depending on your computer anything above around 30k instances ( press f2) will cause slowdown to load all the instances. Spreading out will help as will reducing the number of lights and pets.

Valheim uses Voxel graphics, like in Minecraft.

The entire world consists basically of little cubes, like a LEGO cube that consists of visible and invisible cubic LEGO bricks.

Each cube contains information about its appearance, like the used materials, textures, colliders and the visible shape,
Any changes made to those "bricks'" parameters (like terraforming or structure building) are getting logged.

If you enter a seed, the game is going to check for the cubes parameters within your rendering distance and render these.
After this it's going to check for changes made and apply these to the cubes.

That's what you may see if you're entering heavily modified areas.
You can literally watch the game drawing the scene, expecially on rather weak CPUs and GPUs or in crowded areas.
First you might see the seed's origial appearance and then watch it transforming.

That's a pretty CPU intense calculation and therefore rendering takes some time.
The more cubes within you rendering distance got modified, the more load for both your CPU and GPU, the heavier the lags you might experience are .

It don't know exactly the rendering distance any more but If I recall it correctly it's somewhat between 250m and 500m from your position.
One brick's size is about 2x2m

So I'd advise you keep that distance to you buddies or don't build too big within that area if you want to keep a smooth experience

valheim doesnt use voxels at all. The whole world is a height map you can deform.

is it voxels or height map... may have awarded a treasure early

Originally posted by INC3NSUS:

is it voxels or height map... may have awarded a treasure early

Heightmap. This is also why you get a border slope around terrain modifications and not discreet "blocks".

How large is 'large' in your case? Can you show screenshot examples?
The biggest loading lag I find is if you leave a lot of loot on the floor, in a trench or behind walls etc. Grab everything and place it out of your crafting tables range - and it will disappear in about 2 game days. It won't disappear if you leave any loots within your crafting bench range circle.

i have screens loaded on my profile page... it does not include the mc mansion up the hill my buddy has that also has a farm, a wolf and pig farm too.

but still more curious about how Valhiem loads things and if distance between things like farms or buildings matter.. zones...

Originally posted by INC3NSUS:

i have screens loaded on my profile page... it does not include the mc mansion up the hill my buddy has that also has a farm, a wolf and pig farm too.

All I can see is your Life is Strange review on your page, when I try and look at your screenshots it says you have them privated.

um hmm not sure how to change that looking in steam settings now but not seeing it.

think i just uploaded a few public ill come check back later.

view > screenshots > valheim
set private to public per screenshot i think, may also have to community share it

Whats your lighting situation friend? Multiple flickering lights do seem to load the area and having a faster graphics card seems to make only a small difference (Hence I suspect an optimisation issue)

I find the hanging brazers give the largest areas of light for lowest FPS/Lag imp[act but what do others say?