there should be a no map where you dont have a minimap but you can access the map from a cartography table that way it still has a use

I play on a multi-player server with usually anywhere from 50-70 people on per day, and rising to over 100 when a new seed or patch comes out. The server owner set up a no-map/no-portal seed recently just prior to the Hildir patch dropping. What a game changer!! A few found the challenge too great and left until the new patch dropped. Some really, really struggled; but stuck it out anyway. The rest of us thoroughly enjoyed it, though I did miss the portals. I discovered I didn't need maps - I could make my own. But portals would have been a real saving when transporting goods to new bases or trying to get to my tombstone when I inevitably died. What I also found was that human behavior on the seed reverted to much of what humans have done throughout history. As you said about coastlines, most of us did just that - followed the coast. We built paths and learned to use landmarks, the Great Tree in the sky, and the rising and setting of the sun and moon as our guides. People tended to create villages at areas that had some kind of landmark - near the mouth of a river, near an Eikthyr battle altar, or near a combination of river/Meadow/Black Forest border. The villages were given names, and even streets. We were allowed to use the POS command to get coordinates, and so I gave my homestead a civic (or street) number based on the first numbers on the POS coordinates. I lived at 540 South Shore Road - I had earlier made a road around a massive inland sea using my hoe and gave it that name because its starting point was south of spawn. Others followed suit, and soon many people ended up with addresses which helped others to know what area their builds were in. Names like Eikthyr Drive and Karve Harbor (the latter if said with a Massachusetts or Maine accent) became landmarks in themselves. Expansion from the spawn area was slow, initially. Much like our exploring ancestors in our real world history, the humanity of the server didn't expand into the seed overnight. I found a web site where someone had created a weather reporting system based on the day number of the seed - and it worked!! So I would give a daily weather report when I was on. Many players used this to help them plan their adventures since, as you noted in your video, traveling during bad weather without a map could result in catastrophe. I'm very glad that my time in a no-map/no-portals seed was spent on a multi-player server. We really came together there as a community in ways that just doesn't happen on seeds with maps. I cannot imagine the amount of time, loss, and effort of such play if done solo. Props to you for the attempt!

Awesome I never knew the tree in sky had a purpose! I even get lost with a map so thats good to know!

In my game, I build direction posts all around shores of every island. Each island has a name. And I have a file to keep track of where my resources are (which base has/needs what). I don't use carts on boats, I just try to be minimalist and harvest locally if needed. It's time-consuming and everything needs a lot of planning, but it feels more real than ever.

