My only real gripe with Valheim today is the breadcrumbs, or I guess the RNG relating to seeds. I really enjoy the exploration aspect, sailing my ship and finding new locations. I even like the limitations on what you can bring through a portal – pretty much forcing you to explore. If everything could be portaled around, we’d be no further than WoW Garrisons. Plus, you can portal around stuff to upgrade crafting stations, so aside from exploring with a few copper on hand, it’s fine.

The challenge is moreso related to the knowledge to that something exists. You’ll never know about ships if you don’t make nails. The odds of finding the in-game vendor are pretty low unless you’re even aware he exists – there’s no reason to go island hoping, and he’s often deep in a Dark Forest. Just finding a boss is it’s own adventure.

Finding the first boss is usually pretty simple – it’s a few metres from your starting point. The second boss’ location is found while you’re exploring tombs for loot/cores – and there are plenty of them. The third boss’ location is provided why exploring crypts for iron – again, multiple crypts per swamp.

The fourth boss, Moder, requires a similar runestone that randomly spawns within a specific dark tower structure in the mountains. There’s nothing in these structures except for skeletons. And these structures themselves only appear to spawn once (if at all) within a given mountain biome. Perhaps its my bad luck, but it also appears that most mountains are surrounded by plains.

Biome RNG

I’m rather impressed by the randomization logic applied to any given seed. Biomes appear to have a tileset minimum size in order to spawn a given item – be it a tower, a cave, or even a small village. There’s this sort of magic number that you eventually get a grips on, that will tell you if a Biome is rich in options or not. This won’t matter much until you hit the swamps, but makes a big difference in the mountains (for silver), and plains (for fuling villages).

The beauty of swamps and plains is that they are coastal biomes. From your ship you can get a general sense of what’s in the biome, and from the map, the general size. Mountains, not so much. They never really reach the shore, and you often have no idea how big a biome is because of it. Due to multiple learning sessions (i.e. deaths) I’ve come to the habit of building a portal on shore, and then hauling up the resources to build another on the mountain, if need be. I run up that hill (Elkthyr power!), take a quick look at how big the place is, then plop down a portal if it’s going to take a bit. I need to be full health to bother exploring, cause a single quick hit from a golem, or a tandem of wolves can be an unlucky end.

Moder Location

To find the Moder runestone, I need to find a big enough mountain biome to have a black stone ruin. And I need to luck out that the ruin itself has a runestone. I don’t really need the silver anymore, I’ve mined / upgraded my gear enough and still have 200 to spare – this is just exploration.

It may not be obvious from the map, but there are 9 mountain biomes on that list that were explored. 4 of which had a black stone ruin, none of those had a runestone. I ended up finding the summoning location by pure accident, after 2 real-world nights of exploration. To sail from the Moder location (north) to the home base (south) would take slightly less than 3 in-game days.

In any other game, I’d say that this time spent wasn’t fruitful. That’s not really the case here.

• I learned much earlier that you don’t enter any swamp biome without poison resist potions. There are swamps everywhere – I avoid them entirely
• Troll caves tend to be near the coast. Bhagpuss‘ experience reminded me of this fact. While I won’t avoid them, I will take time to explore the coast a bit to make sure there are none nearby.
• You cannot take a single hit on the plains on an empty stomach. Deathsquitos are extremely aggressive and quite hard to spot. Oh, they attack over the water too. Play with music on, and have the ability to block 80 damage. The first thing you must do when beaching is build a workbench and put up a portal.
• Elkthyr’s power + a full stomach = you can climb most mountains in 1 go
• I ended up with some extra loot from Fulings (plains) and Deathsquitos (plains). Also now have a full stack of wolf furs, and 2 new drake trophies (which have very small drop chance). Oh, and another 1,000g from various chests.
• I found a few plains (I should have put markers!!!) that had Fuling villages I will explore later.
• I am coming to the conclusion that I should have left portals on ALL the islands I visited. I have more than enough materials to support this.

Knowledge is never a waste, and I learned a whole lot from this larger trek. Things that even a guide would not have done justice. The question is, would I have acquired this knowledge had I had a map marker pointing to Moder? Some of it, certainly. Not all. I learned a ton from the swamps, even though I found the runestone real quick. I’d still advocate for an earlier runestone… I’d have learned all of this exploring the plains anyhow.

