Yo! Bum Rush The Show

Lateish yesterday evening, just when I was just thinking of calling it for the day, I tabbed out from Valheim to find Wilhelm had posted the first part of the story of his team's attempt to kill the second boss, The Elder. That got me thinking about my own couple of run-ins with the titanic treant. 

Those hadn't gone too well and I'd kind of drifted away from the plot a little. I'd spent most of yesterday building a huge stockade that stretches all the way around both my stone tower and my log cabin. I had some other large-scale building projects in mind. It didn't seem likely I'd run out of things to do for a good while, so why bash heads with a boss just because some raven flapped up and told me I should?

Wilhelm's post had re-ignited my curiosity, though. A few days had passed since my second attempt to cut The Elder down. I wondered if he was still crashing around in the forest or whether perhaps he'd gone back to wherever he came from, awaiting a re-summoning. 

At this point I should probably have made a plan instead of jumping straight through a portal. This is the downside of instant travel. It allows you to make snap decisions. Also from here on there are spoilers about the boss and the fight, just in case anyone's behind me and still trying to keep it fresh.

Last time I'd made a run at The Elder I'd done a fair amount of set-up work, including placing a portal in a hut on the edge of the forest where his altar stands. As it would transpire, this was crucial to my eventual success. Also my immediate defeat.

Part of the problem was, as always, over-confidence. I was dressed head to toe in grade three bronze armor, with a fine wood bow, several hundred fire and flinthead arrows and a grade three bronze axe for close-up chopping. I'd made some sausages out of draugr entrails (best not to think about it) and some bluebery/raspberry jam, all of which had bumped both my hitpoints and health regeneration to previously unheard of heights.

I wasn't figuring I could beat The Elder but I was pretty sure I could get in, give him a go and get out in one piece if things didn't go my way. There was just one thing I'd forgotten. It was the middle of the night.

When I jumped down from the portal (I'd built it on the roof to keep the local wildlife from destroying it while I was away) I realized I could barely see ten yards. I should have called the mission off right then but you feel silly having come all that way, don't you? And anyway he might not even be up any more. I at least had to check that out.

As I ran through the forest with no yellow fog or big red name across the screen I thought he must have despawned but when I finally got close to his altar, there he was. He'd wandered back to his calling place. And he spotted me from a very long way away.

All the guides I'd read about the fight agreed the way to solo The Elder is to bow-kite him around his altar, hiding behind the four stone pillars which block his massive ranged attack and popping out to pepper him with arrows. I tried that. It went disastrously wrong. 

In the darkness and chaos I got pinned down by his roots and stuck up against some immovable object I couldn't make out in the dark. The Elder closed in and stomped on me a couple of times and that was the end of that.

I was cross. It was a stupid death, entirely my fault. I'd been unprepared and I'd panicked and now I'd lost a load of skill points and my corpse, with all my best stuff, was right in the middle of the boss's home base. 

 

In other games I've played this would be the time to back off, take stock, think about how to deal with a difficult situation. Valheim doesn't work that way. When you die in Valheim you get a temporary immunity to skill loss, the only real penalty there is in dying (and a harsh one it is). That immunity lasts ten or fifteen minutes and each new death while it's up refreshes the timer.

It took me a while to see it but this effectively turns you into a superhero. You can be killed, sure, but death no longer has a sting. Therefore, the key thing to do when you die and leave a corpse with stuff you want to recover isn't to take time to prepare for a difficult corpse run. It's to get the hell back as fast as you can so you can do it before that immunity fades.

This is where portals become so very potent. I hadn't even thought to rebind to the nearby hut. I woke up in my bed back at the log cabin. From there it would take longer to get to my corpse than the immunity buff would last so a skill loss death loop would be all too possible. Only I had portals. It took me a few seconds to get back to the hut on the edge of the woods and less than a minute to get from there to my corpse.

Naturally, since it was still dark, I couldn't find it at first. I got killed looking for it and then killed again the next time but that didn't matter. The second time I spotted where my original corpse was and the third time I was able to grab it. 

There might have been another death in there somewhere. I wasn't keeping count. The important thing was, in no more than five minutes or so I had all my stuff back. What's more, I was back in my log cabin scarfing down sausages and buffing up for another run. 

