One Valheim Feature From Mistlands Still Has a Long Road to Walk

Highlights

• Valheim’s Mistlands update introduces magic weapons, but their balancing compared to other weapons is a concern.
• Magic builds in Valheim are high-maintenance due to the need for specific skills and Eitr food buffs for effectiveness.
• Valheim needs more variety in Eitr food buffs to improve magic builds and gameplay balance in future updates.

Valheim’s Mistlands update has proven to be a big step for the game, bringing new life to a massive, dangerous biome, as well as introducing magic weapons to the game. Overall, magic weapons are still quite new in Valheim’s lifecycle, and they can feel this way when players reach the point of finally unlocking them.

The magic weapons themselves in Valheim aren’t necessarily underwhelming, but the current foundations of this feature as a whole have a lot of room to grow that future updates for Valheim need to address. There are ultimately many interrelated factors that influence why Valheim’s magic weapons feel incomplete, though the weapon balancing in the Mistlands stage of Valheim‘s progression and the limited variety of Eitr foods are the main areas that should be improved.

Valheim’s Magic Weapon Balancing Is A Major Red Flag

For now, the magic weapons that are currently available in Valheim are only obtainable once players get access to the resources available in the Mistlands biome. This alone isn’t problematic, but how these weapons are balanced compared to other weapons at this stage of the game is cause for concern.

Most, if not all, of the enemies in Valheim’s Mistlands biome are incredibly resilient. This is due to the fact that these enemies are resistant to the damage types inflicted by most melee and ranged weapons, with the exception being that these enemies are vulnerable to damage types dealt by magic weapons. What this means for magic builds in Valheim is that instead of being an equally viable playstyle compared to ranged and melee builds, magic is essentially a required playstyle for progressing through and defeating the final boss of the Mistlands biome.

Given the variety of melee and ranged weapons in Valheim by this point in the game, this kind of balancing can be quite frustrating as it undermines the value of any preexisting weapons for a temporary and seemingly unjustified reason. Even outside Valheim, this kind of approach to weapon balancing that forces players into a specific playstyle is a major red flag.

Valheim’s Magic Builds Are High-Maintenance

What further makes it problematic that progressing between biomes in Valheim eventually requires players to use magic is that it isn’t a very accessible playstyle, at least for now. For the magic weapons to be at peak effectiveness against the Mistlands biome’s enemies, players will need to invest in an overwhelming amount of new skills and mechanics to begin crafting and regularly using magic weapons, mainly the new Eitr foods.

Valheim Needs More Eitr Food Buffs For Magic Builds

Eitr is the power source for all magic weapons that allow players to cast spells. In order to generate Eitr, players will need to consume specific food buffs in Valheim. Eitr food buffs are a fun progression to the health and stamina food buffs in Valheim, but there is one glaring flaw with these new food buffs, which is that there are severely limited options for now.

Every Eitr Food Source Currently In Valheim

• Yggdrasil Porridge
• Stuffed Mushrooms
• Magecaps
• Seeker Aspic
• Minor Eitr Mead

As new updates like the upcoming Ashlands biome update come to Valheim, there are bound to be more Eitr food sources in the game, but for now, players only have four main Eitr food buffs and one mead consumable. Given that these existing Eitr food buffs effectively serve as the ‘introductory’ buffs for Valheim’s magic weapons, the maximum amount of Eitr that players can have when stacking these food buffs together is seemingly quite low. Not to mention, these Eitr foods mentioned all have relatively low stamina and health buffs, so investing heavily in Eitr with these foods means that players are majorly sacrificing other aspects of their survivability for the sake of using magic weapons.