There is also one not-so-obvious advantage to knives in general. Because XP in Valheim is gained per hit, lower base damage and higher attack speed makes the knives skill leveling significantly faster.
Started playing valheim with 2 friends, one friend fell in love with the atgeir, the other with maces + shields, i unironically went daggers + shields, because I wanted more attackspeed, what I didn’t expect was that I would become the main damage dealer/tanky boi of the group, my attackspeed let me deal tons of dps to mobs/bosses and still parry, but get swarmed and your basically dead.
Yup, that about sums it up. I found that Leviathan on my first trip out to the ocean. Change everything, I built zero weapons after it. I'm going to upgrade to go into the Mistlands, but yeah it's a solid weapon to have in your back pocket.
In the mistlands it starts to feel weak due to the resistances seekers have, but everything before that it does awesome. It is always a great backup because you can always repair anywhere you go. Very important for "no portal" playthroughs.
Good video. I concur on the cost benefit analysis you did with the Razor. I have a knife specialist that proved the value of the abyssal razor in gameplay and I began to keep it as a backup/secondary for all my follow-on characters. I will add that the silver dagger is a better option when facing undead or blobs tho.
Definitely better for the undead, but the abyssal still gets the job done. Wish there were more undead to give silver weapons more of a reason to be used.
My favourite early weapon is flint spear (and later its upgrades). It is not just fast and provides respectable DPS, but you can also throw it, so it is kinda able to replace the bow (at least it needs no arrows, so it is even cheaper to use as a ranged weapon than a bow).
I definitely agree, but my flint spear takes a back seat to the razor. Spear is definitely more optimal than the bow, but I feel most people like the range the bow provides and the elementals arrows. Flint spear would have made it in honorable mentions, but its attack animation is an aquired taste. Still good early, just not as popular.
@@zanderatkins1970 Never thought of gaming the system like this. I dont know how much itll get used, but I'll keep it in mind for a speedrun or something.
Even the flint knife is great! You breeze through the meadows extremely fast, it is insanely cheap to upgrade to +4 and you can even hunt DEERS EASILY!!! Few things I wanna add about the Abyssal Razor and with knives in general, is it's one of the only weapon in the game that comes already fully packed. Upgrades on it are very insignificant. It already comes with 200 durability and it also has INSANE amount of Staggers for a dagger. I mean, non-upgraded Abyssal Razor is on par with a fully upgraded +4 Stagbreaker (40 to 43) for crying out loud. Abyssal Razor will carry you all the way to the plains. Just get a basic Iron Mace for monsters weak to Blunt. Then you would want to get Black Knife asap. The stagger on the Black Knife is absolutely ridiculous. Same as other knives, you don't even need to upgrade it, but you could. Knives are insanely underrated. The Abyssal Razor also let's you focus on: Troll armor (Easy to max out and farm Trolls with the Abyssal Razor) Wood shield (Insanely cheap to maxout and has 18 armor block compared to 16 for a non-upgraded copper buckler) Fine wood bow (No copper required as well and easy to farm for the upgrades) Then you just keep your copper for boats and useful tools and just go straight for the Swamp after defeating Elder and max out the Iron buckler. Since the copper era is the most annoying/boring one, you can just breeze through it gracefully this way.
All solid points. I do think newer players should try to not skip the bronze era though. Just so they can be overprepared for the swamp. Other than that, you listed pretty much how I play.
I technically got the razor before killing Eikthyr, but that's because I usually kill Eikthyr and the Elder pretty much back to back later on and instead take my sweet time to plan out my base and build defenses. I pretty much never mine copper myself anyway, I employ the trolls. Even if it means I have to haul it from greater distances. Tin is a little trickier because of how small it is, but I usually get a troll to mine just enough so I can make a bronze pickaxe and then mine tin myself. The razor is definitely amazing. It took me a while to give knives a chance, but once I did, I instantly fell in love with them.
@@t0ssacoin408 Hehe, I blame all the handy tips from youtube 😉. Once I learned how to dodge a troll and have him mine ore for me, Eikthyr stopped being a priority, because all you really need to progress is the pickaxe. Definitely not a universal advice though. It has a deadly learning curve 😅
@@msmichellewinchester Sometimes I forget how clever people have gotten at advancing past a biome without completing it. Trolls are usually my arch nemesis till I get a bronze buckler.
@@t0ssacoin408 I tend to have a problem forgetting I can parry them later in the game, because I spend such a long time dodging. I honestly don't tend to skip a lot (not a fan of glitches and without them you can't really progress through swamp unless you killed the Elder anyway). The next boss I usually wait on while also going into the next biome is Moder, but that's because I tend to have weird "luck" for seeds that have their good mountains surrounded by plains 😆
@@msmichellewinchester I think the plains are easier to enter from the swamp rather than the mountains. I never see the wolves coming, and it takes me a while to get used to the timing on their attack. Deathsquitoes are easy enough to dodge and then you have time to shoot them with your bow. Plains over mountains any day.
You can even mine all of the chitin before the leviathan starts sinking. All you have to do is log out before it does and it'll be as you never triggered it. Also works with the ones with the flame metal ores.
@@t0ssacoin408 Just got off of work and tried it, it still works. Holding 40 ore and still have to bottom part of it to mine. The second it makes a sound I just log out and log back in and it counts like nothing happened. :)
How can you can get this weapon before venturing into the Black Forest? You're saying: Build a karve. Karve requires bronze nails. You need copper, tin and surtling cores for smelters to make these nails, all of which are not available in the meadows.
If you get lucky, a leviathan might spawn within eyesight from the shore. Then you can craft a raft. So technically you can get the abyssal razor before you enter the black forest, but it is more likely that you will need a karve to find a leviathan.
I personally wouldnt change to silver because it isnt a huge jump in damage unless you are fighting undead. Which, I still think the abyssal handles that just fine. If you dont have an abyssal razor, then sure, make a silver knife.
It really depends. If you're going to be a scout type, roughing it on a long exploration trip, then you should really stick to things that can be fixed with a lv 2 workbench or less. If you're just gonna make a small outpost shack with a portal as needed, then there isn't much point. As for fighting undead, I'd rather just use Frostner for that. You're not sneaking up on them that often and some undead are resistant to stab & pierce Best save the resources until the black metal one instead
