This is an update to my post from 4 days ago, where I told some stories about my first day landing in Ashlands and how I mislead I felt by the community! I was led to believe this was going to be a brutal, horrifying experience that would make me consider quitting the game long before finding the boss. After how rough I've felt Mistlands is (not because of difficulty, but because of the pervasive annoyances,) I totally believed that consensus.

A note before I continue: I'm not a particularly good or skilled player. I think I'm extraordinarily average, so I genuinely thought this would be a brutal experience.

Unpopular opinion: I walk away from my Ashlands experience instead feeling like it might be a candidate for my favorite zone in the game. From start to finish, it was simply fun. It was very active with a constant sense of progress and no slow, boring parts. I do still wonder if I just got very lucky in my run. I'll leave that to you all to tell me.

My Experience Summary

My full experience was probably about 10 hours long, making it the shortest biome in the game (for me), along with the meadows. My time can be summarized as follows:

• Hour 1: setting sail, approaching, landing and setting up initial 2 portals.
• Hours 2-3: venturing deeper, establishing portals 3 and 4, getting into 2 hectic group battles, finding putrid hole, unlocking stone portals
• Hours 4-5: taking down first fortress, busting open the tower gate with a battering ram, establishing portal 5
• Hour 6: crafting new weapons and gear at base, revamping several key portals to allow metals to transport now that I had 10 molten cores. Getting more metal to ashlands.
• Hours 7-8: Finding and conquering 2nd fortress, acquiring Jade, mining some flametal, cooking. Dropping portal 6. Found boss altar.
• Hour 9: boss prep. I thought I was being smart by building 3 large columns to host 3 ballista's over the top of the coliseum. Spent some time crafting the metal springs, killing another fuling camp to get 100 more black metal to craft 3 ballistas and 120 missiles. I assumed these would passively deal roughly 100 x 120 = 12,000 damage to the boss while I fought it inside. Silly me.
• Hour 10: fighting and killing Fader. Probably took about 25 minutes. I portaled home to sleep through one night, but that caused him to heal back about 20% of his health.

My Biome Rankings So Far

• S-Tier: Meadows, Black Forest, Swamps, Ashlands
• B-Tier: Plains
• C-Tier: Mountains
• D-Tier: Mistalnds

There's virtually nothing I'd change about the S-tier zones. I think they are each nearly perfection for what they're supposed to be. I don't have many problems with the Plains, it's just not as fun or interesting as the others. Not even enough to be alone in A-tier. I do have some problems with the Mountains, and more with the Mistlands, but this post isn't about that. This is about the ASHLANDS!

Dying in Valheim vs Ashlands

Hearing the worst set my expectations low and caused me to prepare to the extreme, and that was probably for the best, but going in blind, I'm quite shocked by how doable the zone was. I'm most surprised that all of my 1,800 hours of overall Valheim experience (70% of which was surely just building) actually allowed me to adequately prepare and not die much at all in this notoriously difficult zone. In all other zones, I've easily died dozens upon dozens of times during my first foray into them. That's fine. It's what I've come to expect. Most things in Valheim kill you until you learn how to deal with them.

But my total Ashlands death count was a meager 4.

1. I died once to a warrior skeleton hidden in the dark when I wasn't looking (told that story in my previous post.)
2. Once to lava after I fell while mining Flametal. Did NOT expect instant death.
3. Once while trying to recover that corpse... Turns out you need to bring a hammer and some wood to build to get close enough.
4. And once during the Fader fight, but from my own ballista missile! I learned the hard way that they do friendly fire...

