Yes, the Valheim Viking survival simulator is supposed to be transported to purgatory, but it is actually a very 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 plant carrots, but to relax and catch up in their peaceful world.
In our most recent adventures, however, we have discovered how to mine ore; a great time for the clan. It promised new and exotic riches: bronze helmets, a bronze dagger, a bronze sword! How innocent we were, reveling in our new discovered power. Little did we know that mining would be filled with so many terrors.
Mining is different in different games. I’ve been playing a little bit of Final Fantasy XV lately. It is a JRPG in which you take a trip with some trendy friends. Quite different from Valheim, then. But just like in the Viking land, I can roam the rocks, press buttons and the ore will appear in my inventory.
In FFXV my character does that anime “yuh“, or, like, overexcited” huh, what is that? “while they activate the collect_resource_ animation.exe file, they bend down and run their hands through the air. There is no need for a pickaxe; this smooth movement of the arm through the breeze is enough to separate the mineral from the stone.
There are other games in which mining may require a real tool, but the physical act of hammering a pick into the stone prefers you not to get involved. It’s like, “hey, you could, like, do something else while I do this, right?” In RuneScape, you right-click and are actively encouraged to get your PC up and running while you go out to feed flocks of geese with bread crumbs or draw funny shapes in the condensation on your window. After completing these real-life activities, you return to Game X, look at the piles of ore you have collected, place them without thinking about your bag and repeat the process. This time, there will be less geese and less space to write “your mother” backwards.
In Valheim, the process doesn’t just involve you actively, it is totally terrifying. As soon as our Viking clan finally got some picks, we entered the Black Forest in search of ore deposits. In this dark and ominous place, we were looking for large bulbous orbs that protruded from the earth and were ready to appear. But to pop them, we couldn’t just right-click and hang up, we had to tap our reeds repeatedly.
I was impressed by the feeling of “physical” mining in Valheim. I had a real feeling of heaviness when I lifted my pick with both arms and threw it into the warehouse for the first time. In the mining mini-game in something like Stardew Valley, you have to stay involved and keep an eye on the surroundings and resistance, for sure. But while Sigmund, Ragnar the Red, Dunder Mifflin and I mined, it seemed genuinely an exhausting expedition, all of us focused on the task at hand – as if we were actually wiping the sweat off our eyebrows and licking our lips in the perspective of the spoils to come. But hard work, historically, does not come without problems.
It turns out that when you mine, the tinkling of your choice attracts nearby creatures. There we were, salivating on the rocks and greedily pocketing ore, when a giant blue arm suddenly arched on the canvas and enveloped us with our clothes in oblivion. “Oh shi-“,” WHAT? “,” Jesus! “And quietly,” come on, not like this “, we exclaimed variously. A giant blue troll had – in a way that was the opposite pole from the cold – warned us that we were not welcome in its territory. We were not willing to arguing with Dobby’s tough dad and we limped off as fast as our legs put on clothes could take us.
I look forward to when we finally figure out how to fish and, for the moment, we all cast our lines, being hurt in the ocean by a green wildebeest the size of the Iron Giant. I have no idea if this exists in Valheim, but it is likely that it is not far from the truth. Now, whenever we go mining, we always take care of our shoulders. Or we have someone to be on guard, just in case a blue terror emerges from the forest. I’ll be honest, it made Valheim substantially less relaxing for me.