I consider myself a casual gamer. But Valheim has actually gotten me to learn stuff like parrying and dodging- stuff I thought I could never learn. Need to do more roll/dodge practice, as I don't have that as a habit yet. Takes those "fast twitch" reflexes to see the blow coming and react before it lands.

I'm at nearly 400 game days, and trying to find a new swamp with new crypts so I can do more iron. So the total opposite of a speedrun. Hey, the game is so gorgeous, I could play just for the deer hunting and sailing. And I actually find myself watching in-game sunrises and sunsets.

They are already working on new difficulty options.

most servers i join or complains i see is people quiting arround the swamp biome. so yes its a bit of a difficulty jump. sortof.
Game isn't that hard as long as you do what it expects you to do of it.
The only hard bit is the grind to get the resources.
Most ppl that die, die because they didnt prepare and went in naked.

most often ppl that die, die because of.
-low quality food. still just eating simple meats.
-no potions (swamp specificially)
-hit n rolls tactic. or refusing to adapt to the combat. like i see pure 'archer' players. lol, that wont work. Gotta use all the weapons.

Solutions:
-make the apropriate food
-make the potions
-use a shield for parry, makes game ez mode. and weapon for each mobs weakness.

Enjoy a easyer life.

not all games are meant for "casual gameing" in the first place. especially survival games where you need to put in alot of TIME is pretty much the opposite of what casual gameing stands for.

SUMMARY:
Armor - Shield - Food *also Mead when you are able - Weapon.

Get those in that order, as far ass your focus. Sneak often, until you do not have to do so.

Armor equipped for the area you are in,so, Leather for Meadows, and, until you cannot upgrade it anymore, plus, also, having a shield made from the materials from that area, so, Wood Tower Shield, also fully upgraded, plus your weapon of choice, fully upgraded for the current / Biome, then, you go to next area, being Black Forest. Also, eat 3 foods at once , plus , sleep at night, for rested, plus then you avoid more dangerous enemies.

I played often in solo, especially Swamp Biome and higher. Key is to focus on Armor, and Shield every time you go to a new area, If you do so, then, your damage is reduced, and you can easily handle fights, plus then, go into next new area / land / Biome.

It's not actually about the difficulty; it's the learning curve. Progression depends heavily on gear, and even more heavily on player knowledge and preparedness.

Originally posted by u4all:

SUMMARY:
Armor - Shield - Food *also Mead when you are able - Weapon.

Get those in that order, as far ass your focus. Sneak often, until you do not have to do so.

If we're giving precise instructions, do them in this order, instead:

Plant-based food (mushrooms, berries), crude axe, flint knife (jumping sneak-attacks can one-shot unaware mobs - try attacking with your knife using middle-mouse-click, from cover, while sneaking), kill boars for leather scraps, crude bow, wooden arrows.

Use sneak attacks with the dagger until you get a bow, then use your bow at range and either axe or knife with a buckler for melee. Carry enough wood and stone to be able to build a quick workbench, a couple walls, a couple roof tiles, and a campfire any time you might need to stop for a rest. Adding enough wood for a few more walls, a door, and a bed is a pretty good idea, too.

Craft a flint axe (flint is found next to water in the Meadows), kill deer for leather hide (and a couple trophies), then make leather armor and a finewood bow (knock beeches into birches to get fine wood; chop a few pines (not fir) just inside the Black Forest for core wood). Make fire arrows and a buckler or shield, and cook up your meat into better food (cooked boar, deer, and neck - add a cooking station or two (roasting spit) to your campfire).

Kill Eikthyr with fire arrows, find some bees, collect the queens, decide on a good place for your first "real" base. Notes for a "good" location: a relatively flat area in the meadows, near (but not in) the Black Forest, and near water. Build/repair a house, add a bed, campfire, cooking stations (plural), and chests. Make beehives, collect some honey, then go into a few crypts and gather some yellow mushrooms and surtling cores. Build a kiln and a smelter, start making charcoal.

While you're building your base, use yellow mushrooms (from the burial chambers) and honey (from the beehives) to keep your health/stamina up. Not eating while building will kill you just as quickly and easily as going into combat without having eaten first.

Go deeper into the Black Forest, find some tin deposits on the ground near water. Gather 10 tin. Look at the big rocks in the area, watching for the shiny veins that indicate copper deposits. Mine at least 6 copper. Do this in the daytime, so you don't have to deal with the constant greydwarf spawns at night.

Return to base with your metal; smelt it. Use 6 copper to make a forge, and use the 10 tin to make a cauldron. Place the cauldron on a second campfire.
Mine more copper and tin. Smelt the metals, forge bronze, forge bronze gear (don't forget the cultivator), make better food in the cauldron (blueberries and raspberries for queen's jam, boar and honey for jerky). If you have carrots, make deer stew.

