The door inside the fortress into the center tower was destroyed, along with the part of the tower below that door. As I lowered the dirt level, the tower fell apart until what you see was floating in the air. The door I destroyed in the very beginning to get inside, but I did try to minimize the damage when I broke it so that the arch and surrounding walls would be as undamaged as possible.

I was on the developer's Discord, looking for seeds to start my 'real' run, after a couple short "getting-acquainted" villages. Once I'm comfortable with the controls, and the basic mechanics of a game I'll generally create the map I'm likely to stick with until endgame. A user was describing this seed, and I liked it, so I created a new world to do a small bit of scouting first and make sure this spot would work well for what I was envisioning. I quit on Day 6, iirc, after scouting the Western 1/3 of the island or so (and a bit of terraforming) and started the series that I've recorded here. Thanks for the comment!

Thanks for the comment, and the compliment! I have a love-hate relationship with fences and gates in ASKA. I played Medieval Dynasty just before this game, and fences were exceedingly easy to place, and conformed nicely to the terrain. The ASKA implementation of them is decidedly less user-friendly. And, to make enough to really make a difference feels like a fair bit of work at this stage. But rest assured, the long-term plan is for fences, and eventually walls. Right now, I'm just paying the Smolkr tax and grumbling about it.

Hey, thanks for the question. Twitch is www.twitch.tv/aceofbasesca and I'll definitely keep uploading episodes. Glad you're enjoying them!

That's certainly one way, though not very safe if you miss, and certainly not cheap as there are limited flare rounds in the world. This also depends on having found the flare gun. This video is about safety and ammo cost, but the flare gun is fun, no doubt! Of course, he usually runs off afterwards to die in a lonely corner of the map, so it's a bit tougher to load all that meat into a storage container a few feet away. Thanks for the comment. Cheers!

@@aceofbasesOG The video works, dead on - I've done it myself many times. Waiting in the car for bleedout. As to the flare gun method - it's reliable; if you miss he runs away, if you hit, he drops dead 99% of the time on the spot. Seriously. It's super easy. Thanks for the vid :)

I'll do a video of the interior with the current state of build-out in the near future. Thanks for the message, and the compliment. Yes, the boss fight has the potential to be very destructive to the surrounding area. Unsure whether the boss AoE attack would penetrate the walls, but if it did the majority, if not the entire build would be demolished. Also, the walls might not be as durable as we think against his attack, so it might even level the fortress itself instead of just the contents. Maybe I'll do a video of that fight at the castle on a backup save, for science!

debugmode

I agree, probably the same toolset. I said as much at ~5:20. Thanks for the comment!

My advice works in real life as well, though only if the car is signifcantly up-armored. The US presidential limo would probably work. Bring keys. :)

Only partially. Once I'd excavated all the dirt there was a tower floating in the air, ending at the bottom of the tower doorway. I believe the dropped material was Grausten, but my memory may be faulty. :)

Thank you! I'll post another video soon with a walkthrough of the now mostly finished interior. It turned out nice, I think. :)

Glad that did the trick! Going to build something awesome?

@@aceofbasesOG The fact that I was able to secure any sort of base in Ashlands is already a miracle. But yes, I'm about to stone this baby up and get busy setting up camp. How did you get into the middle tower? I like that opening for your stairs in it.

@@Fade_Bloodlace The battering ram and the catapult will both destroy charred fortress blocks, including the doors with the spikes. Both are like using a sledgehammer with your eyes closed to open a door, but they'll do the job. The battering ram is towed like a cart, and make sure to bring a few pieces of wood to fuel it. You'll stand in front of it, between the handles, and facing the spikes. Not intuitive. If you're very careful you can remove the door with little damage to the surrounding tower. Both are in the first tab of your build menu. Congrats on your foothold in asthma-ville!

Sounds great! It does seem like they intended to make it easy to build inside.

