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Valheim has broken the 5 Million sales (store.steampowered.com)

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[–]aegroti 2236 points2237 points  (471 children)

It's a pipedream but part of me hopes that with the success that the game ends up with tons of content and patches for many years.

End up with fifteen plus biomes, a hundred types of animals and alll sorts of accessories. A man can dream!

[–]SmallTownMinds 1175 points1176 points  (194 children)

Fingers crossed for the Terraria treatment.

[–]Porrick 342 points343 points  (42 children)

This comment made me wonder how big the Terraria dev team is - I just looked it up, it's 12 people. Valheim's team is 5 people (although they've said they are going to hire more). Coincidentally, same as Dyson Sphere Project. These are tiny tiny teams from my AAA point-of-view - I've been on preproduction teams larger than 12 people.

There's a bunch of Early Access games that this team could emulate to my perfect satisfaction - Factorio and Satisfactory in particular have been exemplary in their transparency and dedication to updates. Satisfactory even shares a publisher with Valheim!

[–]CorporalCauliflower 209 points210 points  (35 children)

Terraria was originally developed entirely by one man, Andrew Spinks. I'm fairly certain he did all of the game programming all the way to 1.2 and only hired on a marketer and a graphic designer until then. As great as Valheim is, it doesn't quite live up to how impressive the feat of Terraria is. Terraria is also a custom game engine, Valheim is made in Unity.

[–]Dreadgoat 159 points160 points  (19 children)

Valheim being made in Unity is a good thing. It means that it will scale well with success (money).

When you make your own engine, you have immense control over everything and pretty much unlimited extensibility, especially if you are a competent coder (which I would guess Andrew Spinks very much is) but you have to teach the ins and outs of it to every new hand on stage. No matter how smart or well paid they are, it's a new thing they have to learn and that takes time.

But everybody in game dev knows how to do Unity stuff. Say "hey here's money make assets" and boom assets appear.

[–]SanctusLetum 124 points125 points  (17 children)

People often seem to think a game being made with Unity is a bad thing, but there are some stunningly beautiful games using Unity. It is an extremely powerful engine that is easy to learn and work with and can produce mesmerizing results.

It is especially good for small teams like indie devs because it means they don't have to deal with all the backend work of designing their own engine and can spend more resources on making their game the best it can be, especially since the engine is so incredibly adaptable to various game types.

[–]DivineInsanityReveng 60 points61 points  (5 children)

These engines (Unity, Unreal, Source) are always a good thing. It means the game Devs have a standardised platform with heaps of features to work from. Coming from an OSRS player, hearing "sorry that's engine work" as a reason for a lot of basic features not existing is not fun.

So the good thing about Valheim is most of the things we want are simply content. Fully capable within the engine it's built in and just need time and effort put into developing the functions and assets.

[–]OhStugots 17 points18 points  (3 children)

Coming from an OSRS player, hearing "sorry that's engine work" as a reason for a lot of basic features not existing is not fun.

OSRS player as well, I know it's somewhat justified because the original had spaghetti code and whatever, but could you imagine if other games pulled that move? Like there's a UI fix that everyone wants for League of Legends, and the developers wanted to give it, and said "Yea we'd love to offer this but none of us are capable of coding this UI. The engines too hard to code, sorry."

It's just always cracked me up how in the OSRS community, "We're not good enough at coding" is a valid excuse for not providing things.

[–]DivineInsanityReveng 15 points16 points  (2 children)

Well yeah it's sadly the nature of custom built engines and scripting languages.

Eventually, all the people that worked on core elements move on, and you're left training new people on niche coding that isn't going to be applicable anywhere else.

So all the developers can really say is "engine work" because none of them work on the engine, just on producing content using RuneScript.

But yeh it's honestly hilarious seeing people not like a mainstream engine being used, that's only good things to me. A custom engine gives you unlimited ability but it also means you have to build everything from scratch which often results in worse optimisation or buggy/crappy versions of things people are very used to.

The fact it's taken 8 years for OSRS to get UI scaling so that the game is at all playable on 1440p and above is testament to this 😂

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        [–]eyeGunk 12 points13 points  (4 children)

        Could've sworn there was 2 developers. Red (redigit) and Blue. Made it easy to remember.

        [–]CorporalCauliflower 19 points20 points  (0 children)

        i'm not any kind of Terraria historian, but I'm fairly certain he hired on additional developers later in Terraria's lifespan. There were also third party studios that did the porting process to consoles, mobile, Switch, etc.

        The point stands that the entire foundation of the game rests on Red and a music composer he hired to do the themes. I wonder how much he personally profited, because people like me were able to buy the game for 2.50 and put 300+ hours into it

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          [–]kboy101222 18 points19 points  (3 children)

          Didn't he have Cenx (Andrew/ Red's wife, idk her real name) also working on the game? And I'm fairly certain he at least had someone doing the art nearly from day 1

          [–]TheGoldenHand 13 points14 points  (1 child)

          She worked as a PR and support.

