Valheim: would you like to play a game?

[InsaneJ]

This text instead of long ramblings about new servers, expanding our niche, trying new things, etc :)

Browsing Steam I came across Valheim. Take a look:
https://www.valheimgame.com/

Key features (from the Steam page):

Huge procedurally-generated world - explore and inhabit mystical lands, from mysteriousforests to imposing snow-topped mountain ranges and stunning meadows, complete with their own creatures of legend to battle and wildlife to hunt.
Co-op PvE (2-10 players) - - Whether you want to brave the lands alone or venture with trusted allies, Valheim supports independent, player-hosted servers and unlimited world creation. We recommend playing co-op with 3-5 players.
Punishing dodge & block based combat system with a wide range of weapons
Build & sail ships - from flimsy rafts to imposing warships, build legendary vessels to conquer the seas and discover new lands.
Summon and defeat vengeful primordial bosses of myth and legend, and collect trophies to progress and craft new powerful items
Flexible house and base building system - raise mead halls, farms, settlements outposts, castles and more.
Intuitive item crafting - forge the finest weapons and armour, and craft food and mead.
Dedicated server- for players who want to run a persistent server. If you prefer not to run a server on your PC, consider renting a server at G-Portal.



It's still in early access but it seems to run well enough and has quite a bit of content. Has anyone here played this game? Is it any good? Does it look interesting to you guys? Perhaps there's another game you'd like people here to consider?

[LegendOfAir]

That's pretty cool, I think that would be a fun game to do as a party and go through together. Only issue would be the scheduling to coordinate that. If it turned into a solo adventure where we could still interact with each other from time to time, it still be okay, but I don't think it would be as fun without a whole party together through most of it.

But I wouldn't be against it overall, I have no other game to offer really.

[Dourne]

been watching sl1pg8r play it occasionally. i'll pick it up for the wife an I. It seems to be in our wheelhouse of games.

[Jiro_89]

Seems like Alpha-Ark days without the dinos. Looks interesting.

[InsaneJ]

I've played it for a little bit. Seems like an interesting survival game.

According to Steam charts Valheim seems to be gaining serious attention. It took 4th place of concurrent users yesterday:
https://steamdb.info/graph/

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I'm not saying we should jump in. But if we're interested in running a Valheim server, now would probably be an opportune time to start.

Maybe I'll try tinkering with the server stuff tonight and see what happens.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2382282960

[InsaneJ]

I've got a server running, I think.

Server ip: valheim.happydiggers.net:2457 though possibly you'd have to use 2456 as a port number if you're adding the server to Steam manually. It's a bit of a weird server. It runs at 2456 but listens at 2457 for queries.

Server password: HappyDiggers01

For me the server doesn't show up in the in-game server browser. Not sure why. Please let me know if you guys can join, how you did it and if it's any good.

At idle the server seems to use about 2GB of memory. We'll see what happens if a couple of people join.

[LegendOfAir]

I didn't actually connect the dots, but a lot of my friends have been playing / streaming this and they are loving it. I noticed they were playing a new game, didn't pay attention to the title until now. It seems to be doing pretty well indeed. I might give it a go here soon.

I have a feeling it's going to be a huge learning curve for me though since I was never all that adept at Ark, haha.

[Dourne]

I've got a server running, I think.

Server ip: valheim.happydiggers.net:2457 though possibly you'd have to use 2456 as a port number if you're adding the server to Steam manually. It's a bit of a weird server. It runs at 2456 but listens at 2457 for queries.

Server password: HappyDiggers01

For me the server doesn't show up in the in-game server browser. Not sure why. Please let me know if you guys can join, how you did it and if it's any good.

At idle the server seems to use about 2GB of memory. We'll see what happens if a couple of people join.

bought it played it havent stopped playing it. the server issue is a little strange. at first i would start a server from my pc and it would not show up for like 5-10 min before my friends saw it and could join. I log in everyday and leave it up while i am at work. they can use it fine until about 12 hrs later when i get home. then i restart it and rejoin no problems. play 4-5 hrs then i log it off for the night.