Next Steps

Taking down Moder of course! The beauty of this particular mountain location is that it’s relatively open and flat. I built a portal shack a decent ways from the summoning spot, and have already found 2 eggs. Before I start the fight, I will want to prep a tad.

• Make some more medium healing potions
• Get my Draugr bow to level 3 (I need some extra Guck, which is annoying to collect)
• Get 200 Poison arrows (Obsidian are good for single shot attacks)

Once Moder is down, I think it’s time to think about a new home base. I have more than enough space, but I’d certainly enjoy being closer to a triple biome (plains, mountains, swamp). I could easily leave a portal somewhere to cut down some trees. For another time!

With Bonemass down, it’s time to find some mountains. Or at least, that’s the suggestion you get from Hugin. Since I had a longship, I knew I could transport a whole whack of iron back home (8 stacks I think it was), but also wanted to take a detour before the next step.

And here we enter my only real issue with Valheim, and it’s the breadcrumbs, the small bits of information that lead you from one area to the next, or that options even exist in the first place. It could be an item that you can only craft once you’ve found all the potential items, no matter how rare. It could be a nuance to a given zone that just isn’t really explained. And importantly, it could be the ability to just find a boss. It’s really cool in terms of exploration, no question. Yet you can hit some rather painful walls and finding the solution may simply require luck.

The detour was to find the world vendor, Haldor. I knew he existed from other blogs, but I had never found him on my map. He had 2 key items I was looking for, most importantly an item that increases carry weight by 150 (50%!). When you first enter the Swamp, you’re more likely to lose durability on the pickaxe that be full-up on items. When you finally get an Iron Pickaxe… well storage starts being a problem. Long runs between the mining spot and the smelter are not fun, and more carry weight is super helpful. His second item was Ymir Flesh, a rare crafting material (only from him) that allows crafting some neat items.

The trek to Haldor starts back at home base with a new portal, then collecting the items needed for its partner (and wood for a bench). The search for Haldor took me around quite a few large islands. I’d heard that his icon showed up on the map at a decent distance, but in order to make sure I was maximizing my chances I had to go extremely close to shore. It took nearly 90 minutes of sailing to find a decent landing spot. One portal at shore, then a trek across the plains (and the deadliest mosquitos since Fallout: NV) to finally find Haldor! I sold all my treasure, bought what I needed, and still have about 4000 gold to spare. Maybe there’s a way to trigger finding his location (stone or the bird), rather than this crazy large trek. Even an item that had an arrow for direction would be a neat exploration tool.

More storage on hand, I took a long trip back to home base, and started prep for the mountains.

It’s Darn Cold

I had found some nearby mountains early on, and noticed that I took cold damage – close to 1hp/sec. When you have 25hp, that’s a death clock. Now that I was a bit stronger, I could take the hits a bit more. A Frost Potion will protect you from the cold for 10 minutes, which seems like a lot, but really isn’t. Mountains also come with 3 main enemies – wolves, drakes, and golems. With Iron gear, all 3 can kill you in 2 hits. Which they did.

Back to breadcrumbs again. The Wishbone you get from Bonemass “finds secrets”. The odds of you finding any secret are quite low, so even with it equipped you probably won’t know how it works. And it works differently depending on the zones – it either points to graves, points to muck in swamps, or points to silver in the mountains. And in the mountains, you need a decent sized biome to even spawn silver. If you figure the typical open meadow size, you’re looking at something 4x that size to spawn 1 silver node.

I explored 3 mountain biomes with no luck. Well, maybe bad luck is the better statement. I died 4 times. I did finally find a biome on my main island that had silver, and proceeded to head down the hill to set up shop. Recall that any smelting shop has 4 requirements – a workbench, a portal, a smelter, and a forge. You probably want walls and a chest, but that’s easy enough. You can use the portal to transport all of that stuff – except the copper needed for the forge. Preparation is super important! Also of note, silver requires a level 2 forge – and the only non-metal upgrade is a bellows. Long story short, if you are setting up ANY smelting shop – have the material for a portal and at least 6 copper.

