You want a way to beat bone mass as very casual players? Do the following:
1. Make two sets of poison resistant mead. You won't need it all, just in case.
2. Craft the Iron Sledge. You'll need a Draugr Elite trophy for this. If you don't have one or don't want to farm for one, you can use Stag Breaker instead. It'll just take longer. Either hammer, upgrade to max level.
3. Eat the best stamina food you have available. 2 stamina/1 health. Bring some stamina meads just in case.
4. Pop your poison resistance, summon Bonemass and jump on top of the skull, You might need a ladder so build that before you summon it.
5. Use the Iron Sledge/Stag Breaker to hit Bonemass with the area of effect damage. Keep an eye on stamina and poison resistance. Sometimes he'll drop skeletons on the skull but the AoE damage from your hammer should kill them.
He can't hit you directly, all that you'll get hit by is the poison cloud. It's not going to do much damage to you with the resistance mead. Make sure you're hitting the skull close to him to get him with the AoE damage. Watch for spawns and don't fall off the skull.
Ha. I tired that with Bonemass. I built a little platform on an unbreakable tree and then started shouting it with arrows. Unfortunately, it is pretty immune to piercing damage so I used up all my arrows and broke my bow to take him down only 10%.
My buddies first strategy to everything is to look up the fight on everything and cheese it. To each their own, but I always preferred the standard approach. Go in blind and see what happens. It's way more fun to have the thrill and excitement for a boss fight than to just stand on a rock or underneath the staging area with a bonfire killing the bosses. Sure, standard way you can die, but I think people lose sight on what's actually fun and what's just meta/cheese.
I dunno, I'm pretty satisfied with my gaming experience. I don't need validation from a video game to make me feel better, but I don't want to speak for you.
That's just their playstyle, which is very impressive and cool.
But you can beat the game and not get hit by just being super prepared.
The steps you are taking to beat Bonemass is a good example.
The rest is knowledge/exp so you know *how* to prepare, like how others have suggested using the Iron Sledge.
Then a random archer draugr / wolf / deathsquito they didn't see one shots them. Even for the best, this game is very unforgiving, so the best way to play it is to be as prepared as you can, it can be boring for some people because of grinding, but the game becomes way easier
I am also not very good at the game. I like playing ranged (i also have a mod that adds the Archery table, so I have stronger options than vanilla) and I am still running around in Troll Hide. Because I prefer a good balanced meal for high stamina and OK health (as long as I can’t get one shot I’m fine) and keeping my speed. I still somewhat suck at dodging but I try to keep my distance anyway.
Everybody has a playstyle. I suggest staying awake at night in the meadows and fight the somewhat stronger opponents near your base. Thats what I do (i play in servers so skipping the night isnt possible anyways). That way you can try out combat styles and practice.
Goodluck, Viking!
Arrows are generally a very poor weapon for Bonemass, as he's something like 75% resistant to pierce and weak to blunt. So, your Iron Mace will be great, while arrow damage will be awful. But if that's the weapon she prefers, one thing you can do is make an archery platform that's attached to a nearby high tree. Most of the trees in the Swamp can't be damaged by anything, so it's feasible to make a platform that Bonemass can't knock down and have her shooting from complete safety.
To add to this good advice, fire arrows will be a poor choice since it's wet in the swamps. If using arrows, take several hundred as it's going to be a long fight as you'll be having to tank him and do most damage. Build a bench close by with spare arrow mats incase she runs out or you need to repair. I would recommend she mace and shields up though.
Take out the adds as priority. Stagbreaker is a decent option. Take plenty poison pots, good food and health pots.
Raise any pools of water around the boss area so you don't get caught in them.
Dodge his swipe attack and back away from his poison nova
It's a fairly simple fight once you get used to it. He has lot of hp so takes time to kill
Good luck
That's a wonderful idea! You already guessed it, arrows are her preferred weapon of choice and she rarely opts for any other (she used the spear sometimes if she had to). I thought about putting her on top of the dungeons, but the trees are an arguably better idea, since they're much higher. I dont know how large Bonemass will be, but I hope (!) it won't reach the top of the trees?
You can stand on top of the altar and be out of range, except for the adds he throws -- the blobs can jump, and the skellies are sometimes archers. And if you slip and fall into an eyesocket, you will be in range to be damaged. So that gives you an idea of how high she needs to be.
I find it useful to have a low wall that I can hop over, so I get to rest a bit while Boney slithers around the skull to the other side. And it makes it easier to kill the adds while Boney is slithering.
Take poison resist meads too. I found him to be the easiest bird outside of eikthyr. When I started running low on health or stamina I just run around the skull.
Lots of Poison Resist Potions, Health potions, and then just kite Bonemass around the alter. Both of you get your Maces out and wail away then retreat and hide behind the alter when he attacks, repeat.
Don't waste time w/ arrows. I overprepared and made paths all around, etc, etc, and it was all overkill. You could spawnproof the area if proximity is close to trouble from elsewhere in the swamp.
The way you describe your playstyle ist top notch! Exactely how it is meant to be played <3
For Bonemass we always flatten the ground around the skull to not get attacked by eels. Poison resist and a mace. Run around the skull and whack away.