          [–]kboy101222 15 points16 points  (0 children)

          Ah, yep.

          Also, it's weird to see someone say "Andrew Spinks" instead of Red or Redigit. I actually had to remember who tf Andrew is. Not that that's relevant, but I just found it funny.

          [–]Reilou 7 points8 points  (0 children)

          The guy that left to go make Starbound was one of the artists originally. I don't think Cenx officially joined the team until later because she was apparently the main driving force behind Redigit un-retiring and coming back for 1.3 after saying the game was done.

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              [–]supertrashinator69 151 points152 points  (11 children)

              Stardew Valley treatment would be nice. Wholesome community too.

              [–]Ivence 66 points67 points  (10 children)

              All my friends are out sailing the seas and I'm over here going "oh neat, that will let me add really neat accent lighting to the back room of the fort!"

              [–]WhitePawn00 38 points39 points  (8 children)

              In our little viking town on our server we've basically split off into roles and all of us are enjoying our roles. We have cooks and farmers who like the food management and making sure the town is fed. We have explorers who like sailing the seas and opening up the map (and sharing with us via the map share mod). We have the builders who are just looking for an excuse to build a new building somewhere. It's great how all these avenues are fun for people who enjoy them.

              [–]Ivence 20 points21 points  (1 child)

              Yeah my map is basically swiss cheese. They find spots for outposts or get set up for a big ore run and then I'll pop through and grab the resources I need to keep building things or to help with the mining and the big fights.

              It's funny when we're sailing home with haul and they're all discussing which route to take depending on the wind and I'm sitting here going "I don't know it all looks like brown to me."

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                    [–]XxNerdAtHeartxX 131 points132 points  (13 children)

                    I don't expect more than 9 biomes. I think they went in with the goal to build 9 to represent the 9 realms of norse mythology. Thematically, it'd make sense to stick to that.

                    [–]aegroti 52 points53 points  (8 children)

                    Spoilers for budding Valheim Vikings:

                    Maybe a future where each biome becomes huge and much larger (so rather than them being dotted around you need to try and explore most of the biome, kinda like how the "deep north" will be in the north).

                    Then the biomes can have sub-biomes within. Black forest be a sub-biome of Meadows for instance. Mistlands be sub-biome of swamp.

                    Be cool if there was a "hell" like in minecraft where you can dig down in certain biomes to eventually reach a subterranean realm.

                    [–][deleted] 31 points32 points  (0 children)

                    The Ashlands kind of tick off that Hell box. It's on the Southern edge of the map like the Deep North.

                    [–]SpaceballsTheReply 16 points17 points  (5 children)

                    I think it's much more likely that the current worldgen will go unchanged (all nine biomes are already in the game; four are just waiting on content to fill them), and they'll find other ways to expand beyond that if they feel like going another step.

                    I would love to see some endgame "raiding" system where you take a portal to a smaller, instanced world (could be entirely new biomes), fight to a boss, then go home with your spoils and despawn that world. Maybe with some other mechanics to make it not just a big combat slog; perhaps you have to survive for a certain amount of time before the boss arrives, so you have to do a little gathering and build up defenses.

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                      [–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (2 children)

                      I think all 9 are already in the game, so people won't have to restart worlds when the new biomes are made. Meadows, Black Forests, Swamps, Mountains, Plains, Oceans, Mistlands, Ashlands, Far North. That later 4 not having been developed yet (Oceans do have 2 things involved with it at the moment). Who knows, maybe a few years down the line they might expand more then that.

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                        [–]dd179 463 points464 points  (166 children)

                        I wouldn't call it a pipe dream. They just have to build upon their success and for the love of god, ignore most of the survival community's feedback.

                        Their vision got them to where they are, they need to stick with it.

                        [–]threehundredthousand 223 points224 points  (17 children)

                        I just hope they can ignore the Rust community.

                        [–]dd179 93 points94 points  (1 child)

                        That's the community I was thinking about when writing that comment lol

                        [–]SkyWulf 54 points55 points  (2 children)

                        Only game where the community made me decide to get a refund

                        [–]Bierculles 12 points13 points  (1 child)

                        Oh yeah, nothing beats joining a server and having racial slurs thrown at you because you asked a basic question about the game.

                        [–]EldritchAnimation 18 points19 points  (7 children)

                        Out of the loop: What's up with the Rust community?

                        [–]shawnaroo 95 points96 points  (4 children)

                        Some survival games tend to attract people who, for whatever reasons, want their games to be as difficult and punishing as possible.

                        And some of them, what they really want is for the game mechanics allow them to be the ones punishing other players by killing them/destroying all of their progress. Basically they want the game to be designed to 'legitimize' behavior that otherwise would be considered griefing.