Mining the Nodes

The fun part about silver is that the nodes are massive, 3x as large as the typical copper one. It’s shaped as a sort of elongated Y, and you will probably mine close to 500 stone before you get all the silver out. Once you’ve got a bit ready, you want to craft any silver armor (chest, legs, helm, or cape). Just one will make you immune to mountain cold (and night time cold too!) The small downside is that this protection does not work while you are wet – so make sure it isn’t raining before entering the mountains.

My personal order of priority tends to be be as follows:

• Wolf Fur Cape
• Silver Shield
• Wolf Armor Chest / Legs
• Silver Sword
• Frostner (which deals blunt/frost damage, which golems are super resistant)

Moving Death

The mountains are quite a bit different than other biomes, primarily because you can’t really hide, and moving often requires running up hills. Wolves attack in packs, and very quickly. Parry timing is hard because of this, and further drains stamina. If you can, pluck them with a bow. Drakes will show up with little warning, you’ll hear a scream, and then get pounded with ice shots. You need to take them down with a bow while they are hovering, then dodge after your shot to avoid taking damage. When you have 2-3 at the same time, you really should focus on one at a time.

Golems. Ugh. Think tolls but super resistant to all damage except a pickaxe! You can shoot them with about 30 arrows, or you can dip/dodge/dive your way to hit them with a pickaxe. The downside is that it has a very small range, if you miss you’ll make a hole in the ground, and you can’t block. Even in full silver gear, you’ll take 50-60dmg from a golem hit.

You’re going to die in the mountains. Less than the swamp, way less, but getting your corpse is a lot harder. Depending on where the corpse is located, you may need to take a frost potion to avoid cold damage before you can re-equip your gear. And if wolves did you in, they will be there when you get back. Naked you + wolves = another corpse. And gosh forbid you died while having MORE than 350 weight, you won’t automatically loot your corpse.

Next Steps

I’ve now mined 2 nodes of Silver and have level 1 items of pretty much all I need. I now need to find another mountain biome for more silver, and at the very least find a stone that will tell me where the Mountain boss is located. I could use a bit more upgraded gear too…a shield most of all. Getting my block to 85 would be awesome.

My adventures in the swap progressed quite a bit! Rather than take the same approach as the Black Forest, I opted to take the environment before tackling the goals. Bhagpuss certainly pointed me in the right direction.

The swamp is, uh, swampy. There’s water everywhere, and in nearly every puddle is a leech. Leeches are painful enough in terms of damage, but they also poison. And poison in the swamp deals about 100 damage. It’s also always dark, so you’re near guaranteed to step into water at some point. Prevention is the big one. And the hoe tool is amazing! It will level any ground for no material cost, so you end up making road through the swamp and just entirely avoid water. You’ll still be wet all the time (reduces stamina regeneration), but your feet will be safe. Of note, never be in the swamp if you are WET, COLD, and NOT RESTED. Your stamina regeneration is practically nil.

If the floor is no longer lava, then you can start worrying about the other stuff. Draugr and Skeletons abound, and in groups of 3-6 at a time. You just don’t have the stamina to take them all on at the same time. There are some large respawn areas too, where you’ll have a large mass of them come at you non-stop. The archers are the worst, especially those at level 2 or 3… they can kill you in 1 hit. Then there are slimes and oozes (who spawn slimes when killed) who spew poison. Get hit by that, and you’re going to die. Finally, there are Surtling who spawn near fire geysers and shoot fireballs. Water kills them, and a bow is a great tool for them. They are annoying more than deadly.

Most things in the swamp will hit for as hard as a frost giant, either directly or as a DoT. You need a LOT of HP, 120+ to be safe, which means 3 pieces of quality food. And if you’re planning to explore at all, you’re going to want a Poison Resistance potion. For 10 minutes, your poison damage drops to maybe 20pts total and you become much more resistant to even getting hit by it in the first place.

So all that in mind, you’re 100% prepared, you’re still likely going to die.

Building a Base Camp

Since you can’t transport any metal in raw form (ore or bars), you need to build a base camp. You’ll want to put up a portal for easy access to home base material + when you’re gonna die. I first created a portal on the shore until I found a nearby crypt. At the crypt, I leveled a wide swath of ground and fenced off the front door. I built a smelter, a forge, and then leveled up that forge with some tools (level 2). The forge is the problem – it requires copper which can’t go through a portal. I was lucky and found a nearby forest and mined some up. You’re going to need a LOT of coal, so the kiln at home base is effectively running 24/7, and there’s an actual use for the Elder power!