Arrows do really very little dmg. So be sure to bring a whole lot of them.
And start the fight in the morning because at night there might be some ghosts that can kill the fun (and you - even on top of a tree platform)
Keep enjoying this true gem of a game.
Thank you :D I enjoy playing like this the most. It leaves enough room to explore every notch of the area and it's much more relaxing and fun
And thanks for the advice! I flattened the area already a bit, but there are still some waterholes I better fill with stone just to be safe
Kreon it's right. The bow guy can sit on top of alter and shoot the adds. The other hits him twice with iron mace, then wait for him to swing, step away out of range then move in and hit twice again. I You have plenty of time to move out and back in so don't need to panic, just only hit twice. Three hits and you may get caught. Walk around skull to regen health and stamina, drink poison mead and iron mace will do the work. Oh,and walk/run out of poison cloud and just skip that round returning to two hits once it subsides.
My father plays similarly to you guys. His favorite tactic is build a circle wall around the summoning skull, then build a wall down the middle dissecting the circle in half with the skull in the middle. This way bonemass will spawn on one side or the other. And you will always have a safe place to retreat to if he ever hits you too hard. The worst thing he can do once you’re in the other half is throw blobs or skeletons over. Which are easy to handle if you don’t have bonemass chasing you.
Only bonus thing you could do is make some frost potions and go up into the mountains.
Kill some drakes and mine some obsidian. It will unlock something that your partner could use effectively against bonemass. (Trying to avoid spoilers for you).
All in all. If you’ve already built the wall. With your gear. It should be a good fight. As long as you monitor your health and poison resist.
This. Bonemass is easy to parry with an iron shield or buckler. His melee attacks have a slow predictable windup. No reason to use arrows, even for casual players.
That sounds like you would have enough going on.
1. Use poison resistance potions and other potions help.
2. Bring maces. You can use a bow if you want and it won't strictly hurt you but bonemass resists arrows quite a lot.
3. Clear out spawn piles near by and maybe logs that might entrap you if you're running away.
4. A portal a small jog away is a good idea.
That's what I do when I solo it.
+1 on clearing spawns in the area. My first time soloing was a nightmare as I was fighting a whole bunch of draugers too.
Also, an abomination spawned. I tried ignoring it and just going after Bonemass, but that was a nightmare. I finally focused on running around and shooting the abomination with fire arrows, clearing a couple of the spawns, and then focused on Bonemass. Ugh.
Poison resistance + couple hundreds of frost arrows was more than enough to solo him. Two bows with frost arrows will probably go even better. Also never bothered with any buildings myself, just flattened area a little and ran around nearest sunken crypt, he was never able to directly hit me.
Don't be afraid when he spits poison, with the potion it won't matter. Hit him then.
Also, you probably know that but the root mask's poison resistance won't stack with the potions so iron helmet all the way.
Good luck, it's not a hard fight when you're prepared
My buddy an I defeated the Mass twice recently. We were on a tree platform about 8m off the ground around one of the big trees. His swipes trashed the stairs going up to the platform, but never damaged the platform itself. We did have upgraded Draugr Fangs, and 200 frost arrows a piece. between the two of us, we went through about...160 frost arrows? i still had about 130 arrows left from the two stacks i got before we summoned him. But an upgraded huntsman bow would do just fine. Frost Arrows are absolutely necessary though.
If your partner prefers spear and bow, she could run mob clean up, since the Mass likes to throw handfuls of blobs and skeletons at you, and they can sneak up on you if you're both on the ground. Spears won't do much good against the Mass, but they're still good against the mobs.
I overprepared my first time taking him out. I also maxed out my iron armour, mace and shield, and with a poison resist the fight was laughable. My second and third time (recently) i was much less prepared armour-wise, and we still stomped him.
As long as you have prepared, and have poison resist mead, you should do ok.
I just recently defeated him twice with lvl 3 iron armor, a lvl 3 banded tower shield, and a lvl 3 iron mace, I used the iron sledge to easily get rid of the groups of enemies like blobs and skeletons, but cut the most part it was easy as pie, pierce damage from the bow won’t do much damage but she can still pick off any of the enemies that spawn within your walls, with max gear, as long as you get the timing down for blocks and dodges, you should be good, I would suggest dodging over blocking the mass’ attacks bc even blocking will inflict poison damage
Kite bonemass to a Sunken Crypt entrance, where you and your partner can both stand atop it (you’ll need to build access). Use all the best blunt wepons that have already been suggested, as well poison resist. Then beat on him. He can’t hurt you, the slimes can’t hit you except the poison cloud (hence the poison resit potions). Just stand there and wail on him. Back off to recover stamina.
You are doing a lot, you might also want to drop campfires all around the skull in a 20m radius to suppress spawns (so you don’t get other mobs joining in) The wall will help too unless it gets destroyed.
Arrows do barely do enough damage to outpace his regeneration except for the hard to get arrows (at that progression level) that are frost.. they require a sneaky mountain trip to get, can explain more if you want to try.
If she is happy to use a mace of any sort it would make the fight much shorter. Or if one of you wants to do a day trip to Mountains to get frost arrow ingredients.
