Entering the Bone Zone

This is a tale long overdue, because it describes one of my first memorable experiences with Valheim, having jumped into it completely blind.

My pixelated Viking dude, Andur, was still a fresh-faced bearded youngster roaming the meadows with club in hand, bludgeoning boars and deer to death. His wardrobe still consisted only of the latest in deer-based garments and he’d barely set up a small shack to sleep uncomfortably close to a fire in.

At this very early stage I really wasn’t concerned with any concrete goals – I was just exploring for the joy of it and trying to decide which of the starting areas was most aesthetically pleasing to settle down in. It was at this point that I discovered two things:

1. There are different biomes, not just the meadows. In retrospect, this should’ve been obvious by the intro sequence in which you are flown over mountains. Still, I’d spent maybe a bit too much time in sunny meadows, surrounded by beech and birch and oak.
2. There are darker things out there than just forest critters and Greylings, particularly when you get underground.

I was pleasantly surprised by a long and foreboding line of dark firs indicating the border of a Black Forest, with taller pines visible further in. Andur only had his base level club and wooden shield, plus a pocket full of berries and mushrooms, but it seemed more than sufficient to explore a little forest. I can this loadout “The Hobbit”, and much like Hobbits, I would rely on stealth to survive this unfamiliar area.

The Black Forest wasn’t much of an issue to begin with; some unfamiliar plants, some ore that would obviously come into play later, and slightly bigger asshole stickmen. This time with the ability to throw rocks and poison me – as though they weren’t already a nuisance.

After checking out a few ruins from a distance and realizing I probably can’t take on an entire stick-gang at this point, I decided to head back to base and craft some better gear. But as I did this, a peculiar rattling sound disturbed me. This was followed by a whistle and the sharp poke of an arrow. There were animated bone-men around! Even worse; they seemed to be emerging out of a hole in the ground, with a crude stone entrance barely distinguishable from any old boulder.

Again, the reasonable thing to do would be to mark the location on my map (something I didn’t know I could do at that point), go home, get better food, rest, eat, etc. However, consider this: the gear I would stand to lose upon dying could be crafted again in the space of about 5 minutes. So, in I went, not realizing this would result in Andur’s first death.

Andur had entered the antechamber of the Bone Zone, and I have to say the atmosphere for an ancient burial chamber is spot on. The ambient sounds that sound like bones reassembling inside the walls are a bit over the top and clearly there to spook and not provide real environmental cues, but I love the cramped and claustrophobic feel of those corridors.

Once again, Andur adopted the traditional stance of the low-level Viking – the crouch. I slowly lurked around each corner with club held high, ready to bonk any undead back into their graves. I was also very excited by the prospect of collecting many bones for crafting; something that had been a rare luxury up until this point, considering you only find them in the odd dolmen in the meadows. As an added boon to Andur’s inner Hobbit, there were new mushrooms to consume! Better ones.

There were many doors, dark alcoves, and a lot of rattling. I got unnerved a couple of times when I’d have a few bonemen charge at me from the same room but all in all, I thought this must be the entry-level “dungeon” experience for new Vikings. I was holding my ground well enough, looting some fairly unexciting items like feathers and amber. I got a more significant scare when rounding a corner, I found myself face to face with a dark purple haze which would turn out to be an evil bone pile. In my initial panic, I bonked until there was no boning left and didn’t get much opportunity to observe what the pile does.

Andur thought he was done with his first ever tomb, but then the final unexplored branching corridor from the antechamber led me to a larger chamber with some strange particle effects visible through the door, and a LOT of rattling on the other side. I posited that this must be the primary calcium chamber, maybe housing a much larger skeleton or bone-pile. Either way, Andur was unfazed and ready to bonk once again.

I ran in there and immediately got disoriented. The large room consisted of at least four pillars, and more hallways going off in all directions. Skeletons were running at me, others were shooting. But Andur’s attention was on the dark floating mass in the center. A helpful tooltip named it “GHOST” once it got close enough to… touch me inappropriately. I can’t really tell what ghosts actually do, only that it hurts.

For whatever reason, my threshold of spookiness had been exceeded and I decided this must be a high-level enemy that I couldn’t take on right now. So, I did the least Vikingy thing imaginable and turned around to run – this was the fatal mistake. The path out was blocked by the dead. The other doors were shut by the dead. I didn’t know which way to turn or who to bonk. The polysaccharides provided by the mushrooms were being metabolized rapidly, and Andur’s health was decreasing.

Suddenly, unceremoniously, Andur was disassembled and returned to atomic dust. “You are dead”.

I couldn’t let this go of course – Andur’s honor was at stake, plus he wanted his mediocre shit back. I trained for days, raising as many skills as I could. I learned the ways of the axe, the spear, and the flint knife. Many families of Necks died. I practiced “anger management” by kicking at least a few dozen more Necks into the ocean – this would enable me to keep a cool head when facing the Ghost again. I eventually realised that Necks are amphibian, but no matter. There's plenty of foot to go around.

Eventually, I made my way back to the old tomb, armed to the teeth like a caveman Rambo. Andur would enter the Bone Zone once again, to re-kill the dead. Ashes to ashes, calcium to bonedust.

You may think that the spear, a long weapon that you thrust ahead of you with a pointy end, would be the right tool for tight corridors and close-quarters. However, something always felt off with that thing. It feels like it doesn’t reach far enough and the combat isn’t quite visceral enough for Andur. For these reasons I adopted a fighting style I like to call the Cheese Grater – Andur first sneaks into a combat encounter, positions himself for an attack, rolls forward and then SLICE! SLICE! SLICE! Not only does this get a few crits in, but it’s so quick that those idiot bonemen don’t know what hit them. Incredibly, this strategy allowed me to enact sweet revenge and return Ghost to the… afterlife? A different one I suppose. It would trouble the Tenth World no more.

Thus ends the story of the bone zone. The loot and shiny red cubes were a nice reward, but it would be a long time before I did anything with those.