Mining

Each crypt has a junk pile you need to mine through, with a small chance to get iron scraps. You may luck out with a chest that has more! Crypts are chocked full of Draugr and Slimes, and your #1 best friend is the Stagbreaker. This is a 2hnd mace that does large AE attacks. The damage is tiny (like 20% of a normal weapon), but it causes knockback and goes through walls. It is amazing, and should be used before you step into a new room to just make space.

As with all new material, you now get a ton of new recipes. What do you need to build?

Priorities

• A new mining pick is the most important tool you have. Only need rank 1 for now, since the forge can repair it quickly.
• Shields are super powerful, not only in preventing damage but in being able to parry, which doubles damage to the target. Get an iron shield – upgrade to 2 for reasons.
• Everything in the swamp is vulnerable to blunt damage – get an iron mace
• Iron armor isn’t terribly useful. It costs a lot, and nearly all the damage you take will be from poison.
• You gotta build a boat! The longship takes 100 iron nails (10 iron). Why? It has 18(!!) storage slots, compared to 4 for the Karve. You want to mine until you have at least 300 iron ready to transport back to base. A fully upgraded forge requires a ton of iron.

Bonemass

A giant flaming green skull in the ground. Sure does look like it’s going to go poorly.

I set up a nearby portal (after having put a new one at home base) and took my time to level as much of the ground around the spawn as possible. I didn’t want to fall into any water. Went back home, slept for the night, and filled up on food (sausages, cooked meat, and royal jam), took 6 poison and 6 healing pots and headed out.

Bonemass is something else. A giant walking slime demon with 3 attacks. His melee strike deals a truckload of damage if you get hit (you can block with a level 2 shield, or dodge). He, um, regurgitates a massive AE poison cloud. And he will throw some goop out that spawns 2 skeletons and 2 slimes. This last one isn’t so bad, as long as there are no archers. Get our the Stagbreaker and you’re a-ok for that spawn. Bonemass is vulnerable to blunt, so your iron mace is mint here.

Bonemass himself has a ton of hitpoints, and you’re going to be darting in for a bunch of attacks, then coming out to get extra stamina. He also heals if you need to go back home and recharge. I did manage to take him out, two deaths included, over a period of 30 minutes. It took all my poison pots and healing pots to get through it.

Return Home

I got a trophy and a wishbone. The trophy unlocks the Bonemass power, which is a major damage reduction, figure that’s useful for starting a new biome or a boss. The wishbone, I don’t quite know. It says it finds secrets. Hugin says something about heading to the mountains as a next step. I need to go back and transport my iron home, then find a good spot in the mountains to start exploring. I do know that I take cold damage in the mountains, so frost potions are brewing up.

I’ve been around enough to see some very strange patch notes. Square-Enix has some for March 18th that are really a head scratcher.

Extending the Leveling Process

The single player campaign gets you to around level 15 of 50. From that point forward, you need to play repeatable missions (e.g. grind) to get to 50. That process is linear today, so 1-2 takes as long as 45-46. That entire process is pointless, as it’s not possible to have the best gear drop until you’re 50. If you’re actively grinding (I had a post on this), you can do 1-50 in about 2 hours.

The patch notes indicate that the time to level between 25-50 is going to increase. No idea what the value will be, but certainly more. Why? The levelling experience is nearly identical to the one at 50 (minus Hives), so what? The explanation is that new players get skills too quick, which is a business twist if I’ve ever seen one. If the process is mindless, it’s effectively impossible to have any player groups form, this seems more like it will reduce player retention. Very odd. Or not…

Replacing the Cosmetic Reward Structure

Currently, cosmetic rewards come from leveling, lockboxes, and random drops. Once you’ve hit 50, there’s no real way to target a cosmetic aside from gambling or outright buying it on the store, which itself appears random. Avengers is a weird game where there is no partial cosmetics, it’s an entire player skin with no customization. I get why, the IP needs to be protected, but it’s also a horrible model when you end up with 4 hulks who are identical. The good news here is that cosmetics have zero impact on power levels, so there’s no link to gear drops and your look.

