The game gets worse with every update.

What started as a charming survival game with a good but simplistic souls like combat system and really cool base building amongst the few biomes at launch unfortunately quickly became a mess of systems that don't work very well, bugs and a different gameplay philosophy compared to the original biomes at launch.

The game never really built on the cool world theology, the biome system, the ship travel systems, the survival aspects etc, it instead focused on the combat while the combat has always been the weakest part of the game. Instead of improving combat they have just forced you into more of it with more dynamic enemies while keeping all the same issues with the systems such as not being able to aim properly with melee with any vertical melee aiming being impossible while they introduced biomes and scenery that has a heavy vertical nature to it.

I feel like the devs didn't really understand what made the game the overnight success that it was and instead tried to tap into the souls like genre just without any of the good combat and RPG systems in those games.
Maybe they will correct some issues with the game moving forwards, but its been 3 years now and they've never really tackled any core problems and always seemed rather hostile towards the player base with the secrecy and not paying much attention to what anyone wants unless it aligns with them, hence the combat and the problems introduced.

I've played Valheim on and off with friends since the first days it was available. This game had tons of potential, but unfortunately the devs either don't want users to have fun, or cater to a specific, hardcore audience.

You'll be constantly wasting hours of your free time simply because the devs want you to.

- You have portals, but you can't use it while holding certain materials. So you have to travel all the way back you came by boat (a trip that may take dozens of minutes).

- Then there's the swamp, a biome nearly everyone hates due to the constant rain (which gives a wet debuff) and bad terrain to traverse (which is made worse by your debuff). And you may be forced to come back to it later because the game expects you to use iron for newer gear.

- Inventory space and management is pretty bad. You're expected to carry your armor (3 slots), weapons (usually 2 or more slots), food (at least 3 slots). That's already 1/4 of your slots, and I'm not counting key items or potions. Add to that items having weight and enemies having their own specific loot and you'll be running back to your base constantly to make space. Leaving stuff behind is an "option", but you'll likely be needing the resources you're leaving behind at some point.

- Crafting is confusing and time consuming. You'll be often swapping tables to craft or repair your equipment. Making food is often obnoxious. A cauldron being there is ok; needing to use an oven afterwards for some dishes is boring. It has limited space, takes too long and can turn into charcoal if you forget about it. You'll also have to wait for wood to be turned into charcoal, ores to be turned to bars, barley to be milled into flour, flax turned to linen thread... And you'll be needing dozens if not hundreds of each for each player.

- Building is cool, but you'll be grinding all the materials you need to make your base good looking for actual days.

- As for the latest update... Ashlands is tedious and is seriously making me considering dropping the game for good. Enemies are constantly spawning and simply exploring in relative peace seems to be impossible. Lava being deadly is reasonable... The fire resistance barley wine doing nothing to help against it is not, when in the Mountains you're literally freezing and drinking a potion nullifies it. "But lava is supposed to be deadly!" No, this is just the game breaking rules it taught earlier, like skeletons taking more blunt damage (charred skeletons do not). Anyways, lava will kill you. And then kill you again while you're crossing it using temporary platforms and a random lava blob will knock you away. And kill you again while you're mining flametal and the ground collapses without any reason. Good luck getting your items back!

This game does not respect your time nor feels rewarding when you overcome a challenge. It just gives you another task to do.

Unfortunately there are not many games like Valheim out there. And unfortunately Valheim loses its charm very quickly. Many of its issues can be fixed with mods and/or tweaking the server settings, but those do not excuse the sad state of vanilla -- the way the devs intend the game to be played.

There are SO many things in this game that are there just to make your life annoying. Carry weight, then your stuff breaks. Then you cant take ore through portals. Then you have stamina. Then the rain makes your stamina refill worse. Die once and good luck getting your body back. its okay take the slowest boat known to man, oh there's no wind you cant. Get there and get one shot by the stuff camping you body. I've never had a game make me want to stop playing so quickly in my life. I get the games grindy but why are there SO MANY things standing in your way.