                        The problem that sometimes happens with these games is that these people end up being a significant part of the 'hardcore fan base' of the game and tend to be very vocal, so they end up with oversized influence on the developers and that results in the game being steered towards their desires at the expense of everyone else.

                        Rust has gone in that direction, and basically the result is that the community has just become extremely toxic and aggressive, because once the community starts to lean in that direction, it tends to drive away everyone else.

                        [–]flashman 10 points11 points  (1 child)

                        I have a feeling /u/garryjnewman wanted Rust to be harsh and attracted a self-described 'hardcore' community, rather than the community dictating his game design decisions.

                        I've spent several hundred hours with Rust over the last seven years but it's become clear to me it most rewards people who can afford to spend several thousand hours playing it.

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                                [–]cyrenical 117 points118 points  (31 children)

                                The one thing we can reliably expect is lots more co-op survival games similar to Valheim. Too many survival games have tried to shoehorn PvP as some kind of endgame focus, and all the ones I've played have had terrible PvP mechanics.

                                The majority of the new games inspired by Valheim's design will be crap, but I hope a few will be great. And maybe, just maybe, publishers and developers will see how important it is to have their survival game be in a good state before throwing it out into early access.

                                [–]Tantric989 121 points122 points  (23 children)

                                I feel like there's just not enough co-op games in general, and it's why Valheim got popular fast. It's fun on its own, but better with friends. Games that focused on co-operative play are still too far between and don't do enough to emphasize the cooperative mode of gameplay.

                                [–]Raincoats_George 55 points56 points  (11 children)

                                I think the ten person cap changes things up. You have a large enough group there that you can divide up tasks and accomplish a shit load. But it's not so large that it turns into an unmanageable mess with griefing and pvp.

                                They nailed it.

                                [–]Sarcastryx 13 points14 points  (0 children)

                                I think the ten person cap changes things up...it's not so large that it turns into an unmanageable mess with griefing and pvp.

                                That makes sense. 6-7 people is the upper bound for optimal group cohesion in humans, meaning 5-10 people is likely the optimal range for a co-op game meant for group play. That's enough to maintain general cohesion of the group, while allowing sub-groupings to splinter off to perform tasks efficiently and reform with the full group as needed.

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                                  [–]Divio42 23 points24 points  (0 children)

                                  I feel like there's just not enough co-op games in general

                                  Co-op that are not forced online. I don't want to play with random strangers who have completely different expectations and play styles.

                                  I want to play with my girlfriend and her kids.

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                                    [–]sheetskees 10 points11 points  (1 child)

                                    Grounded (the honey I shrunk the kids one) is PVE focused as well and a lot of fun.

                                    [–]Rhaps0dy 19 points20 points  (2 children)

                                    co-op survival games similar to Valheim

                                    I also hope for more survival games without GUNS. Valheim was amazing to me because I didnt go from punching trees to suddenly having an AK47.

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                                      [–]mkallday10 34 points35 points  (8 children)

                                      And new boats! Lots and lots of boats.

                                      [–]Azudekai 20 points21 points  (2 children)

                                      But most importantly oars. They have the oar holes, they have the seats, now we just need oars to use.

                                      [–]sockerpopper 8 points9 points  (1 child)

                                      I would love this. Make working against the wind a little more tolerable if the more people rowing the faster you went.

                                      [–]muskytortoise 19 points20 points  (3 children)

                                      I'd love to see some basic options for map creation that would allow us to pick larger oceans. I want to swim in that ship and maybe go do some medium scale fishing (as opposed to existing two scales of fishing you can do), not manoeuvre around rocks.

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                                        [–]Spekingur 41 points42 points  (12 children)

                                        I would LOVE to see biomes with these kind of landscapes

                                        Also, streams and rivers and waterfalls above sea level. And be able to make proper caves into the landscape. Though probably not possible, since there might be limitations on the game engine.

                                        [–]omnilynx 47 points48 points  (10 children)

                                        Even the current terraforming system is having performance issues (that said, those should be solvable). Allowing caves would require switching from heightmap-style terrain to a full 3D mesh, and I'm not sure the dev team is ready for that. It would certainly take up a huge amount of dev time.

                                        [–]Bojangly7 14 points15 points  (8 children)

                                        Well the company has the funding for years of development

                                        [–]omnilynx 26 points27 points  (5 children)

                                        Sure, I'm not saying it's never going to happen. Just outlining why it's unlikely to be in the next couple of updates.

                                        [–]Bojangly7 16 points17 points  (4 children)

                                        A terrain rework would be at least a year if not more yeah. I doubt they would ever do it to be honest. There are already caves in the game and the ground shaping works fine.

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                                              [–]wolfpack_charlie 17 points18 points  (1 child)

                                              It seems like in the past year there have been way more indie games made by very small studios that just completely blew up and broke records, so it's interesting to see how they handle that kind of success and how small teams or even solo devs (like the Phasmophobia dev) attempt to scale up their development efforts.