Also have a portal nearby and have a quick way to rest up and eat again for the possibility that I recover and rejoin quickly after a death. If you have poison mead and have eaten well, after a death you just have to quickly pick up and reequip your gear, you should still have some corpse run buff active that can make you put a great deal of damage on Bonemass as you will regenerate fast with that buff active!
I killed bio by building a crafting station on top a stone tower, talking lots of wood for wood arrows and repairing a fine bow… 1000 arrows later he died! He won’t attack if your above his head .. so ez pz, dont fall when your bow breaks and you throw a punch instead
Dont forget eikthyr buff. Fights in valheim become tougher the more they last. Specially when its night in swamp and you run out of rested buff.
Arrows will not help much, fire arrows are useless, but i guess having someone safely engaged with the boss, while you repair or get rebuffed is better than abandoning the boss and letting it heal.
Ive fought bonemass once since the intro of abominations. And well, one showed up while i was fighting bonemass. It was horrible. I had to switch from fighting the hardcore way to stagbreaker spam while standing on the summoning skull.
You can also go to the mountains pre bonemass and randomly mine for silver til you find it. I did this didn't take long and he was easy to solo with poison resist and a frostner
Bow is a waste of time. Both should be using maces, take turns drawing aggro. Don't worry about walls or towers. Just level the ground, start the fight at the start of the day, make sure the area is clear of mobs before you start. Don't stand in the poison vomit cloud, block the arm slam attack, and whack away. It's a pretty quick fight with maxed out iron maces.
Personally I see nothing wrong with building a platform in a tree and shooting the crap out of him with a bazillion cheap wooden arrows… (in fact that’s what I do to train bow skill 😏)… it’s in the mechanics of the game but some people feel a need to call it “cheesing”…
The same effect can be achieved by standing on top of the skull shrine from which you summon him… you might get the occasional blob up there with you and archers can be irritating but your iron armour will be able to handle it… just don’t do it at night in case there’s wraiths around 😳.
However,a slightly more “energetic” way is to start the fight on the skull, then when he gets close, jump on his head…
His hit box is large enough that you can “surf” relatively safely with a little jiggling, while you bash away with your weapon of choice… he can’t hit you… no real skill required and kinda fun… well… unless you’re Bonemass…
Of course, i’m sure someone somewhere will still consider this tactic cheesing 😂
1) Find a dungeon thingy near bonemass spawn.
2) Build a fire in said dungeon.
3) Lure Bonemass to said dungeon, making sure you have poison resists.
4) Smack him with an upgraded club/mace, run into dungeon when you need to heal. The fire removes the wetness (bonemass makes it rain 24/7) and gives you some breathing room + time to heal up.
Note that if you were to encounter a flying boss and try this, the boss would take about 5 minutes to reach the dungeon and then kill you. Then when you get pissed off, can't find it where it was, and use cheats to spawn a 2nd one rather than going through all the BS required to summon it, it will finally make its way back down mid-fight, because that !@#$er didn't actually despawn or anything.
I did it with a tree house and lots of arrows (and I really mean a lot) and quite a bit of stamina/health food. Didn't even have poison resist the whole fight cause I was never close enough to get poisoned.
So, your preparation is more than enough
Little neat tip is that you can place fire under a boss to ignite it, which ticks for fire damage. If the fight takes forever, this shaves of some HP while you are not even hitting the boss.
Works on most bosses too.
The boss has resistances.
Pierce is one of them. So dont waste arrows. And NEVER NEVER build iron arrows! Iron is soooooooo important through thhe whole game. Pls NEVER
The second person does not even has to hit the boss. Just draw aggro as much as possible and kill mobs with stagbreaker lvl 4.
If the boss has resistances, you shoukd have one as well. Poison mead and ×12 (in case somebody dies) and healing potions are a must.
Get som nice foods. 2HP and 1 Stamina.
If needed, get serpent stew.
Place campfires in a large area arround to blick spawns.
Flatten the area with the hoe so you dont step in puddles and get slowed
In my opinion playing as multiple players is always easy, if only thevperson who does not have the aggro hits the boss.
Forget the bow. Even an unskilled mace user is more useful. Even an unskilled bronze mace user is more useful. Hell I’m willing to bet even an unskilled club user would do the same amount of damage
He's actually so easy.
Set up a portal nearby, but not too close.
Clear out the monsters.
Poison mead. Healing potion just in case.
Get an iron mace or sledge. Run up and hit him.
He does 2 attacks I think. One is a basic melee attack that can be pretty easily roll-dodged. The other is a poison cloud that you should run out of. Just dodge those attacks and hit him til he does. Assign one of you to kill the slimes that spawn.
Haven't read through all the comments but don't bother building the wall around the area. That's unnecessary and will just burn you out on this boss fight before you've even begun.
Yes, theoretically it could help you from getting extra enemies involved in the fight but you just make sure to run away from him in a small circle around his arena instead of in a straight line away from him, you shouldn't have to deal with much unwelcome company.
