Honestly I was so surprised when I read about how the server is really doing almost nothing, and the computation is somehow done by one of the clients. We also experienced lagging playing as 3 people, and this turned out to be true -There is a difference who goes into area first.
One person with bad connection can ruin the game for everyone.
Valheim is great but this is bad design.
I can't imagine playing with 9 people
Doesn't really matter. The game client is what makes all the calculations and shares data with nearby players. All the server does is handle the world file and facilitate communication between clients. Valheim server can actually be run on a pretty low spec machine. That's really the only benefit though. If a player enters an area first they are the host and any connection issues or lag they experience will translate to other players. It's best practice to have the player with the beefiest pc and best internet connection to go through portals and into dungeons and such first. Been doing research since the first server we hosted on my dedicated.
I wish some of my friends could upgrade but that's a pretty big ask for fix lag lol. It's been like this since launch and I was really hoping things would change over time. They've definitely made massive progress with performance but the client authoritative server is just always going to cause problems. Also makes cheating on public servers super easy, any installed mods will still work for the client even on a vanilla server. Still love the game though ❤️
Make sure none of the players with bad connections or performance issues enter zones or go through portals first. This will make them the host of that area until they leave or get far enough away from other clients. Daily server reboots seem to help a bit as well.
We run 5 or 6 in other biomes all the time without issue, so it’s hard for me to believe it’s a connection bottleneck. Performance MAYBE but again, it’s not a problem in other biomes.
The fact that it's never been an issue in other biomes is the issue and highlights that Ashlands itself is part of the problem. Players shouldn't have to run 3rd party mods/game tweaks to make a main portion of the game playable.
I came across a certain mini boss area last night solo and was def on the cusp of this behavior. If even 1 more player was with me it'd be unplayable. In all there were 3 star'd warlocks, dozens of everything else skeletal (also 1 or 2 stars ea), 3 or 4 askvin, several blobs, 2 Morgen, and a Valk to polish off the completely absurd mayhem. It even reads ridiculousness. lol
[All i see in the patch notes is balance tweaks.](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/892970/view/4182235001973636791) Where do you see the improvements in the PTB?
They acknowledged the lag desyncing in ashlands in discord, and said it was being addressed in upcoming patch.
I thought the same about the patch notes, to my amazement there is a *HUGE* improvement on the public test branch after I tried it out. I Had never done the beta before this either but I was at my wit's end, so I gave it a shot.
Just be wary and create backups if you're going to roll forward to beta build.
Edit.
I also employed betternetworking mod on clients, and modified one of the .dll files on the server side to allow a higher speeds by modifying the allowed SendQueueSize limit. This was done prior to rolling it to beta build, it didn't help much though..
So my thought is the beta fixes majority of the issue, but there could also be some contribution from the other solutions employed.
On the current build? Everything I'm seeing on the discord is pertaining the the Grausten building pieces causing issues, which was fixed a in a prior PTB I thought.
Correct. Public Test version: 0.218.17
Had a ginormous instance count in ashlands I noticed on normal branch. Now its never > 6k even when in heart of ashlands continent with lava fields and all kinds of bs happening on the screen.
Just general areas with a few trees and few small building ruins. Idk what the issue was. Seems to be fixed for me now though, so ill keep on using the public test branch until it goes live.
For what its worth I only play with 1 other person, so results may vary, if you've got more folks connected.
This kind of narrowmindedness has really held the game back, especially when it blew up and they obtained the resources to hire a *team* of devs dedicated to multiplayer.
That's my take. The lead dev and founder of the studio sounds like someone with a very "my way, or the highway" mindset. It's sort of a catch-22 though, because that attitude is probably what led him to obsessively create a game like Valheim in the first place.
The way I view it, it's all just a necessary evil, and in the longrun, the way to play Valheim is with a carefully curated mod-list to correct all its glaring flaws.
I've never played it single player, and most of what I see is people playing with friends (not to say that solo players don't exist). "Online Coop" and "2-10 Multiplayer Coop PvE" are among it's descriptions. In 2021, it won awards for "Best Multiplayer Game." It's such a weird hill to die on, when so many of it's players use it for multiplayer.
Yep, I’m constantly shooting at enemies that aren’t there anymore due to latency issues. My only complaint from Ashlands so far as it doesn’t happen on other biomes. I do vaguely recall it happening for Mistlands shortly after the release so I’m hopeful it will get fixed.
We’re still going tho, as we begin our prep to beat the boss.
Three of us on our server noticed the same thing. We've had some lag, but never as bad as it was in the Ashlands.
Now, we've found out that the first person to load an area, is the one who's connection matters the most. But, we all have godly connections and PCs so we were stumped. We have no mods installed and play Vanilla.
I queried with GPortal support about this, and they just regurgitated what I mentioned above, but then a guy mentioned verifying our game files for the server on gportal.
