How to train bow skills in Valheim after the update?
 
Bonemass is your answer :]
 
 

Original video on the topic

 
 
 

Transcript of the video

In the past, if you wanted to increase your weapon skills, you could always spend some time hitting rocks or trees. By doing so, your every attack dealt zero damage, but it was counted as a hit anyway and used to increase your proficiency. It seemed like it was intended mechanic, as training in such way wasn’t as effective as hitting real opponents.
 
 
In fact, shooting mobs used to give you twice as much bow skill per hit in comparison to the objects.
 
 
That being said, these days are gone, as the Hearth and Home update removed possibility to advance your skills in such way…
 
 
So, let’s turn Bonemass into a training dummy instead.
 
 
Prepare 10 withered bones, lots of wood and enough materials for three portals, place one of them at your base, tag it as tp#dummy and head up to Bonemass spawner.
 
Once you get to the swamps you gotta find one of these tall trees, drop a workbench and another portal, call it tp#temp and start building ladders to get to the middle way to the top of the tree.
 
 
Make a platform with enough space for another workbench and portal, give it the same tag as the one at your base, and head through it to get more wood, as you are probably going to need it.
 
 
Go back, make your platform bigger and comfortable, so you won’t accidentally fall off it.
 
Do a roof above you that’s going to cover every single square of your platform.
 
 
Swap name of the portal to tp#temp and head through the portal. Destroy workbench and ladders you’ve built before, then go to the boss spawner and use your Withered bones to summon Bonemass.
 
 
Lure the big guy beneath the tree and jump into the portal before Bonemass is gonna destroy it, then make a hole somewhere on the platform. If you see the boss and can hit him with your bow, it means you did everything correctly.
 
 
Now, change your portal name to tp#dummy again, head back to your base, craft tons of arrows, and once you head back through the portal, you can start your training session.
 
Congratulations, you’ve become an owner of the best training dummy in the game, as long as you want to train archery.
 
 
Now, there’s few reasons why it does work so well.
 
As long as you lured Bonemass correctly, he won’t be able to neither throw slime balls at you nor damage you with aoe attack.
 
 
He is going to attempt to destroy the tree, but you don’t have to worry about that, as these trees are unbreakable.
 
 
Bonemass is going to regenerate his HP as long as there will be no players around him, so you can literally use all your arrows, get out through the portal, cut some trees, take a nap and head back for another training session.
 
 
Cherry on the cake is the fact he simply sits here and even if you are gonna log out, he wont move an inch. This guy was literally made for this job. Like, look how happy he is.
 
 
 

Explanation of the logic behind Bonemass behavior

That’s rather obvious, but this method is rather suggested for players that have killed Bonemass at least once. You need some basic understanding of how the boss behaves to exploit his AI correctly.
 
 
Valheim doesn’t have the most advanced AI, but it has some things you gotta keep your eye at.
 
Starting with quite the obvious thing – monsters follow you no matter what. This blind need to chase the player generates obvious opportunities.
 
 
We are luring Bonemass beneath the tree and positioning ourselves in the way so he’s gonna destroy the portal just after we jump into it due to another AI rule, which is – if the target is inaccessible, destroy nearby player’s buildings.
 
Due to this, we want to get rid of anything that Bonemass could take aggro on besides us. No workbench or ladder should be left over, because Bonemass might simply change aggro and move away from the desired spot, which gonna force you to expand the platform, which is dangerous, or straight up break everything apart and start the whole process over again.
 
 
We are building our platform around the middle way to the top of the tree because if we gonna build it any lower, we might start receiving damage from the AoE poison attack.
 
 
The roof above the platform is due to Bonemass slime attack, as he throws a bunch of mobs on the tree, which effectively spawns mobs on the top of it – some collision problems related to Unity engine I guess?
 
That being said, roof protects you from mobs falling on your head, and guarantees effective training sessions, because you don’t have to be alerted about potential dangers.
 
 
BE CAREFUL ABOUT YOUR BOW’S DURABILITY! If you gonna keep training and bow is going to break, you gonna start attacking with bare hands, which is about to move your character’s model forward. You might fall through the hole if you wont be careful 😀
 
 
That’s about it. Have a nice training session o/
 
 

 
 
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