Most folks are used to games like Ark or Minecraft have come to just embrace the frantic hacking and slashing attacks that survival games usually stick close to. Well, Valheim has added in a combat technique that I have thoroughly enjoyed in games BEYOND the survival genre, and that is the parry.
In Valheim, performing a “perfect parry” (which is blocking RIGHT before an attack strikes you) will offset an enemy for a short, but highly beneficial, period of seconds. Here, you will be able to freely hack at your enemy knowing they’re stumbling off balance, no fear of them striking back for a couple of moments, and in addition to this you deal CRITICAL damage, meaning that you’re not dealing average damage. Oh no, you’re dealing ADVANCED damage, double, triple, sometimes quadruple the amounts of damage you’d normal deal. Which sound like a pretty good deal to me.
Remember, you can parry without a shield, but you might take some damage still, or may even take full damage from some enemies, a shield for performing parry’s is highly recommended for using it to it’s full potential.