Multiplayer Sync issues

09 Feb, '21
stryka

Not sure if this falls under the same category, played the game yesterday in my buddies server 11 hours no problems at all aside from a few acceptable hiccups, launch the game today in the same server and chests can no longer be opened, regardless of locations (no wards either preventing me from opening said chests) was able to temporarily fix said chest glitch by building a wooden stool (i dont know) and after fixing that, doors were no longer able to be opened. none of my other buddies have had these issues, but several restarts didnt fix anything.

10 Feb, '21
Dream WEaver

Does the person with said issues have an MSI computer? If so, check for Killer network software and if they have it - get them to uninstall that software

10 Feb, '21
JinKuroneko :)

I want to start with, this game is a freaking amazing. Great fucking job !

The game feels like single player/local if we far away from each other but when we start to reconvene, some of us will desync sometimes up to 1min delay. It's like everything he saw is 1min behind.
I assume the game try to update information between each other on what we have been doing, what items we have etc.

10 Feb, '21
Ruben

im having issues interacting with other players and then i will lag and end up in the ground. I would stand in front of the other players and no one could see me and i couldnt see buildings. ive reinstalled,but nothing works

10 Feb, '21
Matt Merged

Having the exact same issue with my group - the one player with the poor connection quality disrupts the performance for everyone and we're also on a dedicated server.

10 Feb, '21
Deus

@Dream WEaver, No killer network software or other network "optimisation" software on my pc. I host the server on my computer. For my experience with 2 firiends we have some Sync issues but it is still playable but when we start to be more (4-6 players) we start having big sync issues more than 2 or 3 minutes differences. At first we have not dedicated server on my computer but private game, and we switch on dedicated to try resolving issue. Set static address ip, forward multiple port, try to be all in the same language, nothing has worked at the moment for us.

10 Feb, '21
Jake

When playing co-op my friend and I lose the ability to open chest or doors and animals will stand still taking no damage. The only way to fix this is to logout of the server and then log back into the server. Sound like the same issue?

10 Feb, '21
Grimesy88 Merged

continued...
up with itself. All of Player 3 actions during this period are discarded.

The same happens if a player hosts a server from the in game menu and we join him. If Player 3 joins he can have the same affect on the overall server.

It seems there needs to be some form of server side system that has the ability to deal with traditional client/server traffic especially where one of those clients might not have the best connectivity. I would assume such a system would time someone out on a short time out period if they were having an impact on the server as well as also deal with error/missed packets, there perhaps should be better resend/retry practices at the network level?

Anyway i wanted to put the effort in to trying to articulate my experience as i want to ensure you have the best possible chance of making this a huge success.

Dan - GGHOSTING.ONLINE

10 Feb, '21
Measurity

To the devs: I recommend looking into the reliability flag for steam P2P API. Not all data needs to be reliable (ex: movement, fast animations that do not impact gameplay, effects). This reduces the networking requirements and can help other data get through that is important.

10 Feb, '21
drewfortyyy

A friend and I playing on his dedicated server, both on late model rigs and 1gb connections, went 10+ hours with no sync issues, then the next day experienced sync issues up to 10 minutes or more between my action and his seeing it. Adding a third player further confirmed 2 in perfect sync and 1 player minutes behind, even with good latency. Issue seems especially intermittent.

10 Feb, '21
Briabot

My boyfriend and another friend of mine have been playing on my world for about 30-ish days with no problem, bit of lag here and there but completely normal. But today, my bf tried joining and there's a massic desync and lag, he can't open doors or do anything but from my end he seems fine. We tried going on his server and same thing, I can't do anything.

It's odd because it was fine and now it's broken. It's really demotivating because we have already done so much on my world and this makes us not wanna play (not like we really can).

10 Feb, '21
Vinchester

I played with my friend 4/5 days in a row for bout 15hours a day (Yes I know :D) Without ANY ISSUE, after Today's Patch, we got problems like, cannot picked up loot, chopped tree cannot be destroyed or reloging cuz of HUGE FPS drop rate after 1/2 hours of play, Most of thing's we built, never saved, we lost a lot of materials cuz of dis. Waiting for Fix.

