Category Archives: Adventure

After hitting full sets of silver, me and the better half decided it was time to visit the mother of dragons. Or at least I thought I had a full set, only later did I realize my pants were still of the iron persuasion. Nevermind all that, Moder is not a particularly physical fight in Valheim so it doesn’t matter much if you’re in silver or not!

I’ll preface this entry by stating my mild disappointment with the Moder fight which is a bit sad for a dragon fan. It felt anticlimactic, the worst being the preparations preceding it. We took maybe 2.5 hours from start to finish, with the final 10 minutes on the actual boss kill. The journey there was tedious and clearing the area wasn’t fun. At all.

Prepwork Shlepwork

The boss prep in Valheim is always the same: once you have a marker, you max out the current level of gear and ready recommended weapons and potions. For Moder that means stronger arrows than usual, or if we were to believe internet guides, LOTS and LOTS of obsidian and poison arrows!! One person went as far as saying they required 800 arrows on the fight which, if true, is testimony to their failure as an archer. Bonemass was already a lot easier than many reports claimed and well, Moder is another three steps down from there.

Anyway, we figured the boss being airborne, arrows made sense. We also brought a couple of medium healing meads along in case dragon guano hit the fan. Then our never-ending sea voyage began…It must have been over an hour until we finally landed on shore and built our small base at the foot of the mountain. It’s obviously random where the bosses are located, Moder was far off to the east for us with no previously discovered route.

Base, beds and portal built, we slept over night and started our climb in the morning. We settled on carrying a dragon egg each, relying on finding a third one on our way up. This at least went smoothly with a dragon nest sitting right beside Moder’s summoning circle, as if to say “in case you forgot one!”. That’s when we started to clear a large perimeter around the boss, as you usually do.

Naturally the area was a golem-infested suck fest. Two of them appeared right away, another one following soon after with blue drakes bombarding us (and them) from above. The flying pests fell quickly to obsidian arrows, the golems however I still deeply detest! Pick-axing them around uneven terrain is annoying as hell, so we took quite some time killing everything off to be on the safe side. That’s when a fourth golem spawned, at which point the weather had turned so abominably there was no way we would summon Moder into that dark blizzard.

Waiting out the weather, night settled in. I started getting a bit cranky as I was already running out of food and our 24-minute rested buff (which we had gotten through the portal just before journeying up) was gone too. Might as well build another make-shift hut with a fireplace now that we were already stuck. Another 10 minutes or so later, which felt more like 30 minutes, we finally got to summon the boss.

Defeating Moder

The dragon appeared with a bang, looking much cuddlier than I expected. In fact I was reminded of the Dragonheart movie where Draco is too goofy to be taken seriously. Moder doesn’t look very ferocious but she has a large health pool and bad breath. We dodged her aerial attacks easily, shooting arrows and awaiting the landing phase. The fight has no particular rush to it – Moder flies, Moder lands, and if you just stay at max range nothing will hit you at all.

Naturally we did get too close a couple of times, kiting the dragon for a bit while also trying to get a couple of sword strikes in. Same as in the previous bossfight, Moder takes a lot more damage from the right melee weapons but it’s also the riskier tactic. It took us maybe 10 minutes and 200 arrows altogether to kill her.

She drops a very nice trophy, the nicest thus far, so I’m thinking of going back sometime for another one. The dragon tear unlocks the next tier of crafting stations, tuned towards the Plains biome. Best of all, Moder’s buff is the seafarer’s boon, so my thalassophile partner was very happy to unlock that one.

I have mixed feelings about Valheim’s fourth boss. I think the unexpectedly long and tedious prologue soured me to the experience. That is the other side of the coin of randomness: sometimes everything clicks and feels smooth and epic, sometimes not so much. I’m okay with that as it’s the price you pay for more unique gaming experiences.

I don’t want to put Moder down too much, either – it’s not a bad fight. It probably echoes my overall mountain impressions which leave room for improvement. I do want to give the dev team props for making each boss fight feel truly unique in Valheim at least. There’s been no repetitions or stupid lazy fights the way you have them in other MMOs where it barely registers that you just killed a special opponent. And again, that dragon trophy is damn fine!

Now I look forward to reading how fellow Valheim adventurers Wilhelm and Bhagpuss were faring on this one, it must be any minute now!

So yesterday I mentioned we were slowly moving towards Valheim’s third, notorious boss encounter. Bhagpuss has a funny post up about getting ready for Bonemass, including a meticulous list of fool-proof preparations. He does not like enforced boss encounters very much in MMOs. After sharing it with my better half, I had this spontaneous idea of giving the boss a go last night, now that we have some level 2 iron gear and weapons. Am kinda getting tired of the swamp.

I don’t use blunt weapons in Valheim, so crafting frost arrows was a great tip for me. I spent an hour on mats for 200 arrows and went to build a base with a portal next to Bonemass’ location which is on another continent from our base. Turns out the boss was awfully placed too, in the middle of a large pool of water right next to a Plains biome with a goblin town at the border. Doing recon on Bonemass, I had both a Fuling soldier as well as one of their large commanders aggroing on me several times while trying to clear the swamp of other nuisances. Fun times!

Next, I built the much suggested mini-tower up one of the trees close to Bonemass’ summoning skull. I hadn’t heard anyone mentioning stone or anything fancy, so I went with several ladders leading up to a shooting platform way above the boss. As far as on site prep went, that seemed to be all that’s required. Thus armed with frost arrows and a few poison resistance potions, what could possibly go wrong?

We came, we saw, we yoloed

The pretty platform tower held exactly ten seconds after spawning Bonemass. As the three heroes fell through the bursting tree and ladders, chaos and hilarity ensued. The boss moved up on our friend who died instantly after also taking the fall damage from before. We spread out desperately trying to heal up while shooting arrows, realizing Bonemass had a lot of health and the shared frost arrows weren’t going to be nearly enough. Then the adds came.

When the second party member died, I decided to pull back and reset but resetting wasn’t an option. Bonemass kept pursuing me, never resetting his HP bar or despawning. While kiting, both of my party members managed their corpseruns and rejoined the action – that’s when we knew, we were going to show this sucker!

Sharing aggro between the three of us and kiting the boss around, the fight quickly became easy. Bonemass isn’t particularly fast and as long as you avoid the puke of doom, you can handle both him and the adds fine while minding your potion ticker. We also learned that the blunt weapons do considerably more damage than frost arrows, so we combined both, slowly wearing the boss down. For a small party of three, this certainly seems to be a feasible tactic.

Bonemass succumbed with a shudder and a moan after approximately 20 minutes. It’s been the greatest fun and laugh we’ve had together in a game in a long time! Mountain biome here we come – be very afraid!