I like the idea of this in theory, I just feel like there are a couple of things that would turn me off to it. I should preface by saying that I am largely a solo player, and think some of these issues may diminish with coop. 1. Not being able to discover the world. I play Morrowind with only a physical copy of the map, and that is very enjoyable - you can still get lost, especially if you elect for a random starting location, as I do, and using landmarks to determine location is a lot of fun. However, the world itself is always the same each time you play, so I don't feel like I'm losing out on exploring new lands. As much as I hope for a cool seed each time I make a new world in Valheim, I would never want to see the map ahead of time as that would ruin part of the discovery. I would never have a moment of "wow - I found this huge mountain biome!" or "look at this tiny little swamp in this plains". Instead, I would know where the biggest biomes/best port locations were and want to beeline to them, which would make traversing the world in between seem more like busy work than exploration. Also, I probably would not explore a lot of the world since I'd already know where the "best" parts were, meaning I'd likely never come across that tiny little bit of swamp. 2. Not being able to mark cool stuff on the map. I like looking for cool stuff on my journeys and marking them on the map, especially if it's something I think I can make a neat build around, but it's generally not the sort of thing you could learn from looking at the map - i.e. "three obelisks close together here - could make a sick base in the air!" or "flame geyser spawned in the plains because of nearby swamp biome - what could I do with that?" Part of me is tempted to print out a map of the world seed so that I could make notes on that, but then I would run into conflicts with point 1 as you can't get a map from the seed viewer of only where your character has been thus far. 3. Losing the portal for cool bases. Whether you want to make a wizard tower or a neat defensive base that is otherwise inaccessible without a portal, I really like the portal for cool access points even inside of the same base. Because I take inspiration for my builds from what I find in the world, I don't know what I'm going to want to make beforehand, and so have a bit of fomo that I would end up wanting to make a base that used portals in a cool way, but couldn't because I had disabled them. I've also used portals in fun decorative ways, i.e. the entrance to my last base has a corridor that is lined with portals that connect to each other so that they light up in a cool way when you walk by. 4. Added tedium. So much of Valheim is schlepping around a lot of materials or heading to a certain destination. As such, I find that my finger holding down "w" starts to hurt after playing for a while because it is needed so much. While I love the game, there is a LOT of running, quite a bit of sailing, and a fair amount of planting/harvesting - i.e. stuff that can feel monotonous, like prep work, or causes certain activities to just take a long time. It's hard for me to imagine that playing without a map and portals wouldn't add more to that. With portals, while you still get plenty of sailing and running with ore trips, you can at least cut down on transportation time to gather crops/animals from different biomes/bases or visit cool little bases you made from some interesting feature in the terrain. No portals seems like it would involve a lot of intense relocation and result in fewer cool bases, as you would want everything in one space. I would think that would lead to bases only of necessity, since running around to cool bases you made in different areas would take too much time. I'm curious if you've had any experience with these points in your games - I know everyone likes to enjoy the game differently. One aspect I hadn't thought about before this video is how much more you are incentivized to play around coastlines with no map, to the point where you may be experiencing less of main landmasses, and wondered if that ever felt like an unfortunate side effect.

UNDERRATED VIDEO. OUTSTANDING ARGUMENTS FOR NO MAP! THANKS!

Might need to pitch this to my friends.

I honestly feel that the "No map" mode is kinda extreme even though it brings out a lot more immersion. Everything that's explained in the video can be facilitated by the game itself with a little bit tweaking. What I mean is, there should be a spectrum of No Map mode instead of it being just a toggle button. For instance, an option to allow the player to view the map itself, but don't show the GPS position of the exact player's location. Call it an "Atlas Mode" or something. Fog of war won't get removed on the world map when you're just willy-nilly moving around. Instead, it updates only when you interact with the cartography table. Heck, only allow viewing the world map through the cartography table might even be way more immersive. That way, whenever you land in on a new continent, setting up a base camp with the cartography table could make a huge difference for your survival. Minecraft never had world maps or mini-maps, but players usually don't have the need to access to full blown "satellite" support in the game (at least if your intention is just vanilla survival experience). Instead, Minecraft has map items, a localized familiarity of an area where you can put pins and labels on it. In addition to that, Valheim should also facilitate more mechanics towards exploration AND transportation. Better inventory management, better storage management, better item hauling, for example. I completely follow their idea of not allowing the metal ores and bars to transport through the portals. That makes you think about logistics on how to transport them back to your safe bases. Or, even consider localized forges in the biome you mined them. It makes you think, and plan. To be honest, I want even MORE items to be blocked by the portal. Problem is, item transportation is mostly a chore and not quite fun at all. I don't want to teleport the items across the world. I want better facilities, both across land and sea, for better transportation. It's a huge lost of opportunity for immersion, in my opinion.

Something i do also; i have an irl journal for notes so if i take a break from a world im not too lost when i get back in or if im logging off mid adventure i remember my mission. Itd be cool if they could make a notebook in game. Signs are nice but something portable would be sweet.