 

It was daylight when I got back. As I was doing the corpse runs I'd spotted a stone crypt in the woods. In fact I'd had to duck inside it to escape. That hadn't been quite as safe as I'd expected. The Elder's roots go right inside the crypt when he attacks, which is very weird. I'd been thinking of the crypts as instances separate from the outside world. You do zone into them after all. Apparently it's not that simple.

While I was skulking in there it had occured to me I could use something Wilhelm had mentioned in a comment. Instead of hiding behind the pillars at the altar I could pull The Elder to the crypt and run him around the outside. I fancied my chances of that better than lurking behind a pillar.

So that's what I did. And it went surprisingly well. The crypt did indeed block the ranged attacks and also most of the roots. I was able to get plenty of shots on target. I could tell I was hitting him because The Elder was on fire. 

The problem was his health wasn't dropping. He didn't seem to mind being set alight and clearly my bow skill wasn't high enough to do him enough damage. Well, sod it. My highest two skills are Axe and Wood Cutting. He's a fricken' tree, ffs!

I abandoned all subtlety and rushed him. I began manically hacking at his legs and his health began to drop fast. Unfortunately, so did mine. He was stamping and his roots were grabbing and eventually I had to back off. 

 

But I had my belly full of sausages and jam. And cooked meat. I had almost twice the hit points I'd had last time I tried him and they regenerated faster. I took out my bow and put some more flaming arrows into him to keep him interested and when my health was back in three figures I charged him again.

That way I managed to take him under half health. And then a spear whanged past my head and into the ground. We'd managed to dance close to the edge of the plains and a fuling had spotted me. 

Remarkably, I had managed to kill one earlier, when the same thing had happened but I hadn't been in combat with a giant tree at the time. They're tough, fulings. I couldn't afford to have one pranging spears at me while I was concentrating on the boss. 

I ran, trying to get clear and got killed instead. It would have been a disaster except for that immunity buff and my portals. And the helpful way that mobs regenerate health slowly over time rather than snapping back to full when out of combat.

In a minute or two I was back. I found my corpse (it was close to the hut), grabbed my stuff, ate some more sausages and went looking for The Elder. He'd rgained a little health but he was still only around fifty percent. I had my immunity buff so I had no fear. I charged in and started hacking.

And that's how it went for a few minutes. I danced around his giant feet, chopping at his toes. When my health went worryingly low I sprinted away and amused myself by firing arrows at him from maximum range. He looked spectacular, his vast chest a mass of withing flames, his huge arms flailing, knocking down trees left and right. I'd have loved to take some pictures but I didn't dare - it was a full time job keeping just in range and not getting stomped.

Finally he was down to a sliver of health. I was down to about a third of mine. I'd been backing off at this point until then but I gambled I could down him before he got me and I was right! Boss down!

So much for the recommended strategy. Right back at the start, when I first summoned him, before I'd watched any videos or read any guides on the fight, my instinct had been to melee him. Even in leathers with my flint axe and just some berries to sustain me I'd taken him to 85% before I died. 

It confirms something I've been thinking for a while now. Other people may do better with the bow but my viking seems to be a berserker. She does best on the charge, axe whirling, a warcry on her lips. Forget subtle tactics, just get in close and hack.

And that death penalty can be turned to your advantage. Yes, the skill loss on the first death is vicious, but eat that and you become invincible. Provided you have a portal close by. It's going to change my strategy going forward, that's for sure.

Of course, when I went to pick up the loot my bags were full. Aren't they always. I had to throw out some greydwarf eyes and a couple of rocks to make space for the mysterious Swamp Key and the Elder Trophy. I'm guessing the former is what you need to get inside the crypts in the swamp biome, which is where you find iron, or so I've heard. It also explains how the next step of the crafting tree is gated by the second boss.

As for the trophy, I went back and hung it on its hook at the stone circle. Thanks to my portal network the trip took me no more than a couple of minutes. 

Next up, the swamp boss. I believe it's a blob. And it's supposed to be harder than The Elder. 

Might wait a while before I go see for myself.