10 Feb, '21
Christopher Rasmus

Been playing for the last couple days on a PC/server with no issues. 4 players, no lag, host has left his PC/server on for 10+ hours (i.e., go to bed with server on, wake up server still on, go to work server STILL on, etc.)

Today Feb 10, 2021 after game updated to latest patch latency/lag is spiking up to 60 seconds (e.g., click to open a door or chop a tree and 60 seconds later the door opens or the hit registers on the tree).

Additionally fps seems to have dropped from a usual 30+ down to 10-15.

What is going on?!

EDIT: When I first logon to someone else's PC/server, there are no landscape features (no trees, stumps, etc.) and no buildings for several, several seconds, then poof everything loads in. This has never happened before today (2/10/21). This doesn't happen in solo play.

10 Feb, '21
Başar

When I connect with my friends to eachother's server, not able to see him and interact with any item.
Our both connection is very good and we are not facing any other game such a issue.

10 Feb, '21
shatter

same issue here, everything worked fine until yesterdays patch

10 Feb, '21
Kaos

First of all love the game (playing it solo) but would be even better to share this experience with friends, and there's the issue.
When I enter their server I see only meadow, no trees, no animals just nothing as far the eye can reach. Sometimes they do appear on my screen or after a minute or so I get thrown out (vice versa when they enter my server). First thought this would be an international connection problem but same thing within 30 km of my door. Tried fixing stuff on my own end but to no avail. When those friends try to connect with other people they don't seem to have a problem.

11 Feb, '21
Vliek

This is caused by it being peer to peer and one of the players having a bad connection, from what I have experienced. We found out who causes it and every time he is close to us things start getting delayed, no item pickups, floating mobs.

11 Feb, '21
Edgecrusher

Started to notice something wrong last night. I was noticing a lot of lag so I did a server restart (I am using pingperfect). I came back on and could not open a box at all. I relogged and came back to noticing my progress of the building I was making didn't save. I thought oh well must be an issue related with PingPerfect so I will just continue on. I completed the building and noticed I couldn't open a door. I relogged and the progress was gone on the building. Back to before. I put in a ticket and they wanted to wipe the progress and see if a reinstall of the files would fix the save issue. I told them no and found this issue here. I guess I will wait for a fix?

11 Feb, '21
JeT

Yep desync issues for me and my buddies too. When playing with people from varying locations with high and low pings, we start to get bad lag where doors dont open, people aren't where they're supposed to be etc. Heard its an issue with the netcode. Please address this ASAP so we can play with our friends smoothly! :)

12 Feb, '21
Sub

Whenever I joined my friend's session, I definitely joined his non-dedicated server. I could see his base, I could see him running around. After 10 seconds or so, it desyncs. I can see my friend moving and doing things, but for him, I am standing or running in place. On my end, I am moving in the world, but I lose ability to interact with doors, picking up items etc.

Then my friend set up a dedicated server, but there was the same issue. Since there was one more friend playing with him and everything was fine, we assumed problem was on my end. So I tried VPN and disabling my firewalls. It didn't help, always the same. I join, play for 10 seconds and then it desyncs.

>> Funny part is, I could take his bronze helmet from his server and I can transfer it to my singleplayer game and use it! When friend checked his storage on his server, bronze helmet was still there. Not sure if that was intended by developers. <<

Finally, we realized we are desyncing when we are close to eachother.

1

12 Feb, '21
Moose

When playing multiplayer im having desync issues where my internet speed is being throttled from 250Mbs to 1 or less Mbs. When this happens I desync heavily and cant chop wood, gather anything or interact with anything. In addition it keeps my internet throttled until I reset the router entirely.