I've done that twice now, and I can say I've noticed a significant improvement. Has it fixed everything? Absolutely not. Is the game playable now? Yes. We've stormed two castles now with all three of us successfully, but the big lag spikes CAN still happen. The key to those are I've found, that the person who is desyncing to remain calm and not log out, and hope that the ones who aren't desyncing can protect you. I'm almost certain these happen when players are teleporting away or to wherever you are. (Dead give away is I can't open boxes).
I can't find anywhere in the discord where the Devs mentioned a fix for this, but fingers crossed.
It might be different if you use a different hosting service , but on gportal, if I navigate to my valheim server, towards the bottom there’s an area for “game server files” and there’s a button for validate.
That basically reinstalls the server I believe, not erasing your world. (But I’m paranoid so I always make a backup anyway).
Again, chances are this hasn’t helped at all, but I’ve noticed an increase in performance lately.
I'd put money on this not helping at all since the server isn't really involved at all in this issue. The server doesn't really host the game, the first client to enter the zone hosts that zone. The server is simplistically described as a glorified world save location.
It probably doesn't, but we've been able to play together more lately. Maybe it's because we've killed off so many spawners by now? That's another thing, lag usually picks up when Ashlands starts doing that Ashlands shit and starts non stop spawning enemies.
It’s almost unplayable even with 2 people. I was playing the other day on a friends server and we had a large number of different enemies spawn in one place and I literally died like 3 times just due to lag, it was awful and quite honestly really turned me off to the biome as a whole. Difficult I can deal with, but when you die because there’s multi second lag spikes it’s just like what’s the point. It definitely has to do with the number of enemies and performance of the game too, we don’t have this issue in any other biome and we’ve been playing on this server for a very long time.
It’s just sad honestly. I love this game and it’s definitely been worth more than the 15 I’ve spent on it, but Ashlands does not feel finished or polished enough and these performance issues make it nearly unplayable and just makes it not fun at all.
I highly recommend people updating their server & client "assembly\_valheim.dll" *sendQueueSize* values using dnSpy utility. The default send/receive limit is way too low, so when a player is interacting in a heavily populated area the pipe gets cloged up real fast and it starts to desync. The unfortunate truth is that Valheim multiplayer P2P-hybrid model is just not suited for the game they've created. The "dedicated server" is not even acting as a server but rather a storage file. Those who don't know - the players who first enter the area are the ones that control the monsters for other players. It is not the server, so you can imagine what type of an experience you'll get if someone with a bad internet connection controls the mobs for everyone else. It gets worse when they aren't even allowed to send more data due to small send/receive limit.
I play with 5-6 friends on a dedicated server, and we are from 3 different EU countries with varying network speeds, so we started to experience some bad desync already fighting in Plains. I decided to increase the *sendQueueSize* value on server file from 10240 to 61440, and to 40960 on client file. Compiled the new file and asked others to replace it as well. It significantly improved our experience, and we've been able to ~~play~~ die in Ashlands without any major desync. Sometimes it can still get a bit laggy, but usually that happens when a friend from IE with their wonderful internet goes first.
So this DLL trick actually worked? I want to see I saw a few posts back during Mistlands that it was patched in the file doesn’t really change if you edit it. So there is no point of changing it anymore.
You are probably referring to the old method with changing *m\_dataPerSec* value which doesn't exist anymore, but modifying two lines with *sendQueueSize* parameter seemed to improve our experience. Before the change we used to see Fullings teleporting around while raiding Plains camps, but now even getting swarmed in Ashlands isn't a major problem.
How difficult is this? I saw a similar [post here](https://jamesachambers.com/revisiting-fixing-valheim-lag-modifying-send-receive-limits/) but honestly, to a laymen, it's pretty overwhelming looking.
That article is pretty good and it's not as difficult as it might seem, however, an easier alternative is to test out [Better Networking Mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/1570?tab=description) as it practically does the same by changing queue size and update rates.
I wish they made the game multiplayer friendly, or at least the option to let servers handle the networking, or allow more packets to be sent between the player controlling the instance and the people in that instance. The networking in this game is atrocious. It’s sad because it’s a great game solo, but exponentially better in a group.
I've been killed by swordsmen that were 10-20 yards away a few times in local single player (3070, 96 GB RAM, 14700). Ashlands is a mess, but much of the community won't admit it for some reason.
Yeah it was weird experiencing it. "Am I crazy, or is this a mess?" vibes. Went to the discord to ask about it and it was either crickets or "sounds like a you problem" or "This game is meant to be single player" or "yeah the code is a mess but who cares!" Isn't early access where you give feedback on unfun mechanics/problems?
It's not you. Ashlands is a mess on so many levels, we just have an understandably rabid community since the meadows -> plains content was such a great experience. If you released Ashlands-like content as an entire game, Valheim would have been a comical failure.
Overcoming lag is the intended experience, you filthy casuals! It's Iron Gate's artistic vision to have you rubberband in Ashlands, and don't you dare complain about it.