I Have Built A Treehouse

Roger Ebert famously described movies as a machine for generating empathy. Or he didn't. Not exactly. It's what I've heard he said but I never heard him say it. So I looked it up because always check your sources and apparently what he actually said, assuming we can take a quotation website as an authority, was 

"Movies are like a machine that generates empathy."

My emphasis. Saying something is like something is very much not saying it is something. In a very significant way it's doing the exact opposite. If a thing is like another thing it is by definition not that thing.

Of course, it might just be loose language but Roger Ebert was a professional communicator so maybe the nuance is intended. Then again, he seems also to have been a believer in empathy as a kind of unqualified positive, (which it really very much is not) so he probably did mean what everyone thinks he meant.

But we don't come here to discuss clinical psychology or the belief systems of much-loved, now deceased cultural commentators. We come here to talk about video games. So why did I mention any of this in the first place?

Because yesterday, as I was playing far too much Valheim, it occured to me that if cinema is a machine for generating empathy, video gaming is a machine for generating stories. Not the curated narratives embedded by professional story-writers in the games themselves; the emergent stories created by the very nature of the gameplay.

Here's a tip: you can fix a door onto the entrance to a Burial Chamber and drop a fire outside for a warm and cosy troll-proof shelter.

 

It was XyzzySqrl who put the idea into my head with the comment "Even when I don't personally care to dip into these things I love reading the stories they generate." It's something I've very often thought about EVE Online. A lot of people, myself included, enjoy reading slice-of-life accounts from games they themselves would never dream of playing. 

Maybe it goes some way to explaining the exponential growth of watching other people playing video games as a pastime and a hobby. All those nested narratives exploding in real time. How can scripted entertainment hope to compete?

Maybe, but maybe not. A lot more going on there that replicates, substitutes and replaces social interaction than storytelling, I suspect. Although, some games would clearly offer more in the way of ad hoc storytelling than others. A notional audience watching my antics in Valheim, were they to have been streamed as they happened yesterday, would have been kept royally entertained, provided they were fans of slapstick comedy combined with "Oh god! Why are you going back in the woods?! Have you learned nothing?" slasher movie melodrama.

I could fill several posts with what happened although all the stories would end the same way: a viking jogging through the woods in a fur bikini trying to get back to where she'd been. And don't say she should have stashed a spare set of armor and weapons back at home. She did. Now she had to go get those back, too.

Then again, they live in nests. Maybe they're some kind of rat?

None of it would have happened if the 10th World wasn't so damned interesting. I think it's called the 10th World, the place Odin sends us all to at the start. Honestly, I've not being paying too much attention to the plot. It's more the little things that fascinate me. 

Remember when I said I'd decided the Greylings must be tiny treants because the only thing they ever drop is resin? I mentioned they all wear backpacks, too. Well, I managed to trap one inside my stockade, where I spent a happy few minutes tormenting examining it and guess what?

The "backpack" is actually the body of the Greyling. It's the stump of a tree. They are friggin' treants! That explains why the Greydwarves all drop wood. I thought they were carrying it but it must be their own bodies after I've hacked them apart with my axe. 

The Runestone that adds a whole section of Greydwarf lore to your journal when you read it doesn't mention any of this. In fact, it says something quite different. Or I thought it did. As I re-read it in the light of my own observations I realize there are more than hints towards the truth: "They are born from rot and rainfall, they spring like mushrooms from the smoking soil".

If there was any doubt at all (there wasn't) it was resolved for good and all when I met The Elder. Most of yesterday was taken up with an expedition to find the sacrificial altar of the second "boss". There would appear to be more than one place to summon him. I have two marked on my map, one of which looks to be a very long way away, quite possibly across the sea.

|Don't mind me. Just passing through.

The other was in striking range. One overnight stop. If only it had been that easy. 

Did anyone know there can be inhabited villages in Valheim? I came across one on the way. It was set in some idyllic meadowland, just beyond the dark of a band of black forest. There were more buildings in one place than I'd seen anywhere although they looked in poor repair. 

In the center of the settlement stood a wooden lookout tower and from the edge of the forest I could see they had scouts posted. I approached with caution, not knowing what to expect, and it was just as well I did. 