                                              It's tempting to think that big money = moar content, so WhERe aRe ThE UpDAteS!? But it's hard when you have like 3 people to start out with, and you're almost drowning in technical debt because it's your first game.

                                              Not that Valheim is in the same boat as, say, the Among Us devs, but I doubt they were expecting half the sales they've gotten

                                              [–]centagon 15 points16 points  (6 children)

                                              They just need to open up modding. Last I heard they had no plans for official mod support.

                                              It's unreasonable to expect them to just triple their dev team in a month, even if they are swimming in money. And worse to expect that they'll triple content while staying congruent with their original design vision. Best to leave this sort of silly unbridled content in the hands of modders.

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                                                [–]Recor123 138 points139 points  (10 children)

                                                For a crafting/survival game that came out in 2020 I am surprised at how invested I am in playing it. I really thought I was losing interest in these kinds of games given how many have come out over the past 10 years.

                                                I think the developers just managed to get a lot of the core features that make these kinds of games fun right.

                                                [–]Rich131 58 points59 points  (7 children)

                                                Apparently they've had an active discord with alpha play testers giving feedback since 2018. The fact they've listened to and tweaked the core gameplay is something I really appreciate. You know when playing that the devs have spent enough time in game themselves. Nothing feels grindy :)

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                                                  [–]KittenMittns 916 points917 points  (112 children)

                                                  The atmosphere in this game is off the charts. I can lose hours just casually building in the meadows. It’s really strange how cozy my house in a video game makes me feel. Such a good game, excited for more content to come.

                                                  [–][deleted] 30 points31 points  (4 children)

                                                  Can confirm. I had goal of getting some copper ore.

                                                  Only to find a troll outside my base

                                                  1 hour later I finally reclaimed my base and defeated the troll.

                                                  Another my base was redesigning with a watch tower so I could shoot income attacker's along with a ditch around the base.

                                                  Tomorrow it's likely going to be a few hours extending the walls to give my bees some green space and THEN I can go get some copper assuming I don't get distracted again...

                                                  [–]JohnnyPage 49 points50 points  (46 children)

                                                  How is the game if you play solo?

                                                  [–]Palin_Sees_Russia 110 points111 points  (12 children)

                                                  Actually great! One of the only survival games where it’s totally viable and still fun to play. There are bosses, these cave/dungeons you can go delving in for loot and tons of shit to work toward and build. Also every now and again there are hordes of enemies that will come to keep you on your toes so you better make sure your base has defenses!

                                                  And the best part is that it’s not too hard to play solo, like a lot of others usually are.

                                                  [–][deleted] 28 points29 points  (2 children)

                                                  It's slower than playing with others, but still lots of fun.

                                                  [–]supernasty 12 points13 points  (1 child)

                                                  Definitely slower, but if you enjoy the mining and creating part of the game it will definitely extend the length of time you have with it. That’s a good thing for me as I feel really zen mining for ore to work on crafting and creating a road network to make things easier.

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                                                    [–]SimplyQuid 21 points22 points  (0 children)

                                                    So far so good, I've lost a ton of time setting up a basic outpost away from my main base to facilitate resource gathering, then getting distracted adding structures to my outpost until it's bigger and better than my original base, and then repeating that with my next outpost.

                                                    Building on water is a pain in the ass so far, but I felt very accomplished once I got my first dock actually up and running.

                                                    [–]ColinStyles 22 points23 points  (5 children)

                                                    It can get a bit grindy after the second boss, but I also found it completely enjoyable despite that.

                                                    [–]Servebotfrank 28 points29 points  (4 children)

                                                    We've found it pretty grindy in multiplayer because it takes so much iron to make anything and we got super unlucky with our swamps having no crypts for several days until we found a massive biome.

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                                                      [–]Spengy 9 points10 points  (6 children)

                                                      I just hope people don't have too high expectations. Don't they have like...5 developers?

                                                      Love the game, for the record. Insanely grindy at the end for larger groups, but that makes the reward even more worth it. And I think this is balanced by the repair costs being 0.

                                                      [–]Calthyr 11 points12 points  (0 children)

                                                      That was definitely of my first impressions as well. Getting your building from a hut to a a cozy log cabin/longhouse is very satisfying.

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                                                        [–]AwesomeMcPants 466 points467 points  (82 children)

                                                        It's a damn fun game, especially for $20. I think I'm about 30 hours in and feel like I barely scratched the surface. If you like survival / crafting games like Raft or Minecraft, I can't recommend it enough.

                                                        [–]StochasticLife 357 points358 points  (51 children)

                                                        The price point is really a major drive of the success too.

                                                        One person gets it, plays, and then convinces his friends to get it so they can work together. $20 is a way easier sell than $60-70. I was playing on my dedicated server for nearly a week before others started trickling in, now we're up to 6 regular players with 5-6 very occasional players.

