How a Valheim speedrunner killed all 5 bosses in under 90 minutes

How a Valheim speedrunner killed all 5 bosses in low 90 minutes

(Image credit entry: Iron Gate Studios)

The roadblocks to speedrunning Valheim are pretty extensive. It's a survival stake where you Begin with naught and have to remove monsters, gather resources, and craft gear every bit you travel deeper and deeper into a massive procedurally generated world, one of these days winning on Valheim's five bosses which are scattered crossways the map.

That sounds a lot suchlike Minecraft, where over the years speedrunners have discovered ways to remove the final foreman, the ender flying dragon, in just a few minutes. But there's a big difference when it comes to final bosses in the two games. In Minecraft you e'er love exactly where the ender dragon is. She unfailingly appears when you reach the biome called the End, which you access away traveling direct a fastness's portal.

Valheim's final boss, Yagluth, will always be in a Plains biome, but not all Plains biomes will moderate him. Most won't—in a world where there may be a couple xii different instances of the Plains biome, Yagluth can only be summoned in deuce or three of them. And not all Plains biomes will still check the runestone that tells you exactly which Plains biome Yagluthg is in. With the exception of Valheim's prototypic boss, who always appears on the starter island, there's really no effective where in the world the reside of the bosses might be. Depending on the luck of the world seed you play on, it's a big ol' crap game and takes an dumfounding amount of exploring.

That's why Valheim speedrunners have mostly restricted themselves to taking downhearted just the first boss, Eikthyr, which about have managed to do in just a few minutes. In one speedrun other role player also took down the second boss, The Elder, in under 20 minutes—realised by building some walls around his spawn pointedness and letting him slowly burn to demise in a campfire.

Indeed when I sawing machine an "All Bosses" world record by speedrunner and Twitch streamer NickRawcliffe that took under 90 minutes to kill all 5 bosses, I was surprised. How, in a game that requires so more than time and attempt to straight site all the bosses, not to mention make up prepared enough to defend them, could someone let beaten them all so quickly?

There is, naturally, a catch, involving a Young Game Plus ruleset. Valheim doesn't have Nanogram+—speedrunners had to devise one. The NG+ ruleset the speedrunners stipulatory means that while the seed of the world is always a random one, speedrunners aren't starting from scratch with a parvenue character:

"NG+ means New Game Plus which means any character can be taken in with whatever skill levels (100 max). Any items that can normally be found in game can be taken into the run (No items that can merely be gained from cheats)," read the rules on speedrun.com.

Forthwith the speedrun time makes much to a greater extent sense. That's why at the beginning of NickRawcliffe's run, which you can control below, his character's stocktaking is already filled with goodies. Armor, weapons, the champion Valheim foods, mead, and the summoning items necessary for each foreman, like-minded fuling totems and past seeds. The "All Bosses" speedrun isn't almost starting from scratch to set all five big bads. IT's about apace localization them in a random public where they could be anywhere and in any direction. And that's still plenty challenging.

It doesn't appear that way at first, especially watching NickRawcliffe mobilise and immediately putting to death Eikthyr with one swing of his silver brand 49 seconds into the run. Next, He necessarily to recover the Black Forest biome and click a runestone to discover The Elder's location, which also isn't as well difficult since the Dim Forest is usually pretty close to the terminus a quo in the center of the represent.

But things capture tricker. To find Bonemass, you need to retrieve the Swamp, which usually means doing some sailing. The Swamp also needs to contain a crypt, and the crypt of necessity to contain Bonemass's runestone marker, which is ne'er a guarantee. I've been to Swamp biomes that didn't spawn crypts at all, and I've been in plenty of crypts without a runestone in them. Goug also needs to dash into the mountains to site the marker that points to Moder's location—along with the leash firedrake eggs necessary to summon her. In my own in-person Valheim world, it took scrubbing trinity different Mountain biomes before I ever so found Moder's marker, and the mountains themselves are au fon one big staying power-sapping jumping puzzle. It's not an easy place to natter speedily.

The real gem of this speedrun is when NickRawcliffe makes in the lead a huge amount of time in the Plains. At an hour and 18 transactions in, patc running around looking at for the rarefied stonehenge-like structures that also rarely contain a runestone, he in reality stumbles crosswise Yagluth's evocation spot rather. No need to find the marker at all. It's a blessing from the speedrunning gods.

The Valheim NG+ speedrun ruleset feels a piece unusual, especially after years of observance Minecraft speedrunners start from scratch and take down the Ender Dragon within minutes. Just it's too a really enjoyable speedrun to watch, and looks like a fun way to wager formerly you've mastered the game and there's no need to spend hours crafting, smelting, and tearing down up your skills. Merely jump into a random sow with your favourite character and each the loot you can carry, and see how quickly you can regain entirely v bosses. I doubt I'll ever get good sufficiency to try it myself—just going happening a Chuck Berry run takes Pine Tree State about 90 proceedings—but it's a lot of fun watching someone else do it.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing around them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years equally a regularised freelancer, Personal computer Gamer hired him in 2014, believably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more do work. Chris has a love-detest kinship with natural selection games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat pretense games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he buns make his ain.