Is there a server name?

mine is Server name : Forthood pw: Dourne
we have 4 people playing at this time and have reached bronze/Elder.

*** could not join server from manual ip function which was added to my surprise 2 days ago. entered ip and tried to connect but nothing happened.

[Jiro_89]

bought it played it havent stopped playing it. the server issue is a little strange. at first i would start a server from my pc and it would not show up for like 5-10 min before my friends saw it and could join. I log in everyday and leave it up while i am at work. they can use it fine until about 12 hrs later when i get home. then i restart it and rejoin no problems. play 4-5 hrs then i log it off for the night.

Is there a server name?

mine is Server name : Forthood pw: Dourne
we have 4 people playing at this time and have reached bronze/Elder.

*** could not join server from manual ip function which was added to my surprise 2 days ago. entered ip and tried to connect but nothing happened.

I added and joined the server via the steam server tab outside the game, seemed to work fine. Although I never made it in, got an incompatible version error. I have a feeling we'll be seeing stuff like that a lot in an alpha game. Ark used to update multiple times a day and keeping up with it was quite the task.

[Khajera]

I added and joined the server via the steam server tab outside the game, seemed to work fine. Although I never made it in, got an incompatible version error. I have a feeling we'll be seeing stuff like that a lot in an alpha game. Ark used to update multiple times a day and keeping up with it was quite the task.

Shows up just fine, Keep getting Wrong Password

[InsaneJ]

Right now I've setup the server with a server manager program that checks for updates and restarts the server automatically. But by the look of things this isn't working. Even the update-before-starting-the-server thing isn't working. This very much feels like ARK. I hate it already.


I'm using the .bat file approach now. At least that updates the server before starting it. It shouldn't be too hard to do the periodic update check and auto-restart stuff that way. Just ask Jiro about his experiences doing that with ARK ;)

[InsaneJ]

Looking at it some more, I think the Linux server is definitely the way to go. I can write a script for it that's comparable to the Minecraft server scrips we've been using for many years. It should be able to check for updates, inform players of pending updates, install updates, restart and backup the servers without too much hassle that way.

But the questions is, do we want to run a "HappyDiggers" server? Do we want it public, or password protected? As far as I can tell there's only rudimentary admin stuff available ie: kick, ban and unban. So a whitelist application like we had in the past might not be a bad idea to keep the hit and run griefers out. Although I have no idea if you can actually grief stuff in Valheim.

Dourne seems to have a world up and running and is playing there but that's hosted on his PC. If we get these scripts running, I'd have no problem with importing that world to a server or ours if that is something people would be interested in. Just a thought, I don't want to 'steal' your world away from you guys or anything like that. If you prefer to keep things the way they are then I'm OK with that. I'm just voicing some possibilities.

As stated above, I think we could automate the server part and get it so it'll keep running more or less autonomously. But I'll only put in the effort if there's some interest for it.

[InsaneJ]

Triple post! :)

So I went ahead anyway and got some fancy server scripts running. Right now I can properly start, monitor/recover/restart and gracefully stop the server via systemctl services. The server will always update when it starts so that makes updating a manual process at this point. I've already begun on making a reliable way to check and install updates automatically. The trick is write the current version of Valheim on Steam to a file when the servers starts and then compare that when the server is running ever X-minutes to what's available on Steam. If a different version is found, we restart the server.

Now comes the tricky part. As far as I can tell there is no way to do admin stuff on the server unless you are logged in with the Valheim game. There's no RCON or terminal process running with which you can interact. So there is no way to let players know the server is going down for an update. So when the server gets updated, they would get kicked and then when they try to reconnect they will get a version mismatch.

The upside is that with the current scripts I can get the human readable version info from the server. We could display that on the server page so people can look it up if they want. Current server version is 0.145.6.