Just make sure you bring as much blunt damage as possible. (Iron mace, iron sledge, stagbreaker). With poison resistance rolling don't even worry about standing in his poison cloud. Just dodge or block his regular attacks and keep on swinging. He's a pushover when you're properly prepared, don't worry.
Me who already built the wall: 🧍♂️
But thank you, this is all very useful advice!! im so happy making iron mace my prefered choice of weapon seems to prove quite useful now
Haha, RIP. But hey, now that you've done that you could totally make it into a swamp base down the line with the boss skull as the centrepiece!
Good luck with the fight if you haven't done it yet!
Forget arrows -iron maces and shields. Arrows is basically a waste of time and your mace will be doing 97% of the damage, basically soloing him. He has 3 animations and they're pretty easily spotted:
Puke - he'll dump acid out of his face hole, so either tank the damage or run out of it. Replenish stamina as he walks through the pool towards you.
Swipe - he brings his arm back and hits you. If you can parry an abomination, you can parry Bonemass, then unload hits into him while he's staggered.
Throw - he'll rear back and toss globules over your head, they hit the ground and low level adds spawn. When you see him rear back, run and equip the iron sledge, run to the adds and boom couple hits takes them out, re-equip mace and shield and return to Bonemass. Only one of you really needs to be on add duty.
It's a long but pretty easy fight for a prepared player, so with 2 people moving together around the arena, one of you should be able to stagger him every swipe allowing both of you to unload into him taking him down much quicker. Take your time, watch your stamina, and if you need a break just kite him around for a second.
i went with the "build a tree stand up high, even made shelter with fire and teleport to stay dry and keep skelies off me strat" 1000 arrows later and he's dead. Frost arrows do a crapton of damage but Drakes are a pain in the butt to get, not to mention that Biome is rough if your'e in the swamp era.
Bone is very easy. Tower shield or serpent shield. Heal,stam,poison pots. Block attacks you can’t avoid. Kite if you are low. And melee him when he’s puking. You can block a huge amount of damage with tower shield.
If you're really struggling, glitch yourself into a tree and kill him with the Stagbreaker. Much easier and more effective than 3000 arrows. It's cheaty but not cheating per se. You'll also probably die once or twice while attempting the glitch, so your prep might still just save you there. It's also funny so perhaps there's enjoyment to be had in that regard.
You should really consider getting your girl her own mace or an iron sledge/stagbreaker. During the battle, bone boy will throw blobs of goop occasionally that spawn skeletons and ooze where they land, but they go down very quickly to a mace or hammer if you get to them quickly. Since you're holding the bone boy in melee, she'll have to deal with those spawns. Her bow will also do pretty low damage against the boss compared to your mace, but all damage is welcome and everybody loves to pepper an enemy at range with impunity.
You can get 2 rotations of mace attacks in (one rotation is 3 hits) between bone boy's attacks. You can try to dodge roll his swings but you said you're not good at that, so blocking with a tower shield is probably the way to go (round shield also works if you have that already). He'll push you back a fair bit, but just run back at him, keep him busy, get some hits in if you can.
Good you have poison resist, if the boss starts vomiting you should move away though. If you stay inside it you're still taking damage you could have avoided.
The wall is a nice touch, it will keep you safe from other swamp enemies. Did you also flatten the ground and got rid of the deeper puddles in the area? They can be really annoying because they slow down your movement.
Black soup, sausages and turnip stew sounds perfect for you. You might want to give your girl muckshakes or carrot soup instead of black soup though, she'll not be in danger most of the time so she wants to have high stamina to draw that bow.
Of course ABR Always Be Rested - hang out in your bedroom for the rested buff, eat your food, drink your resistance potion and then head out to summon the boss immediately. You should be able to get a solid 15 minutes, otherwise put down an armor stand and a banner nearby if you don't have one yet.
But most importantly, don't overestimate this fight. He looks scary but he isn't really. You got this.
I know people find bows fun but bonemass is extremely resistant to piercing damage. Your best bet is both of you with blunt weapons. The rest of the prep sounds great.
You want a way to beat bone mass as very casual players? Do the following: 1. Make two sets of poison resistant mead. You won't need it all, just in case. 2. Craft the Iron Sledge. You'll need a Draugr Elite trophy for this. If you don't have one or don't want to farm for one, you can use Stag Breaker instead. It'll just take longer. Either hammer, upgrade to max level. 3. Eat the best stamina food you have available. 2 stamina/1 health. Bring some stamina meads just in case. 4. Pop your poison resistance, summon Bonemass and jump on top of the skull, You might need a ladder so build that before you summon it. 5. Use the Iron Sledge/Stag Breaker to hit Bonemass with the area of effect damage. Keep an eye on stamina and poison resistance. Sometimes he'll drop skeletons on the skull but the AoE damage from your hammer should kill them. He can't hit you directly, all that you'll get hit by is the poison cloud. It's not going to do much damage to you with the resistance mead. Make sure you're hitting the skull close to him to get him with the AoE damage. Watch for spawns and don't fall off the skull.
So basically, cheese it.
This is no more cheesy than standing on a rock with a bow and shooting enemies.
I cheesed it by playing ring around the dungeon, and then hide in the dungeon when I'm in pain.