Everything I loved about the Ashlands

• The slow advancement through the zone, like you're invading a land, was a super refreshing change of pace.
• Killing spawners from a distance by lobbing fire staff blasts was fun.
• Being able to actually see where I was going and where I wanted to go made it feel so much better than Mistlands, even if the zone didn't have any of the Mistlands beauty.
• The progression with all the new materials was phenomenal. I was constantly acquiring new materials and unlocking new recipes. I was always excited to run back to base to check out what just became available. This felt much more rapid and enjoyable previous zones, which helped offset the slow nature of physical progression through the zone. Even material costs for gear and weapons was much lower, making the whole endeavor less grindy than other zones. I naturally accumulated everything i needed just by naturally exploring and pressing onward. (Worth noting I played on 1.5x loot drops for this run.)
• Unlocking molten cores to create portals that you can transport metals through was a complete game changer. This was such a good design call for this zone, especially since it kind of wanted you to bring copper and iron along for the ride to build a stone cutter and shield generators and...battering rams!? It was extremely satisfying to update old primary portals to be able to transport metals. I played this run with a bronze base in the Black Forest, an isolated mountains base which served as my primary sleeping space and cooking hub, and a plains base near Yag for all Plains+ armor and weapon crafting. It was fantastic to finally be able to connect them and fully craft everything I had been wanting. It was also great to be able to bring more metals into Ashlands. Overall just brought a lot of freedom to the play. I'll never choose the allow-metals option for portals on a world now just because it would diminish how good this phase of the game feels.
• Fortresses were awesome. Can't get in from any side, so I built a ladder up to the top and started raining down fireballs on everyone inside. Super satisfying, but they had plenty of return fire. Sooooo, I have shield generators right? I set up one a ways back so that the shield radius would be just in front of me, allowing me to fire at them without getting fired up. Probably obvious, but made me feel super clever, which is a highly rewarding player experience. Took me a while to realize there was a spawner inside. I just thought there were a LOT of enemies. Very satisfying to kill and take control, and such great unique rewards to craft unique weapons! I only found and did 2 fortresses, but that was enough for me to make 4 new weapons.
• Weapons: I didn't get to test most stuff. I stuck with magic. I was a bit underwhelmed by the staff of Fracturing and the Dundr. They both felt similar, like they were better at close range. They worked well to kill Askavins up in my face, but I didn't find them overwhelmingly better than the Staff of Embers even in their good use cases. Staff of the Wild, on the other hand, was a BEAST. That was a game changer. Trollstav was hilarious and awesome. The Ashcloak was a fantastic addition to finally give a cloak with some actual armor. And the Light armor set bonus looked legitimately amazing, though I stuck with my magic armor. I didn't test or try any of the melee weapons.
• I really loved that they added Dvergers and little outposts into the zone. And I loved the abandoned vineyards. It was such an eerie piece of environmental storytelling, to hint at how this land used to be before whatever happened to it.
• The overall fiery ambience was a mood I thoroughly enjoyed. I loved the haziness created by the "heat", the constant ash falling from the sky, the occasional fire arrows raining from the sky, the lava flow cutting off your path.
• I loved the absolute abundance of grausten. I loved that the lava blobs blow up and leave behind like 70 grausten.
• Loved the flametal spires over the lava, and how they sank like the leviathans after a certain point. I wasn't even mad about dying that way, I thought it was hilarious. This was probably my favorite ore to mine in the game.
• Fader was my favorite boss fight so far (more on him at the end.)
• Lastly, it was such a good call after Mistlands to make this region flat AND to have the fortresses emit a giant green beam into the sky to indicate they're there. It's so refreshing to be able to actually see where you need to go and then figure out how to get there. I grew so so so frustrated not being able to find dungeons in the Mistlands and then learning that I was literally 50m from them but just couldn't/didn't see them. Ashlands was oddly a breath of fresh air in this regard.
• I enjoyed the linearity of the ashlands experience. Land > follow the only real path through the lava flow > leads me to 2 fortresses, one of which contains the boss rune > continue the path to the boss.

Fader Fight

I'll end by talking about the Starscourge Radahn Fader fight.

Man I loved everything about this boss experience. The circular coliseum setup was simple and to the point. The 3 bell altars inside satisfyingly built the tension as you hung a bell from each.

