Author: Trafficblast

Crafting newer, better gear is core to the experience in Valheim, and in order to survive long enough to fight through Greydwarves, Trolls, and the game’s huge bosses, you’re going to need strong armor. The trouble is, how you create that armor can be pretty confusing. It requires you to expand your toolset, upgrade your workbench, hunt certain creatures, and learn how to work metal.

We’ve put together a full rundown of each of Valheim’s current armor sets below, including how strong they are, what benefits you can expect from them as you create full sets, and most importantly, how to unlock and create them. Expect to do a lot of work hunting and mining along the way. It’s also worth noting that each set of armor can be upgraded several times to increase its durability and armor levels. Leather armor might be your first armor set and among the weakest, but it can become very effective if you upgrade it while working on advancing to the next tier.

Valheim Armor Sets

Rags

• Set Items: Pants, Tunic
• Crafting Requirements: Workbench; Leather Scraps (obtained from boars)
• Armor per piece: 1
• Weight per piece: 2

Leather Armor

• Set Items: Pants, Tunic, Helmet, Cape
• Crafting Requirements: Workbench Level 2, Deer Hide
• Armor per piece: 2 (1 for cape)
• Weight per piece: 5 (1 for helmet, 4 for cape)

Troll Leather Armor

• Set Items: Pants, Tunic, Helmet, Cape
• Crafting Requirements: Workbench Level 3, Troll Hide, Leather Scraps, Deer Hide
• Armor per piece: 6 (1 for cape)
• Weight per piece: 5 (1 for helmet, 4 for cape)
• Set Bonus: Sneak +25

You’ll get access to Troll Leather Armor once you slay your first troll and gathered its hide. Crafting the armor requires upgrading you workbench twice, which means you’ll need a chopping block and a tanning rack nearby. Troll Armor is solid if you can get the hides for it, and it doesn’t take much to upgrade to make it pretty strong. Troll armor will cover you while you do all the work to mine and smelt Bronze, which can take quite a while.

Bronze Armor

• Set Items: Helmet, Plate Cuirass, Plate Leggings
• Crafting Requirements: Forge, Deer Hide, Bronze
• Armor per piece: 8
• Weight per piece: 10 (3 for helmet)
• Set reduces movement speed by 10%

Bronze Armor is a step up from the leather varieties you’ve been using up to this point, but it’ll take some time to unlock. First and foremost, you’ll need to kill Eikthyr, the game’s first boss. Look for altars marked with a deer relief to find places to summon it, and use deer trophies to do so. When you defeat Eikthyr, you’ll get his antler, which you can fashion into a pickaxe tough enough to start mining ores. That’s the first step in your quest toward Bronze.

The second step is to mine Tin and Copper, which you’ll find around the Meadows and Black Forest biomes. Once you’ve mined both, you’ll unlock the ability to build new crafting stations, including a Smelter and a Forge. Use the Smelter to turn ore into useable Copper and Tin, then use the Forge to combine them into Bronze. From there, you can start actually making things out of Bronze, including tougher tools and new armor.

Iron Armor

• Set Items: Helmet, Scale Mail, Grieves
• Crafting Requirements: Forge, Deer Hide, Iron
• Armor per piece: 14
• Weight per piece: 15 (3 for helmet)
• Set reduces movement speed by 10%

Like Bronze Armor, Iron takes some work to unlock. Scrap Iron is only found in certain places in the Swamp biome, and to get it, you’ll have to defeat the Elder, your second boss. To locate the Elder, you’ll need to explore the Black Forest for certain rune stones, which you can find near altars and inside burial chambers. Interact with the rune stones to mark the Elder on your map so you can hunt it down.

You’ll find Iron in Muddy Scrap Piles, which are located in Sunken Crypts. If you find a Wishbone, you can also uncover Muddy Scrap Piles buried throughout the Swamp biome. Use the Smelter to create Iron, which can then be crafted into armor at the Forge.

Wolf Armor

• Set Items: Drake Helmet, Chest, Legs, Cape
• Crafting Requirements: Forge, Wolf Hide, Drake Trophy, Silver, Wolf Trophy, Workbench
• Armor per piece: 20 (1 for cape)
• Weight per piece: 15 (3 for helmet, 4 for cape)
• Set increases Frost resistance; reduces movement speed by 10%

You’ll need to head to the Mountain biome to find everything you need for Wolf Armor. The upgrade is significant, but so is the cost–you’ll need to find Silver, Wolf Hides, and Drake Trophies to craft this gear, so expect to be busy. Drakes are frost-infused dragons that hang out in the Mountain biome, and you’ll need to bring some down to earn their trophies in order to make your armor. You’ll also need to find Silver in the Mountain, which requires both a Wishbone to locate and an Iron Pickaxe to harvest.

