“The land we’d reclaimed from the wilderness began to resemble a home”
How I found a home in spite of the deadly wilderness of VALHEIM
THE PEACE OF OUR LITTLE HAMLET SEEMS ANTITHETICAL TO THE REST OF VALHEIM
Above the noise of voice chat, I hear the tell-tale buzzing sound a moment before I see what it’s coming from. Despite that momentary warning, I barely have time to react before I’m skewered through the back by a roided-up mosquito. It’s the latest in a series of threats that my party and I are unprepared for; in the last few minutes, I’ve been picked off by an undead but eagle-eyed archer, gutted by a goblin, and flattened under the hooves a buffalo. After I rise from the bed in our hastilyassembled shack for the umpteenth time, I insist that my fellow adventurers and I head home.
After a stretch in the wilderness, that ‘home’ feels almost palatial in comparison to the lean-to shelters we’ve been throwing up as a desperate defence against the worst of Valheim’s fauna. When we first started building, our little slice of the afterlife was barely more than a renovation of those hastily-assembled shacks, but over time we carved out a larger space for ourselves, nestling in on a quiet hillside near the sea shore.
We scratched out a farm to grow carrots, and built a cooking station to turn them into soup.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
Eventually, the patch of land we’d reclaimed from the wilderness began to resemble a home, and then an entire settlement. Now, bees buzz noisily around a collection of hives, pumping out honey that goes to our fermenter, bubbling away in an outhouse to create mead. Metalwork rings out from the forge, while a kiln and smelter churn out the ingredients needed to run it. A longship sits bobbing gently by the dock that we built over the harbor that we dug painstakingly out of the bedrock beneath us.
The peace of our little hamlet seems antithetical to the rest of Valheim, a world that’s harsh, unpleasant, and filled with monsters. Driving rain and bitter cold sap my strength as I try to gather even the most basic resources while remaining unmolested by the creatures of the forest, forever on my guard for the distant tremor that denotes an approaching troll and another fight (or more likely flight) through a dark and unforgiving forest.
But when a storm is raging overhead, returning home and shutting the door against the tempest outside—no matter how exhausted I might be—brings an immediate sense of homely tranquillity in spite of the crashing thunder or howling wind. And when the sun rises from across the lake the next morning, casting a soft light across the lush grass of our meadow, the grunts of foraging boars and barks of nearby deer echoing across the field, it’s possible to forget that this world is out to get me, and bask—if only for a very brief moment—in the idyllic sanctuary that I’ve created for myself.