4Game

POW… Greyling explodes in death.

For background I have 165 hours in the game with about 12 since the update. I previously played vanilla & modded in single and multi-player.

My current game I started a new character post-update and went as long as I could without mods. Of all the things it was the spawnrate of Greylings combined with unstoppable weather damage that made me get Valheim Plus again.

POW… sorry I had to punch another Greyling.

Greylings are a nice dumb and weak enemy. They are easy to kill early on and get the idea of basic combat. My problem is that while…

POW… fucking Greyling

While Greylings aren't hard to kill they are also uninteresting.

Ting Ting Ting… Thwack… Greyling explodes to arrow hit.

See once you get into Leather Armor they aren't even really scary. They can however stagger you and they just

POW, POW, Run… pause… stamina regen… POW, POW

They don't fucking stop. So they don't stop spawning to the point that combat is near-constant. You can't stop to do anything and breathe because they just keep spawning.

This goes into the next big issue that I see constantly being talked about which is the Stamina game. Even with good food Stamina is finite. Early mining of copper though is an absolute bear of a chore. Now I would say that maybe that's ok and the stamina drain isn't bad if it weren't for the fact that instead of using all my stamina to mine I have to stop every 3 seconds to swing my mace. The same goes for resource running since now Greylings and Greydwarves can keep up with us and over time you will get mobbed. You can't just go out and forage and use stamina for that but hold some in the tank for combat.

None of this mentions of course that SNEAKING SLOWLY uses stamina for some reason but that's another discussion.

FUCK OFF YOU SHAMAN PRICK!!!!

Now I want to go into the weather damage thing here because I mentioned it. The way to prevent spawning in the game before you can get wards is to build workbenches which have a fixed radius. This seems like a logical step to start building a home area with a secured boar pen and work area with some minimal wall placement. Weather damage I'm well aware will only half damage the bench but then that's the problem. At half damage it doesn't take many hits from the hordes of Greylings to destroy the bench. So while it's possible I'm not sure that getting a secured area is much of a possibility at all.

Possible Solutions:

Modify low level enemies to dynamically spawn less in the world as a player increases levels/stats and progresses.

This seems absurdly complicated and I'd prefer to see it localized around claimed beds. The way it'd work that say you're in Iron Armor then you won't see any Greylings within 100 meters of your claimed bed. Maybe Leather Armor and a Bronze Mace you'll see half as many that'd spawn and come within 50 meters.

Keep the spawn rate but make Greylings practice true avoidance based on player stats. If they can only do 2-3 damage to a character they will not engage at all. Bonus version if this takes into account nearby allies on both sides.

Probably could be handled with a potential damage check in the enemy AI. If integrated using the bonus idea as you move on you'd only get hit by groups and thereby engagements with enemies would be limited to only those that present challenge versus annoyance.

Eliminate intentional Greyling attacks to Structures without provacation

Had Greylings just randomly wailing on a workbench on the edge of the woods without provacation. They don't wail on the world gen structures, wildlife, or other world gen items so this honestly makes no sense. This would reduce the amount of time invested in cleaning up trash attacks early on which currently just waste time.