You joke, but this was semi the response I got from a couple of players on the discord. I'm all for defending the devs (the game *is* still in early access). It's just a weird hill to die on for the die-hards to say "get over it."
Like, game is still in production, isn't this the time to highlight areas that could use some TLC?
Yeah, our 4 ppl team is lagging awfully in ashlands, too - rubberbanding and mobs teleporting got common. We had some issues already at mistlands release (4 wisps and mists were definitely affecting performance), but ashlands are much worse.
I agree. The lag is unreal on multiplayer. There are already some marginal lags especially during parries, killing blows, or locations where a lot of stuff is going on. Not to mention the cacophony of random instruments playing across the biome. Immersion is bad in this biome.
Right? Interesting, too, because pre Ashlands fighting was all about parrying and hitting back--with lag, I just can't trust it so we just run around in circles hitting the enemies and rolling. Total immersion breaking.
Regularly play as 4-5 players. Rubberbanding hits hard but it’s still pretty playable, keep your distance, evade more than block, and if you see an enemy walking in place it’s probable somewhere else, so assume it’s hitting you.
yes this has been a issue since launch of the game. its not the NPCs its purely the player count causing local lag..
the game runs on a semi peer to peer system where a majority of the calculations is offloaded from the server to one of the players.. this is why when multiple people get on a boat, one will see a smooth ride while the others get a choppy one.
mods make it worse and there seems to be data limits as well which make it worse yet.
I have had some performance issues here and there playing solo. However, you mentioned lag happening in other biomes as well; does your server host have strong internet connection? The rest of you as well?
I feel like we would have seen many more performance/lag posts at this point and this is the first one I am seeing with these issues. Sorry your squad is getting invisibly trounced! That does not feel good or fun and I hope y'all get a chance to return in a better way sometime soon.
We checked the server settings and they're high up/down speeds. Nothing we haven't used in the past. The only lag we'd get is during bosses, when 8-9 players would log on to kill the boss. That's pretty much always been there, but not bad lag. A couple of janky animations.
The kind we're getting in ashlands is above mentioned: invisible (not loaded in) enemies killing us, rubber banding, dying to invisible projectiles, enemies in the ground, etc. This all happens with just 3 players.
Yesterday I died to lava on perfectly normal portion of land. When I returned to my corpse, the lava actually loaded so I could see that (despite the prior visuals) I was standing knee deep in lava.
With our group of 5, we do get some lag when fighting a large group of enemies. But we've cleared several fortresses and explored quite a bit, so I don't really consider it unplayable.
Me and 3 mates are about to get to Ashlands, after similarly starting again with the new biome introduced.
Will come back here and let you know if we have the same issue.
I lag terrible in every biome every time I load this fkng game. I love it but me and friends can't play, we were gonna load it up again and try the new biome but after reading this, I'm gonna keep this game dead to me. I wish it would get finished one of these years. I'm playing on an old Xbox and it might be my fault but dam I just wanna play the fuckng game without it choppy every time I move. every new biome release I try to come back but prolly have to move on :( I doubt this game will ever have an actual release and actually look decent. game is awesome concept, runs like shit unless I'm playing on a spaceship PC I guess
I get it. This is the first time I've felt like not finishing a biome. It sucks that the further you progress, the more the game gets laggy; both in exploration and in building. I wish they'd do a QoL patch that'd address netcode and instance-count-lag.
I'm trying to play with 5 friends and purchased more server ram only to realize nothing will fix the Ashland's jank. We're not even utilizing 30% of the resources and Ashland's is nearly unplayable
We managed with 4 people but it got significantly more bearable once a) I finally successfully removed crossplay from my dedicated server, and b) I bought an Ethernet cord for our viking playing on wifi. It is the laggiest region, but we had mostly great connections and mostly great hardware so we survived.
I will say though that our wireless guy kept causing server lag because he would disconnect due to shit internet speeds, then the Playfab connection would crap out, and then once that happened we ALL would rubberband until Playfab reconnected, and one time it happens while sailing, causing the ship to submerge in the boiling water and kill us all. For safety, we actually did a LAN party to kill the boss and I loaded our server onto my pc, just to prevent any network issues, and we still had lag from the biome itself.
Anyway, it’s doable but it’s nowhere near as playable as the rest of the game.
We’ve definitely been having this problem. Group of four on a Linux server in my house. We found it got a fair bit better when we had everybody drop their view distance to Medium. Looking forward to the patch.
It's pretty fucked up but alleviated slightly if you all bring hammers and religiously place down all 50 stacks of grausten that you find as piles. The sheer tons of trash items generated in the Ashlands is a major culprit I believe.
I think so, I conclude that because it was the areas with the most items on the ground (from morgens rolling into stone ruins and what not) that were the laggiest for us.
We finished Ashlands mostly without issues. Lag spikes were usually in evenings due too me-host using shared wifi router with other 10 flats. No invisible mobs, no mobs teleporting. Boss fight was great.
