In the Viking game Valheim, it’s all about the great hunt, the next important catch, the unavoidable upgrading of your gear … or is it? A player has now shown how to play the survival game “vegan” – without the loot from monsters and animals.
What it’s about:
- Valheim is a ruthless survival game that starts off easy but then gets strict in difficulty
- Better gear and restorative food comes from loot from monsters, animals, and bosses
- A Valheim speedrunner has now completed the game while staying completely “vegan”
Player forgoes “meatly desires” in Valheim
What was the challenge? YouTuber “NickRawcliffe” enjoys taking on special challenges in Valheim and this time he has a truly strenuous idea. With his Viking “Vera the Vegan,” he aims to defeat all bosses without using any animal loot.
For Nick, this also includes drops from all kinds of monsters. All living beings and their parts are off-limits – only plant-based aids are allowed.
Additionally, Nick wants to chees the large bosses as little as possible.
That means he will not use the easiest strategy that exploits intended game mechanics to take down the bosses; rather, he wants to find the hardest way to defeat the bosses possible with his poor equipment.
Why was it so difficult? Valheim can be well compared to the rustic butcher around the corner. While you do get a selection of salads and perhaps even fresh rolls there, the counter clearly focuses on filleted cuts of meat and a variety of sausage spreads.
If you forgo the loot from animals and monsters in Valheim, you miss important mechanics:
- Portals for fast travel are not available
- Boats cannot be crafted
- No armor without hides
- Flint axe as endgame weapon
- No mead, no food with meat
You have a disadvantage in almost every respect in the game: no armor, little damage, and few buffs from food.
On top of that, there are poor travel options. Without a boat, you can only sneak across the seas with a hand cart, and without portals, reaching old bases is a struggle.
Or to put it briefly: There is hardly any strenuous strategy to “enjoy” Valheim.
How did he manage it? Patience and hours of grinding. In total, Nick spent 55 hours on the challenge, spread out over 15 gaming sessions.
We will briefly show you the strategy he used to defeat the bosses and how long it took him. If you want to see his incredible patience for yourself, we’ll embed the English video here:
- 1. Boss – Eikthyr
The first boss was no problem. A little fire here, a few hits there, and the mystical stag was down. But the antlers can’t be used for the pickaxe.
- 2. Boss – The Elder
To get a pickaxe, Nick uses the large trolls. With their attacks, they can mine copper, which you collect for your purposes. Nick also crafted a copper knife. That is to remain the strongest weapon he uses in his run.
Equipped with his high-end knife, he takes down “The Elder” in about 15 minutes. Constantly dodging and continuously attacking eventually brought down the tree. There was the first impression of how difficult the challenge will still be.
- 3. Boss – Moder
To take down the dragon, Nick wanted to equip himself with the best food possible based on his plant-based diet. He found onion seeds for a delicious onion soup – but making it requires a spice rack for his cooking station. And for that, turnips are needed.
The turnips only grow in the swamp and Nick thought – “I might as well take my swamp key with me.” Wrong.
He lost the key while desperately fleeing from the swimming leeches and had to keep going back to the swamp to somehow get back to his stuff. He died a time or two in the process:
At this point, Nick began to use some speedrunner tricks. This way you can restart the game to regain full stamina and lose the aggro of the enemies. Eventually, keys and turnips were finally in the storage.
With his onion soup in hand, Nick now had to “only” find the location of Moder, search for 3 dragon eggs, and end the fight victoriously.
To withstand the icy cold of the mountains for longer, Nick uses his own graves. By interacting with the death marker, he regains full stamina and health, and he set up healing graves everywhere on the mountain.
With a small base under Moder’s spawn platform, the fight on the icy mountain was successful. Nick claims he had to fight for 90 minutes without making a mistake to take the dragon’s life.
The spawn point at the beginning of the world, because the base has gone, is not even accounted for yet. Eventually, the hits with the copper knife were enough.
- 4. Boss – Bonemass
For the nasty sludge lump, Nick even went back to the wooden club. He built a small base back at the spawn point, this time above the spawn point.
Additionally, his graves helped him again. Many graves. Because every poison attack from the billowing beast would inevitably lead to death without the health and stamina boost.
Healing mead that neutralizes the poison was not an option for Vera the Vegan.
Nick needed steeled nerves and about 90 minutes with many deaths for this fight as well.
- 5. Boss – Yagluth
The last boss was almost a piece of cake compared to Moder and swamp monsters. In an earlier video, Nick defeated the bosses in reverse order and took down the last boss first.
So he already knew a fighting strategy in which he digs into the ground and ultimately took 30 minutes to bring down the final boss.
The longest time spent on this boss was searching for the location and the necessary totems to summon.
The 55-hour vegan Valheim feast was already extravagant enough. One almost looks forward to some light fare at the end. NickRawcliffe remarks in the video: “No one will try that again.”
How you find the bosses and engage normally, we show you here: Valheim Boss Guide: How to summon and defeat all 5 bosses – tips and tricks
