Let me preface by saying there will be some spoilers on weapons, armor, and enemies in this, so don't read if you care about that.

I have played this game for over 200 hrs un-modded and had already explored mistlands, done a couple of the infested mines, crafted Krom, found several dverger towers and towns, had fully upgraded padded armor, and had already done every boss except the final boss before finally getting so frustrated with mistlands that I gave in and modded the game.

I'll talk about the mods I use, why I use them, and why this game should probably have a few of them baseline because they made the game significantly more enjoyable.

Opinion 1: Swimming needs re-worked
swimming in this game is extremely slow and frustrating. Every time I am forced to go into the water I get p-off. It's slow, janky, takes a ton of stamina, you can't do anything while swimming but enemies chasing you can still hit you, you get the wet debuff, and its annoying to try and jump out of the water as your character jumps about 1 inch out of the water but takes the full 10 stamina. After playing the game for over 200 hrs, swimming has gone from annoying to even more annoying.

Opinion 2: Dropping currently equipped Gear needs to go
Either you need to stop dropping the currently equipped gear, or you need to re-work how armor works. flat armor is simply not a good system to scale into the late game, maybe percent based damage reduction instead IDK. the reason being that it simply gets more and more frustrating the higher the armor values get when you are killed and trying to get your corpse back. In the beginning of the game its not so bad because your armor value isn't that high nor is your health nor is the amount enemies deal. In the late game, enemies will easily destroy you even with the best food buffs if you don't have armor, which clearly you lost for a reason, usually a starred reason. In my opinion, this game would be significantly more enjoyable if you dropped everything in your inventory EXCEPT your currently equipped gear/weapon. 99% of people will still want to go back to get their bodies, but at least this way it wouldn't be so annoying.

Opinion 3: Mistlands mist/terrain needs re-worked
Dealing with the mist in mistlands was giving me an eye-strain induced headache trying to see 3 feet in front of me, so I modded the game and got rid of all mist. The area got significantly more enjoyable afterwards. I also think that swimming is horrible, so fix swimming or fix the amount of terrain in mistlands that is surrounded by water in small jagged islands.

Opinion 4: Swinging weapons should have a separate stamina bar
After using a mod that did this, I came to really, really like this. This system should be in the game by default. Seriously, download the mod, try the game out with the separate attacking stamina bar, and tell me if its more fun, or less. You could have both combat and non-combat stamina bars scale with food.

Opinion 5: You should be allowed to teleport with metal AFTER killing respective bosses.
Copper/Tin - after killing Elder
Iron - after killing Bonemass
Silver - after killing Moder
Black Metal - after killing Yagluth

After playing for over 200 hours, the gimmick of being forced to sail for what could take 30 mins-1 hr just to get my ore where I want it quickly went from a cool adventure to boring, frustrating and time consuming. If YOU want to sail for hours on end, then YOU can, nobody is stopping you. I installed a mod that allowed me to tele with all metals and the game got significantly more enjoyable. It just isn't fun after doing it many times, especially once you have already killed several sea serpents and mined many kraken. There isn't enough ocean content to keep this feeling fun and rewarding, just tedious.

Opinion 6: Skills should not drain on death unless you play on a "harder" difficulty
At first I pretty much ignored my skill levels, so if I died I didn't care. Late game I looked up the difference that a maxed out skills make and realized how annoying it is to lose 5% of alls stats per death. That equates to hours of play time. I never got any skill past 50 until I modded the game to prevent skill drain. Once again, game got a lot more enjoyable.

Opinion 7: we should be allowed to trade with the dvelgers to get the components we need instead of killing them.

So those are my opinions on how to make the game better curious what others think.