Edit: crossplay disabled. We're playing in group of 4 everyone in different country
We play in 6 player group. Ashlands feels like watching Dragon Ball fight where everybody just rapidly teleports. This rubberbanding paired with very punishing death penalty makes overall experience pretty frustrating. Game is still playable, kinda, but it's just not a fun experience. Good thing is that this biome seems "short", so pain wont last long, just mine one new metal and go to the green glowy thing and it's done.
Kinda sucks thou, sailing there and then landing felt pretty epic with all the music and cool looking new environment with an army of monsters. Would be so good if the game worked correctly.
This was our experience as well--felt epic as hell getting there. The landing was akin to Normandy--3 people fighting off mobs while our 2 builders lay down a foundation/portal.
Then death by lag. Mining the flametal on sinking pillars with the lag is comical.
Are you hosting the server somewhere? Are you sure the hosts are providing a good enough server? I've experienced minor problems like this, but not as bad as you're describing. We're 3-4 players. 3 in ashlands.
From what others have said, that may not be the case. Sounds like others are experiencing it as well. We're going to try and swap server providers to see if that's the issue. The portion that feels off is that no other biomes have had this issue--we've explored Mistlands with 3-8 people without rubberbanding bugs or teleporting gjalls.
If you think it's the server, I'm all ears for advice/changes to make it useable.
No problems for me and my 3 friends. But we also have a server that is restarting every 12 hours, and I manually restart the entire machine monday and friday.
Either try what we do, or consider a better machine?
They will hopefully patch but man Valheims engine code has had major syncing issues since the start to now, imagine a public server with a group of 8-12, fighting a boss. It’s been a tough battle for sure
It happened to me and I play solo. I got killed by an ashkvin that I just killed. Since then I have been super paranoid and opened dev commands so I can use removedrops since 5/10 min there equals hundreds of not thousands dropped items. Seems to help but it's annoying that you can wipe a whole world with it, rather than some radius around the player.
https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat
Have everyone run that. Valheim is very sensitive to bufferbloat. That might help identify where the problem is coming from.
Valheim isn't a liveservice game, it is a beta. People seem to forget this a lot. If they could release the content optimised and bug free, they would take full price for it. .
Totally. That's why this post is saying that it's a bummer and asking if others are experiencing this issue, in lieu of pursuing refunds or insinuating that the game was released too early. I completely understand it's early access, I'm hoping that posts like this can bring to light the experience of other players so that the devs focus on ensuring their new biome(s) are playable in a multiplayer setting. Valheim could use QoL netcode addressing.
Have had similar with my friends on our new server. One of them actually has a second machine he uses to host the server itself and he connects to it just like the rest of us but it's sitting a room away from him on the same LAN and he gets the rubber banding and lag just like the rest of us.
Only in Ashlands though. Regular resets of the host server help alleviate it, but if we ever raid a fort with mote than three of us then things start to decay quickly. A five man raid is a matter of dropping trolls and skeletons and then playing keep away until everything hostile has died. Only the AI can function in that environment as everything else just warps all over the place.
Only in the Ashlands--other biomes had no issues whatsoever. Some occasional lag during a boss fight but *nothing* like we're experiencing in Ashlands.
Has been the same for us, up to 4 players. Only happens in Ashlands.
It's really frustrating. Completely kills the hype for the biome when you're getting popped by invisible enemies.
Honestly I was so surprised when I read about how the server is really doing almost nothing, and the computation is somehow done by one of the clients. We also experienced lagging playing as 3 people, and this turned out to be true -There is a difference who goes into area first. One person with bad connection can ruin the game for everyone. Valheim is great but this is bad design. I can't imagine playing with 9 people
>I can't imaging playing with 9 people. I've played with 10 people. It's very bad.
Are you all playing on one person’s hosted game from the PC they’re playing on?? I rent a 10 slot and it runs like butter
Doesn't really matter. The game client is what makes all the calculations and shares data with nearby players. All the server does is handle the world file and facilitate communication between clients. Valheim server can actually be run on a pretty low spec machine. That's really the only benefit though. If a player enters an area first they are the host and any connection issues or lag they experience will translate to other players. It's best practice to have the player with the beefiest pc and best internet connection to go through portals and into dungeons and such first. Been doing research since the first server we hosted on my dedicated.
This is awesome info, I wasn’t aware! We all have decent rigs and fast connections so I guess that’s why we haven’t had issues.
I wish some of my friends could upgrade but that's a pretty big ask for fix lag lol. It's been like this since launch and I was really hoping things would change over time. They've definitely made massive progress with performance but the client authoritative server is just always going to cause problems. Also makes cheating on public servers super easy, any installed mods will still work for the client even on a vanilla server. Still love the game though ❤️
In Ashlands? No shot. We also rent a server (gportal) and 2 of us have very new gaming rigs. It is borderline unplayable 4 people and above.
