Happy New Year! What’s been your favorite Valheim story in 2021?

For me, one of my favorite stories from playing Valheim was probably within my very first hour of playing.

My small group of friends had started playing the game only a couple days before I started playing, on their own server. When I joined, one of my friends showed me the ropes of how to play and I was quickly armed with a crude bow (among some various other things) while my other friends were elsewhere on the server. They already had a very small village going as the main base, and I was pretty excited about the building aspect of the game from what I could see there. I jumped straight into this game without barely even knowing what it was about before I bought it. I only knew that my friends were having fun and we all enjoy playing the same sorts of games together.

Then, with the friend who was showing me around, we ventured out into the black forest and I was only told to watch out for trolls. Soon enough, my friend encountered one and we started pelting it with our crude bows. But my friend ended up dying to the troll! It was only one or two swings and I knew this troll meant serious business.

I did the only thing which I knew I could do and I kept shooting away with my bow while keeping my distance. Eventually I managed to kill it, and my other friends were impressed that I had already bagged a troll trophy within my first hour of playing! The other friend who died to the troll, still had not yet claimed his first troll kill!

After I returned triumphantly to the village, my friends and I gathered in the main hall, where I was then initiated as one of them with a troll cape, since being given a blue cape was like a rite of passage for becoming part of the village.

I’ve definitely had many great moments playing Valheim, but I think that nothing can really beat those very first few hours of starting a new game, learning how to play, and discovering what the game has to offer.