Poor bear indeed. Poor, warm, delicious bear. :)

Everyone has a superpower! You must only use this ability for good, never for evil. :)

Great note about the moose! I'll end up using whatever ammo I have in abundance, since time till death isn't much of an issue in this case, but when time is of the essence, duration of bleed-out would definitely be something to consider. In this particular instance, I'd tend towards a bullet since I'm in a position to afford the extra time and would want to reserve the arrows for a location where time is more important. Though that scenario is pretty unlikely, this game has taught me that sometimes small decisions can have big implications later. I appreciate the feedback!

These things happen. I'm working on getting a Valkyrie trophy so ballistae on the roof can be targeted, but until then I'll have to depend on workbenches surrounding the neighborhood and my own ability to take them down fast with magic. I did have one attack a much smaller build I had in another keep, and the damage was pretty negligible. Between my attacks and the spikes on the keep tower, the Valkyrie went down pretty fast and all that got destroyed was a workbench sitting at the base of the keep. But, in the end, it's a game and any rebuilding will be just as much fun as the first time I put it up. :) Update: Pulled a full-health Valkyrie onto the fort. I have a one-star Asksvin up top, plus 6 ballistae set to Valkyries. Final loss was 3 decorative charred beams from under the top floor, and 75% of the lizard's health. And a torch. She dropped pretty fast from just the Ask's attacks and the ballistae. 8 missiles fired total between them. It was a non-event. Minor repairs after just topping up all the build pieces and replacing the 3 decorative beams. 9/10.

I just couldn't pass it up, given how perfectly everything fits. In any game I play that has ruins or abandoned structures, I try and repurpose them before building from scratch. Thanks for the comment!

I'm careful not to be too sure of anything when making a video, as things change with patches, mods, etc. I do remember early in my Valheim playing that deconstructing a damaged floor outside in the weather at 50% would return less resources than a floor at 100% from inside. Of course, since then there have been many updates, patches, and I've started using mods like ValheimPlus, which can all affect that equation. I'm pretty certain that at some point I turned on 100% resource return, probably in VPlus, so, in my case, I get everything back. However, I'm presuming that someone who is playing Vanilla might get back less on damaged parts, so I mentioned it and was deliberate to say that I wasn't sure. :) Great tip with the fireballs to hasten the collapse. Thank you for sharing it!

D'oh! I removed the car battery to make ammo otherwise this is a great idea! :P

I do like the battering ram, but mostly for ruins. Very effective way to break them down for a great amount of Grausten, somewhat quickly. For the viaducts I think the hammer is the way to go because of the ease of tossing down a stonecutter and middle-clicking a few blocks. Sometimes, as in the video, the terrain is much less conducive to wheeling the battering ram around. I play with a few mods as well, so everyone's experience may be different. For Grausten, I break the big rocks with a pickaxe, as I use the TopMining mod. This breaks rocks from the bottom up, so no digging in the terrain. Also, when the rock is broken high enough to clear the dirt, the entire thing collapses with one final hit. It leaves a very clean site, as the ground terrain is left completely untouched. It takes about 4 minutes to break a huge rock completely and yields about 2 stacks more than a full cart and inventory carry. I usually have to run back to bring back the final bits in a second trip. You have definitely made me start thinking about the battering ram vs previously indestructible objects, though. The plains towers? That might be an awesome way to get stone and iron, iirc the contents. Also the plains rock pillars. I'll test those today. Thank you for the tip! Update: The beserker tower is still invincible even to the battering ram. It could've been awesome. As for stone pillars in the plains, I'd forgotten they are normally breakable stone. However, unexpectedly, they also float in the air. I wasn't able to get it to explode from gravity until it was destroyed about halfway up to the top. It also netted only around ~325 stone, which is less than I expected. Good times trying stuff out. Thanks again for the ideas!

There is plenty to love, for sure! Thank you for the compliment. :)

Thank you!

Yeah, that's the ticket! Exactly. I just never noticed it! Totally...

:)

It's a good thing he doesn't know how to open a car door. Nomnomnom

That's a good strategy that's worked for me as well, though I haven't had 100% success rate with it. Better than 50%, I believe.