I thought I was going to be clever and setup a bunch of artillery outside to fire away at the boss. I thought that's what catapults would be for, but I guess they need to be manned to use? I never ended up using them. Not sure what their intended purpose is. Regardless, I had ballistas from the Mistlands, so I went with those. I fancied building 50 of them lined all around the coliseum, but the material costs were...extensive. I grew tired of the endeavor after smelting 120 black metal, or enough to build and fully load 3 of them.

I wasn't sure if they'd be able to see through the openings of the coliseum, so I built large columns and placed them up over the top. I figured they'd remain undisturbed and deliver a large chunk of damage to the boss. Boy was I wrong on both accounts. I should have realized something was up when I stepped inside to summon the boss and noticed arrows whizzing by my head.

Anyway, I won't bore you with the bloody details since y'all know how the fight goes. But I was enthralled from the moment he came crashing down from the sky like a meteor like Radahn in Elden Ring.

I had my staff of protection, my staff of the wild, and my ember staff. Popped fire, frost and poison resist pots, not sure what to expect, as well as a potion of lingering eitr and ratatosk flask. Kept protection up, summoned as many vines as I could near the boss, but they always seemed to get roasted rather quickly by his abundance of fiery green spikes. Nevertheless, I just kept circling and casting, slowly whittling him down.

I was once again reminded of the beauty of magic being on a separate resource from stamina. I always seemed to have stamina to run and dodge when needed because casting spells costs no stamina. I cannot imagine doing this fight with anything other than magic. Sounds brutal. I kind of hope magic isn't too effective in Deep North because it just feels too OP. Not complaining really though, because the fight was super fun as a caster.

All was going well...until, standing still, I took an arrow to the knee head. Betrayed by my own engineering, my ballista turned rogue and targeted me, 1-shotting my sorry ass.

This marked my only death of the fight. I returned with Fader around 70% health. I kept at him until about 20%, when my rested buff was running low and it was becoming dark. So I planned to retreat to my portal. It turned out to be a good call to hide my portal behind a small mountain because, well, by this point half of the entire coliseum had been completely obliterated, along with all of my other constructions.

I portaled out, slept the night, and returned. Gah! He healed by about 20%. Nothing to do but return to the fight. It started to become harder to damage him, it seemed I was spending more time running any anything. But slowly but surely, my combo of fines and fireballs took him out, brining my all-to-brief Ashlands adventure to a close.

Closing Summary

Overall, this fight and this zone gave me a combat thrill I hadn't really gotten from Valheim before now, which made the experience quite memorable and unique. I'm left feeling a little sad it's over, but excited for the first time about the upcoming Deep North.

Anyway, just wanted to share and hear from you all if you had similar or greatly differing Ashlands experiences. I'm mostly curious if Ashlands is always this straightforward, or if it can actually be as difficult to find the boss as it can be for Plains or Mistlands. Let me know in the comments!

WTH, guys? I've heard the horror stories over the years, so I feared the worst. But did they perhaps nerf Ashlands since its initial release? Because it's been surprisingly bearable and, dare I say...fun, so far. Especially compared to the Mistlands.

Just wanted to share my experiences so far, so you experienced players can either validate that this is what I can continue to expect or you can shake your head, call me a sweet summer child, and hint that I have no idea what's in store for me still.

I've generally avoided spoilers about Ashlands. Here's all I knew going in:

• Ceaseless fighting, endless hordes of mobs, no chance to breath.
• Some goal is to make your way to some kind of target (not sure what), take control of it, THEN you can build a safety base and press onward from there.
• I've heard advice cautioning to take the sailing approach slowly rather than racing to the shores.

I adopted magic in the Mistlands, like I usually do, because it just feels so much stronger than everything else and feels like by far the easiest way to take down The Queen. I approached with all 4 magic weapons, a bow with frost arrows, and a shield+Frostner. The plan was mostly to toggle between magic and Frostner.