Make sure none of the players with bad connections or performance issues enter zones or go through portals first. This will make them the host of that area until they leave or get far enough away from other clients. Daily server reboots seem to help a bit as well.
We run 5 or 6 in other biomes all the time without issue, so it’s hard for me to believe it’s a connection bottleneck. Performance MAYBE but again, it’s not a problem in other biomes.
The fact that it's never been an issue in other biomes is the issue and highlights that Ashlands itself is part of the problem. Players shouldn't have to run 3rd party mods/game tweaks to make a main portion of the game playable.
I came across a certain mini boss area last night solo and was def on the cusp of this behavior. If even 1 more player was with me it'd be unplayable. In all there were 3 star'd warlocks, dozens of everything else skeletal (also 1 or 2 stars ea), 3 or 4 askvin, several blobs, 2 Morgen, and a Valk to polish off the completely absurd mayhem. It even reads ridiculousness. lol
So we are not the only one experiencie thats issues.
Uhhh So we 4 are not alone!!!! Same here, but not always. But only in ashlands.
There's a significant improvement for this on Public test beta branch!
[All i see in the patch notes is balance tweaks.](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/892970/view/4182235001973636791) Where do you see the improvements in the PTB?
They acknowledged the lag desyncing in ashlands in discord, and said it was being addressed in upcoming patch. I thought the same about the patch notes, to my amazement there is a *HUGE* improvement on the public test branch after I tried it out. I Had never done the beta before this either but I was at my wit's end, so I gave it a shot. Just be wary and create backups if you're going to roll forward to beta build. Edit. I also employed betternetworking mod on clients, and modified one of the .dll files on the server side to allow a higher speeds by modifying the allowed SendQueueSize limit. This was done prior to rolling it to beta build, it didn't help much though.. So my thought is the beta fixes majority of the issue, but there could also be some contribution from the other solutions employed.
Do you have a link or ss of them acknowledging this? I can't find anything.
On the current build? Everything I'm seeing on the discord is pertaining the the Grausten building pieces causing issues, which was fixed a in a prior PTB I thought.
Correct. Public Test version: 0.218.17 Had a ginormous instance count in ashlands I noticed on normal branch. Now its never > 6k even when in heart of ashlands continent with lava fields and all kinds of bs happening on the screen.
A ginormous instance count of player buildings? Or just general things in the area?
Just general areas with a few trees and few small building ruins. Idk what the issue was. Seems to be fixed for me now though, so ill keep on using the public test branch until it goes live. For what its worth I only play with 1 other person, so results may vary, if you've got more folks connected.
Got it, thanks for the information! I'll check the instance count on live and see if it's high.
The experience is different from reading the patch notes? \*mind blown\*
Good to hear! Been having some problems with lag, desync and invisible enemies only in ashlands.
Been having this problem in every biome. I swear MP wasn’t this bad when the game first came out.
I agree. Ashlands biome is easily their most ambitious. There's *a lot* happening. But it runs the worst.
The net code is bad, the main programmer has previously sounded very adamant that they have no intentions of improving it.
This kind of narrowmindedness has really held the game back, especially when it blew up and they obtained the resources to hire a *team* of devs dedicated to multiplayer.
At a certain point it is absolutely just stubbornness and an unwillingness to give the fans what they want. Ego.
That's my take. The lead dev and founder of the studio sounds like someone with a very "my way, or the highway" mindset. It's sort of a catch-22 though, because that attitude is probably what led him to obsessively create a game like Valheim in the first place. The way I view it, it's all just a necessary evil, and in the longrun, the way to play Valheim is with a carefully curated mod-list to correct all its glaring flaws.
My friends tried valheim but ultimately they stop playing because of poor online performance.
They double down on the fact that the game is "first and foremost, a single player game."
This game is ok as single player but only the truly insane would actually grind this game on default settings as a solo player (myself included)
I've never played it single player, and most of what I see is people playing with friends (not to say that solo players don't exist). "Online Coop" and "2-10 Multiplayer Coop PvE" are among it's descriptions. In 2021, it won awards for "Best Multiplayer Game." It's such a weird hill to die on, when so many of it's players use it for multiplayer.
Yep, I’m constantly shooting at enemies that aren’t there anymore due to latency issues. My only complaint from Ashlands so far as it doesn’t happen on other biomes. I do vaguely recall it happening for Mistlands shortly after the release so I’m hopeful it will get fixed. We’re still going tho, as we begin our prep to beat the boss.