The Drake Helmet, Wolf Armor Chest, and Wolf Armor Legs can be made at your Forge and require Drake Trophies, Wolf Hides, and Silver to make. The Wolf Fur Cape is a little different; you won’t need Drake Trophies for it, but you will need Wolf Trophies, in addition to Wolf Hides and Silver. Craft the cape at the Workbench, rather than the Forge, to complete your set.

Padded Armor

• Set Items: Helmet, Cuirass, Greaves, Linen Cape
• Crafting Requirements: Forge, Iron, Silver, Linen Thread
• Armor per piece: 26
• Weight per piece: 10 (3 for helmet)
• Set reduces movement speed by 10%

The top armor in Valheim right now is the Padded Armor set, and of course, it requires a lot of effort to create. First, you’ll need to take down Morden, the boss in the Mountain biome, which will allow you to build the Artisans Table, and then the Spinning Wheel. Next, you’ll need to go to the Plains biome to get Flax, which you can turn into Linen Thread with the Spinning Wheel.

After that, you just need a lot of Iron, Silver, and Thread to make the items in the armor set. The benefits are huge, however, providing you a ton of protection and relatively little drawback.

Now Playing: The Valheim Viking Guide For Beginners

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The first thing you hear aboard the Glykon when you finally make your way inside is a low, frightening growl. As you’re creeping through a ventilation duct to find a way into the derelict spaceship’s structure, it’s impossible to pin down where the sounds of scratching, breathing, and heavy footsteps are coming from. It isn’t long before you discover the bodies and the wreckage. There’s no one aboard. Something awful happened here. Whispers emanate from the walls, and shadows move in the corners, and slowly you realize that everyone is dead, but you are not alone.

Investigating the Glykon is Destiny 2’s latest mission, Presage, and it’s a standout moment in the game. I spent more than an hour wandering the ship when I discovered it, finding my way through its twisting hallways and infrastructure, listening to the sounds of something alive creeping around in the dark. The level evokes the likes of horror sci-fi such as Alien, Dead Space, or Event Horizon, sending you into the bowels of a dead ship with only your gun and your flashlight as comfort, without a clear sense of what you’ll find–or what it might do to you.

Missions with a unique tonal shift like Presage only come along every once in a while, and they’re among the best things that developer Bungie makes for Destiny 2. Unlike the rest of the game right now, Presage places you into a full-on horror story for a short stint. It throws puzzles and obstacles in your way with little or no explanation of how you might make your way through them and trusts you to figure it out. It demands you explore and understand its space, rather than just sending you from gunfight to gunfight–huge portions of the mission contain no enemies at all. And it throws in some very cool ideas that I’ll try not to spoil, with one fun section taking after an iconic Star Wars moment and another that, if you squint, could have been ripped from Halo 2.

Destiny has always excelled at putting players in satisfying shooting battles, but it’s in missions like Presage that it feels like Bungie is really stretching its legs and showing what it’s capable of. There are a few big fights in Presage, but it’s everything else that makes the mission so interesting, with its focus squarely on puzzles and exploration. There are plenty of inventive moments that require you to fully understand an area to figure out how to open a door or break through a vent. Finding your way into the ship to start with, for instance, is an exercise in observing the space around you and uncovering a hidden path that requires a little creative thinking. Bungie constantly designs environmental puzzles that put players to the test with their platforming, and when they’re at their best, traversing the spaces of Destiny 2 is as fun as fighting in them.

Destiny 2 lately has been getting better and better about telling its story, drawing from its lore, and expanding on its world and characters in ways that make them more impactful. Presage feels like it’s brimming with important story beats that haven’t been fully uncovered yet. How the ship and its crew met their fate is an open question–what killed them and why are two others.

The whole thing ties into the lore of the former Cabal emperor, Calus, one of Destiny 2’s more nuanced villainous characters, as well as the current seasonal story arc concerning Caiatl, the new empress and Calus’s daughter. It recalls elements of the Crown of Sorrows raid and the Season of the Drifter from more than two years ago, making both relevant again. It rewards you for paying attention to Destiny 2’s story, and it encourages you to go learn more about the world; the more you know about all these different elements, the more interesting and weirder the story of the Glykon becomes.

What I like most about Presage, though, is that it’s full of secrets. The best moments in Destiny, bar none, are the discovery of secret tidbits hidden within the game. Presage itself is something of a secret–to unlock it, you need to play a specific mission this week , opening a door that has been closed for six years and revealing a new area. Inside the ship itself are clues that imply there’s more to the mission than what we’ve already seen–as you learn more about the ship, you can unlock additional pieces of story and hidden caches.

