Valheim The Board Game

How many things can be crafted in Valheim?

Valheim is a cooperative game in which Vikings must fight mythical beasts and overcome other challenges to win the favour of Odin. It is one of a series of games in which you must craft, explore and extract better and better resources in order to expand your home and forge stronger equipment. You can find dozens of such games in STEAM sales. However, this is quite rare on the board.

That’s why I happily sharpened my axe and set off on a hunt for a little Valheim.

Tutorial

Before we start the game, there is a tutorial to introduce us to its intricacies. This guide takes the form of a deck of cards, with each card revealing the next step. It simulates various situations and demonstrates how to solve problems related to hunger, combat, exploration and crafting. This way of learning is a great introduction to the world of Valheim.

Adventure awaits

Once you have learned the rules, it is time to choose your adventure. There are 14 different scenarios to experience, each with different goals to achieve and bosses to defeat, as well as slightly altered game conditions.

While all scenarios are independent of each other, we can also play a full-fledged campaign if we wish. We play four scenarios, each with a different Forsaken Boss. We can transfer some items between adventures and even gain the ability to use the powers of creatures we have previously defeated.

Craft your hero

Once you have chosen your preferred gameplay style, it’s time to start crafting your hero. First, we choose the prettiest figurine and our favourite colour. Then, we select three skills that will make our character unique. Unfortunately, some of these abilities are weak. That’s why we often choose something that interests us. After all, we don’t want to struggle while playing with useless skills.

Gameplay pattern

We settle into our new home and prepare to take on the world of the Vikings.

Each player can perform three actions during their turn. Initially, we have access to basic actions that allow us to move around, perform limited crafting and cooking, and so on. However, the more we play and develop our home, the more actions we will be able to perform.

At the beginning, it is worth exploring the areas around our home. There, we can find the resources we need for development, treasure chests and, often, enemies to defeat.

Once we enter a tile occupied by an opponent, a dice-rolling festival begins. The fun part is that we roll our enemies’ and our own dice at the same time. At the same time, we inflict and defend against damage. All of this takes place while standing still, with only our wrists moving. Our companions can join the fight too, helping us to slay stronger beasts. I love this feature in cooperative games, and it’s a fantastic option for me.

We can deal with these initial monsters using basic equipment. However, it would be better to have something more advanced so that we don’t struggle too much in combat and risk our health level dropping drastically.

During the first crafting session, we should focus on creating tools that will enhance our gathering capabilities and be slightly stronger than our bare fists.

Later on, we will need to forge something that gives us more dice to roll and ideally provides us with a special ability. There are plenty of options in this regard.

Once we feel brave enough, we can move on to more distant territories to gather better resources. However, we must bear in mind that we will encounter more formidable adversaries there. Then we will need stronger weapons and some armour to protect us from the more dangerous creatures.

There’s no place like home

Speaking of the cottage, that’s where we’ll be SIMSing new things. Players who collect resources can send them directly to the house by carrier pigeon, where they will be added to a shared pool that everyone can use. After all, it’s a cooperative game, so no one will hoard them for themselves.

As well as crafting armour and new weapons, we’ll be able to build furniture straight from VALHEIMKEA. These new furnishings will enable us to perform new actions and make resting in our home more enjoyable.

Relaxing in our cottage will also be enhanced by tasty meals that allow us to regenerate our health and stamina. The menu is quite limited, but all the dishes look delicious. In case you’re wondering, it’s not just meatballs and cheap hot dogs.

This is what our gameplay loop will look like. Explore, collect, craft and defeat enemies, then repeat, taking into account the more difficult challenges of new areas.

Speaking of which, at the end of each player’s turn, an event card is drawn. As a rule, it’s something negative. For example, enemies may invade, the weather may turn bad, or events may prevent us from cooking. As we all know, a hungry Viking is an angry Viking. I know this from experience.

The climax of the game

Once we have completed the scenario’s objectives, we will typically engage in a final battle with one of the available bosses. These arch-enemies invite us to fight them in a unique arena, where they demonstrate their special 'moves’.

The Christmas deer will charge at us, trying to impale us on its metal antlers. The tree spirit will entangle us with its vines. Nurgle’s emissary will poison us and reduce the effectiveness of our fire weapons. The Winter Night Dragon will freeze us with its breath and invite us to a strange dance.

It was here that I encountered the first and most serious hiccup during my Valheim adventure. The final battle should be epic. It should be so epic that I would mention it to my friends and skalds would sing songs about my exploits. However, what we get here is quite a bad meat ball, and not the tasty kind.

This final dish mainly consists of the boss standing in the middle of the arena while we throw dice at him, dealing as much damage as possible. We don’t move around much, we just watch the dice roll across the table. The only exception is Dragon Moder, who plays an interesting mini-game involving catching critical hits while maintaining balance on a single rock.

However, this is still not enough, given that we’ll spend most of the fight standing still. Not even Nurgle Daddy’s poison will force us to do that.

That said, I’m not saying it’s not exciting. When we fight a boss, we sense that it’s a stronger opponent and that we have to work hard to reduce its entire health bar. We can also sense the difference in strength between these arch-enemies. The deer is a tutorial boss, but Bonemass and the Dragon are no joke. Someone is bound to die in this duel.

On the other hand, special attack cards add a lot of variety. Some of them can be quite surprising. I especially remember one where a troll joined the fight against the Ent and tried to catch us by moving clockwise. However, such cool things happened quite rarely.

Game duration and number of players

For a game with so many options, completing the scenario takes just over two hours. This is an excellent result, given the game’s structure. Event cards, which also act as a timer for our entire team, definitely speed things up. We won’t be able to wander around endlessly.

In terms of the number of players, I enjoyed playing with two people the most, because we were able to plan properly and craft what we wanted. However, it was also great fun with four players because everyone had a different plan and we had to agree on how to allocate our resources. I refute any rumours that may arise because I shared with the other players.

Quality and components

I have the deluxe version of Valheim, and it is truly lavishly produced. I love all the compartments for resources and various tokens. They make it much easier to store everything in this huge box. I also really like the fact that we are given instructions on how to pack everything efficiently.

As usual, Mood Publishing’s miniatures do not disappoint. They are highly detailed, look great on the board and exude a Viking vibe with a slight cartoonish feel. Mead and raspberries!

My only complaint is about the house, which we had to assemble each time. It wasn’t easy, and the back often fell apart in my hands. Did you have the same problem?

Summary

Valheim turned out to be a lighter title in which we get to do all the things that make survival game players happy. The first part of the adventure involves grinding for resources and new equipment, as well as decorating our home to create a relaxing atmosphere. While this first stage may seem too easy I would even say trivial at times everything changes when we start fighting the Forsaken Bosses.

Defeating them is the culmination of our efforts and a test of how well we armed ourselves in the first stage. These clashes are exciting. However, I felt that there was a lack of movement, and that there should have been something to force us to change our strategy instead of constantly standing in one place and rolling dice.

Overall, though, I enjoyed playing Valheim. It’s an adventure with a capital A and definitely a treat for players like me who enjoy cooperating with friends. I especially liked the ability to join my companions in battle.

Final verdict: Valheim is a more elaborate version of Chronicles of Avel, with a finale similar to Primal: The Awakening Junior, where most of our action are stationary.

[Game provided by Mood Publishing]