Make bronze nails. Build a cart and a Karve; those will come in handy in the very near future.

Make more fire arrows. Find and kill The Elder.

Make a fermenter (barrel), and start cooking up poison resist mead base and adding it to the fermenter. Once you have some poison resistance mead, go to the swamp with your new Swamp Key, and look for crypts.

All of that being said, a club and a loincloth is sufficient to deal with anything you'll encounter in the meadows; smacking bad things with a lit torch works much better than you would think, too... and carrying one keeps Meadows mobs from attacking at all.

Here are some more "general knowledge" style tips:

Don't sprint everywhere; save that for crossing clearings or running for your life. Look around more; moving slower lets you pay more attention to your surroundings so you don't sprint into a trio of greydwarves and then have no stamina with which to engage your "fight or flight" response.

Learn to block/parry; even unarmed, you can successfully block (and even parry) Meadows mobs. Setting greydwarves and skeletons on fire works a treat; trolls, too, but use your fire arrows instead of engaging in melee combat.

Keep at least 2, if not 3 foods in your "stomach". Eat more food as soon as the icon starts flashing (halfway through the stated duration); the health/stamina buff starts wearing off immediately after you've eaten, and you gain less benefit from the food as time passes. The buff is at less than 90% when the icon starts flashing, and is half depleted by the time the icon actually disappears. Keeping your food buffs up is a critical skill, and its value cannot be overstated; it's difference between running around with 25 hp and 50 stamina, and running around with 100+ of both. Food buffs also add health regeneration.

Watch your status effects.
Being cold (outside at night, for example) reduces your stamina regeneration. So does being wet... and those effects stack; if you're cold and wet, you're going to have a rough time.

Stay rested; the "resting" and "rested" buffs also stack, and do amazing things for your health and stamina regeneration. Adding furniture to your base will increase your "comfort", which increases the duration of the "rested" buff. You can eventually keep the "rested" buff through an entire day, if you have enough nice stuff in your house.

Nearly everything you do makes "noise", which draws the attention of mobs. See https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Creature_senses#Noise
The salient points are that the "noise" originates from your character, depletes by 5m per second, and it moves with you; for example, chopping down a tree means your character is attracting nearby creatures for the next 25 seconds, even if you move elsewhere... and running around generates noise, too.

Survival games are usually grind. Explore, mine, smelt, farm, prepare and when ready attempt the biome boss. In the time that takes (if you pay attention) you will figure out how the creatures move and attack, how to defend, and how to retaliate.

When you have the top gear from the previous biome and defeat the boss you are ready to start the next biome and you have to start the learning process all over again to gather the new foods and materials required to succeed.

Then play something else.

"Too hard for casual gaming" sounds like a feature - especially for a 'brutal survival craft game'.

im at the point that i casually walk through the mistlands.

this has nothing to do with difficulty and entirely to do with skill.

once you know your place is based off of your gear and actuall skill levels, you tend to stop going into areas that are too hard for you.

also, only defeat bosses when you are sure you're ready for the next type of enemies, otherwise you get stuck being raided by next level mobs when you haven't even prepped for them.

pps, make sure you're rested as much as possible as well.

lots of newbies come into this game thinking they can just free roam without setting up a base to get rested and then they complain about it being impossible to play because a boar can one shot you.

no duh, those guys are running around weak at the knees wondering why they're weak.

Originally posted by Ranbato:

The difficulty jumps from one biome to the next are a bit too much. There is also no clear path to "getting better". Either endlessly grind or endlessly collect your corpse.

Hey, the game is what it is. I hope you can believe me that with time, you will develop methods that work well for casual.

In the previews of upcoming game content they show a difficulty slider, so you can tone it down to easy until you get comfortable, and ramp it up when you feel feisty.

FireSpark81 did a pretty good job discussing the Ashlands update on his youtbe channel (vids are about 4 mos old, but the Ashlands content is still under development).

It's all in the gear upgrades yo, you become very strong if you stick around long enough to t3 everything.

Honestly, i am about as casual as it gets, it seems difficult at first, main thing is patience and slow progress, a couple hours a night or even just a couple hours a couple times a week is really how i play.

Don't know what you want with this post, but even if I agree with you about the diff spikes, this game is not bad at all in terms of grind, that's unless you want to build really unnecessary and impressive buildings or have every weapon fully upgraded, the only possibly really time consuming anoying part should be finding the places with the resources to grind (big mountain / swamp) and maybe to have a lot of the best food.
That said the last biome, and the way they done to have we be able to craft the latest items, I personally consider it incredible awful.

The game is actually less grindy after the update that nerfed ground raising a while back.
Sounds to me that you are complaining due to being lazy and lack of patience. This is a survival game and it takes a little bit more preparation, especially if you're solo, before you enter a new territory.
Don't be lazy and complaining. Either that or cheat a bit and be happy.