Yes, Falcons’ survival sim Valheim is apparently going to the purgatory, but it’s actually a relaxing place. My friends and I still get together every week, not just to make sure the bees are still happy, or to see if we can finally grow roots, but to kick back and catch up in his peaceful world.
In our most recent adventures, however, we have discovered how to mine ore; a great moment for the clan. It promised new, exotic riches: bronze helmets, a bronze dagger, a bronze sword! How innocent we were and we rejoiced in our new strength. Little did we know that mining would be fraught with so many horrors.
Mining differs in different games. I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XV for a while now. This is a JRPG in which you go on a road trip with some fashionable chums. Quite different from Valheim. But just like in Viking land, I can wander to rocks, push buttons and ore will appear in my stock.
In FFXV, my character does that anime “Yuh“, or, like, too excited” he, what is it? “while capturing the collect_resource_ animation.exe file, bending down and wiping the air with their hands. No pickaxe is needed; this gentle movement of the arm by the wind is enough to split minerals from stone.
There are other games where a real mining tool is needed, but the physical act of stone upon stone would rather you not get involved. It’s like: “hey, can you do something else while I do this, yeah?”. In RuneScape, right-click and be actively encouraged to keep your computer running while going outside to feed herds of geese with breadcrumbs, or to draw funny shapes in the condensation on your window. After completing these actual activities, return to game X, stare at the piles of ore you have collected, wipe them thoughts in your pocket and repeat the process. This time, there are fewer geese and less room to write ‘your mother’ backwards.
In Valheim, the process not only involves you actively, it is frightening. After our viking family finally got some pickaxes, we invaded the Black Forest in search of ore deposits. In this dark, ominous place we were looking for large spherical spheres that sprang from the earth and were ripe to explode. But to burst them, we could not just right-click and eliminate, we always had to clamber our choices into it.
I was struck by how ‘physical’ mining felt in Valheim. There was a real sense of leverage as I hoisted my cock with both my arms in the air and then crashed on the deposit for the first time. In the mining mini-game in something like Stardew Valley, you have to stay involved and keep an eye on your environment and endurance. But while Sigmund, Ragnar the Red, Dunder Mifflin and I explored, it really felt like an exhausting expedition; we all focused on the task – as if we were really wiping the sweat from our eyebrows and licking our lips at the prospect of loot coming. But toil historically does not come without problems.
It turns out that when you mine, the sound of your choice attracts nearby creatures. There we were talking about rocks and greedily stuffing ore in the bag, when a giant blue arm suddenly bent over the screen and dressed us all in oblivion. ‘O shi-“,” WHAT? “,” Jesus! “And quiet,” come, not so “, we exclaimed differently. A giant blue troll – in a way that was the opposite of cold – let us know that we were not about to deal with Dobby’s hard dad to reason, and limped away as fast as we could carry legs to the laundry.
I look forward to when we finally figure out how to fish, and at the moment we are all throwing our lines out and being penetrated into the ocean by a green wildebeest as big as the Iron Giant. I have no idea if it exists in Valheim, but the chances are high that I am not far from the truth. Every time we go mining, we always watch over our shoulders. Or we have someone waiting, just in case a blue scare comes out of the woods. I will be honest, it made Valheim significantly less relaxing for me.