Valheim no longer lets you level up by hitting rocks and trees

Valheim developer Iron Gate has removed a convenient feature that let players level up weapon skills by bashing away at trees and rocks.

Smacking rocks and trees has been by far the easiest way to level up weapon skills in Valheim, and it's been particularly handy for recouping the experience lost from dying. But following the big Hearth and Home update, Valheim players are finding that they now need to use their chosen weapon against an actual enemy to level up that particular combat skill. So, good news for trees and rocks, but bad news for Greylings and Greydwarfs.

The change isn't mentioned specifically in Iron Gate's Hearth and Home patch notes, but you can see it in effect in this video shared by Redditor OldGuyWhoSitsInFront (thanks, The Gamer)

til_you_cant_level_up_weapon_skills_on_rocks_and from r/valheim

Browsing the comments on the above video, there's a lively discussion about whether Iron Gate was right to remove this little trick. Some users argue that the game's intended progression system, i.e. killing whatever aggressive creatures cross your path, is proportional to the challenge, while others say the experience penalty for dying is too harsh and calls for just such a hack as a counterbalance. Others still have taken to using console commands to gain back lost experience and bypass the system altogether, but whether that's necessary is another argument altogether.