There’s no real clarity at what the end goal is here. However, they are stating that all random drops and leveling rewards are being removed and added to the cosmetic vendor. So read into that I guess.

Next Steps

Combined, these types of changes remove interest in people who have bought the game already. From that, I would bet dollars to donuts that Avengers is going to convert to F2P before the summer. Hawkeye will be the last ‘free’ item provided to the player base, and from then on, everything will be in the F2P mode.

If you’ve been following Avengers, then this really is the only logical conclusion. The single player experience is still frankly amazing, and then after 5 hours or so, it’s done. A F2P swap won’t really change that, just make it more accessible I guess. Until there’s a serious effort to put in content with value at max level (Mega Hives are not that), then there really isn’t any long term view here. It’s similar to Anthem, just a different set of problems that are going to end with the same conclusion.

Dying in Valheim isn’t terribly painful. You may lose small amount of skill points on the first death, but all your gear is just sitting on your corpse. Valheim is kind enough to even put a map marker where you died. Dying is a normal thing, especially when you first enter a new biome. You are but a babe in the woods if you’re not prepared and cautious, and the lowliest of boars can take you down without much effort.

After taking down the 2nd boss, I received a Swamp Key. Inferring that I now need to find a swamp. Valheim is BIG, and my starting island is a full day’s trek from coast to coast in a straight line. My island is but a drop in the bucket compared to the larger map. Exploration is fundamental to Valheim, and the move from Meadows/Dark Forest to anything else feels like you’ve moved onto a different game.

You Need To Build a Boat!

Great game btw. I had put some minor effort into a raft, went out for like 5 minutes, moved like a snail, and then decided to do better. The exploration part of the game doesn’t tell you that there are other boats until you have the right materials in your bag. In this case, Bronze Nails. Why craft Bronze Nails at all when nothing seems to need it, and bronze is already hard to get? Well that was a bad call. I’m now crafting 1 of everything, in the odd chance that is adds a new recipe to my list.

Back to the boat though. I crafted a Karve, which is a sort of sloop with a 4 slot inventory. Sailing in Valheim is more simulation, so you really need to take wind direction into account to actually go anywhere. You know you’re doing it right when the music changes. I opted to head out to larger sea, enough to see the short but far enough away to avoid rocks. That was a bad idea for two reasons.

First, the fog on the map is super important to get the outline of land. You need to be a certain distance for that the unveil, and it makes further trips a lot easier. Second, if it’s night, you’re going to find a sea serpent and it will not stop attacking you. It doesn’t do enough damage to sink a Karve (at least not a level 1 serpent) in one night, but it sure as hell is a new level of stress! Staying to short avoids notice from sea serpents.

I haven’t mentioned sailing in a storm. That is at another level, and I strongly urge everyone to give that a shot.

Finding Land

Finding a swamp is not super obvious. Finding anything really isn’t, truthfully. I ended up sailing for 20 minutes to find something that looked like a swamp. And here’s where that started going downhill.

Swamps are a level of death that’s on part with taking out a troll naked and no bow. You’re always wet, which means slower stamina regen. There’s crazy monster density (Draugr, Skeletons, Leeches, Slimes) so that you’re nearly always in battle. There are leeches in every pool of water, and they deal decent damage and poison you. There’s next to no useable land, meaning it’s crazy hard to find a spot to put a workbench and install a portal. It’s an entire zone that say ‘DO NOT ENTER’.

Of course we need to explore!

So I end up finding a spot that has no enemies, is close to water, and with my hoe I can raise the soil to put down some stuff. I have enough time to put down the workbench, and as I’m building the lean-to for shelter which would allow portal construction, it feels like half the zone has aggroed me. I had over 100hp, full bronze armor, but wasn’t able to get back to the boat before poison took me down.

And where do I end up? Back in my main hut, naked, 3 islands away.

Rebuilding

I had kept all my leather/stone items, but I didn’t have enough copper or fine wood to build another boat. You need a bronze axe for the latter, so I ended up spending a day rebuilding my inventory in order to set sail again. I could see my corpse marker, it was just impossible to get there without a boat.

So lesson learned here is that I need a ‘recovery chest’, which has all the mats needed to build a boat, and the food needed to do the corpse run itself.

The other lesson is that I absolutely need to have a portal on any island that I land upon, and that it is never a good idea to put a portal in a swamp.