                                                        [–]Daveed84 187 points188 points  (22 children)

                                                        The price point is really a major drive of the success too.

                                                        I think this is a major reason that games like Stardew Valley and Rocket League really took off too. Not the only reason, of course, but a significant one. The low price point makes it accessible to a wider audience and a more attractive full-price purchase for everyone.

                                                        [–]Xaevier 71 points72 points  (15 children)

                                                        Fall Guys as well

                                                        $20 is just the right price for a co-op game

                                                        [–]-GeneralDerp- 67 points68 points  (14 children)

                                                        I feel like the main reason Fall Guys got popular was because it was free on PS+

                                                        [–]culdesaclamort 34 points35 points  (5 children)

                                                        That's how Rocket League blew up in the first place.

                                                        [–]Quazifuji 15 points16 points  (2 children)

                                                        I think it also just went viral on Twitch in a really extreme way. Usually when an indie game is big on Twitch I'll see a bunch of variety streamers or streamers who mostly play similar games trying it. That's true of Valheim too - I've just seen it played by variety streamers, especially ones who play survival games.

                                                        With Fall Guys, it felt like everyone played it. Didn't matter what communities they were part of, what their main games or genres were, whether they were normally a single-game stream or a variety steamer, everyone, at some point, was streaming Fall Guys. The only other game I've ever seen that happen with is Among Us. And most of the streamers I saw playing Fall Guys were playing on PC, so the game being free on PS+ wasn't part of that.

                                                        Being on PS+ certainly made it bigger than it would have been otherwise, but I think with how huge the game was on Twitch for a couple weeks it would have sold a ton either way.

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                                                          [–][deleted] 18 points19 points  (1 child)

                                                          Yeah, $20-$30 is the sweet spot these days. I can't remember the last game I bought for $60 that was worth the price of admission. I think the last $60 game I bought was Sekiro and I bounced off of it two or three times before giving up. I bought Surge 2 for $10 in the last sale and played halfway through NG+.

                                                          [–]trdef 17 points18 points  (2 children)

                                                          Didn't Rocket league first take off properly when they gave it away free on playstation?

                                                          [–]Skvall 19 points20 points  (0 children)

                                                          It was a free ps+ game at day one.

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                                                              [–]mucow 24 points25 points  (1 child)

                                                              Definitely. More than $20, I'd wait for a sale, but by then none of my friends would be playing...

                                                              [–]_Gingy 5 points6 points  (4 children)

                                                              All I did was mention Viking survival to a few buddies and they bought without looking at price. I'm 40 hours deep and have only gotten to 2nd boss. With 4 or so people it takes a little to gear sometimes.

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                                                                [–]heyboyhey 17 points18 points  (11 children)

                                                                How come this particular survival game has been so successful? It reminds me of Age of Conan when I look at clips, but that game didn't do as well as this.

                                                                [–]Mipper 29 points30 points  (0 children)

                                                                I played Conan exiles (for about 10 hours) with a friend just before we started playing Valheim.

                                                                Conan is just kind of frustrating, the combat is very clunky and you run out of stamina quickly. The building is fine, but not fantastic; the terrain is not destructible . And the atmosphere in Valheim is just generally more enjoyable, but that point is pretty subjective.

                                                                As well as all that the progression/exploration feels better in Valheim. I personally prefer the runescape/elder scrolls way of leveling rather than just having skill points and xp. The map is already uncovered(and static) in Conan, which makes it less interesting to explore, in my opinion.

                                                                [–]InfernoZeus 13 points14 points  (1 child)

                                                                Assuming you're talking about Conan Exiles, it doesn't help that it's $40 (excluding sales) on Steam. It might not seem like much, but that's double the price of Valheim, which can make a difference if you're trying to convince friends to play with you.

                                                                [–]IamTHEwolfYEAH 6 points7 points  (4 children)

                                                                Almost all survival games set their focus on pvp (since that's what keeps the community going for long periods of time). Valheim removed pvp and focused on a progression path through the game. With clear goals and a clearer path of progression it's much more fun to play as a pve game.

                                                                I love conan exiles, but for people who aren't seasoned survival game players, the game does little to point you in a direction. You know that you should be progressing through the tiers of gear and building materiels, but why? In Valheim you want to get to the next boss, and progress further. In any other survival game, it's just because that's what you're supposed to do.

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                                                                  [–]ApulMadeekAut 19 points20 points  (9 children)

                                                                  Just hit 130 hours and beat the 5th boss last night. Time to sail and explore the entire map!

                                                                  [–]SpaceballsTheReply 8 points9 points  (8 children)

                                                                  I've been searching for ages trying to find the last boss. Beat the first four in my first few days with the game, and now it's been weeks with no sign of the fifth. Where did you find the location runestone? I've scoured so many Plains and have found nothing but hundreds and hundreds of goblins.