Right now my brain is a bit fried so I'll stop here for today. I'll fix the auto update tomorrow. I plan on making it similar to what Botje does with the snapshot server so we can tell if the server has been updated. See here for example:
https://happydiggers.net/showthread.php?303-HappyDiggers-Snapshot-Server&p=23911#post23911
Not sure if there's an official page with an automated change log. But at least we can let people know our server has updated.

[Jiro_89]

I'm gaining some interest in the game. Played 1.5 hours solo yesterday and enjoyed my experience. I haven't checked if you have or not, but if you give me perms on linux for the sudo controls on that game server I can also do some manual interventions if I happen upon it having issues or it isn't up to date.

Hopefully the devs don't go full WildCard and make it harder to run linux servers. Keeping it on there would be ideal for management.

Also, perhaps password/whitelist is a good start for now until we know more about how easy/hard it is to grief in PvE.

[Jiro_89]

Made a little settlement west of spawn.

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[InsaneJ]

Well that was easy enough:
https://happydiggers.net/showthread.php?2944-HappyDiggers-Valheim-Server&p=23922&viewfull=1#post23922

The Valheim server monitor checks every 15 minute if there's a new version available on Steam. If a new version is found it will update the server. The server monitor should also detect if the server encounters a hard crash and restart when it does. So hopefully we don't have to do much admin stuff.

Just in case you do need to do some admin stuff: I've given the people who can log in via SSH the sudo perms needed to start/stop/restart the server. It's similar to managing the Minecraft servers. Use these command:

/bin/systemctl start valheim_01.service
/bin/systemctl stop valheim_01.service
/bin/systemctl restart valheim_01.service
/bin/systemctl status valheim_01.service


I've moved the map you made that snazzy looking settlement on to the Linux server. It ran on a Windows server previously using a simple .bat file. Now it has super fancy scripts cuddling it into submission.

One thing left to do is add 'admin' players to the server so they can kick/ban players that need such thing happening to them. I think it's just a matter of adding Steam player IDs into a .txt file. I'll take a look at that later.

[Dourne]

It is a very fun game. dying sucks and corpse runs can ruin your day quickly. np if you want to use my server, i only ask the stuff stays the same for my other guys (name/pw). It would be nice if they can play while i do something else, say play on this server and not be stuck with mine. we have beat the 2nd boss now and have set up the first portal to and from for easy movement. I Lost all my gear to a possible glitch.

I was able to connect to the Jiro server from steam but not from the game itself. Popularity rules out public for me. There is plenty to do solo but more people is much much easier progression wise. I started a massive building for multiple people west/sw i think near the ocean in a meadow.

[Jiro_89]

It is a very fun game. dying sucks and corpse runs can ruin your day quickly. np if you want to use my server, i only ask the stuff stays the same for my other guys (name/pw). It would be nice if they can play while i do something else, say play on this server and not be stuck with mine. we have beat the 2nd boss now and have set up the first portal to and from for easy movement. I Lost all my gear to a possible glitch.

I was able to connect to the Jiro server from steam but not from the game itself. Popularity rules out public for me. There is plenty to do solo but more people is much much easier progression wise. I started a massive building for multiple people west/sw i think near the ocean in a meadow.

Oh gosh I wouldn't try to connect to the "Jiro server". The first day I was just fiddling around and getting my bearings. The 2nd day I hopped on J's.

[InsaneJ]

Dourne, I appreciate the offer to play on your server. It sounds like you guys have a fun server going on. Though I think you should just keep that server for you as a close group and enjoy the adventure together. Once you're done or you'd like a change of pace, feel free to hop on the HappyDiggers server if you're up for it :)

I've posted the HappyDiggers server information in a separate thread here:
https://happydiggers.net/showthread.php?2945-HappyDiggers-Valheim-Server-INFO

We can continue talking about the game and server in this thread though. The thread above is just for people so they can quickly find the information they're looking for if they want to join our server.