Next Up

I did get my corpse back and was just able to squeeze back onto the boat before dying AGAIN. I sailed the coastline a tad, found some Dark Forest land, and built my portal. And then proceeded to die 3 minutes later. But I do have some iron scraps, some ancient tree, and some mats to cook up better food.

So many lessons learned from a single corpse run.

I guess you could say I’m taking my time in Valheim. Maybe compared to others. It doesn’t feel like I’m going slowly, rather the fact that there’s always 2 things left to do at any given time. It helps a lot that these things never feel tedious, and that every act makes you better at that act.

I can recall the first few minutes I was playing. I punched a bush for some wood, tried in vain to find a rock on the ground, and was mauled to death by a boar. Welcome to Valheim! Now I’m chopping down giant trees in a couple strokes, taking down giant trolls with well placed shots, and harvesting carrots.

I’ve spent the last few sessions taking pains to harvest as much copper/tin as possible to craft some bronze items. A bronze shield (with an ok amount of skill) can negate pretty much everything but poison and a giant troll smash. I’m not rolling through the countryside immune to everything, but the feeling of perennial dread has abated. I can risk entering a crypt without large sweats that I’ll die in 2 hits. Maybe it’ll be 4 this time.

My first large camp was on the border between Meadows and Black Forest biomes. You know the spot, a large open area that just screams BUILD HERE! Slowly, every so slowly, I keep unlocking more things to do. A kiln/smelter to make bars. A forge to smash things to be better things. New trees with new wood to improve my bow and arrows. Rain is a great thing, it causes all the birds to stick to the ground – so there’s 100 feathers for more arrows. I’ll spend an entire day just harvesting food items – mushrooms, berries, queen bees for honey, thistle, dandelions… everything seems to be used for something, There’s no such thing as junk.

Which comes to the next point about stuff in general. There’s so much of it and so little room to store any of it. I don’t mind at all the smaller personal inventory – I think that adds choice to any particular run. The fact that I need 12 chests, stacked on a wall, that’s a problem for a future update. Having to move things from a chest next to a crafting station to my inventory – that’s a quality of life item I would like to eventually see. But this is a quibble, a minor annoyance.

This stands out when you look at Valheim in general – the map for each seed is HUGE. Walking in a straight line for an entire game-day would maybe cover 2% of the map. When I found a rune telling me where the 2nd boss was located, I honestly thought it was joking and there were multiple spawn points. It was 5x farther than my furthest exploration point.

I took enough tails/meat to survive 5 days, the material to build a portal, and enough wood for a workbench and set out to see how I could get to the boss. While the world is made up of various islands, most of them are close enough to swim rather than build a boat. I figured I’d just take the time to explore my local coast line and see what happened. I did luck out and find a spot where I could swim with only minor HP damage. When I took the other shore, sure enough there was a portal with Greydwarves waiting for me. Cue the running around to lose them, in the dark no less.

The other short didn’t have any meadows, so there weren’t any easy access huts to repair and spend the night. I ended up creating a super simple shack (no door!) to sleep through the night. Morning came around, I broke it all down, then continued on to the marker. Only took a further half-day to get there, dropped the portal, and got attacked by skeleton archers. The boss area was standing on a crypt. At least there were no Frost Giants! I opted to clear out some nearby trees to give more room near the boss pillars before heading back home. I then prepped all my gear (bronze gear, fine bow, fire arrows, 2 cooked meats, royal jam, healing potions) and went to bed for the night.

New day, I filled up on food, took 3 seeds to summon the boss and went through the portal.

tldr; the Elder boss is really quite simple. Stand behind a pillar to avoid the vines shooting towards you, shoot fire arrows, and move to another pillar if ground vines spawn. It’s a LONG fight, it was dark by the time the fight ended, but I was never in danger of dying. I am so happy other bloggers got to do him before me!

Next up is trying to find a swamp. I really don’t have a clue where that would be given my current discovered map. Think it’s time to build a big boat and go sailing. I’ll need to do that no matter what in order to transport any metals. Act 3 here, I come.

Bel’s post reminded me this was coming about. What with the news Anthem is effectively dead, I’m a tad curious as to any further entries into this genre.