                                                                  [–]ApulMadeekAut 9 points10 points  (3 children)

                                                                  We stumbled across the actual altar before finding the location rune. It's a giant stone altar that looks like curling fingers. We finally found the rune getting the 5th totem. It looks like a stone henge piece standing alone. 2 upright stones with a horizontal stone across the top, the rune was below that.

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                                                                      [–]FapCitus 199 points200 points  (23 children)

                                                                      I have almost 70 hours on this game now, I can honestly say that this is the best early access games I have ever played. This should be the golden standard how you push out a early access. So excited for the upcoming content even if it’s months away.

                                                                      [–]majorjunk0 90 points91 points  (6 children)

                                                                      I think they said they're about 90% done with game play and mechanics and 50% content, lore, bosses, etc.

                                                                      Early release is going to be better when content like bosses mobs and bioms are missing rather than actual game play.

                                                                      [–]Tantric989 63 points64 points  (2 children)

                                                                      This makes sense and is how it should be. The character mechanics, development, weapon types, etc. are all there. Sailing is smooth, building is smooth, etc. It all makes sense and is very playable as-is.

                                                                      Where it's definitely still in early access is like zones (some biomes are completely empty), sub-bosses/named enemys (which they are planning), and more variety in building. For example, sloped wood panels (not just roof), more types of roof than thatch, a wood panel for the 26 and 45 degree roof caps (to finally close that little opening), flat roofs, angled core wood beams, windows, railings, more furniture, etc.

                                                                      I feel wary about levying that criticism but the game needs more variety in building and I'm sure they're working on bringing it in.

                                                                      [–]Ls777 25 points26 points  (1 child)

                                                                      I'm sure they're working on bringing it in.

                                                                      The first update they are planning on releasing is actually building focused

                                                                      [–]Tantric989 7 points8 points  (0 children)

                                                                      Yeah I figured as much, it's kind of glaring as somebody who builds a lot in these kinds of games, you have an idea in your head but not the ability to make it into the game. Building so far has been a lot of like... "oh, that's not possible, guess I'll do it this way." It seemed pretty clear there was room to add a lot to it.

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                                                                          [–]Adius_Omega 156 points157 points  (3 children)

                                                                          Lately in real life I feel like I can’t escape certain things that I have no control over, like I want to go home to a place that I’m not sure even exists.

                                                                          But coming back from a mining excursion after a couple hours of exploring I really do feel like I’m heading home with the boys after a long days work.

                                                                          [–]euphoric_barley 13 points14 points  (0 children)

                                                                          That’s a real good way of putting it.

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                                                                            [–]Cthulhu_Was_Right 604 points605 points  (83 children)

                                                                            Seeing this game blow up like this reminds me of the early days of Minecraft. Its great to see success for such a small studio, and I hope the popularity lets them keep building in systems and content.

                                                                            At least it isn't written in Java. :)

                                                                            [–]Spekingur 417 points418 points  (51 children)

                                                                            Counter-point: Minecraft's modding community flourished because it was written in Java.

                                                                            [–]theFrenchDutch 21 points22 points  (0 children)

                                                                            It's a Unity game which does mean it's easily moddable as well thanks to C#.

                                                                            [–]letsgoiowa 120 points121 points  (43 children)

                                                                            Valheim already has a pretty great modding scene because it's built in Unity. How do I know? I'm running a bunch of mods right now.

                                                                            [–]FDJT 74 points75 points  (2 children)

                                                                            I mean, it's a very similar situation to what Java was in 2010/2011 when Minecraft started catching traction.

                                                                            [–]UnusualFruitHammock 28 points29 points  (6 children)

                                                                            What is there besides minor tweaks? The biggest I've seen is Valheim plus and its really just some tweaks to existing systems.

                                                                            [–]LordZeya 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                                                                            All the mods right now are just QoL tweaks though, aren't they? I went on Nexus mods and that's all I saw a week or two ago.

                                                                            It'll take a little more time before people actually add content via mods, but I'm sure it'll happen sooner rather than later.

                                                                            [–]Klockworth 46 points47 points  (27 children)

                                                                            Yes, but Minecraft mods go well beyond what’s offered in a Unity game. Entire gameplay mechanics and backend frameworks can be changed. I mean, there’s a Minecraft server that built a 1:1 scale remake of Made in Abyss with all the monsters, curses, and artifacts added in. They also setup a sort of real-estate system that allows users to stake claims and own property

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                                                                                [–]Knuda 10 points11 points  (0 children)

                                                                                It's not the fault of java, it's the fault of mojang just not optimizing the game at all and having the GC constantly doing shit. Check out the sodium mod.

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                                                                                  [–]ihabtom 96 points97 points  (27 children)

                                                                                  Seems to scratch a lot of different itches for me. WoW'y enough without feeling like a constant grind to kill boars, building is fun and intuitive, setting is gorgeous and keeps me wanting to explore. I've really settled into it.

