Xenowars | Defense, Dungeon, And Dung
Valheim | Checking Out The New Howling Cavern
It’s not every day Valheim gets new dungeons. Okay so this was a little while back and I’m just getting around to them now. I knew something was up when Hugin swooped in and gave me some kind of warning like this place was going rip out my guts or something.
For the most part, I felt the raven’s warning about this placing being harder than I thought it would be was a bit of nonsense. I later discovered the exact reason why it was harder.
On the surface, this place feels more like Frost Caves than anything else. There were some differences between the two. The first one was that every creature in here was at least one star in difficulty making them harder to kill. I however have a maxed-out silver sword so not much of a challenge for me.
The other thing is and it could just have been the layout of this dungeon that I got. It felt like a maze once I got deep enough in. I was lost going around in circles for at least half an hour. That is however no applause for the game I’d get lost in a shoe box if given the opportunity.
With just how much more built up the cave entrance of this place was on the outside. I was expecting this place to be crazy. They wanted to give this place a feeling that it was going to be tougher and more rewarding.
As far as the loot itself it was more of the same as what you would expect from Frost Caves. There was however one massive difference and I’ll get to that later on. As it required a bit of a detour to understand what I looted.
Like before you enter this place and have to break walls of ice down. There are some bats on occasion. While they might be slightly harder I could not tell they all died the same.
I do have to hand it to them. Some of the dead ends in this dungeon are breathtaking. They are so chilled feeling with the giant snow icicles, snowfall, and ice it takes your breath away. What did not was the loot.
Some parts of this cave it was quite hard to see. I did not realize just how impaired things were till I was looking back at the screenshots. The fog alone in certain sections took this place up to an eleven.
This place also seemed to have a lot higher density of Ulvs. I’d sometimes run into a room and see at least half a dozen or more of them waiting for me. My sword however has a decent reach and it was like they were blocking each other from hitting me.
So I can’t say the higher density added much more of a challenge to things. Even with them being at least one star in difficulty instead of just being at a normal level. They created their chokepoints for me to deal with them without having to think much about it.
For whatever reason the staircase down felt a lot more alarming than the ones I faced in Frost Cave. Like I got a feeling something nasty was waiting down there for me. However, up till this point, nothing was even close to something I’d consider could take me out even if there were dozens of them.
I then got to the bottom and after not walking far I was soon proven to be incorrect. It turns out this place was in fact a lot more deadly than one would assume.
It is however not because of any of the expected creatures I’ve faced before. Turns out this dungeon includes one of the new mini-bosses as well. This one is called Geirrhafa and put up quite a fight. I’m willing to admit I had many close calls with death on this one.
Just the limited amount of space there was down there. Paired with this unexpected challenger added to the level of danger. My curiosity of wanting to know what this mini-boss dropped took hold and I fought on for dear life till I remained the victor.
What did I end up getting for such a valiant fight? An item called Hildir’s Silver Chest weighted 200. I could not open it and had no idea what it was. The only hint I got was the description of it saying to return it to Hildir. While I know of the location of the new vendor I could be bothered when I was near it to fully see what it was all about. Now I have a reason.
First, however, I had to get out of this blasted place. I still had some decent exploring around to do and some nasty packs of creatures that were not as bad as you think they would be to deal with.
After lots of exploring around, I realized I was going around in circles. This place ended up being more like a maze than the Frost Cave I was in. I was quite tempted to just call it a night and hope on another day I could find my way out. I however wanted to go turn in the chest so I kept at it.
Over time I made my way out. I then ran down the mountain to the portal to go back to my base. From there I took the portal to the third swamp I’ve farmed at. I then had to go through most of the swamp into a nearby plains region that I had been avoiding.
Thankfully the vendor icon appears quite far away on the map otherwise I’m sure I’d still be searching for it to this day. The new vendor itself appears to just be selling cosmetic items. After turning in Hildir’s Silver Chest it upgraded the building slightly and added quite a few more cosmetic items to buy.
It looks like there are quite a few other areas of the building that could be upgraded and have stuff put on it. Perhaps I’ll seek out more of these in the future along with the other new dungeons to see if they drop any chests I can turn in for a reward.
As far as spending any gold here I don’t care much for cosmetic items. Perhaps in the future, I’ll try buying some stuff to see if there is a bigger reason for having any of it. For now, I don’t care for it.
Final Thoughts
Always great to find a new dungeon and even more so when there is a bit of a twist in it that takes you off guard. Thankfully I did not have to do quite a long corpse run the cold damage alone might have been more than I could deal with to get back all the way. It’s also great when you can solve a mystery and uncover some newer stuff.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Valheim.