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

Valheim's most recent patch turned 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 in a 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," one player 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 players had to turn the difficulty down just 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," another player 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 helpfully points 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. 

But not everything's an improvement. Decreased spawn rates do mean decreased drops, especially if you're trying to farm voltures for meat or eggs. Although one player does point out an economical alternative to farming volture eggs: "I find the best, renewable way, to get volture eggs is to run along the coast with an abyssal harpoon. Voltures often spawn further out at sea near the spires, but if you kill them there, they drop their loot into the water. I use the harpoon to throw it to hit spires near them, and it will draw their agro so they can fly to you on land where I can safely kill them and get their loot without swimming." 

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.