[Jiro_89]

I've added a Valheim channel to Teamspeak and Discord, though I didn't add a channel icon to the Teamspeak as I'm unsure if that icon crashing bug is still in effect.

[Dourne]

my guys (Funkknuckle and Southius) just offered to pay for a server so i did not have to run the pc all the time (no big deal although i lost half my building today to a possible in game earthquake..???). So instead i opted to have them join the HD server. they are trying it out.

[InsaneJ]

I've added the Valheim icon to the Teamspeak channel. Adding icons in general should be fine.

Dourne, let me know how they experience the server? I'm curious to know if Valheim is lag sensitive.

[Dourne]

it is imo. Myself, Khajera, Funk and Southius have experience it from time to time. no idea what or why exactly but having more people in an area may suggest a cause.

[Jiro_89]

We had 6 people online at once last night. Dourne's Crew, Legend, and myself. There were a few spotty points where kills and actions were delayed a few seconds. In general it wasn't terrible.

[Dourne]

We had 6 people online at once last night. Dourne's Crew, Legend, and myself. There were a few spotty points where kills and actions were delayed a few seconds. In general it wasn't terrible.

annoying but not game breaking. some of the delays were 4+ seconds. then it would get better.

[InsaneJ]

Interesting to know. Now to figure out what's the cause :)

The server is running on an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16-core / 32-thread CPU. My guess would be that the hardware isn't the bottleneck. Check_mk seems to confirm that:
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The game server VM has 8 vCPUs allocated to it. That means it can have a theoretical load of 8. In the graph above it barely got above 2. That doesn't mean there couldn't have been occasional spikes in CPU load that are completely single threaded. The graph plots an average after all.

So best thing to do is monitor the server when people are on. People who can log in with SSH should be able to use the 'htop' command. Then use a filter (F4) for 'valheim' and you should be able to see all the valheim sub processes running and how much resources they are using. If I'm online feel free to ask me, but Jiro should be able to do this as well.

Memory wise the server had plenty to spare so that's not it.

If it's not the server, then it's the software. Scrolling through the log I'm not seeing anything out of the ordinary. But then again, the log doesn't show much of interest at all at this point. Perhaps someone could poke around on a Valheim forum and see if more people are having this issue. Perhaps it's a Linux server thing while the Windows server is doing fine. We've had that issue with ARK before I think. Though Valheim uses a different game engine so we can't assume it will behave the same.

[InsaneJ]

Whoops! I accidentally restarted the Valheim server just now. Sorry, it should be back in a minute :B

[Jiro_89]

Apparently the restart decided to put my character at the height limit of the map upon re-logging in. Fell to my death. Now that's the alpha Ark I remember...

Also, it seems all hammers, hoes, and pickaxes are gone from any storage container post restart. How strange.

[Jiro_89]

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[InsaneJ]

In case anyone wants to report any bugs or glitches, there is a bug tracker for that :)
https://valheimbugs.featureupvote.com/

[LegendOfAir]

Server started acting up real bad recently. It wouldn't generate the world wherever I went, even if I have been there before. Then I would relog so it would generate the surrounding area, but then if I go back to my base or something, nothing would be there until I relog.

Also for whatever reason, I keep having small issues with items getting removed from chests, I had a stack of meat in a chest and when I went back, the chest was empty within the span of 15 minutes.

Anyone else having similar issues?

[InsaneJ]

Haven't had any issues so far. I've been playing a couple of hours today and I saw you joining a bunch of times. Perhaps it has to do with something in the area you are playing in?

In any case, I've just restarted the server. If you're available, let me know if that makes a difference?

[LegendOfAir]

Seems to be working fine, thanks. Not sure if it was a local thing for me or what.

