Ever had one of those days? I guess technically in Valheim, every day is one of those days which is sort of the point I guess. Working from home during lockdown has at least one advantage lately and that is being able to duck into Valheim at lunchtime and potter around a bit.
Valheim, being Valheim, I know not to set my lunchtime ambitions too high. Something mundane is usually safe like gathering and replanting some wood or tinkering around with base improvements. Of late, I’ve been anticipating making a new and improved dock for a soon to be launched longboat now that we are comfortably in the iron age. Some surveying and head scratching needed to be done, so a lunchtime look around and think seemed just the thing.
Until a troll raid started that is. There’s always a troll. Or this time, two trolls.
There I was down at the dock site with a cart full of materials outside the wall, no food (I was only feet from the main base after all) when I here the noise and see the ominous screen warning “THE GROUND IS SHAKING”.
Trolls being trolls, they made a beeline for the just finished crafting building in the compound. Hearing that gut wrenching crunching sound, I left the cart where it was and sprinted up the hill to the backside of the base only to see the pallisade come down and a troll in the compound wailing on the roof.
Fortunately, it was daytime, I had arrows and I was able to aggro the troll and kite him out of the base. His friend came along, but I had to keep doubling back to make sure I kept him interested too. I kited him a good distance away, plinking and running until I finally had the first one down and then turned to number two.
With only one to dodge, that went smoothly. I returned to the carnage.
Well, with the compound cracked open, there was nothing to be done but start picking up the pieces. The court yard is the new hub for ore operations. Ore can carted in the gate and unloaded into a chest which protrudes through the wall next to the smelter. Likewise, there is a chest next to the charcoal kiln on the same wall, so loading and unloading is quick and easy and the workflow inside the crafting hall is quick and easy being able to transfer wood to kiln, then coal from kin to smelter or coal storage chest without having to move.
Likewise, one can feed ore from the ore box into the smelter, collect the iron bars and deposit them into the chest next to the forge without having to move. Elegant efficiency. Until trolls show up.
The boxes of wood, coal and iron ore being pretty full, when the trolls attacked, they went for the smelter and kiln destroying the holding chests which leaves a rather untidy mess to clean up. And because of the weights involved, there’s quite a bit of shifting of materiel to be done.
Well, that’s the way the palisade crumbles some days, so I became resigned that my lunch hour would not be engineering a new dock and lighthouse but rather repairing what I just finished building yesterday…
With all restored, I still had a few minutes to get back to the dock project. I must have been back down there all of two minutes when the SECOND TROLL RAID began…
Mrs. Potshot across the house heard me shout, “you’ve got to be kidding…” Back on troll patrol, I was better able to handle these guys and distract them before they got any real damage on the base.
Base defended, I logged off until just before dinner while I was waiting for the bread to finish. If there’s a second good thing about lockdown, its been the opportunity to rekindle my bread baking, but that’s another story entirely.
While the house was filling with that fresh bread smell, I finally got to work on the new dock. That’s the screen shot at the top of the post. The storms rolled in and the seas turned angry. Out at the end of the dock, mountainous rollers would sweep the end of the new pier while I was working away hoping that lightning strikes weren’t a thing in Valheim.
After running low on stone and with time short before dinner, I decided to hop on out to our Dieppe base– see Wilhelm’s blog for the story there– to retrieve some supplies of stone that we wouldn’t need there.
Through the portal I went, I filled myself up with stone when “THE GROUND BEGINS SHAKING” again… Of course this troll went straight to work on the palisade wall and guard tower. Unfortunately, he didn’t lose interest and the compound was breached. My third troll raid today…just as my oven timer went off…
Running low on arrows and stamina, bread hopefully not burning in the oven, timer incessantly chirping at me just out of reach, I gambled that I could defeat the raiding trolls before my bread burned and for once the gamble paid off. Trolls dispatched, bread out of the oven, it was time to rebuild the Dieppe base defenses before dinner.
Maybe this evening I’ll finally get to that dock.
potshot 
So familiar…
The thing is, all the time I’ve been buildin with wood I’ve never really had a troll problem, just a troll nuisance. They seem to lose interest very quickly but in any case if I’m staying anywhere for a while I put up a complete ring of pallisade all around the actual buildings, which I then enclose in a separate palisade. Trolls never even get past the outer defences,
That was until I started building in stone. Apparently they see that as a challenge. I naively expected stone walls would be troll-proof so when I built my castle I ddn’t bother putting a second wall around the outside. Big mistake. It seems one troll with a tree trunk can knock down an entire stone tower in thrty seconds.
I have a stone perimeter wall now and it’s far enough away that trolls can’t lob rocks over it to hit my castle. I hope. Have to wait for a troll to turn up to test the theory. I don’t suppose it will be long.
Also, this is going in the post I was planning for today, unless, of course, something else happens first…
Oh dear. I haven’t been to Dieppe base recently. The guard tower was really nice. Not sure that will buff out.