I haven’t written about Valheim for a while because it’s been a bit since we last played. I know that just about everyone is far beyond this point or has “finished” what the game has to offer in terms of boss progression, but Syn and I left off in the Swamps.

So we’d just beaten the tree boss a while back and decided to do some exploring of the nearby swamp area on the second island we’d found. We knew that we needed iron next, so we did an extensive search for iron nodes (we didn’t know) in the zone.

Of course, since there are no iron nodes (we didn’t know), we came up completely empty handed. Not only that, but the Swamp handed us our butt over and over again to the point of frustration.

There were no Crypts in the swamp on that island to boot – we did know that we had a key to enter Crypts, but didn’t know how that worked. So after a fairly frustrating couple of hours – thankfully we didn’t lose anything – we put it away and just haven’t come back to it.

I broke my non-spoiler pact with this game to read up on where iron nodes were (oh…) and to find tips on how to survive the Swamps better. But neither of us were motivated to come back to the game at that point.

Fast forward to this past weekend. I’ve been having an itch now and then to return to Valheim, but I knew the frustration we’d dealt with in our last play was a bit of a turn off for Syn (and even myself a little). We talked about it and I said something along the lines of: “It’s too bad there aren’t modifiable difficulty settings on Valheim like there are for 7D2D.”

That’s when Syn brought up the idea of game mods. We’d heard about the mods that gave more gear slots and that sort of thing, so we went on a hunt to see what was out there. And we found Valheim+.

Now, to our credit, we didn’t do anything to decrease the difficulty of the monsters as we didn’t want to make the game too easy. But we did add a lot of convenience to the game – crafting out of containers, more space in our inventory and less stamina usage so that we weren’t completely crippled and unable to do things every couple of minutes of gameplay.

This has made the game so much more enjoyable for us, while leaving the overall challenge of figuring out how to navigate the land and fight of monsters. Each section of the mod is something you can turn on and off at will – so, for example, if you decide less stamina usage is taking the challenge out of it, you can turn that off.

Valheim+ is very, very flexible and I really like it.

So, inspired to try out this new mod, we set sail for a new island to the south, where I knew I’d seen a patch of swamp before.

This time, we found our Crypt! And while there were still a few deaths (thank you, two star Draugr), we had a good bit of fun mining the iron and finally getting much-needed gear upgrades. Of course, one Crypt isn’t enough to outfit and upgrade for two people completely, so once we’d explored the length of that Swamp, it was time to hit the boat.

Neither of us had really sailed much in Valheim, but we picked it up pretty quickly. In fact, Syn did most of the sailing as we scouted out the perimeter of the nearest two islands – both abundant in swamp land.

We did dock and take on a second Swamp area – and met up with the scary nasty things that come out at night there! – but haven’t had any luck finding another Crypt. I can say that with our new gear – even partial and not upgraded – our survivability in the Swamp has increased immensely. Not that we can’t still die there – oh yes we can – but we have a bit more confidence in our ability to explore and make our way through the area. Which is all we really wanted from the start.

Oh and… opps!

Don’t worry, the boat was fine.