'Magma fish are back on the menu boys': Valheim's newest patch lowers the difficulty of the notoriously treacherous Ashlands biome

GamesSurvival & CraftingValheim’Magma fish are back on the menu boys': Valheim’s newest patch lowers the difficulty of the notoriously treacherous Ashlands biomeWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Iron Gate AB)

Several adventurers from Valheim gather in an accursed locale in the Ashlands, with one wounded viking being tended to by his compatriot amidst the smoke and ash.

Valheim’smostrecent patchturned towards the Ashlands to fix what ended up being a long list of issues. There’s a couple of significant changes, but the main thing is this update will make the Ashlands easier to traverse.

“Most notably, the Flametal mining and the spawn rates of several enemies have been adjusted,” Iron Gate says ina blog post. “Hopefully, this will make your Ashlands experience more enjoyable!” However, instead of making enemies easier to kill, Iron Gate have instead tweaked the spawn chance for asksvin, twitchers, charred archers, charred melees, voltures, and lavablobs.

In every case, the max spawned, group size, and spawn interval for each enemy have been increased. This will hopefully give players a bit of breathing room while they’re exploring this fiery hellscape.

“Good, I’m glad they didn’t nerf it completely into the ground,” oneplayer says. “These look like really reasonable small tweaks that will not ruin the experience. I hope it pans out like that in practice.”

Before this update some playershad to turn the difficulty downjust to keep up with all of the tough enemies in the Ashlands. But as changing the difficulty only adjusted the strength of hostile mobs it only made spawn rates seem better because players could kill them quicker. It didn’t actually do anything to change spawn rates, which was one of the biggest gripes with this biome. “[The patch] makes it a bit less relentless,” anotherplayer continues. “Yet it still should feel like a step up from the mistlands.”

This patch won’t just help players deal with enemy mobs, it’ll also lend a hand in harvesting resources. It’ll be easier to get magma fish now as hot fishing bait will attract their attention: “Magma fish are back on the menu boys,” someone else helpfullypoints out. There’s also better drop rates for Flametal spires (it’s been changed to two to four per chunk). Players will also no longer get caught up and stuck in spires falling animations, so mining should be slightly safer as well. So, if there are still some spires that you’ve left alone, now’s the time to head back to the Ashlands and make bank.

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That’s a pretty small issue, though. On the whole, this patch looks pretty good, addressing significant problems while still managing to keep the tortuous land of fire and keep its kick, even if that’ll still cause players a few headaches down the road.

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