After dying enough times to lose almost 25 levels off my skills (some are practically non-existent now), I broke down and installed mods. Valheim plus made a huge difference.

I turned off the skill loss on death (corpse runs are enough punishment), and I set it so everything floats in water now. Nothing more annoying then staring at some rare loot at the bottom of 6 feet of water, since we can't dive. Made a few other tweaks, such as reducing stamina use while swimming.

Apparently I missed some huge stamina nerf while not playing for the last few months, so most of my changes seem to have just set it back to what I remember things being.

I've made the carapace armor, and even upgraded to level 2 on all parts, it's only 6 pts total armor higher then the tier 4 padded armor I was using before. Slightly underwhelming. When we get more black forge upgrades, then it will really shine. Oddly the helmet needs seeker soldier mandibles, and the description says you'll look like a giant insect... but... it doesn't. It's a completely normal helmet, no mandible. Kind of odd. I expected giant mandibles as cheek guards, the way the silver helmet has drake horns.

What's really great about the mistlands is the weapons.

The new weapons from the black forge are AWESOME. Mistwalker is a must if you use swords. The frost damage is brutal on seekers, and allows me to kill no star seekers in 2 hits (the first hit nearly kills them). The slow effect makes combat a lot more forgiving too. If you only have enough eitr to make one weapon, make mistwalker.

Jotun Bane (1 hand axe) is a close second, which has poison damage. At this point, I carry jotun bane around as my normal "axe" for chopping trees, and I've left the black metal axe back at base.

Spinesnap (the bow) has a much higher max damage, so ends up resulting in insane damage numbers on crits (500-600 pts when hitting the undersides of gjalls on a first sneak shot). I sometimes still carry the draugr bow for the poison dot though.

At this point, I'm nearly out of refined eitr to make more weapons to test them out. Going to have to find more jotun skulls to get "soft tissue".

Once you got all the nice stuff, you will miss the challange...

i love the update. I needed a few mods to make it right for me but otherwise they did a great job. The magic update is a lot of fun but does make me wish we could start magic earlier in the game.

Imagine running around in the Mountains but with a constant blizzard effect going across your screen. That is Mistlands to me but worse. Wisp light and wisp torches do not have a good enough aoe imo and I feel like the environment has way too many crags and not enough valleys.

I've only died once due to angering the little bearded dvergers when I was up top a tower and the fall damage / aggro'd damage ended me before I could retreat. I try not to bother with the other mobs without Frostner's slow or exploiting terrain as I'm unsure of the developers thought process when it comes to scaling difficulty.

What you said, the wisp stuff is so weak you might as well not even use it. Radius needs to be doubled and it needs to stop flying around randomly, it's almost gotten me killed because it flew away when i was aiming a bow and i couldnt see the Gjall about to bomb me. The lanterns are nice at least since they're cheap, but could be improved too.

The new armor is awful, barely barely better than padded, no passives and it looks like crap. At least the weapons and buildables are cool. It'll probably be a full year until we're allowed to upgrade them more than once though :/

Do you play solo? I play duo; we struggled during our first day, but now its like a walk in the park. We die only if we get too cocky tbh

So, to address
Bad things:
1) Its actually like a maze. You cant navigate it as previously. Yeah, its frustrating when you start, but after couple hours you'll get used to it.
2) Don't want to pull GIT GUD card, but you have to learn how to parry in order to kill new mobs. Also, spear is OP for Mistlands. You can stunlock seekers with it (parry -> 3 hits -> stunlock -> finish it off), and kill soldiers way faster than with any other weapons (parry -> special attack right to the ass). Gjalls die after 5-6 throws. Also, Bonemass buff is the best buff hands down, ultimate panic button. And dont forget to always have Rested buff.
3) Didn't notice it, can't say much. Maybe try to cheese by pulling mobs to dvergrs?

If you play solo, maybe try to find someone to play with?

Telling people to play multiplayer in response to difficulty isnt a proper suggestion.

Parrying Soldiers does not give you enough time to get to their weak spot.

I agree the wisplight and wisptorches could use a small boost to their aoe

Difficulty spike is much higher than the very *very* marginal increase in armor/damage from the new gear, which can only be upgraded to rank 2, and is locked behind almost the entirety of the new biome's resource progression; meaning you have to complete nearly the entire Biome before you can even make the gear intended to help you survive the biome.

Originally posted by DeMasked:

I've only died once due to angering the little bearded dvergers when I was up top a tower and the fall damage / aggro'd damage ended me before I could retreat.

Navigation gets much easier once you have made the feather fall cloak.

Originally posted by Sono:

What you said, the wisp stuff is so weak you might as well not even use it. Radius needs to be doubled and it needs to stop flying around randomly, it's almost gotten me killed because it flew away when i was aiming a bow and i couldnt see the Gjall about to bomb me. The lanterns are nice at least since they're cheap, but could be improved too.

The new armor is awful, barely barely better than padded, no passives and it looks like crap. At least the weapons and buildables are cool. It'll probably be a full year until we're allowed to upgrade them more than once though :/

Gjall are indeed hard to see, but they are not hard to hear. You can use poisonous arrows or bow to see them more easily in distance.