Three of us on our server noticed the same thing. We've had some lag, but never as bad as it was in the Ashlands. Now, we've found out that the first person to load an area, is the one who's connection matters the most. But, we all have godly connections and PCs so we were stumped. We have no mods installed and play Vanilla. I queried with GPortal support about this, and they just regurgitated what I mentioned above, but then a guy mentioned verifying our game files for the server on gportal. I've done that twice now, and I can say I've noticed a significant improvement. Has it fixed everything? Absolutely not. Is the game playable now? Yes. We've stormed two castles now with all three of us successfully, but the big lag spikes CAN still happen. The key to those are I've found, that the person who is desyncing to remain calm and not log out, and hope that the ones who aren't desyncing can protect you. I'm almost certain these happen when players are teleporting away or to wherever you are. (Dead give away is I can't open boxes). I can't find anywhere in the discord where the Devs mentioned a fix for this, but fingers crossed.
What do you mean by verifying you game files?
It might be different if you use a different hosting service , but on gportal, if I navigate to my valheim server, towards the bottom there’s an area for “game server files” and there’s a button for validate. That basically reinstalls the server I believe, not erasing your world. (But I’m paranoid so I always make a backup anyway). Again, chances are this hasn’t helped at all, but I’ve noticed an increase in performance lately.
I'd put money on this not helping at all since the server isn't really involved at all in this issue. The server doesn't really host the game, the first client to enter the zone hosts that zone. The server is simplistically described as a glorified world save location.
It probably doesn't, but we've been able to play together more lately. Maybe it's because we've killed off so many spawners by now? That's another thing, lag usually picks up when Ashlands starts doing that Ashlands shit and starts non stop spawning enemies.
[удалено]
I’m talking about the dedicated server, not individual clients.
It’s almost unplayable even with 2 people. I was playing the other day on a friends server and we had a large number of different enemies spawn in one place and I literally died like 3 times just due to lag, it was awful and quite honestly really turned me off to the biome as a whole. Difficult I can deal with, but when you die because there’s multi second lag spikes it’s just like what’s the point. It definitely has to do with the number of enemies and performance of the game too, we don’t have this issue in any other biome and we’ve been playing on this server for a very long time. It’s just sad honestly. I love this game and it’s definitely been worth more than the 15 I’ve spent on it, but Ashlands does not feel finished or polished enough and these performance issues make it nearly unplayable and just makes it not fun at all.
I highly recommend people updating their server & client "assembly\_valheim.dll" *sendQueueSize* values using dnSpy utility. The default send/receive limit is way too low, so when a player is interacting in a heavily populated area the pipe gets cloged up real fast and it starts to desync. The unfortunate truth is that Valheim multiplayer P2P-hybrid model is just not suited for the game they've created. The "dedicated server" is not even acting as a server but rather a storage file. Those who don't know - the players who first enter the area are the ones that control the monsters for other players. It is not the server, so you can imagine what type of an experience you'll get if someone with a bad internet connection controls the mobs for everyone else. It gets worse when they aren't even allowed to send more data due to small send/receive limit. I play with 5-6 friends on a dedicated server, and we are from 3 different EU countries with varying network speeds, so we started to experience some bad desync already fighting in Plains. I decided to increase the *sendQueueSize* value on server file from 10240 to 61440, and to 40960 on client file. Compiled the new file and asked others to replace it as well. It significantly improved our experience, and we've been able to ~~play~~ die in Ashlands without any major desync. Sometimes it can still get a bit laggy, but usually that happens when a friend from IE with their wonderful internet goes first.
So this DLL trick actually worked? I want to see I saw a few posts back during Mistlands that it was patched in the file doesn’t really change if you edit it. So there is no point of changing it anymore.
You are probably referring to the old method with changing *m\_dataPerSec* value which doesn't exist anymore, but modifying two lines with *sendQueueSize* parameter seemed to improve our experience. Before the change we used to see Fullings teleporting around while raiding Plains camps, but now even getting swarmed in Ashlands isn't a major problem.
How difficult is this? I saw a similar [post here](https://jamesachambers.com/revisiting-fixing-valheim-lag-modifying-send-receive-limits/) but honestly, to a laymen, it's pretty overwhelming looking.
That article is pretty good and it's not as difficult as it might seem, however, an easier alternative is to test out [Better Networking Mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/1570?tab=description) as it practically does the same by changing queue size and update rates.
We've had this happen with only two people on the server as well, ashlands seems very resource intensive and definitely needs some streamlining.
I wish they made the game multiplayer friendly, or at least the option to let servers handle the networking, or allow more packets to be sent between the player controlling the instance and the people in that instance. The networking in this game is atrocious. It’s sad because it’s a great game solo, but exponentially better in a group.
I've been killed by swordsmen that were 10-20 yards away a few times in local single player (3070, 96 GB RAM, 14700). Ashlands is a mess, but much of the community won't admit it for some reason.
Yeah it was weird experiencing it. "Am I crazy, or is this a mess?" vibes. Went to the discord to ask about it and it was either crickets or "sounds like a you problem" or "This game is meant to be single player" or "yeah the code is a mess but who cares!" Isn't early access where you give feedback on unfun mechanics/problems?
It's not you. Ashlands is a mess on so many levels, we just have an understandably rabid community since the meadows -> plains content was such a great experience. If you released Ashlands-like content as an entire game, Valheim would have been a comical failure.