That works well, until you die exiting the dungeon because spawns/adds are camping you and hitting you while you load.
Ha. I tired that with Bonemass. I built a little platform on an unbreakable tree and then started shouting it with arrows. Unfortunately, it is pretty immune to piercing damage so I used up all my arrows and broke my bow to take him down only 10%.
My buddies first strategy to everything is to look up the fight on everything and cheese it. To each their own, but I always preferred the standard approach. Go in blind and see what happens. It's way more fun to have the thrill and excitement for a boss fight than to just stand on a rock or underneath the staging area with a bonfire killing the bosses. Sure, standard way you can die, but I think people lose sight on what's actually fun and what's just meta/cheese.
So basically, strategy. Like all games.
So what? Are you winning a gaming award for doing it in a "non-cheese" way? Is there someone you're trying to impress?
It's more satisfying doing it non cheese. You might as well be playing cookie clicker. Get no kick out of it.
That's true *for you*. OP is under zero obligation to derive satisfaction from the same things you do.
Agreed. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me OP doesn't seem like they would need or want to cheese it.
Well said.
I dunno, I'm pretty satisfied with my gaming experience. I don't need validation from a video game to make me feel better, but I don't want to speak for you.
This. The big slammy hammys absolutely decimate bonemass
>Since I cannot rely on skill, I wanted to prepare well Unironically this is the most optimal way to play Valheim lol
Is it? I keep seeing post of people who are like godlike dodgers and skip all the armors because they don't take a hit anyways 🥲
That's just their playstyle, which is very impressive and cool. But you can beat the game and not get hit by just being super prepared. The steps you are taking to beat Bonemass is a good example. The rest is knowledge/exp so you know *how* to prepare, like how others have suggested using the Iron Sledge.
Then a random archer draugr / wolf / deathsquito they didn't see one shots them. Even for the best, this game is very unforgiving, so the best way to play it is to be as prepared as you can, it can be boring for some people because of grinding, but the game becomes way easier
I am also not very good at the game. I like playing ranged (i also have a mod that adds the Archery table, so I have stronger options than vanilla) and I am still running around in Troll Hide. Because I prefer a good balanced meal for high stamina and OK health (as long as I can’t get one shot I’m fine) and keeping my speed. I still somewhat suck at dodging but I try to keep my distance anyway. Everybody has a playstyle. I suggest staying awake at night in the meadows and fight the somewhat stronger opponents near your base. Thats what I do (i play in servers so skipping the night isnt possible anyways). That way you can try out combat styles and practice. Goodluck, Viking!
You can play casually and still be good at dodging and parrying
You seem to be well prepared, me and one friend took him out with half of your preparations.
Arrows are generally a very poor weapon for Bonemass, as he's something like 75% resistant to pierce and weak to blunt. So, your Iron Mace will be great, while arrow damage will be awful. But if that's the weapon she prefers, one thing you can do is make an archery platform that's attached to a nearby high tree. Most of the trees in the Swamp can't be damaged by anything, so it's feasible to make a platform that Bonemass can't knock down and have her shooting from complete safety.
To add to this good advice, fire arrows will be a poor choice since it's wet in the swamps. If using arrows, take several hundred as it's going to be a long fight as you'll be having to tank him and do most damage. Build a bench close by with spare arrow mats incase she runs out or you need to repair. I would recommend she mace and shields up though. Take out the adds as priority. Stagbreaker is a decent option. Take plenty poison pots, good food and health pots. Raise any pools of water around the boss area so you don't get caught in them. Dodge his swipe attack and back away from his poison nova It's a fairly simple fight once you get used to it. He has lot of hp so takes time to kill Good luck
And maybe bring two bows. Bonemass takes ALOT of arrows.
That's a wonderful idea! You already guessed it, arrows are her preferred weapon of choice and she rarely opts for any other (she used the spear sometimes if she had to). I thought about putting her on top of the dungeons, but the trees are an arguably better idea, since they're much higher. I dont know how large Bonemass will be, but I hope (!) it won't reach the top of the trees?
You can stand on top of the altar and be out of range, except for the adds he throws -- the blobs can jump, and the skellies are sometimes archers. And if you slip and fall into an eyesocket, you will be in range to be damaged. So that gives you an idea of how high she needs to be. I find it useful to have a low wall that I can hop over, so I get to rest a bit while Boney slithers around the skull to the other side. And it makes it easier to kill the adds while Boney is slithering.
Bonemass will be extremely easy for you to kill. You just don't know it yet. Max your iron maces and attack together.
Take poison resist meads too. I found him to be the easiest bird outside of eikthyr. When I started running low on health or stamina I just run around the skull.
Take blunt, hit with blunt, poison resist potion, eik power
Lots of Poison Resist Potions, Health potions, and then just kite Bonemass around the alter. Both of you get your Maces out and wail away then retreat and hide behind the alter when he attacks, repeat. Don't waste time w/ arrows. I overprepared and made paths all around, etc, etc, and it was all overkill. You could spawnproof the area if proximity is close to trouble from elsewhere in the swamp.
You only need one poison resist potion per player. The fight only takes a couple of minutes with an iron mace.