You've convinced me. My next playthrough will be No Map No Portals. 🙂

Recently I tried no portals and no map, but with no build cost and maxed out resources. On a hardcore, max-difficulty world. The no-build cost sounded a lot like cheating, but it's actually still not nearly as easy as a world with portals. Because instead of one base, I basically just act like a nomad. Moving around and building small bases wherever I go, so I don't need to worry about finding my base or getting lost

Nice video. Might be worth mentioning that in no-map, a vegvisir will automatically point your character in the direction of the boss if you don't touch the mouse or keyboard. If you then select a build piece like a ladder, for instance, and point it in that same direction, every time you select that build piece it will still point in the direction of the boss. This also applies to vegvisirs in dungeons --- when you leave the dungeon, the ladder will still point toward the boss. So you can use the build piece as a pocket compass when you set off to find the boss.. My only issue is --- Haldor can be hard enough to find sometimes even with a map on which his icon eventually appears. With no map and no icon, it could be even more difficult and time-consuming. But maybe that's the point...

Such good points !

I was thinking of a simple addition to the no map playthrough, what do you think of a ping (with cooldown) that only marks the dead center where you start?

I've played no map with mumble with my friends. No other experience like this. Basically, you only HEAR your friends when they are close to you in the Valheim world.

Have you tried breaking the carts with a weapon so that the crates drop? I don't know how the crates will react when you have so many on one ship, but as long as you leave one item in each crate they will remain as smaller, mobile storage unit you can kick around rather than a bulky cart that might fall off the boat or such.

I am not a cart transporter - so it was quite interesting for me to notice that the longships appear to actually be lower in the rear with the heavy carts on board. Didn't think the physics engine went that far. Makes me wonder if it is possible to 'sink' a ship

I'm very intrigued by this but how in the world do you explore the Mistlands? You can't see the world tree in the sky and it seems you would be constantly getting turned around.

Have a question. I used the command nomap on my dedicated server, and when I try to bring the map back it isn't working. Have you had this issue? Does anyone have any solutions?

Something pointed out on another channel is that the center of the starting stones is actually a compass.

LOL to your 1st tip as someone who now has over 800 days in immersive mode i would say WRONG, only travel by coast can be a issue to if you happen to be on a continent with a massive cove, my friend and myself tried this and ended up getting lost on 2 separate continents because it ended up being just 1 giant loop, this can be dangerous especially early like one of ours had BF coast leading to plains. Use the hoe to make your path is great.....till you reach mistlands or anywhere dangerous then you are basically low on stamina constantly and in danger of certain mobs attacking and killing you, better suggestion would be to carry a axe and hammer on you and make workbench with a Post you can make a 1 post up then make it point the direction you came from. On your point to using Maps outside the game...I would suggest you DO NOT do this...the point of immersive is to forge your own path and find it yourself. the BEST way to figure you is to build your base on the coastline UNDER the world tree....memorize this spot...then no matter where you are you can find your way home, the world tree never moves and never changes so lets say you build your base under a part where the world tree branches into three...it is ALWAYS going to be there, then you can use the branches as your points of going out and exploring take the right branch see where it leads what new continents you discover then just come back to where the split is when you want to come back to base, using a map that is completely generated kinda defeats the ENTIRE purpose of a no map mode. You don't need to PLAN OUT every aspect like "optimal bases" that ruins the fun and exploration of immersive and finding the biomes and where they join randomly.

I don't think maps or portals ruin the game, at least not for me. At all. However, a lot of the "immersive mode tips" I see I think are really useful, even in regular mode. I think maybe immersive mode might be fun in a group. But playing alone like I do it doesn't do that much for me. Except again it teaches me some in-game skills I can bring back to regular mode. (More bases/docks, roads, etc.) I don't really feel like "discovering" the same places over and over again is really exciting, which is what it seems like JP is sort of saying here. Also, I feel like ocean travel is restrictive enough already, and this just makes it so much worse. But again, I do like a lot of the survival/navigation tips that immersive mode players put out.

I still think portals are ok, you still cant move metals, which you cant do anything without

Ultimate ironmen get it

I draw my own map on paper

How is no map immersive? People use maps all the time, even in ancient times.

Epic!