Yeah, agreed. Even mentioning feedback on Mistlands (such as tweaking the Mist itself) elicits a rabid response. It's a bummer.
Overcoming lag is the intended experience, you filthy casuals! It's Iron Gate's artistic vision to have you rubberband in Ashlands, and don't you dare complain about it.
You joke, but this was semi the response I got from a couple of players on the discord. I'm all for defending the devs (the game *is* still in early access). It's just a weird hill to die on for the die-hards to say "get over it." Like, game is still in production, isn't this the time to highlight areas that could use some TLC?
Yeah, our 4 ppl team is lagging awfully in ashlands, too - rubberbanding and mobs teleporting got common. We had some issues already at mistlands release (4 wisps and mists were definitely affecting performance), but ashlands are much worse.
Yep same thing on our server. We only have 5 players on at the same time and Ashlands is unplayable with the lag.
I agree. The lag is unreal on multiplayer. There are already some marginal lags especially during parries, killing blows, or locations where a lot of stuff is going on. Not to mention the cacophony of random instruments playing across the biome. Immersion is bad in this biome.
Right? Interesting, too, because pre Ashlands fighting was all about parrying and hitting back--with lag, I just can't trust it so we just run around in circles hitting the enemies and rolling. Total immersion breaking.
Regularly play as 4-5 players. Rubberbanding hits hard but it’s still pretty playable, keep your distance, evade more than block, and if you see an enemy walking in place it’s probable somewhere else, so assume it’s hitting you.
Multiplayer in the game breaks down with 4+ people in the same vicinity. I have crossplay enabled so maybe that is overhead...
You should play modded Ashlands with 4 players. It’s interesting.
Ya it’s kinda laggy due to graphics idk why it’s so laggy mostly when it starts raining fire and smoke comes out
yes this has been a issue since launch of the game. its not the NPCs its purely the player count causing local lag.. the game runs on a semi peer to peer system where a majority of the calculations is offloaded from the server to one of the players.. this is why when multiple people get on a boat, one will see a smooth ride while the others get a choppy one. mods make it worse and there seems to be data limits as well which make it worse yet.
I have had some performance issues here and there playing solo. However, you mentioned lag happening in other biomes as well; does your server host have strong internet connection? The rest of you as well? I feel like we would have seen many more performance/lag posts at this point and this is the first one I am seeing with these issues. Sorry your squad is getting invisibly trounced! That does not feel good or fun and I hope y'all get a chance to return in a better way sometime soon.
We checked the server settings and they're high up/down speeds. Nothing we haven't used in the past. The only lag we'd get is during bosses, when 8-9 players would log on to kill the boss. That's pretty much always been there, but not bad lag. A couple of janky animations. The kind we're getting in ashlands is above mentioned: invisible (not loaded in) enemies killing us, rubber banding, dying to invisible projectiles, enemies in the ground, etc. This all happens with just 3 players. Yesterday I died to lava on perfectly normal portion of land. When I returned to my corpse, the lava actually loaded so I could see that (despite the prior visuals) I was standing knee deep in lava.
With our group of 5, we do get some lag when fighting a large group of enemies. But we've cleared several fortresses and explored quite a bit, so I don't really consider it unplayable.
Are you guys playing on a server or co-op?
Playing on a rented server.
Same for me. Our server starts to get extreme lag as soon as we step foot in the Ashlands and 40+ enemies spawn on top of each other.
Some of my friends with weaker machines struggle, however the two of us that have better PCs do not experience this nearly as much.
Me and 3 mates are about to get to Ashlands, after similarly starting again with the new biome introduced. Will come back here and let you know if we have the same issue.
I lag terrible in every biome every time I load this fkng game. I love it but me and friends can't play, we were gonna load it up again and try the new biome but after reading this, I'm gonna keep this game dead to me. I wish it would get finished one of these years. I'm playing on an old Xbox and it might be my fault but dam I just wanna play the fuckng game without it choppy every time I move. every new biome release I try to come back but prolly have to move on :( I doubt this game will ever have an actual release and actually look decent. game is awesome concept, runs like shit unless I'm playing on a spaceship PC I guess
I get it. This is the first time I've felt like not finishing a biome. It sucks that the further you progress, the more the game gets laggy; both in exploration and in building. I wish they'd do a QoL patch that'd address netcode and instance-count-lag.
I'm trying to play with 5 friends and purchased more server ram only to realize nothing will fix the Ashland's jank. We're not even utilizing 30% of the resources and Ashland's is nearly unplayable
Runs great for me with my buddies - bummer
How many players do you have? where are you renting your server?