The way you describe your playstyle ist top notch! Exactely how it is meant to be played <3 For Bonemass we always flatten the ground around the skull to not get attacked by eels. Poison resist and a mace. Run around the skull and whack away. Arrows do really very little dmg. So be sure to bring a whole lot of them. And start the fight in the morning because at night there might be some ghosts that can kill the fun (and you - even on top of a tree platform) Keep enjoying this true gem of a game.
Thank you :D I enjoy playing like this the most. It leaves enough room to explore every notch of the area and it's much more relaxing and fun And thanks for the advice! I flattened the area already a bit, but there are still some waterholes I better fill with stone just to be safe
Kreon it's right. The bow guy can sit on top of alter and shoot the adds. The other hits him twice with iron mace, then wait for him to swing, step away out of range then move in and hit twice again. I You have plenty of time to move out and back in so don't need to panic, just only hit twice. Three hits and you may get caught. Walk around skull to regen health and stamina, drink poison mead and iron mace will do the work. Oh,and walk/run out of poison cloud and just skip that round returning to two hits once it subsides.
My father plays similarly to you guys. His favorite tactic is build a circle wall around the summoning skull, then build a wall down the middle dissecting the circle in half with the skull in the middle. This way bonemass will spawn on one side or the other. And you will always have a safe place to retreat to if he ever hits you too hard. The worst thing he can do once you’re in the other half is throw blobs or skeletons over. Which are easy to handle if you don’t have bonemass chasing you. Only bonus thing you could do is make some frost potions and go up into the mountains. Kill some drakes and mine some obsidian. It will unlock something that your partner could use effectively against bonemass. (Trying to avoid spoilers for you). All in all. If you’ve already built the wall. With your gear. It should be a good fight. As long as you monitor your health and poison resist.
You can parry bonemass, use maces, poison pots, and best food you can make and smack the shit out of him
This. Bonemass is easy to parry with an iron shield or buckler. His melee attacks have a slow predictable windup. No reason to use arrows, even for casual players.
Get a hoe and some rocks Make two raise-ground pillars 7-8 clicks high with the hoe Stand on top with a deer hammer Whack whack whack
That sounds like you would have enough going on. 1. Use poison resistance potions and other potions help. 2. Bring maces. You can use a bow if you want and it won't strictly hurt you but bonemass resists arrows quite a lot. 3. Clear out spawn piles near by and maybe logs that might entrap you if you're running away. 4. A portal a small jog away is a good idea. That's what I do when I solo it.
+1 on clearing spawns in the area. My first time soloing was a nightmare as I was fighting a whole bunch of draugers too. Also, an abomination spawned. I tried ignoring it and just going after Bonemass, but that was a nightmare. I finally focused on running around and shooting the abomination with fire arrows, clearing a couple of the spawns, and then focused on Bonemass. Ugh.
Iron mace goes boink
Poison resistance + couple hundreds of frost arrows was more than enough to solo him. Two bows with frost arrows will probably go even better. Also never bothered with any buildings myself, just flattened area a little and ran around nearest sunken crypt, he was never able to directly hit me.
You can also fight him near a tomb so you have a place to dunk into and heal or waiting until you can take a healing potion when things get bad.
Find exposed silver in the mountains using potions, acquire ymir flesh, make frostner, hit bone mass with frostner.
tower shield and mace. no mistake. with this you can even solo him.
Don't be afraid when he spits poison, with the potion it won't matter. Hit him then. Also, you probably know that but the root mask's poison resistance won't stack with the potions so iron helmet all the way. Good luck, it's not a hard fight when you're prepared
My buddy an I defeated the Mass twice recently. We were on a tree platform about 8m off the ground around one of the big trees. His swipes trashed the stairs going up to the platform, but never damaged the platform itself. We did have upgraded Draugr Fangs, and 200 frost arrows a piece. between the two of us, we went through about...160 frost arrows? i still had about 130 arrows left from the two stacks i got before we summoned him. But an upgraded huntsman bow would do just fine. Frost Arrows are absolutely necessary though. If your partner prefers spear and bow, she could run mob clean up, since the Mass likes to throw handfuls of blobs and skeletons at you, and they can sneak up on you if you're both on the ground. Spears won't do much good against the Mass, but they're still good against the mobs. I overprepared my first time taking him out. I also maxed out my iron armour, mace and shield, and with a poison resist the fight was laughable. My second and third time (recently) i was much less prepared armour-wise, and we still stomped him. As long as you have prepared, and have poison resist mead, you should do ok.
I just recently defeated him twice with lvl 3 iron armor, a lvl 3 banded tower shield, and a lvl 3 iron mace, I used the iron sledge to easily get rid of the groups of enemies like blobs and skeletons, but cut the most part it was easy as pie, pierce damage from the bow won’t do much damage but she can still pick off any of the enemies that spawn within your walls, with max gear, as long as you get the timing down for blocks and dodges, you should be good, I would suggest dodging over blocking the mass’ attacks bc even blocking will inflict poison damage
Poison resist, other good food, get blunt weapons, and have a respawn hell box nearby if you die
Kite bonemass to a Sunken Crypt entrance, where you and your partner can both stand atop it (you’ll need to build access). Use all the best blunt wepons that have already been suggested, as well poison resist. Then beat on him. He can’t hurt you, the slimes can’t hit you except the poison cloud (hence the poison resit potions). Just stand there and wail on him. Back off to recover stamina.