I didn't make the carapace armor yet either, but from what I could tell, it's quite a lot cheaper to make than padded (considering iron and flax more valuable resource than all the other materials for carapace except eitr, and you only need a few of that per piece), provided you have no trouble with seekers. I agree that it's kinda bad but it might not be bad in every situation. Personally I'm not cross with being "required" to stick to my existing gear, constant power creep is not a good thing either. I'm also happier with this "tier" of gear than previous, since I found the plains tier of weapons unaesthetic and lacking in utility, but the armor was good.

Originally posted by Soulstinger:

Parrying Soldiers does not give you enough time to get to their weak spot.

Parry and Frostner secondary attack to the face, rinse and repeat. You don't need to hit seekers in the weak spots to eliminate all of them. Solid footwork mitigates need for dodging or blocking against multiple targets, especially if you manage to slow them down with frost weapons, and bonemass power and root harnesk mitigate damage by large percentages, to single digits (keep barley wine with you if going root). Bile bombs make short work of larger groups of swarms, be they ticks or seekers.

I'm playing solo, the first hours were quite hard. I died first against Dvergr ("I'm wondering if I can plunder those crates - oooops..."). Again when trying to get my stuff back. And another time against a one-star Gjall which caught me off guard while on stamina food. Since then I got a few close calls but currently it works quite well for me.

With the new food, especially the salad, navigation gets easier. Most of the time I just climb a cliff and jump to the next peak and so on until I reach easier terrain. The raven coat helps a lot. Sometimes it's even possible to dig your way through the mountain.

And during combat, parrying does the trick, even my black metal sword can one-shot seekers then. Soldiers take longer, but if they are alone, they're no challenge either. For enemies with stars I usually use bonemass as a backup. Only thing I really hate are the Gjalls.

Originally posted by Soulstinger:

Telling people to play multiplayer in response to difficulty isnt a proper suggestion.

Playing with someone will give them a space for making mistakes and easier time learning how to traverse through new biome properly. What's your suggestion then?

Originally posted by Soulstinger:

Parrying Soldiers does not give you enough time to get to their weak spot.

If you can't do it doesn't mean no one can. I can easily kill soldiers using method I described above.

Originally posted by Soulstinger:

Difficulty spike is much higher than the very *very* marginal increase in armor/damage from the new gear, which can only be upgraded to rank 2, and is locked behind almost the entirety of the new biome's resource progression; meaning you have to complete nearly the entire Biome before you can even make the gear intended to help you survive the biome.

Looks like you tried to facetank new biome and failed miserably. New dungeons are easily doable with Plains gear, if you prepared well. If you can't kill something the intended way then cheese it - ooze bombs and fire arrows are always there

Originally posted by Soulstinger:

Telling people to play multiplayer in response to difficulty isnt a proper suggestion.

Parrying Soldiers does not give you enough time to get to their weak spot.

I agree the wisplight and wisptorches could use a small boost to their aoe

Difficulty spike is much higher than the very *very* marginal increase in armor/damage from the new gear, which can only be upgraded to rank 2, and is locked behind almost the entirety of the new biome's resource progression; meaning you have to complete nearly the entire Biome before you can even make the gear intended to help you survive the biome.

Yea I've been playing through Mistlands solo and haven't had much of an issue since I've already had 2 playthroughs to Yag so I kinda know what to do.

I really dislike how you need dark surtling cores for the new crafting stations because combined with the mist mechanic it can be rather quite annoying stumbling around with your barely functioning wisp light or wisp torches, not sure if you missed something because you can't see anything even if you go to the top of a craggy cliff.

Think I've explored 1 mistland getting 2 cores and now I'm wandering around another one where I *think* I've found zero dungeons thus far. I'll probably end up running around with a portal to set up as usually enemies don't really attack them.

This update is the first time I was really tempted to use god mode / fly since the environment of mistlands isn't fun to me. It's just Mountain with perma blizzard but worse.

Originally posted by Facewound:

If you play solo, maybe try to find someone to play with?

There's that condescension i was waiting for lol

Originally posted by Tokomi:

I'll keep at it, but I have some problems with the design.

The bad things I find are:
1. Nearly unnavigable terrain.
2. Not enough armor/protection available, and/or overtuned monster damage.
3. Monster density is too high near coastal areas.

These three factors coupled together make it not 100%, but very nearly unplayable without God-mode or Fly turned on - for me.

The good things about it are
1. Someplace new to explore - but I wish I could.
2. New items to discover and learn.
3. I like the mystery of it, and the ambience/soundscape remind me of the portrayal of Fangorn forest from "The Two Towers" LotR movies. Spooky and ominous. Very well done.

Possibly just because your a casual player going into a not-so-familiar area? If it's made that way then its meant to be played that way.

@demasked I agree, I think I had to fully explore 3 separate biomes in the middling to large category before I found enough cores to begin the gear progression.

And by fully explore I mean, sail to, build portals to, establish an outpost, fight my way in learning the enemies new movesets, die to geography-induced stamina drain and 1 or 2 star seekers, die to gjall sniping you off mountains and falling, die to seekers knocking you off mountains/into water where they can attack and you cant, die to situations where the seekers can hit you while you cannot hit them due to inclines, criss cross the same biome for hours trying to map out dungeons... the works. All before being able to START on the new gear, which honestly provides a very negligible increase in survive-ability over plains.

Its challenging, but in my opinion the numbers are off by just enough to make it more frustrating than entertaining. You aren't punished for mistakes so much as merely suffering the drawbacks of existing mechanics clashing with the new environment.