Being in the hospital can be a bit of a bummer, especially when it has been four weeks with no end in sight. Unfortunately, that’s where I’ve found myself this spring. The cherry on top is that I’m about two hours from home, making it a four-hour round trip for anyone who wants to come visit. That’s nothing to sneeze at. Without getting too personal, dear reader, I’d like to assure you that I’m going to be just fine.
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Still, conditions like these are enough to make anyone homesick. No matter how good the care is (and it’s top-notch), nobody wants to be isolated so far from home. However, just like so many other times in my life, gaming has come to the rescue, this time in the form ofValheim.
A friend of mine set up a persistent server for my friends and I to play on, meaning any of us could log on at any time and play. While this happened justbeforeI went into the hospital, it turned out to be incredibly convenient for my current situation.
When friends are online, I can hang out with them like I would any other night. When friends aren’t online, I gather resources and build structures to assist with our goals. Both synchronous and asynchronous co-op always give me something to do with my friends.
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Under the fluorescent lights of the hospital room, I escape to a place where I need a torch to see in front of me. I sit in front of a hearth in our main hall to make sure I am well rested. My character and I often have something in common — we’re both cold from the chilled air. Admittedly, mine has often been a medical kind of cold with the faint smell of bleach lingering in the air, but you get the picture.
The times I’ve been alone, I’ve built. I’ve farmed. I’ve created large halls of black marble lined with portals and sconces. I’ve tried, failed, and tried again to master roofing. Standing on top of the roof, I’ve applied many shingles that simply crumbled beneath my feet before I learned how to properly structure supports.
But the most important escape comes when my friends are online. From the somber confines of my hospital bed, I do adventurous things like sail across an ocean. We’ve done silly things, like take a pre-boss-fight soak in a hot tub together. Then we took a portal to the top of a mountain and slayed a frost dragon that barely fit on my laptop screen.
More than once, I’ve fallen asleep from painkillers, snoring into the Discord. My friends, always supportive, even built a little hut around my snoozing character to ensure I didn’t get killed.
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That’s the thing about Valheim — at any given moment, it can be whatever I need it to be. I can adventure with friends. I can farm all on my own. I can lose myself for hours in building something interesting. It offers me experiences so varied that I can always load it up and dosomething. Furthermore, that something can always end up something productive; something benefiting myself and my friends.
Every day, I’ve woken up to a schedule filled with the same routine. Someone takes my vitals, someone brings my medicine, someone brings my breakfast. Doctors check on me, nurses pop in, respiratory pops in — people in and out and in and out until lunch, when it all begins again.
At night, it’s quiet, except for the occasional patient howling from pain. The nurses check in infrequently, and I can sign into Discord to hear the comforting voices of my friends. Then I log into Valheim, and I’m in our main hall. I’m at my digital home away from home, which is just about as close as I’m going to get right now. Maybe tonight will be a silly session. Maybe we’ll fight a boss. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll fall asleep again listening to the laughter of friends.
