Valheim is a Viking-themed survival game that has taken the internet by storm. Whether players are sailing through the open ocean or mining ore in the forest, Valheim provides a stunningly beautiful adventure. It’s very impressive for an early-access title. However, there are some aspects of this game that make no sense.
Yes, Valheim is an early-access game, and yes, it shouldn’t be held to such a high standard. But there are a few things about it that can be just baffling. And these issues aren’t because Valheim is technically still in development. In fact, most of them can be easily addressed. Like inconsistent portal rules, shelter requirements, and dead-end dungeons, to name a few.
10 Exploding Loot
It’s pretty clear that Valheim isn’t meant to be the most realistic survival game out there. In fact, part of what makes this title such a raging success is its fantasy-like Norse setting. Players will spend the majority of their time on activities such as hunting game with a bow, battling enemies with a spear, or butchering livestock with a knife for important materials. The loot from these creatures is your key to success. But the way in which these items appear looks a bit odd even by mythology standards. As soon as you take down an enemy, they’ll literally explode in a puff of pink smoke. Pink! And the only remaining trace of your foe will be some pieces of loot on the ground. This is definitely a weird gameplay choice created by Valheim’s developers.
9 Free Repairs
Everything in Valheim will cost you. Need a forge? Time to go mine and melt down a bunch of ore. Want to upgrade armor? You’ll probably need to hunt some deer for their pelts and smelt more metal. And don’t even think about building a log cabin until you’ve chopped down about a dozen trees. However, the single most popular quirk of this game also makes the least sense: repairs are free.
Yep, you can break your gear over and over, and repairing it won’t cost any resources. This also applies to structures, crafting stations, and even longships. No need to stress if anything gets demolished. When players are required to gather every possible resource to craft even the simplest items, why should repairs cost nothing? This aspect of Valheim is definitely convenient and saves players a lot of time. But it still doesn’t make sense.
8 Horseless Carts
In Valheim, you get to play as a fearless Viking who can survive in a rugged wilderness that is filled with powerful enemies. So why should you have to pull your own dang cart? That just doesn’t seem fair. Sure, the wooden cart is a convenient way to gather huge batches of resources that players wouldn’t be able to carry home in their inventory. But there’s something undignified about running through the woods with a cart strapped to your hips. So, where are the horses? Fans of this early-access game don’t think mounts are missing due to development limitations; after all, the deer in Valheim are amazingly lifelike, so creating a horse shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. Right?
7 Interior Fires
There are a lot of realistic survival features to Valheim that players have become obsessed with. For example, the only way to have a high maximum health level is to be well-fed, warm, and rested. When taking a swim, you can drown if you use up all of your stamina. You can freeze to death if you don’t have sufficient clothing. Before eating any animal meat, you have to cook it first. This intricate system requires players to carefully plan how and when to use Valheim’s precious resources and stay alive.
Another interesting survival feature is that players can suffer from smoke inhalation. If you have a fire in your shelter with no ventilation method, you’ll start to quickly lose health. This has killed many Vikings that clearly weren’t the best architects. But the weird part is that you can’t have a campfire inside your home (at least not without a chimney), but you can have torches. Wouldn’t smoke from five torches have the same effect as a small campfire? Apparently not.
6 Portal Rules
The massive world map of Valheim, with its wide variety of biomes, is part of what makes this game so addicting. Players love to explore its stunning landscape. And the game’s developers even offer a helpful feature for quickly moving between already-discovered areas: portals. If you build one portal at your camp and another connected portal anywhere else on the map, you can instantly travel between them. This takes some rare resources but it’s worth the effort. However, Valheim’s creators don’t want to give players too much of an advantage, so they set some portal limits. These rules unfortunately don’t make much sense. You can carry hundreds of pounds of wood and stone between your portals, but not ore. Shouldn’t it be all or nothing? Not a random selection of resources.
5 Bed Requirements
A bed is arguably the most important item to build in Valheim. Besides its obvious use as a location for players to gain their ‘rested’ bonus, it also serves as a spawning point. This is where you’ll respawn if you’re killed. Before you’re allowed to use your bed, sadly, there are several criteria that you must meet. And these requirements aren’t exactly logical. Your bed must be covered by a roof, placed on flat ground, and surrounded by walls. Fair enough. However, it also needs to have a campfire close by. But this is a bit hard to do if building a fire inside your shelter can literally smoke you to death. If you don’t have the resources to build an elaborate chimney, you’ll be forced to place a campfire awkwardly close to your bedroom wall.
4 Landscaping Options
One of the coolest features of Valheim the freedom it gives players to build unique structures. Some Valheim pros find abandoned towers and customize them with flair, and a few have even created complex cities or ports. But most parts of the game’s wilderness aren’t flat enough for a large building. Therefore, players need to adapt.
Valheim actually allows you to change the landscape by using a hoe. This helpful tool has a ‘flatten land’ option, a ‘pathing’ option, and a ‘raise land’ option. What’s missing here? Well, if you use a hoe and raise the ground too high, you probably want to lower it. Unfortunately, this isn’t an available option with landscaping tools. It’s a small oversight that can be sidestepped by using a pickaxe on the bare ground to create a large hole.
3 Double Pickups
As previously mentioned, most of Valheim’s resources can either be looted from an (exploded) enemy corpse or they can be picked up off of the ground. Players can grab wood branches, stones, flowers, mushrooms, and even berries while on the run. But the way this action is designed makes no sense. For example, if you want to pick up a branch, you’ll target it and use your action button. Then the wood will be placed in your inventory….right? Wrong. Clicking the action button will convert the branch into the default wood appearance, and then you can either click again or run your character over the wood piece to officially gather it. It’s super awkward.
2 Item Storage
Ah, inventory limits. The bane of all Valheim Vikings’ existence. Players of this survival game are constantly up against both bag slot and item weight maximums. Therefore, most of your possessions need to be stored at your base. It’s just impossible to carry multiple stacks of wood, ore, stone, meat, pelts, plants, weapons, and armor as you explore the vast Valheim landscape. This is understandable. But what doesn’t make sense is your storage ability. Upon coming home with a pack full of loot, players are only able to build chests to put everything inside. And these chests don’t have many storage slots. Many Valheim fans, as a result, complain that their epic fortresses have to be littered with stacks of tiny chests. It just creates an organizational nightmare.
1 Dungeon Designs
This game’s landscape is obviously beautiful, but players also love to delve underground and explore Valheim’s haunted dungeons. These places are often filled with both challenging enemies and lush riches. You can loot hidden chests, pick up a few Surtling Cores, grab piles of treasure, harvest glowing mushrooms, and even destroy skeleton nests. You can also encounter countless dead-ends. In fact, many players complain that the location and sheer quantity of dead-ends in these dungeons is ridiculous. It’s pretty disappointing to battle past a group of skeletons and be rewarded with an impassable stone wall. Or to climb down a hidden shaft and end up at a pile of dirt. Why bother?
NEXT: Valheim: Where To Find Iron And What It’s Used For
