Speedrunner NickRawcliffe seems to have found great enjoyment in the survival MMO Valheim . He constantly seeks ways to master the game creatively. In his latest attempt, he completed Valheim… but backward.
What did the player do? NickRawcliffe is a speedrunner, who set the first world record for the fastest Valheim run (which has since been broken multiple times). Now he has sought a new challenge: mastering Valheim backward.
This means Rawcliffe kills the last boss Yagluth first and the first boss Eikthyr last. However, since this wouldn’t be much of a challenge with an existing character, he created a new character for this.
Why is this impressive? Actually, you need to defeat the first boss Eikthyr to craft your first pickaxe. This tool and the upgraded forms are needed repeatedly later on to progress further.
Generally, Valheim is structured so that you must defeat a boss to complete a “chapter” and then continue. You need specific items from them to unlock new resources and recipes.
How long did it take him? The “speed” run took a remarkable 45 hours, with more than half of that time spent just on summoning the third boss, the Bone Mass. He summarized his run in a handy 17-minute video:
Because you can’t just go and fight the bosses; you must gather the appropriate materials beforehand: All bosses in Valheim and how to summon (and defeat) them.
27 hours for bone and a troll as a tool
How did NickRawcliffe manage it? In his video, Rawcliffe explains some of the tricks he used to find and defeat the bosses or to craft tools that he technically shouldn’t have:
- for his first pickaxe, he used a troll with a club, which he lured to ore deposits so it would “mine” for him – Thus, he obtained equipment and tools made of bronze
- He defeated the final boss Yagluth with a trick by hiding underground and attacking the boss through the ground
- for Bone Mass, actually the third and one of the hardest bosses, he had to wander through swamps for a remarkable 27 hours to find rare chests that could even more rarely contain the bones needed to summon the boss
- normally such bones are found in crypts – but you can only enter them once the second boss has been defeated (which comes after Bone Mass in this run)
He avoided glitches like the chair glitch to enter the crypts. He says: “It feels like cheating.” Other tricks, like exploiting the AI, are okay, though – only after the new adjustments have made the enemies slightly harder.
Okay, cool – But why?! Valheim has been available since February 2021 and has yet to receive a major content update. Players who remain loyal to the survival MMO are constantly looking for new ways to spend time in the game:
The developers are currently working on completing the first update “Hearth and Home”. This is supposed to primarily expand the building and crafting aspect of the game, which is already one of Valheim’s more popular features. They have already revealed more about it in a blog post:
Valheim finally shows its first major update, release soon – Here’s what to see