What I love about magic so far is its separation from Stamina. Because purely cost Eityr, all stamina is reserved for defense and mobility, unlike the offense/defense discipline you must maintain with other weapons. The ability to just keep moving in a controlled space, dodging freely as needed was super helpful against packs of enemies in Mistlands, and so far feels incredibly helpful in Ashlands.

The Approach

I already had several outposts down south, so I built a Drakkar, loaded it with 25 copper and iron to go with my 5 shield cores I was newly able to make because I figured these shield generator things would be very necessary. I popped that Moder buff because the winds weren't in my favor and set sail.

The whole trip took less than 3 minutes because I was literally already on the boiling water border. I started at full sail, but quickly lowered to half mast as I carefully navigated between the rocky spires. Slower = better, I heard. I nearly got stuck between 3 spires, when 2 vultures attacked me from the sky while an upgraded serpent thing came at my ship from below. Definitely panicked for a hot sec before rallying to focus on the vultures first. My instinct going in to hot hell land was to try the Frost Staff on enemies first. Luckily, this melted the vultures in seconds.

My instinct from past serpent fights was to use my bow, but I really struggled to get a good consistent angle on this thing. The Drakkar is huge, and this serpent was constantly right below my boat. I really started to worry how much damage my boat was taking. So I pivoted to test the viability of dropping a workbench on these rocky spires that surrounded me. With a bit of maneuvering, I was able to drop one and mercifully repair my ship. Now I felt better about having time to deal with this thing. Eventually I got a clear angle on it and tried the same Frost Staff approach. It basically melted the creature in one full bar of Eityr. A small panic but a victory!

I couldn't quite manage to recover my workbench, but that was fine, I brought about 100 wood.

I was honestly close from there. I did need to reverse out and then paddle forward a bit more before I saw shore for the first time. Distant PTSD memories of sailing to Swamps for the first time and watching my boat get toasted fired in my brain. I opted to dock at a nearby rock spire instead and dropped my first portal there. I regrouped back at base to get full rested buff, eat, and then attempt the landing the first time.

The Landing

It was...quiet? I genuinely expected there to be over 100 enemies based on stories. I was a bit shocked to learn I could actually land on the main land and walk around peacefully without encountering anything. I didn't think that was even a possibility.

So I summoned up 3 skeleton friends, popped shields on all of us, then set off. There was a super ominous looking giant Grausten structure off to the east. I was scared, so I dropped a portal on the mainland first, figuring 2 portals home are better than 1. My plan was to be slow and redundant.

I approached the stone castle thingy and fought off 2 skeleton warrior enemies, who weren't bad at all. 2 blasts of fire staff and my skeletons murdered them.

To my surprise, there were no enemies in the stone castle either! Huh!? It was actually a peaceful deserted...restaurant/vineyard? There were tables littered about, and grape vines and berries up and down the walls. Strangely serene. I was properly confused at this point because my experience was not matching the stories at all. I actually considered whether or not my game was bugged somehow.

Anyway, I migrated my portal to this stone area and setup a shield generator there. I loved the giant pink barrier glow of it, which served as a helpful home base beacon as I ventured deeper into the Ashlands.

Venturing Deeper

I'm nearing the end of my story because I really haven't gone far yet, but as I gained confidence, I did set out to more aggressively explore. I wandered inward, taking it slowly. Quickly encountered my first Morgen. These seemed bigger and stronger, like they may be the Trolls of the biome. But with 3 skeles to distract, and the freedom to keep moving because of free stamina while using magic made them very easy to deal with 1 on 1. I used only magic, a mix of fire and frost. Couldn't really tell which was better against it, as neither were super effective, but both worked well enough.

