You know how Valheim has spooky little mounds that spawn infinite enemies? And you know how you can use your hoe to move earth around and create, say, a pillar? And you know how it’s possible to surround that pillar with, say, campfires? And build, say, a fence around all of that? You can probably see where this is going.
In many ways, Valheim is a game about collecting supplies, and to the developers’ credit, they’ve made the process remarkably enjoyable. But after a while, you just want to have enough logs and rocks on hand to build whatever you want, in perpetuity. That in mind, I must applaud the subtle genius of Valheim player Leathermattress’s “Greydwarf Toaster 5,000.”
It is, more or less, what I outlined above: A player-created pillar beneath a Greydwarf spawn point, surrounded by fire, with fences to keep everything nice and tidy. Greydwarves spawn, immediately fall into the fire, burn to death, and poof into a pile of sticks and rocks, as is their wont. Then you swoop in and collect said sticks and rocks as needed. The Greydwarves are born to die so that you may live in a slightly bigger house.
You might be concerned: Isn’t this heinously immoral? To that, I reply: Yes, but also Greydwarves are annoying jerks, just like Greylings. So you can, through the ancient art of mental gymnastics, convince yourself that there’s still a shred of good left in you. On a more practical level, you might also be concerned that keeping these fires going will cost more wood than it’ll generate. On that front, you’re in luck: According to Leathermattress, the system produces a net gain of wood.
“Absolutely,” they said on Reddit in response to a question about whether the Greydwarf Toaster 5,000 produces more wood than it uses. “Do a loop to restock the campfires, then I’m at max capacity taking wood/stone back to base after another couple of loops and discarding whatever I don’t want.”
Theoretically, this system could work with many different kinds of spawn points, as long as you’re armoured up enough to endure more powerful enemies wailing on you while you create the pillar. Granted, it might be simpler to just collect, say, Draugr entrails as needed, rather than going through the trouble of doing this with a Draugr spawn, but if you’re already here, reading a whole post about infernal enemy incineration engines, you’re probably past the point of caring about simplicity anyway.
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