                                                                                  [–]zilong 36 points37 points  (25 children)

                                                                                  But grinding boars is required, especially if you want to upgrade your equipment. Unless there's another way to get leather scraps that I haven't figured out, yet.

                                                                                  [–]fade_like_a_sigh 24 points25 points  (4 children)

                                                                                  Once you get to the third biome, the material you mine to get that tier of metal will also net you a reasonable supply of leather scraps.

                                                                                  Combine that with hunting the odd boar you see when out and about foraging for other stuff anyway like berries for potions, and you shouldn't have to do too much grinding.

                                                                                  But yeah, early game you're gonna want to kill every boar you come across.

                                                                                  [–]ihabtom 54 points55 points  (16 children)

                                                                                  Domesticate the boars.

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                                                                                        [–]definetlydifferently 100 points101 points  (32 children)

                                                                                        My friends and I spent the other night playing hide and seek in our own village. Building yourself into the floor of your house shouldn't be this fun.

                                                                                        The rest of the game is amazing too, obviously. But building is so good.

                                                                                        [–]nhdemtre 35 points36 points  (6 children)

                                                                                        Usually I'm awful at designing and building structures in games so that turns me off of it, but Valheim I find myself losing hours just sitting there building different buildings for storage, forging, animals, etc. The building is so goddamn good.

                                                                                        [–][deleted] 40 points41 points  (4 children)

                                                                                        First Devs that basically enforce smart building though the rules of the workshop and smoke

                                                                                        AND give you building set that clips together and makes sense like it's 4 walls and a roof.

                                                                                        And then you start to learn that if put down beams on the ground as a foundation everything works better and then discover more stuff and before you know it you have isengard and you leveled the black forest...

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                                                                                          [–]Andrakisjl 92 points93 points  (44 children)

                                                                                          Just had a casual glance over the game, would it be a reasonably accurate simplification to call it Viking Minecraft?

                                                                                          Looks pretty great

                                                                                          [–]shawnaroo 41 points42 points  (9 children)

                                                                                          It's definitely got some of the same vibes as minecraft. Exploration/resource collection/crafting/building. Most of those function somewhat differently than in minecraft, but they're all compelling in their own way.

                                                                                          It's got some weird interface issues/quirks that I'd say stem from it being in early access. When I first played it, it was fairly confusing and sometimes frustrating, and I sort of felt like I hated it. But then afterwards I couldn't stop thinking about playing it more, and so I powered through that a bit longer until I learned how most of it works and have been having a lot of fun with it since.

                                                                                          [–]Ryulightorb 14 points15 points  (8 children)

                                                                                          the only bad thing about building so far for me is i tried to dig a massive hole to build in but at some point you can't level it out or dig because it creates more land.

                                                                                          It's great though super impressed

                                                                                          [–]KeyworkPredator 17 points18 points  (6 children)

                                                                                          Yeah every spot of terrain can only be raised or lowered by a set amount in relation to itself. So even if you can find a huge mountain range or very low area that was procedural generated, you can't necessarily take a random area in the meadow up to or down to some of the natural height of landscapes you find.

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                                                                                            [–]boomer478 91 points92 points  (12 children)

                                                                                            would it be a reasonably accurate simplification to call it Viking Minecraft?

                                                                                            There's some story and lore to collect. There's quite a bit more gameplay and mechanics around building and combat (buildings need support, combat is whatever you want to make of it, different weapons, playstyles, etc), but overall not an inaccurate statement.

                                                                                            [–]cepxico 94 points95 points  (10 children)

                                                                                            I'd say it's closer to a 3D viking terraria.

                                                                                            [–]ThatOneGuy1294 11 points12 points  (0 children)

                                                                                            The combat is honestly sort of like Dark Souls. You can't do anything except walk if you're out of stamina, you can either dodge roll, block, parry, or mix them, and every attack has a fairly clear telegraph.

                                                                                            [–]letsgoiowa 12 points13 points  (1 child)

                                                                                            To me, it scratches the same itch as Skyrim does in terms of the joy of exploration. It feels like multiplayer Skyrim to my lizard brain.

                                                                                            [–]beenoc 11 points12 points  (0 children)

                                                                                            Viking Minecraft with hints of Terraria, with the boss progression. The boss progression is actually closer to Starbound's IMO, but that's less familiar to most.

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                                                                                              [–]Antigone6 54 points55 points  (26 children)

                                                                                              I have over 150 hours in this game and just about to start looking for the final boss before we move on to the next game. I love this game.

                                                                                              But.

                                                                                              Myself and my group of friends are taking a much-needed break from what normally would’ve been another 50+ hours of gameplay to wait for stability/optimization patches. I went from 100+ FPS, to 70+, to ~30, to finally 5-6 FPS in our base during an event, with a 2070Super. My brother, with a 3080, is just barely pulling better numbers than that. All because of the way terraforming works, more or less.

