Valheim Mod Play Journal 10Jun2021- Wolf problems

This is an ongoing journal of modded play of Valheim. I played the game straight up and won several times, this is more about extending the life of the game. The first post in the series lists the mods I use. I think the game plays dramatically differently with mods, and thought a journal of how that was going would be helpful for those who are bored with the regular game and are considering mod play. I write these on my breaks at work, so I have no access to screenshots etc, and if you want that I can sometimes get to it on the weekends. There is a lot of strategy change based upon these mods, and I do tend to be wordy, so if you are a TLDR type, this is not the post for you and I wish you the best.

Go here for the previous post. Links will take you all the way back to the first post.

First thing was the recent patch broke Valheim Plus, and this caused problems for me as I was using expanded inventory of 6 rows rather than the base game of 4. Armor tends to default position on the bottom of your inventory, and when the patch hit, those extra rows were lost, along with my entire armor I had worked hard to get. You can get around this by turning off auto patch, or manually put high value items in top rows so they survive it when the mod breaks on patch. Fortunately I had a backup set of gear that was halfway decent.

When I last left I had some 5-star wolves in a pit breeding. The thing with 5-stars is the sizing feature makes them huge. Base game has some size adjustments for 1 and 2 stars, but these can get pretty crazy as you get up to 5-stars. For example a 5-star troll has massive reach. And I don't care what gear you have, a 5-star can one shot you.

For wolves this impacts play in a few ways. The pit needs to be larger so they can turn around and get close to each other. And if you recall the pathing problems trolls face when you kite them through the woods, occasionally getting stuck on terrain….well the same happens for wolves. This means if you want to use them and not be constantly baby sitting them, you need to use them in more open areas.

Once I had built a structure with portal above the pit the wolves bred. I got about 5 of them as adults eventually, and decided to see if they would breed further. My pit is about 3x3sections of square footage. So I loaded up the pit with raw meat, and afk'ed. I checked at 1 and 2hrs later, and it seemed safe, so I risked it for the night.

Well in the morning I was still logged into Valheim, and my character was not dead. Half the stakewall was in ruins, and there were 3 wolves left. There had been a fight, and the wolves had won. The 5 star splitter was gone, and so too was my regenerator. Remaining were frost infused (the original find) and two I don't remember what they did…nothing that great.

So it was decision time. For the breeder to work you have to leverage AFK time at the breed spot, which means you need a secure AFK spot. Also if I am going to go to that kind of length to secure the spot, I probably need to build a proper breeder in which you cram 2 breeders into a tiny space with a single wood plank floor, and you construct this off the ground around 10m or so above the birthing pit so when they check to see if there are nearby wolves to throttle the birth rate, they find none, and they breed at maximum.

I thought about this some and decided there were two routes to go, (1) make a breeder near a Gray Dwarf spawner and do the full Gray Dwarf farm thing, or (2) make the breeder at a strategic location that is easy to get to via ships and has reach over my intended area of conquest, preferably in a meadow to reduce high star troll problems.

I went with the latter for now. I think I will shop around for a good gray dwarf spawner of strategic value. But I do need to get above 3 wolves pretty fast else risk losing them.

My starting island has two large land masses with a narrow section that I put a canal through and named Panama. That would be a good strategic location in a meadow, since the whole north world was accessible via the canal, and my main base was due south. I thought about shipping them, and looked at the size of the wolves and reconsidered. It would be hard shoving them on a longboat and fitting them. That problem would take a while, and I needed a quicker safer solution.

So I decided to take the land route, and try to minimize the chance of me running into a high star golem that the wolves would attack and lose against. I fed them for luck and took my happy wolves straight over the edge of the mountain, down to the meadows below, and began the long perimeter hike. I had a hoe road for a speed boost (speedy paths mod), but it was overgrown. I would have to constantly check to see if the wolves were with me, or stuck on saplings then free them.

Overall the wolves just destroyed things. They hit for 200ish damage each. The big limit seems to be positioning as I previously described. They could get hung up on saplings and not have an angle of attack. But there were 3, and they supported each other so we did fine. One time I noticed them stop…a cub had birthed. It would not follow, and I wanted to get the wolves home, so I pressed on leaving the little cub to fend for itself.

Things were going so well that I decided to push through the night. That turned out to be a really bad move. I was going through a forest biome stretch, and the wolves were doing great against gray dwarves.

But then an aggressive 1star troll spawned. And I watched in horror as my 3 wolves charged, got stuck on saplings, could not attack it, and it beat them to death with impunity. All of them. I was demoralized. All that time spent on them was erased.

Then I remembered that cub I left behind. It wasn't two wolves, but it was a start. I would rescue it. So I went back up the path and found it. A plain ordinary 5star wolf with no mods. The poor cub was on the run most of the time. Hostile enemies would spawn, and it would flee. I would kill them, and the cub would settle down. Finally the spawn let up long enough for me to drop a bench and stakewall the cub in a pen. I gave it a little meat, set up a portal, and called it a night.

The cub was safe the next morning, but still was a cub. I decided to clear a path all the way from where I had penned the cub to Panama. Chopping, picking, hoeing, and hauling all of it in a cart with the cub safely in the stakewall. Took me 2 days to complete the path to Panama.

So I went back and the thing was a cub still. Remembering the state of the road going north, I decided to just clear that out and periodically check on the cub. And so I was doing that when off in the distance I see an enormous wolf. The wolves had birthed another cub and I did not notice! The day was saved! It was armored too, one of the most destructive mods you can get because they almost never die, and usually armored wins against other mods in fights.

That wolf was an adult, which had fed in the wild, and I could get it to follow me. So off I took it to the cub pen. The clear path was a huge improvement, I would only need backtrack when the wolf went after something in the woods.

So I am approaching the cub pen with a good lead on the armored wolf, and a gray dwarf decides to try it with me. And as I am switching to mace and shield, the now full grown 5-star wolf that was a cub bursts through the simple wood gate leaving it in shatters and destroys the gray dwarf. My cubby!

I don't risk another night trip. I put both in the cub pen, repair the door, toss them meat and port home. I will get at it first thing in the morning.

And so I return, and find the wolves mated and had a cub. That is a good spot for it. So I pen it up, and give it meat. And as I start out the enclosure the wolves birth another. I leave it, and escort the adults with no mishap to their new home in Panama. I return and play pen the cub until finally both cubs are safely penned.

So I went from 3, to zero, to 1, then 2, and now 4 wolves. I thought I was ruined. But it turns out feeding them for luck likely saved catastrophe. Moral of the story- feed your wolves, because a happy wolf may save the day.