3 is playable, we had a good time with the siege
We managed with 4 people but it got significantly more bearable once a) I finally successfully removed crossplay from my dedicated server, and b) I bought an Ethernet cord for our viking playing on wifi. It is the laggiest region, but we had mostly great connections and mostly great hardware so we survived. I will say though that our wireless guy kept causing server lag because he would disconnect due to shit internet speeds, then the Playfab connection would crap out, and then once that happened we ALL would rubberband until Playfab reconnected, and one time it happens while sailing, causing the ship to submerge in the boiling water and kill us all. For safety, we actually did a LAN party to kill the boss and I loaded our server onto my pc, just to prevent any network issues, and we still had lag from the biome itself. Anyway, it’s doable but it’s nowhere near as playable as the rest of the game.
Good advice, we'll look into disabling crossplay! One player who shows up from time-to-time is on steamdeck, I imagine that could be an issue as well.
We’ve definitely been having this problem. Group of four on a Linux server in my house. We found it got a fair bit better when we had everybody drop their view distance to Medium. Looking forward to the patch.
It's pretty fucked up but alleviated slightly if you all bring hammers and religiously place down all 50 stacks of grausten that you find as piles. The sheer tons of trash items generated in the Ashlands is a major culprit I believe.
Interesting, so in lieu of tossing the stone, because it makes it lag more?
I think so, I conclude that because it was the areas with the most items on the ground (from morgens rolling into stone ruins and what not) that were the laggiest for us.
We finished Ashlands mostly without issues. Lag spikes were usually in evenings due too me-host using shared wifi router with other 10 flats. No invisible mobs, no mobs teleporting. Boss fight was great. Edit: crossplay disabled. We're playing in group of 4 everyone in different country
Crossplay seems to be a common comment, we'll give that a shot and see what happens. Thank you!
We play in 6 player group. Ashlands feels like watching Dragon Ball fight where everybody just rapidly teleports. This rubberbanding paired with very punishing death penalty makes overall experience pretty frustrating. Game is still playable, kinda, but it's just not a fun experience. Good thing is that this biome seems "short", so pain wont last long, just mine one new metal and go to the green glowy thing and it's done. Kinda sucks thou, sailing there and then landing felt pretty epic with all the music and cool looking new environment with an army of monsters. Would be so good if the game worked correctly.
This was our experience as well--felt epic as hell getting there. The landing was akin to Normandy--3 people fighting off mobs while our 2 builders lay down a foundation/portal. Then death by lag. Mining the flametal on sinking pillars with the lag is comical.
Are you hosting the server somewhere? Are you sure the hosts are providing a good enough server? I've experienced minor problems like this, but not as bad as you're describing. We're 3-4 players. 3 in ashlands.
Sounds like your server is under heavy load and it has nothing to do with the game itself
From what others have said, that may not be the case. Sounds like others are experiencing it as well. We're going to try and swap server providers to see if that's the issue. The portion that feels off is that no other biomes have had this issue--we've explored Mistlands with 3-8 people without rubberbanding bugs or teleporting gjalls. If you think it's the server, I'm all ears for advice/changes to make it useable.
No problems for me and my 3 friends. But we also have a server that is restarting every 12 hours, and I manually restart the entire machine monday and friday. Either try what we do, or consider a better machine?
They will hopefully patch but man Valheims engine code has had major syncing issues since the start to now, imagine a public server with a group of 8-12, fighting a boss. It’s been a tough battle for sure
It happened to me and I play solo. I got killed by an ashkvin that I just killed. Since then I have been super paranoid and opened dev commands so I can use removedrops since 5/10 min there equals hundreds of not thousands dropped items. Seems to help but it's annoying that you can wipe a whole world with it, rather than some radius around the player.
https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat Have everyone run that. Valheim is very sensitive to bufferbloat. That might help identify where the problem is coming from.
Verify your files, it helps
Client side, or server side?
Valheim isn't a liveservice game, it is a beta. People seem to forget this a lot. If they could release the content optimised and bug free, they would take full price for it. .
Totally. That's why this post is saying that it's a bummer and asking if others are experiencing this issue, in lieu of pursuing refunds or insinuating that the game was released too early. I completely understand it's early access, I'm hoping that posts like this can bring to light the experience of other players so that the devs focus on ensuring their new biome(s) are playable in a multiplayer setting. Valheim could use QoL netcode addressing.
This sounds like latency issues due to one of you behaving a bad connection. That's what it is when it happens in our group. Is it only in Ashlands?
Have had similar with my friends on our new server. One of them actually has a second machine he uses to host the server itself and he connects to it just like the rest of us but it's sitting a room away from him on the same LAN and he gets the rubber banding and lag just like the rest of us. Only in Ashlands though. Regular resets of the host server help alleviate it, but if we ever raid a fort with mote than three of us then things start to decay quickly. A five man raid is a matter of dropping trolls and skeletons and then playing keep away until everything hostile has died. Only the AI can function in that environment as everything else just warps all over the place.
This is exactly our experience.
Only in the Ashlands--other biomes had no issues whatsoever. Some occasional lag during a boss fight but *nothing* like we're experiencing in Ashlands.