Good news for anyone particularly attached to their Valheim buildings, as developer Iron Gate has tweaked the AI to make monsters slightly less keen on smashing up structures.
Iron Gate recently made a change to enemy AI that made monsters much more aggressive towards buildings, and players started to complain the monsters had become a bit too rowdy. Enemies were seen running past players to destroy their buildings instead, while some monsters became so confused about what they should be attacking that they essentially froze in place. I checked the patch out for myself and discovered local greydwarfs had stripped our village walls of decorations, while a run-in with a troll ended in disaster when it became a bit too interested in my friend's treehouse:
In any case, it seems Iron Gate noticed the AI change was causing a fair bit of chaos, and the AI has been tweaked once again to solve the problems.
"We hear you," the developer said in the patch notes, adding that the update provides "some tweaks to the monster AI to make them behave better when attacking structures etc."
The patch notes explain that monsters will now "always target creatures [including players] first if they have a clear path to them". On top of that, monsters should now "only attack low priority structures [walls etc.] if they are trying to get to a player".
Again, I tested this for myself and immediately noticed a significant improvement - enemies I encountered were once again more focused on me than my buildings, and the combat generally seemed back to normal: no more trolls standing around staring at portals. Even when hiding inside my mountain base, a nearby drake didn't seem too intent on demolishing my tower. Which is good, as I worked hard on that.
Anyway, if you were worrying that you'd have to dig trenches around all your buildings, you can put down your pickaxes - this patch should sort things out.
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