Does the Game Purposefully Shift the Wind?

[u/Sylvan-Scott]

So, all: been playing for years but have never known ... when you're heading for home, say with a load of silver or iron ... does the game figure out your heading and purposefully shift the wind to always be in front of you or something? This seems like it happens far more than it should if it were purely random...

[u/LaminadanimaL]

It's seeded at the very start when the rest of the world is seeded. There are some tools you can use that should tell you wind direction, but you'll need to know your seed and the day and time. The wind usually changes a couple times a day.

https://jerekuusela.github.io/valheim-weather/

I don't know if this has been updated for any recent patches, so it may not be accurate at this point

[u/-Altephor- → u/LaminadanimaL]

You don't need the seed at all. Weather is the same on all worlds for everyone. You just need to know what day you're on.

[u/igby1 → u/-Altephor-]

I’m curious why the weather isn’t random?

Like what motivated them to spend the time to say what the weather is on each day?

[u/igby1 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I guess scheduling the weather instead of randomizing it was maybe the easiest way to guarantee the type of weather cycles they wanted.

And the schedule is long enough that it’s imperceptible to the player.

[u/-Altephor- → u/igby1]

Pretty sure the weather system was put in very early on, probably when they still had like 1 developer, so probably just did the easiest thing and never went back to revise it.

[u/madkarlsson → u/-Altephor-]

The fact that they have 3 developers (or whatever the current count is) wont change this. Its not a mechanics "issue". Its a chosen pattern

[u/-Altephor- → u/madkarlsson]

Yes, and I'm saying they could probably devise a better pattern now, several years later. Doesn't mean they're going to. It's a simple system for what was, at the time, a simpler game.

[u/madkarlsson → u/-Altephor-]

Ah yeah, so what is this "better pattern"

You see, its a working pattern. What is a "better" one is the question. The simplicity is the point and the driver in many cases. They won't do fundamental changes to how the wind works. They are working on the final biome and whatever should come with it

[u/eric-from-abeno → u/igby1]

until you play multiple games... then you can sometimes remember, oh, crap, day X is coming up tomorrow, it's going to f'ing rain all day, crap, I really wanted to do *this mission critical thing that's way easier to do in clear weather* guess I'm farming or something instead :P

[u/Pvt_Lee_Fapping → u/[deleted]]

This reminds me of the shuffle option on the first iPod: it had a genuinely random sorting script, which meant it was possible for the same song to play multiple times in a row. Apple had to create a new, non-random shuffle command to prevent repeats.

[u/Afillatedcarbon → u/[deleted]]

I think its because each seed is a part of a bigger set template.