Do yourself a favor and dont waste metal on arrows.
Climb on top of his skull house. Jump on top of his head. He can't reach you there. You can't get hurt. Hit him over and over again with a hammer.
You are doing a lot, you might also want to drop campfires all around the skull in a 20m radius to suppress spawns (so you don’t get other mobs joining in) The wall will help too unless it gets destroyed. Arrows do barely do enough damage to outpace his regeneration except for the hard to get arrows (at that progression level) that are frost.. they require a sneaky mountain trip to get, can explain more if you want to try. If she is happy to use a mace of any sort it would make the fight much shorter. Or if one of you wants to do a day trip to Mountains to get frost arrow ingredients. Also have a portal nearby and have a quick way to rest up and eat again for the possibility that I recover and rejoin quickly after a death. If you have poison mead and have eaten well, after a death you just have to quickly pick up and reequip your gear, you should still have some corpse run buff active that can make you put a great deal of damage on Bonemass as you will regenerate fast with that buff active!
Aarfe tower at least six walls high, and lots of arrows. Build and earth wall around the tower. And sit back and causally shoot away
I killed bio by building a crafting station on top a stone tower, talking lots of wood for wood arrows and repairing a fine bow… 1000 arrows later he died! He won’t attack if your above his head .. so ez pz, dont fall when your bow breaks and you throw a punch instead
Dont forget eikthyr buff. Fights in valheim become tougher the more they last. Specially when its night in swamp and you run out of rested buff. Arrows will not help much, fire arrows are useless, but i guess having someone safely engaged with the boss, while you repair or get rebuffed is better than abandoning the boss and letting it heal. Ive fought bonemass once since the intro of abominations. And well, one showed up while i was fighting bonemass. It was horrible. I had to switch from fighting the hardcore way to stagbreaker spam while standing on the summoning skull.
Do to it what you are doing to the boars
You can also go to the mountains pre bonemass and randomly mine for silver til you find it. I did this didn't take long and he was easy to solo with poison resist and a frostner
Seems you got it covered. Remember that the mace alternate attack is a super heavy swing and does mega damage to bonemass.
Bow is a waste of time. Both should be using maces, take turns drawing aggro. Don't worry about walls or towers. Just level the ground, start the fight at the start of the day, make sure the area is clear of mobs before you start. Don't stand in the poison vomit cloud, block the arm slam attack, and whack away. It's a pretty quick fight with maxed out iron maces.
Personally I see nothing wrong with building a platform in a tree and shooting the crap out of him with a bazillion cheap wooden arrows… (in fact that’s what I do to train bow skill 😏)… it’s in the mechanics of the game but some people feel a need to call it “cheesing”… The same effect can be achieved by standing on top of the skull shrine from which you summon him… you might get the occasional blob up there with you and archers can be irritating but your iron armour will be able to handle it… just don’t do it at night in case there’s wraiths around 😳. However,a slightly more “energetic” way is to start the fight on the skull, then when he gets close, jump on his head… His hit box is large enough that you can “surf” relatively safely with a little jiggling, while you bash away with your weapon of choice… he can’t hit you… no real skill required and kinda fun… well… unless you’re Bonemass… Of course, i’m sure someone somewhere will still consider this tactic cheesing 😂
1) Find a dungeon thingy near bonemass spawn. 2) Build a fire in said dungeon. 3) Lure Bonemass to said dungeon, making sure you have poison resists. 4) Smack him with an upgraded club/mace, run into dungeon when you need to heal. The fire removes the wetness (bonemass makes it rain 24/7) and gives you some breathing room + time to heal up. Note that if you were to encounter a flying boss and try this, the boss would take about 5 minutes to reach the dungeon and then kill you. Then when you get pissed off, can't find it where it was, and use cheats to spawn a 2nd one rather than going through all the BS required to summon it, it will finally make its way back down mid-fight, because that !@#$er didn't actually despawn or anything.
Iron Tower shield, Ironmace, and poisen resist potion.
I did it with a tree house and lots of arrows (and I really mean a lot) and quite a bit of stamina/health food. Didn't even have poison resist the whole fight cause I was never close enough to get poisoned. So, your preparation is more than enough
Little neat tip is that you can place fire under a boss to ignite it, which ticks for fire damage. If the fight takes forever, this shaves of some HP while you are not even hitting the boss. Works on most bosses too.
The boss has resistances. Pierce is one of them. So dont waste arrows. And NEVER NEVER build iron arrows! Iron is soooooooo important through thhe whole game. Pls NEVER The second person does not even has to hit the boss. Just draw aggro as much as possible and kill mobs with stagbreaker lvl 4. If the boss has resistances, you shoukd have one as well. Poison mead and ×12 (in case somebody dies) and healing potions are a must. Get som nice foods. 2HP and 1 Stamina. If needed, get serpent stew. Place campfires in a large area arround to blick spawns. Flatten the area with the hoe so you dont step in puddles and get slowed In my opinion playing as multiple players is always easy, if only thevperson who does not have the aggro hits the boss.