                                                                                              Alongside that, with the way connections to the world work, we’ve had far too many instances of someone dying because the world is adjusting to new people in the area. Hell, I was dead the entirety of the Bonemass fight because he appeared in front of me suddenly and I spent the rest of the fight trying to get my body back.

                                                                                              I love, love, love this game and can’t wait for the eventual fixes, but as of right now, those issues are starting to push us into frustrated territory instead of fun.

                                                                                              Edit: this is also coming from someone who has never played a crafting/building game. It’s fantastic and should be considered for anyone on the fence, and anyone who even remotely enjoys the style of game.

                                                                                              [–]code_and_coffee 23 points24 points  (2 children)

                                                                                              I went from 100+ FPS, to 70+, to ~30, to finally 5-6 FPS in our base during an event, with a 2070Super.

                                                                                              Yeah this started happening to my friends and I, and we decided to branch out into separate areas and build our own bases to try and counter this issue. Definitely not ideal but better than taking the performance hit or having to stop playing!

                                                                                              [–]MortalJohn 13 points14 points  (10 children)

                                                                                              to finally 5-6 FPS in our base

                                                                                              The problem is given the level of freedom players have to design their homes you're always going to hit into that performance drop when you've got dozens of houses loaded together with mobs spawning all around you. Hit F2 to get a FPS counter up, and also check how many assets are loaded at one time. At some point you just have to make a personal benchmark, and decide how big can you really go before you hit a fps wall.

                                                                                              Still the recent addition of Vulkan gave me a performance gain which was nice, even though my cursor loves to disappear occasionally now, that's early access for ya.

                                                                                              [–]Antigone6 8 points9 points  (3 children)

                                                                                              Our issue is terraforming. We have 2 large buildings and a couple of small ones which shouldn’t affect FPS all that much, as it doesn’t in our other area with 2 large castles and no terraforming.

                                                                                              It sucks because having moats, pits, and level ground is something we all want, but the more of that we do, the worse all our FPS gets.

                                                                                              And I know it’s early access, which is why I prefaced with my love for the game and added my understanding that updates will come.

                                                                                              [–]ScalaZen 8 points9 points  (2 children)

                                                                                              Terraforming is the issue. The way the game works is every rock, grass and section of ground is an instance. Hitting F2 shows the instances of the area. Which is normally around ~3000-4000 instances. When leveling and removing trees & rocks the game keeps all the instances and whatever you constructed.

                                                                                              Someone made a more detailed report about this on r/Valheim. I'll edit when i find it.

                                                                                              My base is 11,000 instances and i get a 15-20 fps drop.

                                                                                              E: https://reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/lqcr88/reason_behind_low_fps_and_huge_instance_numbers/

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                                                                                                  [–]Catch_022 34 points35 points  (47 children)

                                                                                                  How is this for single player only?

                                                                                                  I generally don’t like survival games but a bit more guided gameplay like subnautica would be great.

                                                                                                  [–]shawnaroo 57 points58 points  (9 children)

                                                                                                  It's not really guided at all, but most of my playing has been solo and it's been plenty of fun. I don't think there's anything in the game that you can't do solo.

                                                                                                  [–]spiffybaldguy 16 points17 points  (3 children)

                                                                                                  to add on to u/shawnaroo is saying here, the game scales based on player counts. I did the boss with 4 players on 1st boss. fought him on my server same gear, was able to solo pretty easily. It seems like they become hp sponges with more players (and maybe some added defense buffing).

                                                                                                  edit: fixed r/ to u/, because apparently I shouldn't be a redditor today lol

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                                                                                                    [–]Doc_Faust 20 points21 points  (10 children)

                                                                                                    I really like it solo (though I also play with other people sometimes). It feels goal-oriented in a way I'm really enjoying.

                                                                                                    [–]LyzbietCorwi 12 points13 points  (1 child)

                                                                                                    It feels goal-oriented in a way I'm really enjoying.

                                                                                                    That's something that attracted me at first and what made it stand out for me in the survival genre.

                                                                                                    I'm not the most creative person, so I don't have a lot of creativity to build stuff in Minecraft or Terraria.

                                                                                                    In Valheim, you're told about killing the bosses right from the start, and this kind of guidance is really great for me.

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                                                                                                      [–]mr_guffman 21 points22 points  (0 children)

                                                                                                      50 hours solo, so far. It’s great.

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                                                                                                        [–]Racthoh 27 points28 points  (3 children)

                                                                                                        Killed myself chopping down a tree and wife almost died in her sleep because of the smoke from our fire.

                                                                                                        10/10 would recommend.

                                                                                                        [–]DanielTeague 8 points9 points  (2 children)

                                                                                                        Smoke is no joke, I got caught in a death loop from a bad bed placement in my home. I'd keep waking up and getting stuck in my roof then suffocating in the smoke until the game finally spawned me at a certain angle to escape.

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