Highlights
Valheim's grind can be slow, but world modifiers and mods can help speed up progress for solo players and multiplayer groups.
Valheim's linear progression serves to adequately prepare players for individual biomes and boss battles, yet it restricts the scope of exploration and decision-making. This limitation could be addressed by introducing more diverse and optional content such as additional bosses, weapons, armor, and biomes, enabling players to experience greater freedom and variety.
The progression in Valheim can be quite slow as it involves several time-consuming tasks such as building fortified bases, exploring the map, acquiring food buffs, and gathering resources for crafting better gear. This can be particularly tedious for solo players. However, a recent update has introduced world modifiers which allow players to customize the overall pacing, difficulty, and survival elements of the game, making the grind more manageable. Multiplayer, mods, and custom world modifiers offer a more efficient way to make progress in Valheim. Despite these features, the grind remains fairly linear.
Though Valheim's linear nature has its advantages, ensuring that players are adequately prepared for each biome and boss fights, it also allows players who prefer a slow-paced gameplay to fully explore and conquer each biome without the need for revisiting. However, the drawback is that first-time players have limited opportunities to deviate from the intended path.
Valheim Is an Extremely Linear Game
The order of major bosses in Valheim can be challenging for players who prefer to explore at their own pace. Additionally, players who are searching for traveling merchants might encounter difficulty due to the significant variations in biome difficulty, which can discourage exploration in certain areas. To provide more flexibility in player progression, world modifiers and unofficial mods for Valheim can be utilized. However, it is important to note that using these features comes with a potential risk of detracting from the overall game experience, as it requires carefully navigating the game's mechanics.
Valheim's linear grind is directly linked to its lack of meaningful optional content. Unlike benchmark games like Minecraft, which offer freedom of choice in progression elements, Valheim forces players to constantly focus on core survival aspects like food, armor, and weapons. To improve the game's pacing, Valheim should introduce optional bosses, additional tiers of weapons and armor, and new biomes. The Leviathan monsters in Valheim demonstrate the potential value of optional encounters, but currently, few other experiences have a similar impact. Future updates to Valheim should aim to address this issue.
Valheim should consider boosting the impact of player skills as a potential solution. Among the limited noticeable skills in the game, the jumping skill stands out as it can be upgraded relatively quickly compared to other more specialized skills. However, many other skills in Valheim are challenging to level up and offer minimal benefits, making them less appealing to prioritize for improvement. It is clear that most skills in Valheim could benefit from an enhancement, which would provide players with an alternative way to progress and potentially make the boss order less linear. Valheim is currently available for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