Draugr. A whole village of undead vikings in full armor. So much for my understanding. I thought they were swamp-dwellers but here they were in lush farmland. No wonder there were no farmers left.

I gave that village a wide berth. Every time I passed it. Which was often. There's a whole post in how I found an almost fully intact stone tower, not a mile away on the edge of the Plains, and how I ended up trapped there overnight, the doorway hastily barricaded, something unseen beating on the walls and cackling. 

Or how I built a shelter on a flat rock in sight of the Draugr town, only to find myself besieged before I could finish, swarmed by Greydwarves so persistent and numerous they eventually overwhelmed me. 

I got to know the pathways past the village of the damned better than I'd have liked, what with all the toing and froing to get back to my corpse. And yet I pushed on, learning as I went.

 

Nice tower. I'll have that.

Did you know that if you're besieged in the fragile, makeshift place you've made your home, nervous that should you be killed you'll awaken in the same bed you just died in, the way to prevent a potential spawn camp death loop is not to destroy your own bed? 

If you do, you won't next awaken, as I thought, in whichever bed you'd taken as yours prior to the one you just smashed to kindling. Oh, no. That would be far too convenient. You will, as I discovered, wake up in the original spawn spot where you first logged in, the standing stones where the game begins. It could be inconvenient if, like me, you died two days travel to the south.

All of these adventures (and there were many, many more) fade into insignificance when compared with the events that transpired when I eventually found the altar I was looking for. At this point I could describe what happened but I'd genuinely hate to spoil the surprise for anyone who hasn't seen it for themselves. If you're curious there are plenty of videos on YouTube.

All I'm going to say is this: he's fricken' huge! He also completely and definitively nails the Greydwarves are treants theory. Or wood elementals, maybe. Is that the same thing? They sure as hell are not the made from "the souls of murderers or great sinners" I'm pretty darn sure of that.

Another thing about The Elder: terrifying as he is when you're fighting him (I got him to about 85% so some work and/or research needed) he's orders of magnitude more fearsome when you come back and find him corpse camping your grave. 

This must be the place.

 

I say your grave. It's more like a couple of hectares, centered on your grave.

Seriously, I've rarely seen a more impressive tantrum. Again, spoilers, but it is absolutely worth losing the fight (or just backing off a few hundred meters during it) to see The Elder in full fury. He knocks down trees like they were matchwood, which is what they become as he stomps on the fallen trunks. He rages and crashes about in a frenzy of wanton destruction and woe betide you, his summoner, should he catch your scent.

When I got back to the scene of my defeat after a very long run I was dismayed to find The Elder still hanging around. Years of gaming have trained me to expect a reset in situations like this. Not here. You summoned him, now deal. 

He has an aggro range measured in hundreds of yards and a sphere of malign influence many times that. I was about to commit my fallen corpse to memory, along with everything on it (all my good stuff, naturally, since I'd been prepped for the big fight.), until I realized you can kite him! Like the trolls, if you hold your nerve you can bait him to follow and he'll come. A long way. 

I was tempted to pull him right back into the Draugr village to see if the two forces would finish each other off only I wasn't sure I could survive long enough to find out. In the end I pulled him almost to the shack I'd built then circled back around behind him, grabbed my stuff and legged it out of there. He's probably raging still. I'm not going back to check until I have a better plan. Or, inded, a plan.

Come up! The view's amazing! The gravestone? Oh, that's nothing, never mind that.

 

And that would have been the end of my adventures for the day. Should have been. It was late. I was heading back up the coast, all my stuff recovered and lots to think about. I should have just made it back to my log cabin and camped for the night. Only I saw this beautiful oak tree.

It was standing in deep grass just where the meadows swept down to the sea. There were pines along the shore where wild raspberry bushes flourish and gulls wheel in the wind. It was stunning. And then I realized.

A treehouse! I'd found the perfect spot for a treehouse!

So I spent another hour and a half learning how to build one. That was a story in itself, a comedy, mostly, as I kept running out of wood, built the platform too small for the bed.then finally jumped down in the night to confront a Greydwarf as it tried to smash my workbench, only to kill myself with the fall. And I hadn't even bound yet so I had to run back yet again. In a thunderstorm.

So many stories. Time to go make some more.