The demo itself covers the first chapter, up to level 7, 4 powers and 2 talent points. There’s no crafting, no real customization, and I’d have to guess other systems just aren’t present. It’s not a beta in that sense, but really a demo of what the game will have as 90% of your playtime.

If I had to compare, it would be like playing The Division with cover based mechanics and skills with cooldowns. The world is a sort of mix between Avatar and Anthem, or at least appears to be. The first chapter is all trench battles, and feels quite drab. Just when you’re about to leave that place, the demo ends.

The good news is that the shooting mechanics feel tight, and enemies go to great efforts to flank you. The less good news is that the cover mechanics don’t feel right – it’s like the 100m hurdles all the time. It could just be the first chapter. There’s marginal weapon variety – assault, shotgun, sniper, rile, and so on. They feel different enough in handling to matter more than just pure DPS. Melee is weird, as you sort of force push something and hope it hits. It’s hard to figure out range when you don’t have an actual object to judge. Also, it’s 2021 – why can’t I jump?

The 4 classes have interesting bits I suppose. You can have 3 active skills, and they often interact with each other. The ability to interrupt casting is really cool, though enemies build resistance over time. I’ve tried all four to level 5 (and pyro to 7). It really isn’t remotely close enough to get any sort of passing grade, aside to say that the classes all play differently. Given the size of the talent trees it sure looks like you can further customize the classes – say more healing, or more debuffs – at your leisure.

I will add that the game looks good. Damn good. It uses motion blur in quick movement areas, which helps mask any framerate drops. Gear, even at low levels, has appeal. (side note – my big gripes on Anthem/Avengers is the lack of player customization.)

The story sounds interesting, and the end of demo gives some flash forward bits to more interesting locations. Anthem and Avengers both had solid leveling experiences, then petered out completely at the end game. If Outriders plays more like Borderlands 3, then I can sort of see this thing work well. But truthfully, I can’t make heads or tails of any of it. Thinking about it, I don’t really care much. I paid $20 for Avengers (worth it) and like $15 for Anthem (also worth it). In both I was frustrated at the end game, but now I guess I have better expectations. And better alternatives in all that’s around. Lowered expectations are good.

There are still some bugs to workout, so I’m guessing a pretty big day 1 patch is due when this launches in April. The game crashed to desktop 4 times in the 8 or so hours I’ve put in. I got stuck on terrain a few times, enemies teleported, skills just didn’t work at all. It’s QA stuff that I’m sure has been flagged before, and that this demo is more like a chance to heat-map player behaviors. There’s little pity for any game that launches broken these days, so smart on them to push this to the right.

All told, this isn’t a day 1 purchase for me. There’s potential, for sure, but there’s also a backlog of like 20 games to get through that I know are good games.

I should hope no one is surprised by the announcement. I’ve written a lot on Anthem, and there are few examples of perfect failure.

Anthem is a failure of BioWare management, full stop. The devs built some spectacular systems, and as a proof of concept, Anthem just knocks it out of the park. When taken as a whole, that’s where the game fails, and that is entirely at the feet of the directors. Jason Schreier’s report does a good job of explaining this.

Anthem NEXT had a team of 30 people to incubate a new idea, which wasn’t so much a ray of hope for Anthem specifically, but a way to salvage as much from the game as possible to transplant elsewhere. The prime market window for something like Anthem is in the past. Dozens of companies have tried to enter the team-based shooter realm and have failed. You’re fighting against years of momentum with Destiny and The Division. You need to be practically perfect.

BioWare has never, ever been close to perfect. Go back and play their games to check it out. They are great at capturing the essence of an idea, and have had success in being the only option in their field. We geeks are notoriously forgiving of other geeks attempts, and once BioWare started a more corporate view (e.g. DLC in Mass Effect), our patience waned.

The lack of patience has created a lack of success for BioWare for pretty much the last 10 years. Mass Effect Legendary is out in May, and should be an olive branch to their player base. It’s one of those “don’t F this up” deliverables, as failure here doesn’t bode well for Mass Effect 4 or Dragon Age 4.

That said, I’m glad this is not a jobs cut operation. The people working on Anthem NEXT are going to other projects, which is great. Here’s hoping both of those major projects can apply lessons learned from Anthem (and related, Cyperpunk 2077) so that a quality product is delivered and employees survive the process.