It is natural enough for me to immediately seek the open water in Valheim. Boats are one of the essential elements of the game in my mind… and no doubt an essential aspect to being a Viking. So once I had what looked like some open water I built a workench in a shack by the beach, spruced it up, and built my first raft. Or maybe my second. I think the first one was what in what turned out to be a lake.
Well, another raft anyway
Rafts are not boats. But when you can’t have a boat yet, a raft must serve… though I cannot recall any Viking epics that took place on a raft… though I may simply lack the knowledge.
I set sail in the daylight and slowly rode over the placid water, heading south. It certainly looked like open water, and when I reached the far shore and found black forest, I turned around and slowly motored on back.
A raft is slow and night fell and the waves kicked up and the temperature dropped… and then a sea serpent showed up… because of course one did.
Can you even see him, black on the black background?
I was midway across on my return trip and there was no chance I was going to out run him, my only hope was the raft holding together until I had half a chance to make it to land. The serpent had other ideas and chomped on my raft a few times, until it came apart, at which point he chomped on me until the inevitable result.
Dead in the water… another meaning
So that happened.
As hinted at in the settings I displayed last post, I had set the death penalty down at “casual,” the easiest setting to be had. That means you respawn with your gear… excuse me, your equipped gear. Anything in your inventory is left on your corpse marker to be picked up… which for me was out in the water.
Day six and I was dead already
I had to put together another stone axe and then go find some trees to cut down… not hard, they are pretty much everywhere around my first base… at which point I was careless, always a hazard when one is in a hurry, and managed to fell a tree onto myself and died again.
Death by timber
Fortunately that was close to my bed and I had yet to collect much of anything… and if you don’t die to a tree once in a while are you even playing Valheim?
Back to the chopping and then some boar hunting so I could get the materials to make another raft to sail out and pick up my stuff… because I had a bunch of stuff in my inventory. Don’t go sailing with full pockets I guess.
On the list of things in my inventory were a couple of bone fragments, which you need for upgrading all your early gear. Two were not going to do me, so I needed some skeletons. At some point they spawn around your base at night… but not yet it seems.
Some exploring into the edges of some black forest on my side of the water led me to a crypt, with some skeletons around it. Me and my club made short work of them, so I figured why not go on inside and get some more. I was going to need a lot of bone chips after all and these guys were pretty easy.
Inside I had some initial success, then ran into some tougher skeletons.
How about a two star skelly?
The answer to the question as to who would win, me or a two star skeleton? Not me.
Dead again
I ran back, grabbed my stuff, tried again… and died again. But I had really damaged him, so I went back again, running across the meadow into the black forest, over the creek, past the bear, and into the crypt where I defeated the skeleton on the third try, collected some more bone chips… and my stuff… and then poked around a bit more, grabbing a few surtling cores, always useful, before decided to head back home.
I stepped out of the crypt… and the bear killed me.
I did mention the bear in there somewhere. But bears… those are new to Valheim.
And bears are tough. My attempts to hit the bear yielded very little damage are lost me a lot of health when he hit me back. They are resistant to almost all physical attacks, but they fear fire. Once I learned that I got out a torch and started chasing the bear around, beating on it when I got into range.
Sometimes you chase the bear…
Then the torch burnt out… and sometime the bear chases you.
So I ran around, quickly made another torch, then it was back to bear on fire!
Do not set bears on fire in national parks
Eventually I figured out that holding the torch in my off hand, chasing the bear around until it jammed itself into some bit of the landscape, and then just beating on it with whatever weapon I had until I slowly, very slowly, killed it was the safest plan.
Bear stuck in a tree while I beat it
It goes faster if you occasionally set the bear alight, but hitting the bear with the torch wears out the torch very fast.
Once dead the bear dropped a hide, paws, meat, and a bear trophy. These all unlocked a number of new recipes for the workbench.
I took my collected treasure back to my little base.
It isn’t much, but it is home for now
I am not an accomplished builder of bases the way Potshot and Ula are. I tend to have a more… utilitarian relationship with the game and its housing. That place started as one of the barn-like structures with an opening at one end where I had put down a workbench, a bed, and a fire so I had a place to sleep.
Then I started slowly expanding it as my need for space increased, starting to add on in a way that would make Sarah Winchester seem disciplined and organized. But I quickly bumped up against limits on what I could build. I was going to need a pick to harvest some copper and tin so I could craft bronze tools and harvest fine wood… and that is how the game always hooks you in. I just need to progress a bit further and then I will have the bits I want.
So I was going to have to look into slaying Eikthyr.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
