Quick answer
Welcome back to another episode of Before You Buy, the show where we give you some straight-up gameplay and our first impressions of the latest games releasing. First, you need to download the Val dedicated server from Steam. To enable cheats on steam, navigate to your game library, cycle to valheim, right click on it and hit properties. I played this game on PC using Steam version to be specific.
Join the 1% Club, get the Falcon Show exclusively every weekend. Open your Steam library, click the drop down in the top left, check the tools box, scroll to the Val dedicated server, and hit install. Hard to believe, but after a little more than half a decade, Valheim has finally left early access. Next, to find your server folder, you need to rightclick Valentine dedicated server in Steam.
According to the developers, the game is considered feature complete with the addition of the Deep North, the final biome of the game. The reason we are doing this is because Steam updates reset the original so your custom settings stay safe in the copy. It's been a long road to get here, but you can now play Valheim from start to finish. And with that file size almost quadrupling, uh the game's price has also risen from $19.99 to $29.99, which is a 50% price increase.
Platform basics
I mean, granted, still a $30 game, so it's not like a crazy expensive game or anything, but let's talk about if it's worth it. Obviously, this video is my opinion and the opinion of others in Game Ranks, but yeah, it's worth it. If you're just looking at the final 1.0 update in isolation, I could see somebody wondering why that justifies the price jump, but basically, we're talking about exiting the early access stage. The all the updates over the course of early access, this is good.
Valheim's a pretty massive survival game. It can be relentlessly challenging, but for the most part, it plays pretty fair. It's a game that isn't especially complicated, but has a whole lot of depth. The world generation remains some of the best in the entire genre, and the variety of locations and enemies is some of the best I've ever seen in one of these games still today.
There's a reason why Valheim is so well regarded despite its lo-fi style. What the game has now is just more. It's got more biomes to explore, more bosses to fight, more dungeons to explore, more weapons, armor, construction materials. For recording footage, we loaded up old saves, but the developers recommend starting a new game to get the fully intended 1.0 experience.
Where to buy
So, we also did that, and that's actually where the vast majority of this footage is from. In terms of a survival game, it's very good. So, it had a solid reputation for years. And I have to say, these games have gotten just a lot less annoying to play.
If you compare Valheim to the games that followed it, like the recent Wind Rose, which is very much cribbing from this game's playbook, it can look a little archaic. Wind Rose has all these little features that make base building and crafting a little easier, and Valheim stubbornly refuses to change. If anything, they've gone out of their way to make it a little more complicated than normal with stuff like requiring a roof over the workbench to function. But, in this game's case, I think the old-fashioned nature of the crafting kind of just works.
It helps that the actual base building is some of the best in the entire genre. Little fiddly at times, but the amount of granular detail you're given over your build, it's just super impressive. And the physics system means that you actually have to build structurally sound buildings with proper support, or the whole thing collapses. You can't just get away with slapping a wooden cube in the middle of a field and calling it a day.
Editions and keys
You have to build a viable structure. Another feature of the building I particularly like in this game is you can actually dig up or flatten ground. But Valheim does it really well. Being able to design your own pads is a simple but very satisfying aspect of the game.
Another aspect I have to comment on here, this game just feels forward-thinking in terms of its survival systems and progression. And I'm saying that five years in when like I said, this is not really something you could call quote-unquote contemporary. 2021 is not contemporary, but how Valheim is different is best exemplified with the food. And here, the crafting system is directly integrated into progression.
The only way to beef up your boy and do more damage and tank more hits is to craft better weapons and armor and cook better, more complex dishes, and grant exponentially increasing health bonuses. You have to eat to keep your health high, but it's something you only really have to concern yourself with when you're walking away from the safety of your base. Enemies will attempt to raid every once in a while, but at least dying isn't as punishing as out in the middle of nowhere where it's nearly impossible to reacquire your gear. As far as story goes, it's a little more finished, a little more fleshed out, a little more there compared to early access.
Performance
So once again, to get the most out of the 1.0 update, you got to start from scratch. So again, start over if you want all of it. Coming back to Valheim after all this time reminds me why it's so highly regarded though. It's simple but in-depth and has some of the best world generation I have ever seen in any survival game.
There's so many biomes now, but the general progression hasn't actually changed a lot. The main goal is of course to defeat bosses, all of which are summoned by sacrificing some specific item at an altar somewhere in each biome. They drop rare materials that can be used to craft powerful weapons and armor, so fighting them repeatedly is pretty encouraged. It would be repetitive, but the game is open enough that it doesn't force you to do it in any order.
And the game is kind enough to really mix up the biome generation, so it's not always just one specific biome after the next. And the story is not like super in-depth or anything, but for this game it works. As a survival game, it is easily still one of the best. But you do need to be willing to go along with the game's somewhat languid pace.
Tips
You always need more wood than you think you do, so be prepared to log. Playing solo kind of a chore, but with friends things move a little bit faster, which is generally the case for this genre. You're going to have to build at least a few of them around the world as you move forward. And at least for the most part, what's required for crafting is crazy straightforward.
The game does not make you do a lot of fiddly random crap. Stuff that you build out of wood only requires wood. You don't have to shape it in a lathe or any craft like that. The game has a vaguely Souls-like combat system, just with no lock-on, which maybe would have been awkward.
Not a constant annoyance like it used to be, but it's not an entirely solved problem. There are a lot of them in the new saves as well. It's a shame cuz the game has pretty striking visuals at times. The subtle environmental effects, mixed with the low-poly graphics, give this a a strange dreamy atmosphere that can look really stunning under the right circumstances.