Windows 10
RTX 2080TI
I9-9900

12 Feb, '21
Alex Merged

Same issue here, on our 5 players dedicated in eastern north america, one of the players is connecting from china and during spikes of latency or unreliable transmissions, it makes it horrifying if we are in the same area. It sometimes recovers on its own, sometimes it doesn't and the queued actions get stuck until the china-bound player disconnects and reconnects.

If we are in separate areas everything is fine, however.

12 Feb, '21
Phix

I'm hosting a dedicated private server for about 10-12 of my friends, 4 of them were having no issues at all and everything was fine. Myself (on LAN), and a couple of my other friends with me were having intermittent bouts of 30 second delays on swings, opening doors/chests, etc. We also had desync issues where one of the guys was somewhere else on his screen compared to where he was on my screen, and we were 'yoyo-ing'. Rebooting the server (restarted the PC, 12 core CPU with 16 GB RAM on SSD) didn't solve the issue either, however the other group kept working fine. Not sure what that was about, but it happened a couple times. Later in the night everything worked fine again for everyone. Tested my internet connection and it was fine during the problems as well.

12 Feb, '21
viper

me and my friend notice dsync with animals and enemies, movements not in sync and sometimes animals i can see teleport and are right next to me but he cant.

12 Feb, '21
take4spam

On dedicated server:

My friend can play normally, everything works, but when I play... I become invisible for him, things that i broke are not synced with him, resources I collect are still showing to him and so on. Sometimes I could not deal any damage to mobs and resources on world and I need to reconnect. And it feels like I'm half-disconnected. disconnected from server but still in the game with him. So I can see everything that my friend did or is doing. I saw him destroying things, I saw him building and so on, but when I tried, nothing. My friend saw me standing still or he wasn't even able to see me right in front of him. If I build, it didn't show for him and If I reconnected everything was gone. I even tried when he was not online and same thing.

We also have quite a powerful dedicated machine at OVH because we are also playing with tons of other games and we have no problems with them. I really wish a solution for this is found, I want to play this good game with a friend

12 Feb, '21
Laughingman

I am and my friends (6 of us playing) are all having desync issues. For me it is noticeable during combat. I will be no where near enemies and start dieing from hits I cannot see.

12 Feb, '21
Radu Ionel Viorel

Hello, when i connect to one of the servers my character is all alone i cannot see the others players but the other players can see me, after a few minutes i get disconnected .

12 Feb, '21
robin greffier

our dedicated server running fine for days , then suddently de sync ..

12 Feb, '21
Finch!

So far the biggest issues I've been having with desyncing is when sailing. I'm playing on a server with just myself and one other person and every time we sail, the waves have been delayed for me by a ton. The boat is either constantly floating or underwater and I have to stay seated on something or I'll start swimming and lose the boat. Luckily I haven't drowned to this issue yet but its still annoying.

12 Feb, '21
Mike

Yep, desync has been completely awful recently. When it happens I notice my ping in Discord spike to 1500+ as well, instantly fixed by logging out.

12 Feb, '21
Shinsei

Exact same problem for me as Sub is having

"Sub

Whenever I joined my friend's session, I definitely joined his non-dedicated server. I could see his base, I could see him running around. After 10 seconds or so, it de-syncs. I can see my friend moving and doing things, but for him, I am standing or running in place. On my end, I am moving in the world, but I lose ability to interact with doors, picking up items etc.

Then my friend set up a dedicated server, but there was the same issue. Since there was one more friend playing with him and everything was fine, we assumed problem was on my end. So I tried VPN and disabling my firewalls. It didn't help, always the same. I join, play for 10 seconds and then it de-syncs."

also tried opening ports, dmz-ing, turning off windows firewall, reinstalling...

Tried many servers, same problem

12 Feb, '21
Seifer

To help out the devs, I think everyone with these issues need to give a little more detail to help pin point what the issue is. Could people start posting the following:

Dedicated Server or Player Hosted
Operating system of Dedicated Server or Player Hosting
If Dedicated Server, is it running on a Virtual Machine?
How many players on when desync happens

Any other info is good but I think that is a start to hopefully see if there is a pattern.

