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Valheim fans have encountered a common problem: someone, or something, is causing their boats to vanish. Some Vikings blamed their friends, while others thought it could be a normal bug in an early access game.
Oe viral tweet from March 1 seemed to explain the phenomenon.
I've learned today that players in Valheim are noticing their boats missing or flying.
— Gliitch (@GliitchWiitch) March 1, 2021
The truth - birds (like seagulls) are landing on boats and a bug accidently places the boat under bird control - which means the bird lands on a boat and flies away with it, stealing it.
This is a fantastic explanation for a bug, and players were enamored with the idea that birds were swooping down out of nowhere and taking entire boats away with them.
But Polygon reached out to developer Iron Gate Studio to determine whether the mystery had been solved, and it sounds like players haven’t found the truth behind those missing boats quite yet. An Iron Gate representative shared the following with Polygon via email:
In regard to the bug in the tweet you shared, it is not real, haha! Interesting to see how much traction that tweet has received.
About glitches ... There was a glitch which saw one object get the data of another, so for the above example, a bird could have gotten the data of a ship, thus a player could’ve experienced a flying ship — but yeah, no ship-stealing birds!
In short, a bird could have appeared to be a Viking longship flying off into the air, which sounds like a trick worthy of Loki himself ... but players can rest assured that birds won’t be taking off with the results of their hard work.
Boat-building Vikings will still need to keep an eye out to make sure their friends and server-mates aren’t taking off with their rafts and longships, because the humble birds have been acquitted of all crimes.
