Earlier this week, I was involved in an all-too-familiar Valheim tragedy: after sailing too close to the shoreline, I was pursued by a rather large insect and nibbled to death, leaving my tombstone (and all my precious belongings) stranded in a distant land. What followed was a high-risk naked rescue mission that only just succeeded, but it turns out there was a far easier way I could have solved this: by enlisting the help of Valheim's very own Body Recovery Squad.
The BRS is a group of Valheim players dedicated to helping others recover their items, no matter where the tombstone is stranded – and they do it all for free. Players in need of assistance can head over to the community's Discord server, join a channel called #assistance-application, and hit an "SOS" button to allow them to request help in the channel. At this point one of the team members (known as operators) will get in contact with the client, organise to join their server, and a bunch of burly Vikings will set sail to help them recover their gear.
It all sounded like a fantastic community effort, so I got in touch with BRS founder and leader Lucas (known as Rim Jaynor) to ask him more about the process. In the real world, Lucas is a mechanic who lives in northern British Columbia, but he decided to establish the BRS after he and his friend had a brush with a deathsquito. "We were lucky that we had a portal close by and another friend who wasn't with us," he explained. "For us it was a quick run back through the portal to grab our stuff. In the discussion of the events it came up – 'you know, what if we weren't that lucky? We'd be back in the Stone Age!'"