13 Feb, '21
Belthize

I have a thread on the steam forums here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/892970/discussions/0/4939856028569039376/

It appears the client are *sending* data at 40KB/s or higher while receiving many 1s of KB/s. Normally the client only has to send key press type info so the transmit rate should be a fraction of the receive rate.

Unfortunately 40KB/s is very close to the transmit rate of DSL (15Mbit DSL typically has a 500-600kbit up limit). So some people are simply hitting a bandwidth limit at which point the queing system kicks in and other clients grind to a halt till the slow link catches up.

13 Feb, '21
Belthize Merged

I have a thread on the steam forums here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/892970/discussions/0/4939856028569039376/ with screenshots and other information showing the desync impacts and traffic rate.

It appears the client are *sending* data at 40KB/s or higher while receiving many 1s of KB/s. Normally the client only has to send key press type info so the transmit rate should be a fraction of the receive rate.

Unfortunately 40KB/s is very close to the transmit rate of DSL (15Mbit DSL typically has a 500-600kbit up limit). So some people are simply hitting a bandwidth limit at which point the queuing system kicks in and other clients grind to a halt till the slow link catches up.

13 Feb, '21
Garbigo

Whenever I join my friends server the desync stars kicking in. The weird thing is that desync only starts when I'm close to someone. When I'm far away from everyone everything seems to run fine. I can chop down trees and kill things. I'm the only person on the server who has these problems. I don't know how to fix this and it seems like I can't.

13 Feb, '21
bloufalcon

played with 1 other member on player hosted server and dedicated server and noticed major lag/de-sync within a minute of joining. game was essentially unplayable. I did notice the "bad server connection" icon in the upper lefthand corner. playing on WiFi. moved my computer to a different part of the house (same room as router) and issue with sync was resolved. I was the "bad actor" in the multiplayer sync. thing is - I was getting fine performance (ooka test) with 100-300 Mbps up / down when in other room; experienced a few hiccups with the connection due to wifi not being 100% signal. looks like any hiccup in the connection that would cause packet loss sends the game into an unrecoverable and continuously degrading state of sync.

for all those out there experiencing sync issues, get on wired connection and see if sync issues still happen. played tonight for about 2 hrs with zero sync issues...only change was my connection (physically moving next to the router so wifi was 100%).

13 Feb, '21
HitTheMan Merged

Just to push this out here for people regarding desync and lag and problems with the dedicated servers or multiplayer in general, here's how Multiplayer work in this game, a very good statement from Ori from discord:

"No. We're telling you what it is. The ONLY thing a dedicated server does in Valheim is keep the world open and accepting connections. It's literally the game client with no graphical interface, no character, only serving the world. It puts the players connecting in a peer to peer web. One person with a bad connection hurts the entire web causing desync. This server architecture can run on a potato because of this setup."

Dedicated servers doesn't mean better performance, just it being online 24/7 basically

Reddit post to spread the word:
https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/liu2gi/how_dedicated_servers_multiplayer_work_in_this/

13 Feb, '21
HitTheMan

Just to push this out here for people regarding desync and lag and problems with the dedicated servers or multiplayer in general, here's how Multiplayer work in this game, a very good statement from Ori:

"No. We're telling you what it is. The ONLY thing a dedicated server does in Valheim is keep the world open and accepting connections. It's literally the game client with no graphical interface, no character, only serving the world. It puts the players connecting in a peer to peer web. One person with a bad connection hurts the entire web causing desync. This server architecture can run on a potato because of this setup."

Dedicated servers doesn't mean better performance, just it being online 24/7 basically

Reddit post to spread the word:
<https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/liu2gi/how_dedicated_servers_multiplayer_work_in_this/>

13 Feb, '21
Pierre De Jager

Hi yeah we get MAJOR desync issues on our dedi server....