Digging through and finding what’s hidden in missions like Presage are some of the greatest experiences that Destiny 2 has to offer. It’s moments like these when we see the community around the game at its finest, it’s reminiscent of when thousands came together to solve the puzzle of the Corridors of Time. They’re opportunities for Bungie to make its game feel massive and nuanced, where your investment in the game is respected and rewarded, and where Bungie is at its most creative and inventive.

It’s been tough to be a Destiny fan lately. Some changes, like the removal of some planetary destinations and “gunsetting,” in which older weapons and armor have been rendered obsolete, have turned off a lot of players. Though I might have complaints about losing my favorite gear to old age or the lack of story context for my friends first stepping into the world, it’s missions like Presage (and the extremely cool gun you get from it, Dead Man’s Tale) that keep me playing.

I like Destiny’s enormous universe and the strange, fascinating stories it can tell. I like that one mission can be focused on comedy, and another can be a straight-up haunted house. I like that there’s always something new to uncover. And I like that I’m eventually going to find out what happened on a derelict ship drifting through the solar system, shoot a bunch of aliens with a cool new gun, and see a little more of Bungie’s massive world come into sharper focus.

Although Nintendo made no mention of the Legend of Zelda’s 35th anniversary during the February 2021 Direct, it did have two Zelda announcements to share during the presentation: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is getting DLC, and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is coming to Switch in July. Considering that Skyward Sword itself is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, it seems like a fitting time for Nintendo to dust the game off and give it some modern touch-ups, including a new control method. But while the original controls were a common point of contention, they were never the biggest issue plaguing the game.

As the first full-fledged Zelda adventure designed specifically for the Wii, Skyward Sword made extensive use of the Wii Remote, eschewing the series’ traditional control scheme in favor of motion controls. Many aspects of the game were designed around gesturing with the Wii Remote and Nunchuck; you had to physically swing the controller to slash with your sword, for instance, and firing arrows involved pulling back on the Nunchuk to draw your bow.

Although Skyward Sword generally reviewed well at the time of its release, its motion controls would prove divisive among many (to say nothing of the accessibility issues inherent to the control scheme). I can only speak to my own experiences with the game, of course, but I personally felt the motion controls were implemented well; in the multiple times I played through it, I rarely found myself struggling to execute any of Link’s actions–with the exception of the rotating block puzzles that replaced boss keys, which can all go in the bin. But I was also fortunate enough to experience the game in a setting where I had ample room to swing my controller (and no judging eyes around to see me pretend sword fight).

Skyward Sword HD still uses motion controls, unsurprisingly, but Nintendo has also implemented a new, button-only control method as an alternative. It’s difficult to gauge how well this scheme actually works without some hands-on time, but just from a glance, Nintendo’s solution seems serviceable, if not what most fans probably envisioned. Rather than swinging the Joy-Con to slash with Link’s sword, the button controls map sword slashes to the right stick.

By necessity, this scheme is considerably different from how previous Zelda games controlled, but it does at least allow you to experience the game without motion controls, which is especially helpful if you’re playing on a Switch Lite or have a disability (or just vehemently oppose motion controls). As nice as it is to have this option, however, the primary issue that dragged Skyward Sword down was not its controls, but rather its excessive padding. Some mild Skyward Sword spoilers follow from here on.

The most egregious example is the game’s Silent Realm tear hunts. Partway through the adventure, you return to the surface to track down the Sacred Flames with which to power up the Goddess Sword. Upon your arrival, however, you’re informed by Fi–the spirit that resides in the sword and your companion throughout much of the game–that you must first undertake trials to prove your worth. These trials take you into the “Silent Realm,” a dream-like rendition of the area you’re currently in.

Your objective in the Silent Realm is to collect all of the sacred tears scattered around the area. What complicates this mission is that you cannot use your sword or any other items while here, and the Silent Realm is patrolled by invincible guardians that can strike you down with a single hit, forcing you to restart the entire tear hunt if you get caught. It’s frustrating and an absolute chore to play through, and the game sends you on four of these hunts throughout the course of the story.

Fi is also another detriment to the experience. Like Navi and Midna, Fi offers guidance and frequently propels the story forward, but she interjects incessantly. Chatty companions are nothing new for the Zelda series, of course, but Fi’s robotic personality and penchant for spelling out the obvious in excruciating detail make her particularly reviled.