[Jiro_89]

I don't know if this is accurate or not, but based on the ingame console this is what the server tells me it's using. Is it auto allocating memory or is there a config setting? I haven't tried to look through the server files yet, I need to setup my connections on the new PC.

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[Dourne]

i so ping the server from the game. 486297 ms, open a box fine np. Khajera pings the server 235ms cannot open a box.......:confused::confused::confused::confused:

[InsaneJ]

We're not the only ones having issues. There are several threads of people complaining about performance:
https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/lkirx3/some_kind_of_memory_leak_issue_related_to_portals/

(https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/lkirx3/some_kind_of_memory_leak_issue_related_to_portals/)https://valheimbugs.featureupvote.com/suggestions/159975/possible-memory-leak

https://steamcommunity.com/app/892970/discussions/1/3104638448267816427/

I've set a crontab to restart the Valheim server twice a day at 00:00 and 12:00 CET. Since there is currently no way to communicate with players on the server from outside of the server (that I know of), the server will simply restart without further warning. My advice would be to logout one or two minutes before the restarts. I'm not sure yet how the server saves it's data, but I'm hoping that should guarantee all your progress gets saved.

On another note. I finished my thatch shack yesterday.

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Today I'm going to try to upgrade some of my gear and then go after the first boss. I saw you guys already beat him, but if I'm not mistaken you can just summon him again and again. We should probably make a boss grinder at some point ;)

[InsaneJ]

Looking at those ping times. They aren't comparable to opening a command prompt and pinging the server. My latency to the server is around 0.1ms. In-game I'm getting 16ms right after today's first automated server restart.

If you're getting crazy ping times, could you guys try restarting your client and then pinging again? From what I'm reading about Valheim it seems it has some memory leak issues. If restarting the client doesn't help, we can restart the server. I think I can easily automate that for staff members going through Botje.

[InsaneJ]

Nothing like sailing across the ocean in your undies just so you can maximize the amount of ore you can haul.

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[InsaneJ]

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Crashed my Karve while trying to escape a Serpent in a storm but found out I could build long boats so got one of those.
Bonemass is now hanging on my wall.
Found a dragon egg.
Got started on silver.

[DOM]

I caved in and invested in this. Only played for 10 minutes, but I feel I will lose many hours of my life to this game...

[InsaneJ]

I caved in and invested in this. Only played for 10 minutes, but I feel I will lose many hours of my life to this game...

It's a fun game. Pretty relaxing to play especially if you take the time to prepare for things by getting/upgrading gear, making potions, using the terrain against your foes.

Took down Moder and put up the trophy on that stone thing at spawn.
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Since I'm the first on the server to do this apparently I need to do it again so I can hang her head on my wall like I did with the other bosses. Not that it's very difficult to do though. I build stairs leading up all the way to the mountain top so you can 'walk' up there while carrying dragon eggs without having to jump/run. And I also dug a trench around the platform you summon her on. Since the platform is indestructible you can hide behind it when she attacks and fire back with arrows when it's save to come out. Since your below ground level in the trench her AI gets confused, she can't attack downward so she'll just walk around a bit while you fire arrows. The trench works pretty well.

On a side note. Samyg really needs to come empty his grave, there's tons of stuff in there that's worth saving I think. The grave is just outside Jiro's base.
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One other thing. I accidentally crafted an extra set of wolf armor legs (https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Wolf_armor_legs) (20 armor / 1000 durability) when what I wanted to do was upgrade my existing set. It's part of the second best armor in the game(I think :B). So... who would like to trade? I don't need expensive stuff, but I'm always looking for Thistle (to make more sausages) and processed food in general. I'll throw in free repairs for life since you'll need a forge +upgrades to make/maintain it. So if anyone is good at gathering/farming/cooking, this might be your chance. In fact, if you sweeten the pot enough (weekly delivery of food perhaps?) I could be tempted to complete the set :)

[Chogata]

I was on the fence about buying this game for some time, but maybe I should, now there is a HD server? :D