Please please please look at it devs

13 Feb, '21
Erika

me and my boyfriend have been playing 5 days now, we didnt have major lag issues until 2 days ago. Our internet is fine, we closed every application, no performance issues on our desktops, we are on the same network and the lag is different for both of us. To the point we died and lost all our high level gear and almost dying again from taken damage of something we don't even see. The game is amazing but we havent been able to play properly the last two days now due to this lag.

13 Feb, '21
Eddy

Having the same issue. Just constant. It works great for around 20-40 seconds then players are teleporting everywhere, i'm unable to open chests if someone is nearby or pick up items. Just huge amounts of desync sometimes minutes in the past then will very suddenly catch up. Other players leaving will fix the issue but when the come back it only takes another 20 seconds and it's unplayable again.

13 Feb, '21
Laz

Let me share details about my experience with desync.
+ I can confirm that items might duplicate or vanish when a desync occurs. If you are not sync'd and you pick up an item from a chest and relog, both your character and the chest will contain the item. If instead of picking up you deposit, the item will vanish.
+ A dedicated server did not help.
+ We noticed lag during a kind of garbage collection in the server and that might have triggered desyncs, but it's hard to isolate.
+ Not being able to interact with chests is a common symptom of desync, but you might still be able to do that while already desync. For example, once I had 50 wood on my character and 50 in a chest. I got all wood and built 2 stockpiles. After relogging, I didn't have any wood on me, the stockpiles were gone and 50 wood were still in the chest.

13 Feb, '21
mancheet

Did some trouble shooting and I think I found a general solution to anyone experiencing network throttling while valheim is open. The issue seems to occur for anyone who has software that optimizes network traffic.

The example given in steam describes "Killer Network software (often found on MSI computers)" being the issue, and uninstalling it being a fix. I resolved the issue on my Lenovo Legion 5 by disabling Lenovo Vantage's Network Boost OR adding valheim.exe to the list of programs to prioritize.

In general to solve this issue, check if your computer has any software that attempts to optimize or prioritize game connections on your network. Disable it or add valheim.exe to the list of software to include in the prioritization as it is not included by default.

13 Feb, '21
Edward

We have some desync problem on local network dedicated linux server. No MSI PC!

13 Feb, '21
Mitchell K Merged

i keep getting connection issue icon and then disconnected when i join a friends server. my internet speed is 118 down and my ping is 13ms. my computer is also plenty powerful enough.

14 Feb, '21
April

Boyfriend and I bought the game Feb. 12th, fell in love with it and decided to rent a server from GTXGaming. I haven't been experiencing any de-sync issues but my boyfriend has. 2 minutes after he would log into the server with me, his character would stop moving and he wouldn't be able to chop trees, loot chests or anything but he could keep getting levels in his skills. We tried multiple re-logs, restarts and reinstalling but nothing fixed the issue. Hopefully this is resolved soon so we can play together! We are absolutely loving the game, though..

14 Feb, '21
doubledgedboard

similar issues here, no core bottlenecking, no memory bottlenecking, no disk bottlenecking, and firewall ports are configured, and plenty of bandwidth available

dedicated server was running perfectly fine and then became desynced, where I'm unable to do anything (destroy objects, open chests, etc)

standing still, I randomly receive damage and get moved around every once in a while

14 Feb, '21
ArchdukeMD

Me and my friends have over a hundred hours in the game after buying it 6 days ago. Everything was relatively fine in terms of server syncing but since a couple of days ago, it was borderline impossible to play the game anymore. Monsters were teleporting everywhere, interactions weren't... interacting, you name it. I dont know why, but the multiplayer has been desyncing like crazy which led us to ultimately stop playing the game. I hope this would be the priority fix cus we really like playing the game

14 Feb, '21
Nicola Merged

I have the same issue! 9 players connected to my server, as soon as player 6 leaves the server ramps up and the game continues

14 Feb, '21
John

Same problem here! Such an amazing game but me and my friend who lives 1 block away can't enjoy it cause of the crazy lag :(

Multiplayer Sync issues

Comments: 234