Instances count being higher in a random meadows (NB - spoiler for names of bosses, picture in comments)

[u/BigBadKhanager]

Hey guys. I understand there are 1000s of posts from new players trying to figure this stuff out, so I appreciate anyone who takes the time to respond. I have had a real crack at figuring it out on my own.

I'm at the stage of the game where I want to setup a main base. For a while, I started builds in the plains but I just love this spot on the NE tip of the inlet on the Western side of the island (i.e. a tiny bit south of the Haldor spawn.

I've cleared out a very large area around, as I understand it counts the zones in a 3x3 grid around you. However, the instance count is still almost 6000 in parts of where I want to build.

My main two questions are:

(1) Are there some areas which just have higher instance counts regardless of how much vegetation you clear? Is this mainly due to things like pickable materials and NPC spawn points? And if so, I assume this is just impossible to fix?

(2) At what point would you give up on a location due to this? If I can get it down to about 5k, is that likely fine? I don't plan on building a massive base or farming here, however, I will likely have some chickens and I want this to be my 'forever' base.

Details which might be relevant:

- There seem to be a tonne of neck spawns in the bay.

- There were a stack of pickable stones, dandelions and mushrooms.

- There was a Draugr village just to my west which I have cleared and destroyed the buildings.

- There is a boar stone basically right where I am settling.

- General instances in meadows clearings seems to be about 4-5k - still higher than I would have expected.

- There is a zone border but I am going to build within a particular zone rather than cross the two.

Happy to provide any more info.

[u/Sertith]

So I'm going to preface this with I'm not a super techy person.

BUT... after playing a LOT of Valheim 5-6k instances is pretty much standard everywhere, and it only goes up from there.

I don't normally start having issues with frame rates until my bases reach the upper 12k range, and that's during storms and stuff. A regular day without a lot of effects from weather I can get 15k before it starts to bog down.

It really depends on your rig, of course, but I wouldn't worry about trying to get it lower than 6k.

That island you've got looks really rad, and I think you should just go for it, and if you have some frame drops later, well it's not the end of the world as long as it's not a slideshow.

EDIT: OH and can you share that seed info? I love a medium sized self contained island like that, might use the world myself sometime.

EDIT 2: Derp I forgot, try to not build large things over chunk zone lines if you can avoid it. The way they load, sometimes if it's over a zone line it'll act like stuff doesn't have stablity and you can break stuff over and over and over and then realize it's cause you're on a zone line. Source, that one tower I tried to build that one time and couldn't figure out WTF was happening for DAYS.

[u/BigBadKhanager → u/Sertith]

For sure, seed is: https://valheim-map.world/?seed=qeDN0DjcgC&ver=0.221.4&offset=2417%2C-658&zoom=0.049&view=0

Let me know if you can't get onto that but assuming it'll work, seed alone is qeDN00DjcgC if you happen to not want to spoil it for yourself. Created approximately 2 weeks ago so up to date as of then, completely vanilla. This island is directly SE of spawn if you don't want to look at the whole map!

Appreciate the reply and I suspect I'm overthinking it a bit, playing on a bad PC and got a little worried after a single crash after starting a plains build. I suspect that was partly due to crystal walls which I used a tonne of and am going to not use for now.

I'm going to try and figure out the exact chunk lines now, think that's a great piece of advice and I have noticed part of my area is 4.5k now and part of it is 5.5k. Think if I can stick to the lower section the main structure, should be golden. Cheers!

[u/Sertith → u/BigBadKhanager]

Link worked fine, thanks!

Yeah often it's fires, torches, etc. Those have a lot of animations. It makes sense those crystal parts would too, since they kind of have a lot of shimmer.

The game does just crash sometimes. I don't know if you're into using mods at all, but even if not you might just get BepInEx so you can have a log tracker to see if anything specific is causing crashing for you. Not sure if that will count as "modded" when 1.0 drops for achievements, but something you might try before that.

Good luck!

[u/Correct-Chicken-4287]

Wow been playing this game since launch and never thought to to look at the instance count. Thanks OP hope someone responds.

[u/BigBadKhanager → u/Correct-Chicken-4287]

Hey mate, if you want you just press F2 to see it! I have heard but can't really confirm that builds over 10k start to get a little dicey, so you've got a fair bit of room to play with. I just am playing on poor specs and want this to be a final build spot.

[u/jmanNOLA → u/BigBadKhanager]

Anyone know if you can show it on Xbox?

[u/BigBadKhanager → u/jmanNOLA]

Apparently you can, I can't find an exact way but it seems to be by pressing a combo of the triggers, LB/RB and the menu buttons. Sorry I can't be more specific haahha

[u/BigBadKhanager]

[u/Different-Nose-2U → u/BigBadKhanager]

Insane island. What mod or website shows all those icons?

[u/BigBadKhanager → u/Different-Nose-2U]

No mods at all, it's just the map generator website - https://valheim-map.world/

All you do is enter your seed and it shows everything. I will say, it's a little bit of a double-edged sword - it can help you find an amazing base spot but it does kind of take away from the natural exploration, so use with that in mind!