(and hi again, everybody, I know I've been gone for a while... got sucked in by Primal Fear pretty seriously ;) )

[InsaneJ]

Yes there is a HappyDiggers Valheim server (https://happydiggers.net/showthread.php?2945-HappyDiggers-Valheim-Server-INFO). No worries about taking a break from Minecraft/ARK/HappyDiggers. There's lots of interesting games that can suck up all available time and people have lives that need tending to. We're not going anywhere :)

Our Valheim server seems to be running pretty stable, at least for me. I haven't heard about players with higher latency to the server if their connection/de-sync issues have been resolved since the last couple of updates. The changelogs mentioned some fixes that may have solved the issues. I'd be interested in hearing if that's the case or not. See here (https://happydiggers.net/showthread.php?2944-HappyDiggers-Valheim-Server&p=23990&viewfull=1#post23990).

As for the server, it's being restarted twice per day at 00:00 and 12:00 CET. It also checks for updates to the server files on the Steam repository and performs automatic updates if it detects changes to the repository. Unfortunately I can't detect game version changes, only changes to the repository. So if the devs update a readme file for example, the server will perform an update without actually changing anything. Fortunately that doesn't seem to happen too often.

So yeah, might as well give it a go. The server seems to only be played on by a bunch of people from the HD forum. But that's understandable since we're not advertising the server anywhere else at this time. This means we haven't had any issues with griefers so far which makes for a relaxed way to play the game.

[InsaneJ]

It seems Valheim player count has dropped quite a bit after it's initial rise in popularity.

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I haven't played it in quite a bit and right now I'm not too interested in going back to it. The game was fun to explore but to me the world seems a bit repetitive, which is odd given that it's procedurally generated. I think it has to do with lack of biomes and lack of stuff to do outside of the main tech tree and limited building options. Let's face it, Minecraft and it's mods have spoiled us rotten :)

So is anyone here still interested in playing the game? Looking forward to new releases perhaps?

Right now I'm considering taking the server offline. So if people still enjoy playing there, please let me know so I don't ruin your fun. If anything this server setup was a nice way to get more experience running Steam-game servers on Linux with our own custom scripts. The stuff I learned should be mostly applicable for something like ARK or whatever else comes along that runs in a similar fashion.

[Jiro_89]

I agree with your assessment. I think after it gets some hefty updates I'd like to take another stab at it, but it really could use some more biome options. Workshop items could also make things interesting in the future too. I also haven't played for a bit too.

Side note: I just started a MC Agrarian Skies 2 challenge map on my windows VM with a friend to test out how well moderately/heavy modded MC performs. It has been going quite well performance wise. Perhaps more to come of that in the future if time permits and interest exists.

[InsaneJ]

Skyblock is fun, I'd be up for that :)

I've been playing FTB Direwolf20 for Minecraft 1.16 with Mupje and my kid for a couple of weeks. Having progressed significantly in the tech tree the server load when we're all on is at roughly 60% capacity. Which means we could do a VIP run on that pack if we want to and keep an eye on not having too many machines running all the time. I'm thinking a community building/island/area where people can share the machines that are build rather than everyone building all the same machines and bogging down the server that way.

What we did is we divided the tech tree somewhat so everybody can focus on their own projects mostly. Mupje does the plants and animal stuff, she's currently exploring a villager mod that allows you to assign villagers to build certain roles that then start constructing buildings for their roles. I've focused on Mechanism and resource gathering. We've got wind and biofuel going, a nuclear reactor, fusion reactor, steam generators. Resources are gathered through QuarryPlus which I added to the pack, Mechanism's digital miner and those fancy new mob-grinder-factory blocks that don't actually involve spawning mobs. Instead they convert power and some 'mob juice' into mob drops of all kinds. I should probably do a short base tour :B

[InsaneJ]

I've disabled the server. If we ever want to pick it up again we can. But until that happens, if that happens, I'm leaving it off.