Nobody can do everything. Sure, people can and have survived on their own in the wilderness for as long as they’d like, but survival is about more than surviving. People like certain amenities, like being comfortable or having the peace of mind that if there’s an off day it’s not the end of things. People created society because it beats the alternative by a nearly unimaginable degree, because having the luxury of specialists that can’t do everything makes life for everyone much better than a lot of generalists who have to do everything to a just-barely-adequate level of skill.Askastarts off as your all-purpose survival game, where anything that needs to be done looks like it’s going to be your problem, but underneath the scavenge/harvest/build beginnings it quickly becomes obvious that you can’t create much of anything without a village to back you up.
No Viking Is As Strong As All Vikings
Starting out alone, Aska (or her male counterpart, Ragnar) land on a wild, remote island. The sea-giant who chased them there isn’t too happy they got away, but now that they’ve landed they’re someone else’s problem so he shambles off back to the ocean depths to harass any other vikings who may come sailing his way. Aska, on the other hand, has a brand new home of a large wooded island and a few basic supplies from the shipwreck. It’s not much, but it’s something to start with.
Valheim’s Hearth and Home Gets Fully Animated Release Date Trailer
The first job is to find a place to settle down and this doesn’t need to be too far from the initial shipwreck. The land is fields and forests with a few hills to keep the terrain interesting and it’s mostly safe enough near the landing point that you can find a nice, open area and plunk down the first camp fire. Granted, it’s early summer so the warmth it provides is more about comfort than need, but it serves as the heart of the initial rough settlement. Aska can make a few rough tools without the need for any crafting stations, so with axe and pick in hand she knocks down trees and breaks up rocks to create a couple of lean-tos to house the beginnings of a community.
New people arrive when summoned by a stone relic called the Eye of Odin, and you’ve got a choice between two viking tribespeople. Each has a number of traits, such as being a skilled hunter or needing to eat more than normal, but even if the particular skills aren’t exactly what you need, they can still learn as they go to whatever job you put them towards. While the game doesn’t tell you this, though, the first summoned villager should be left jobless, which will default them to a Builder status. When you start playingAska,it’s easy to fall into theValheim-type survival mode, where anything you want you’ll need to create one stone or log at a time, but it’s not that kind of game. It doesn’t do a great job at the beginning explaining this, especially seeing as arriving alone and needing to build everything yourself contributes to a mindset that can be hard to break, but each new villager automates another task so your primary job needs to be summoning, management, defense and figuring out how to keep everyone fed.
Need To Break That Do-Everything Mindset
Management is the big one, and inAksa’s case that means deciding what to build and in what order. The woodsman’s pit is a great first building seeing as just about everything is made from trees, followed in quick succession by a scavenger’s pit and stone gatherer’s pit. These pits can be upgraded to proper workstations later on, capable of holding larger amounts and different types of resources, but having a ready supply of the basics makes for much easier expansion. After that, though, things start to get tricky. A toolmaker’s workstation is an obvious need, but next up is it better to start upgrading from lean-tos to proper huts or would a fisherman’s shack make more sense? Meanwhile the villagers are getting nervous due to the lack of defenses, so a barracks and patrolling guardsman will give them the peace of mind to do their jobs better. And of course the healer’s hut is a must-have.
While the new land is relatively peaceful near the landing point, there are creatures on the island who will never be your friends, not to mention the rise of the blood moon bringing undead attacks to the settlement. Surviving long enough to get that first healer can be more than a little tricky, especially before you’ve had experience with the combat and the first blood moon goes bad. For the most part fighting isn’t actually that difficult, with a dodge-roll to get you away from danger, but stepping back out of range being equally effective, although I ended up jettisoning my first world due to dying and making the wrong choice on revival. you may either take a stat-hit and come back with nothing or revive as a ghost and sacrifice a villager, and if you choose ghost and change your mind, that’s not going to work. The next world went much better, though, right up until the ticking clock in the form of the change of seasons hit.
Time Passes And Seasons Turn, And That’s Going To Bring Problems
Summer is lovely; it’s warm and you can work or explore all day and night long without issue. Fall starts off nice, but soon enough the “lovely” part starts to fade and freezing to death becomes an option. Temperatures drop at night, so in addition to being too dark to see, you can’t stay away from the warmth of the village’s fire pit. First the cold leeches stamina recovery to a trickle and then, once the cold gauge is empty, health starts chipping away down to zero. This can be particularly troublesome if you’re having problems with the food supply, because as dark as it is, nighttime is actually the best time to forage.
A tap of the Z key sends out a wave of resource detection, highlighting things like rocks, shrubs, flax for gathering plant fibers, and of course, the wild vegetables growing all over the place. Everything gets highlighted in orange and in the black of night they stand out like a beacon. Fall and its frozen nights means you can only rely on hand-gathering for so long, and need to have the food supply properly handled before winter kicks in.
This might be difficult, though, because the farmers currently aren’t that bright. Each farm can have three four-by-four fields, one plant per square, and while you can configure what grows in each spot it’s iffy on whether or not the villager assigned as a farmer will listen. “I couldn’t plant (vegetable) because I couldn’t find the seeds” and a check of the farmer’s inventory shows them holding several while the farm’s storage is fully stocked. This will hopefully be cleared up, but it’s hard to appreciate a work-in-progress when your villagers die of starvation because the farmer can’t check their pockets.
When things work as they should, though,Askabecomes a combination village-sim and action-adventure. Initially most of the time will be spent setting up the village, but the need for more resources like food and metal means the land needs to be fully investigated and it’s not safe out there. Wolves have their territory while monsters protect their dens and there are rewards for adventurers strong enough to clear them out. Granted, that first year or so is best spent getting the village properly functioning, and the sheer number of systems (cooking, hunting, laying down roads, warehouses, etc.) means there will be several failures before everything works together as planned, but a stable village is possible once you’ve got an idea how things work. Once the village is free from needing constant attention, that’s when adventure and the rewards it brings with it start calling. It can be a good life in the new lands, and if it takes a while to experience it all then the journey will be an epic worthy of a viking chieftain.