Encountered a light mix of mobs, including an Askavin or 2, as I made my way to a very tall stone tower. I abandoned my skele friends as I climbed up to the top. I don't think the tower was anything, just a structure to climb, but it gave me a great vantage point. From the top, I saw a few glowy pink/red spires in various distances. I tried to arc my fire staff to see if I could hit them from huge range. Turns out I could. I didn't know if they were destructible or not, but I gave them each a good 10 casts and learned that they were. I also took a moment to have fun lobbing fireballs at skeleton warriors in the lava. It was like playing an aiming mini game from up top this tower and was quite fun.

I went back down, feeling super confident at this point. But Valheim has a habit of humbling the confident player. My shield was off at the moment, and I thought it was quiet and safe, so I took a moment to read a notification on my phone and immediately saw DIED flash across my screen. One of those maga skeleton warriors I aggroed from up top swung by to tell me how he felt about that and 1-shot me. Good to know they 1-shot me without a shield in my mage armor.

I ate food at base, rested, and portaled back, which was nice and easy, got my corpse and took my own revenge. Then continued my journey.

Ok I Can See How This Can Get Crazy

I started to understand the lava flow posed a sort of terrain puzzle, blocking my way (I think). I skirted along it, trying to see where I could get across. Thought about building across, but decided to keep exploring first.

Oh look, a 1 star Askavin! Let's give him a shot. Skeles, attack!

Oh, a 2nd 1 star Askavin hidden right next to him. No biggie, cast and move. I know enough to not make the rookie mistake of sprinting away like a maniac. I just keep walking in contolled circles, dodge rolling when needed.

But Ashlands decided it was over my conservative gameplay style and sent the army at me anyway. Before I knew it, there were 4 of the easy fire zombies charging at me, I had arrow barrages coming at me from 2 different directions indicating Skeleton Marksmen, a 1 star Morgen showed up, a couple warriors with swords, and just as i started thinning out the easy enemies, this giant flying fiery feathery thing whose name I couldn't even make out at the time swooped in to join the fray.

Good LORD!

My skeletons did not last very long at all, and I knew it didn't make sense to resummon them. It time to just keep moving and see what I could do on my own. I'm not going to lie, it got legitimately dicey several times. I went through the gamut of potions and elixirs. I had Ratastok and lightfood elixirs already popped because they're my new best friend for movement. I popped fire resist because I assumed something here did major fire damage. And I used major health and minor eityr elixirs twice over the course of the ensuing 5 minute fight. Also popped Bonemass buff for the first time in a very long time.

I honestly should have died, as I survived with literally 1 HP after taking an actual non-shielded, partially blocked hit from the Valkyrie. Despite being a magic user, I was milking my stamina for all it was worth. But I just kept moving, slowly, rolling only when absolutely needed, and casting fire blasts at the group, slowly withering them down. Plains trinket was huge. It must have procced 5 or 6 times across the fight, which healed for 600 HP.

Eventually they all fell, and I was left shocked I survived, but I felt a rush of satisfaction and fun that I hadn't felt in Valheim since maybe my early days playing in the Black Forest, aggroing the whole damn forest. Or early Swamps adventures.

I was so hesitant to do Ashlands because of how annoying I found Mistlands over the past few years, and the complaints I had heard. But so far, I'm LOVING this zone!

Mage gameplay is what makes it bearable, though, I think. If I were melee, I don't see how I could have survived. I do swap to frostner to take out some of the skeleton dudes, as that seems quicker, especially while I'm letting my Eityr recover, but against everything? Pretty sure I'd get murdered until I learn every enemy's attack pattern. But when you can just keep strafe moving as a mage, it's not too hard to avoid everything while continuing to deal damage.

Anyway, that's my story so far, just wanted to share in case others were like me and feared even trying Ashlands due to all the horror stories. It's quite fun so far, though I'm sure I've not even scratched the surface.

So I'll leave it to y'all to tell me if I've basically had "the Ashlands experience" so far, or if I can expect to be eating these words in the near future. Thanks for listening 😄