So yesterday I mentioned we were slowly moving towards Valheim’s third, notorious boss encounter. Bhagpuss has a funny post up about getting ready for Bonemass, including a meticulous list of fool-proof preparations. He does not like enforced boss encounters very much in MMOs. After sharing it with my better half, I had this spontaneous idea of giving the boss a go last night, now that we have some level 2 iron gear and weapons. Am kinda getting tired of the swamp.
I don’t use blunt weapons in Valheim, so crafting frost arrows was a great tip for me. I spent an hour on mats for 200 arrows and went to build a base with a portal next to Bonemass’ location which is on another continent from our base. Turns out the boss was awfully placed too, in the middle of a large pool of water right next to a Plains biome with a goblin town at the border. Doing recon on Bonemass, I had both a Fuling soldier as well as one of their large commanders aggroing on me several times while trying to clear the swamp of other nuisances. Fun times!
Next, I built the much suggested mini-tower up one of the trees close to Bonemass’ summoning skull. I hadn’t heard anyone mentioning stone or anything fancy, so I went with several ladders leading up to a shooting platform way above the boss. As far as on site prep went, that seemed to be all that’s required. Thus armed with frost arrows and a few poison resistance potions, what could possibly go wrong?
We came, we saw, we yoloed
The pretty platform tower held exactly ten seconds after spawning Bonemass. As the three heroes fell through the bursting tree and ladders, chaos and hilarity ensued. The boss moved up on our friend who died instantly after also taking the fall damage from before. We spread out desperately trying to heal up while shooting arrows, realizing Bonemass had a lot of health and the shared frost arrows weren’t going to be nearly enough. Then the adds came.
When the second party member died, I decided to pull back and reset but resetting wasn’t an option. Bonemass kept pursuing me, never resetting his HP bar or despawning. While kiting, both of my party members managed their corpseruns and rejoined the action – that’s when we knew, we were going to show this sucker!
Sharing aggro between the three of us and kiting the boss around, the fight quickly became easy. Bonemass isn’t particularly fast and as long as you avoid the puke of doom, you can handle both him and the adds fine while minding your potion ticker. We also learned that the blunt weapons do considerably more damage than frost arrows, so we combined both, slowly wearing the boss down. For a small party of three, this certainly seems to be a feasible tactic.
Bonemass succumbed with a shudder and a moan after approximately 20 minutes. It’s been the greatest fun and laugh we’ve had together in a game in a long time! Mountain biome here we come – be very afraid!
I think this is the most involved you’ve been in an MMO/MMO-esque game in what feels like forever, Syl. I’m so glad you’ve rekindled your passion.
I think so too! The classic running and screaming in terror with your buddies never gets old, I’ll enjoy it while it lasts! ^^
Hahaha! I love it when a plan comes together!
It’s interesting that Bonemass was able to knock your platform down. I watched a few videos of people using towers and platforms and the most trouble I saw them having was draugr and blobs getting up to them. No-one had the floor knocked out from beneath them. Falling damage in Valheim is brutal, too. I take more damage from small stumbles in the mountains than from any of the mobs there.
Apparently we all end up back in the swamp when we get to the plains because we need more iron for that level of crafting but I don’t think it will be all that scary by then.
I knowwwww…..iron is gonna be required in loads of stuff still and also the wraith chains for some of the nice fur armor. Alas, at least now we can also try find silver which seems to be rather elusive.
And the ‘plan’ was really quite comical, the boss literally shattered tower and trees right after the first arrows hit him. I was wondering why this didnt happen for you, it seems that he smashes stuff easily that gets in the way of his aggro. 😀