This past weekend, Syn and I dove back into the world of Valheim. When we’d left off, we were hitting up some swamp crypts to bring back iron and upgrade as much of our gear and tools as we could.

We did a little bit more of this, too, but then our gaming sessions went wildly astray in many different directions. This was especially due to the fact that we had a TON of stone lying around and could now work at replacing our wood structures with sturdier stone.

Boar Loves You

I don’t think I ever blogged about my tamed boars.

Way back in the original gaming sessions, I somehow managed to pen up a couple wild boars in a small abandoned farm just over the hill from our base and tame them. It was close enough that we could keep going over to check on them but far enough that sometimes we forgot to feed and breed them.

One of the major base expansions that Syn started working on was really putting to use the open space we have in our meadow. She set up some nice farming blocks and a new and much more improved boar pen.

We then built what we called a “boar highway” that consisted of a fenced road from the old pen to the new pen, transporting about 5 adults and 1 piggy successfully. I wish I’d taken screens of that, but for some reason, Valheim decided to bug my screenshot button for a while. It fixed itself on its own, so I have no idea what cause that.

After that, Syn managed to capture a one star boar. She’s been breeding that into the old stock and now we have a group of one stars to provide a renewable source of meat to go with the radishes she’s been growing for stew.

Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

Since we have a lot of sailing ahead of us in the direction opposite of where our little karve resides, and we had the extra iron to do it, I decided to experiment with building our first longboat. But in order to do that, we needed a bigger dock out by the shiphouse.

These docks weren’t as frustrating to build as my original docks, nor did they take anywhere near as much time. While we’re not quite ready to sail off to the island where the next boss resides just yet, we now have a larger boat to make that journey on when we decide to explore!

Expanding the Main Base

Not only did we start restructuring the outer walls and garden area in stone, but Syn vastly expanded the area within the walls giving us much more room for portals and structures.

Then I took on a particular pet peeve of mine – the mish-mash of forge upgrades that were littered around the yard. When we first put down the forge, we had no idea that we’d need space near it for six or so other objects that further upgraded that forge. Same for the workbench to a lesser extent.

Since the forge was up against an outer wall, I’d started just throwing these things out in the yard as near to the wall as I could. And that became a cluttered mess.

So I set about tearing down the wood wall and expanding it out in stone so we could have a properly organized forge and workbench area. So much better!

Syn also reworked the layout of the entire house – reorganized our storage chests, upgraded the floor to stone, and added a nice big hearth.

Much, much better!

The Swamp Stinks

We’ve started to get the warning “A foul smell from the swamp” popping up lately. The first time this happened, we were at our little docking outpost that was actually near a swamp. So we thought that maybe we’d built a little too close to the swamp and were being attacked for it.

But no.

They’re attacking our main base now, too, despite the fact there’s no swamp on the island that we know of! We’ve had no problem fending them off between the stone wall and our upgraded gear. So that’s an encouraging thing!

Trying out Fishing

After raiding the crypts in the swamps, we’ve accumulated a big stack of gold and valuables. So, I decided to take it to the merchant, sell it off and invest in a fishing rod and bait. I know that the fishing system is pretty barebones right now, but I fish in any game that has fishing. Valheim is no exception!

I’d taken note that fish were around the longboat dock area when I was building there, so I settled in for a bit to see what fishing was like.

I learned that fishing is an active hobby in this game. It’s easy to lose bait (which costs gold – but we have plenty). You can also fish out an area quickly – I wish the spawn would last a little longer, to be honest.

It was fun to try, though I can’t really do anything effective with the raw fish I took from it. I know later you can make high quality food from it, but we don’t have all the materials for that just yet. So, for now, I’ll poke around at it here and there, but we have more important things to do!

Exploring the Plains

…Like exploring the plains!

Or, well, a little tiny bit of plains. Basically, now that we had some rank 4 iron gear, I wanted to see if we could take on deathsquitos. After being slaughtered by one due to accidentally stepping into the plains for just a moment, we’ve been avoiding the zone completely.

We’ve come a long way in terms of confidence in moving through the swamps now, so I was super curious to see how we’d fair in the plains.

Things we learned:

• Deathsquitos still hurt, but with good food, we can take them down easily
• There are huge scary beasts in the plains that can tear us up badly (I survived and ran away)
• There are small little creatures in the plains that can tear us up, but we can kill them

The area of the plains that we explored was very small, just a corner of the island. So we didn’t really discover anything of interest out there aside from some cloudberries.

It was getting late at that point, and we’d played more than our fill, so our adventures into the plains will have to hold off for a while longer yet. We still have more crypts to dig out and a boss to find!