My experience is that when you shoot an animal and they can't path to you, they turn and run away most of the time, which means tracking them. I'll use the ledge when I just need the bear or wolf to go away, but for dropping them right next to a base this seems to work the best for me. Your results may vary, of course. Happy hunting!

Well, you'll hopefully be fat on predator meat, at least! Good luck, and thanks for the comment.

Lol. Great tip!

Thanks for the comment. Glad it was helpful!

If only we made similar income. Happy hunting!

LOL. :) Probably get around to that next week. Maybe when this video hits 20k views. Thanks for making me laugh!

Can do multiple shots for sure, but risky with little reward. One shot is really enough, as conservation of materials is big on the harder difficulties. Didn't want to risk having the video end with a bear mauling, so played it safe for the purposes of the video. Enjoy!

@@aceofbasesOG Fair enough.

I like that porch, and I've used it, but there's the risk of another mechanic coming into play, in my experience. If you can see/shoot the bear, but he can't path to you, he goes into flee mode. This is most noticeable on a rock ledge that you dropped onto from above. He doesn't see the path to you, since he's not able to walk over edges, but you can shoot him from there. Porch is the same setup. So, when using the porch, I found that it was likely that he'd suddenly bolt off across the map, and now I'm tracking him and hoping the trail doesn't get lost, and then I'm shuffling all that meat back in a couple trips past wolfpacks. The first time I did the porch it worked perfectly, but I was never able to repeat it reliably and gave it up for the car, which is 100%. Happy hunting!

Thank you. Hope it was helpful. :)

I'll have to play around with this a little more sometime. Feels like I've tried that once before and the bear went right over the fire and ate my eyeballs, but perhaps that behavior has been tweaked and I never tried it again because, well, the first time was painful enough. :)

Well, sure. One arrow or revolver bullet is the way to go, depending on difficulty. I used multiple shots to shorten the video. Happy hunting!

​@@aceofbasesOG as my knowledge goes shooting the bear won't kill him quicker (i mean yeah there's the crit chance) because the bleedout will reset if you hit a different spot Like let's say that you hit the Bear with a headshot the bleedout time will be 45mins But if you shoot the same bear again with a body shot the bleedout will be an hour (all made up times)

@@Whiterunguard455 My experience thus far (full disclosure, haven't played in a year+, easily so things may have changed) is that multiple shots will drop the bear quicker, not due to bleed-out but rather due to damage from the projectile itself at impact. I'd imagine there is impact damage, then a bleed-out DOT. Certainly if I shoot him in the face multiple times as he runs at me, he will die faster than he'd normally bleed out, so the subsequent shots must be doing something more than applying the DOT again. Regardless, normally in a stalker run, I'd use 1 arrow and then just wait for the DOT to do the rest.

@@aceofbasesOG interesting to know thanks!

I'm glad it was helpful. Keep on surviving. And nomming fresh bear meat.

Thanks for the comment! Glad it was helpful. It definitely took some trial and error to find all the nuances.

The flare gun makes a great emergency bear gun, but in a long run game, arrows or revolver bullets are far more plentiful. No doubt the flare gun is a beautiful choice when you forget you're in a bear spawn area and come around a tree to a bear 20 feet away.

But there is that small risk of you shooting a little bit high and Bear won't die And it won't scare him

All guns cause bleeding, and will kill any animal other than a moose with enough time after a shot. You can just shoot a bear and prevent it mauling you with a campfire.

I'll typically do a single shot, then pop in and out of the car until he drops right there. No tracking, with potential loss of the trail, and the net time and calories expended is, I think, less than the track and quarter method. Plus, less exposure to other risks while shuffling all the meat across the map.

@@aceofbasesOG how do you get the hunting knife?

​@@ChristopherWinchIt appears randomly in some locations, search the maps in Google and you'll find some of them

@@ChristopherWinch That's a great question for Google. There are a number of places on every map where the knife can spawn, as well as the materials to make your own.

If you wait an hour or two in the open he may disappear.

Yes, definitely a bit riskier, that one. :)

@@aceofbasesOG lol I like the car trick too but there's not always one around when I usually stumble across a bear, plenty of trees tho!