These aspects did more to hamper Skyward Sword than its controls, which is a shame because the game has some genuinely enjoyable ideas between its moments of frustration. The soundtrack in particular is wonderful, featuring some of the most beautiful and moving tunes in the entire series, and the dungeons are cleverly designed and culminate in some memorable boss battles.

Introducing an additional control method in Skyward Sword HD is a welcome improvement and helps make the game more accessible, but its other issues are more in need of addressing. If Nintendo can trim Fi’s dialogue and pare back the tear hunts, perhaps by reducing the number of tears you need to collect (as it did when it remastered Twilight Princess on Wii U) or not resetting your progress when you fail a trial, then Skyward Sword would be a stronger game overall. It still wouldn’t be without issues; there are other instances where it feels like the game sends you off to do something simply for the sake of prolonging the adventure. But these fixes would certainly help improve the pacing, and it would make it easier to appreciate Skyward Sword’s many genuine charms.

A time jump in a television show can revive a stale premise with new characters, new motivations, and new settings. It’s a way for new viewers to pick up the plot. And it’s a way to skip over the boring parts of a story, and get to the exciting, narrative-turning action.

In the case of the CW’s Riverdale, the latter was the main reason for its Season 5 time jump–seven years after the characters’ high school graduation.

“We did decide very quickly because all of the kids were seemingly going to different colleges and we didn’t want them to all go to, like, Riverdale University,” said showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “And in terms of drama, for me, college is a less appealing version of high school stories… This time jump allows us to start with a clean slate, drop in the middle of stories, and then have people catch up.”

On the February 10 and February 17 episodes of Riverdale, we caught up with most of the main characters’ lives post-time jump. Here’s what we know so far. Riverdale airs every Wednesday on the CW, at 8 a.m. EST.

Archie Andrews

Archie completed his armed forces basic training and rose to the rank of Sergeant. He fought in war and was injured while trying to protect his men, one of whom lost both his legs. He returns to Riverdale with orders to revive Riverdale High School’s ROTC program, but quickly discovers that his beloved town has fallen on hard times.

He calls and reunites Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Toni, and himself in a last-ditch bid to save Riverdale. The four of them agree to become teachers at the understaffed Riverdale High School until permanent replacements are hired. Betty and Archie are now seeing each other, and have agreed not to tell Veronica and Jughead. However, it seems inevitable that they’ll find out, and soon.

Mary Andrews

We only hear about Mary’s whereabouts second-hand; Archie says that she’s not living at the family home, because she’s renting it out. We later learn that is not the case; the Ghoulies have been using the Andrews home as a base. It’s unclear whether Mary knows this or has been deliberately misleading Archie.

Veronica Lodge

Veronica became a Wall Street broker, with aspirations to be the “She-Wolf of Wall Street.” She has been married to Chadwick Gekko, another Wall Street broker, for a year. Chadwick wants kids and wants Veronica to settle down, but Veronica wants to be back on the Wall Street trading floor with him. She deals with her frustration by working at Lacy’s, a shady jewelry boutique, behind Chadwick’s back.

Veronica originally left Wall Street to deal with her stress due to “The Accident,” which we later learn was a helicopter crash that nearly killed her. She now regrets the decision to leave. We get confirmation that Chadwick is a controlling, duplicitous man, much like Veronica’s father Hiram Lodge. Veronica will be a temporary teacher at Riverdale High School instead of heading back to New York, which has the positive effect of pissing off Chad and Hiram, simultaneously.

Hiram Lodge

Hiram is responsible for turning Riverdale into a dilapidated shell of its former self, by choking it of resources to increase the value of Sodale, the nearby residential community that he is developing. He is currently trying and failing to purchase the Blossom family’s maple tree properties, but Cheryl refuses to sell. He’s a board member of Stonewall Prep, which tormented Jughead in Season 4. And he successfully coordinates a vote to un-incorporate Riverdale, making it a town in name only. The school is about the last public-serving institution tha Hiram has not destroyed.

Hermione Lodge

Hermione Lodge is now a successful reality star and features in a “Real Housewives” type of show. She is happy for Veronica’s marriage to Chadwick and doesn’t understand why her daughter is discontent.

Betty Cooper

Betty is an FBI trainee who tracks and profiles serial killers–appropriate, given that her brother Charles was also a serial killer. However, she’s had an extreme setback to what ought to be a promising career. She successfully tracked the “Trash Bag Killer” to his home, but because she did not call for backup, she became his prisoner for two weeks, and then he escaped. Now, she’s stuck filing papers instead of being in the field, and she sees a therapist, whom she blatantly lies to. She’s also dating Glen, an FBI Agent and her superior. When she arrives back in Riverdale, her family resents her for having left. As one of Riverdale’s newest teachers, she’ll be taking a leave from the FBI to help out Riverdale and continue hooking up with Archie.