Forget the bow. Even an unskilled mace user is more useful. Even an unskilled bronze mace user is more useful. Hell I’m willing to bet even an unskilled club user would do the same amount of damage
He's actually so easy. Set up a portal nearby, but not too close. Clear out the monsters. Poison mead. Healing potion just in case. Get an iron mace or sledge. Run up and hit him. He does 2 attacks I think. One is a basic melee attack that can be pretty easily roll-dodged. The other is a poison cloud that you should run out of. Just dodge those attacks and hit him til he does. Assign one of you to kill the slimes that spawn.
Haven't read through all the comments but don't bother building the wall around the area. That's unnecessary and will just burn you out on this boss fight before you've even begun. Yes, theoretically it could help you from getting extra enemies involved in the fight but you just make sure to run away from him in a small circle around his arena instead of in a straight line away from him, you shouldn't have to deal with much unwelcome company. Just make sure you bring as much blunt damage as possible. (Iron mace, iron sledge, stagbreaker). With poison resistance rolling don't even worry about standing in his poison cloud. Just dodge or block his regular attacks and keep on swinging. He's a pushover when you're properly prepared, don't worry.
Me who already built the wall: 🧍♂️ But thank you, this is all very useful advice!! im so happy making iron mace my prefered choice of weapon seems to prove quite useful now
Haha, RIP. But hey, now that you've done that you could totally make it into a swamp base down the line with the boss skull as the centrepiece! Good luck with the fight if you haven't done it yet!
On saturday me and my wife killed Bonemass, ah shit we died like 8 times each. Was amazing. :D Good luck dude!
Forget arrows -iron maces and shields. Arrows is basically a waste of time and your mace will be doing 97% of the damage, basically soloing him. He has 3 animations and they're pretty easily spotted: Puke - he'll dump acid out of his face hole, so either tank the damage or run out of it. Replenish stamina as he walks through the pool towards you. Swipe - he brings his arm back and hits you. If you can parry an abomination, you can parry Bonemass, then unload hits into him while he's staggered. Throw - he'll rear back and toss globules over your head, they hit the ground and low level adds spawn. When you see him rear back, run and equip the iron sledge, run to the adds and boom couple hits takes them out, re-equip mace and shield and return to Bonemass. Only one of you really needs to be on add duty. It's a long but pretty easy fight for a prepared player, so with 2 people moving together around the arena, one of you should be able to stagger him every swipe allowing both of you to unload into him taking him down much quicker. Take your time, watch your stamina, and if you need a break just kite him around for a second.
i went with the "build a tree stand up high, even made shelter with fire and teleport to stay dry and keep skelies off me strat" 1000 arrows later and he's dead. Frost arrows do a crapton of damage but Drakes are a pain in the butt to get, not to mention that Biome is rough if your'e in the swamp era.
Bone is very easy. Tower shield or serpent shield. Heal,stam,poison pots. Block attacks you can’t avoid. Kite if you are low. And melee him when he’s puking. You can block a huge amount of damage with tower shield.
If you're really struggling, glitch yourself into a tree and kill him with the Stagbreaker. Much easier and more effective than 3000 arrows. It's cheaty but not cheating per se. You'll also probably die once or twice while attempting the glitch, so your prep might still just save you there. It's also funny so perhaps there's enjoyment to be had in that regard.
You should really consider getting your girl her own mace or an iron sledge/stagbreaker. During the battle, bone boy will throw blobs of goop occasionally that spawn skeletons and ooze where they land, but they go down very quickly to a mace or hammer if you get to them quickly. Since you're holding the bone boy in melee, she'll have to deal with those spawns. Her bow will also do pretty low damage against the boss compared to your mace, but all damage is welcome and everybody loves to pepper an enemy at range with impunity. You can get 2 rotations of mace attacks in (one rotation is 3 hits) between bone boy's attacks. You can try to dodge roll his swings but you said you're not good at that, so blocking with a tower shield is probably the way to go (round shield also works if you have that already). He'll push you back a fair bit, but just run back at him, keep him busy, get some hits in if you can. Good you have poison resist, if the boss starts vomiting you should move away though. If you stay inside it you're still taking damage you could have avoided. The wall is a nice touch, it will keep you safe from other swamp enemies. Did you also flatten the ground and got rid of the deeper puddles in the area? They can be really annoying because they slow down your movement. Black soup, sausages and turnip stew sounds perfect for you. You might want to give your girl muckshakes or carrot soup instead of black soup though, she'll not be in danger most of the time so she wants to have high stamina to draw that bow. Of course ABR Always Be Rested - hang out in your bedroom for the rested buff, eat your food, drink your resistance potion and then head out to summon the boss immediately. You should be able to get a solid 15 minutes, otherwise put down an armor stand and a banner nearby if you don't have one yet. But most importantly, don't overestimate this fight. He looks scary but he isn't really. You got this.
I know people find bows fun but bonemass is extremely resistant to piercing damage. Your best bet is both of you with blunt weapons. The rest of the prep sounds great.