anything they set their murderous compound eyes on. The Tar creatures were a brilliant change in that regard. This honestly also applies to the swamp somewhat, but I can handwave that due to the Bonemass.
• Give Deathsquitos a more pronounced windup swing, before it actually applies damage. I've noticed that when you die to one, it looks like it does collision damage. But if you roll away from it, it's clearly doing a rear back and thrust motion. Y'know, for consistency.
• Make Deathsquito damage not based on a giant number, but, I dunno, Deathsquito poison. They still murder you if they hit you, but now they can't sting your Karve and then it SHUDDERS and visibly ages due to what should be a small puncture.

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TL;DR:

• Deathsquitos are assholes.
• Things you build shouldn't be snapped in half just by raw brute damage values the same way you as a meatbag do.
• Suggestions above to fix.