Alice Cooper

Alice is still active in the town’s local politics. But her biggest job is helping Polly raise her twins. Alice is resentful of Betty, who she feels abandoned them in order to attend Yale and join the FBI.

Polly Cooper

Polly is living with her mother and raising her twin girls. She tells Betty and Alice that’s she’s working as a waitress to make ends meet. We discover, however, that she’s actually with the Ghoulies, and in Betty’s words, might be dealing, or tricking, or both. The last we see of her, she’s being chased down by a man in a truck–which may be the last time we see her.

Reggie Mantle

Reggie is currently working as one of Hiram’s goons. We see him briefly at the Blossom estate when Cheryl turns down Hiram’s latest maple proposal, again. He also declines to help his friends, both when Archie needs help getting rid of the Ghoulies in his home, and when Veronica needs help escaping the watchful eyes of Hiram and Chad.

Jughead Jones

Jughead is now a published writer with a successful novel, which marked him as one of the most promising voices of his generation; the novel was based on his time with the Serpents and his relationship with Betty. But since then, he’s fallen on hard times. He currently has writer’s block. His potential gig at the New Yorker fell through. He’s getting evicted from his home. His girlfriend, Jess, is leaving him. And debt collectors are trying to track him down. He recently hooked up with what he thought was a fan of his first book, but it was actually an aspiring author who blackmailed him into reading her book and trying to get it published. He has a large chest tattoo, which definitely has a backstory.

Kevin Keller

Kevin graduated from Carnegie Mellon and is now the drama teacher at Riverdale High School. He’s in a relationship with Fangs Fogerty.

Tom Keller

The sheriff of Riverdale is the only remaining law enforcement.The understaffing has caused huge parts of the town to descend into lawlessness and violence.

Cheryl Blossom

Cheryl continues to be a recluse, as she has been since graduating high school. She taken up painting. Toni alludes that over the past seven years, Cheryl has taken practical steps to rectify her family’s negative reputation and undo some of the damage it wrought. But Cheryl still fears the Blossom family curse, and thus refuses to get close to anyone again, especially Toni, in an attempt to protect them. The last we see Cheryl, she’s using her wealth to protect Riverdale High School from Hiram Lodge by budgeting and privatizing it.

Rose Blossom

The elder matriarch of the Blossom family may emerge as something of a villain this season; she’s training Cheryl to be a master art forger. It’s an out-there plot point that requires more explanation.

Toni Topaz

Toni is the new Snake Queen of the Serpents and the guidance counselor at Riverdale High School. She and the other Serpents bought the speakeasy beneath Pops as their new homebase. Toni is a main character this season and joins Betty, Veronica, Jughead, and Archie at their booth in Pop’s. She’s gotten her family to soften on ex-girlfriend Cheryl Blossom, but the two of them are still not together (though she did convince Cheryl to fund Riverdale High. Toni is also pregnant, and she isn’t revealing who the father is.

Sweet Pea

Sweet Pea held down the Serpents while its leaders were in college, and now drives trucks for the Serpents as one of their legitimate businesses.

Fangs Fogarty

Fangs also graduated from college, and he also drives trucks for the Serpents. He’s in a relationship with Kevin Keller.

Pop Tate

Pop Tate has retired. His granddaughter, Tabitha Tate, is taking over the Chock’lit Shoppe.

11. Scorpion’s origin

Shudder’s original anthology series Creepshow has its second season premiering on the streaming service on April 1–and it’s already been renewed for Season 3. One thing horror fans will love about Season 2 though is that one tale is a love letter to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead.

The story titled “Public Television of the Dead” pays homage to the classic Evil Dead franchise. During AMC Networks TCA winter tour presentation, director Greg Nicotero spoke about this specific feature. “Rob Schrab wrote that episode,” the director said. “I realized in retrospect that a lot of my episodes were period pieces. A lot of them take place in the ’70s. I have a big affection for growing up in the ’70s and reading Famous Monsters magazine and watching chiller theater.

“So, having directed “Model Kid,” which is the first segment in the premiere, ‘Public Television of the Dead’ is really sort of my kind of big thank you to Sam Raimi because I worked on Evil Dead 2, and I worked on Army of Darkness. I had always had a massive affection for Sam, so I feel like I channeled my best Sam Raimi in that episode, and damn, I had so much fun like getting that camera whipping around and like the evil for his point of view and designing our own version of the Necronomicon. It was really a blast so much fun.”

In addition to this upcoming second season in April, Shudder released a Holiday Special in December, which featured killer Santas and werewolves.

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