Hello, fellow Vikings.

This is going to be a lengthy post, however I feel like this conversation is very necessary.
I’ve been seeing several posts complaining about the mistlands and, although I can totally sympathize, I can’t help but notice that many of the complaints miss the point, not only of the biome, but also of the game itself. It’s surprising to me that a player who has reached the endgame have failed to learn some fundamental aspects of the game.

I don’t mean to be condescending to anyone, I just hope that, if you are currently hating mistlands, please consider the points in this post before moving forward.

• This post doesn’t contain spoilers.
  
• I apologize for mistakes in my English

1 – Valheim is not a fast paced game

I noticed some people go through the game by exploring one biome, harvesting materials to build the best gear, killing the boss and then moving on to the next biome. That is not by any means the way the game was meant to be played. Valheim is meant to be played at a very slow pace, focusing on exploration way more than progress. For instance, I see a lot of people complaining that when they die is difficult to recover their gear. This is often due to the fact I mentioned before: people build the best gear and move on. If this is your only decent gear in a game where you are at risk of dying at all times, that is a mistake in your part. You cannot expect to be easy to run naked into enemy territory, so you must be prepared. You should have more gear and more weapons. If you lose your sword, bring a hammer, if you die again, bring a spear. Farm animals and bulk cook food, so you can always have spare food to eat before leaving. Not only gear, but all materials should be harvested to full extent. If your exploration consists of, say, finding one big swamp, harvesting all the iron and then never expecting to return to the swamp, you are missing a key component of the game design. You should be exploring several islands with lots of swamps and bringing lots of iron back. If you die with an iron gear, you should have enough iron to make more. You shouldn’t be moving into the mistlands unless you have at least a full chest of iron and black iron spare. This translates into skill points as well. I see a lot of people complaining about the loss of skill points. Yes, they are difficult to maintain, however people usually complain because they move too quick to the next biome. If you spend more time exploring the same biome, even after defeating the boss, you will be in top gear and probably will be very difficult to kill, meaning you can train your skills for a longer time without dying. If you try to rush the game you will be entering new areas with low skill level, which will make it more difficult, so you will die more and lose more skill level. Valheim is not a game that is supposed to be beaten with incredible player skill that could make up for lack of gear or skill points, such as elden ring, instead it requires you to be smart about it, which includes doing extra farming and leveling before entering a new area. In short, it’s a game that allows you to grind to make it more survivable. You can decide to not do that, but you would have to do it at your own peril.

2 – transportation

Another thing I noticed is that a lot of people seem to have a mentality of "going into a place, harvesting tons of stuff and then going home". If you try to do that, you will be quite frustrated. What you should do instead, is to be constantly making portals as you go and bringing stuff back. If you die, you didn’t lose a lot of stuff, and you will have a portal close to the area so it’s easier to recover your stuff. This also covers a lot of the complaints I read about inventory space. It is surprising to me that people who are reaching the mistlands are still complaining about inventory space. You had a lot of time to learn to manage your inventory. Whenever I leave for exploring, I tend to have most of my inventory full. I bring armor, sword, shield, bow, maybe secondary weapon, foods, meads, bombs, ammo, building hammer, axe, pickaxe, plus materials to build portal. And somehow inventory space is hardly a problem. This is mostly due to what I mentioned above. Once you clear a certain area, you should build a portal, put the metals in chests and bring the rest home. This will make the process way less frustrating. One you finish exploring that full peace of biome, then you drag all your metals to the base. This is, I’m afraid, a mandatory component of the game, since we are talking about vikings. Going into other lands, killing the local populace, stealing their resources and hauling everything overseas. Basically Europeans in the 1500s but with cool beards and mead. And I’m under the impression that people think that, because they dropped their items they have it. It’s not true. You don’t actually have an item until it’s safe in your base. If you die, you didn’t lose it, you just failed at the second part of acquiring it. Because this is a crucial part of the game, you should be devoting a lot of your energy thinking about this. Optimizing items transportation is almost as important as mastering combat. If you are not doing this, then once again I’m afraid this is a fault in your part, not the game.

3 – mistlands

I’m still not done with the mistlands, but so far exploration doesn't seem that bad. I’ve seen several complaints that miss the point of the biome. For one, people think you should explore it by constantly jumping over the mountains. That is insane. As others pointed out recently, you should see the biome as maze, not a bunch of cliffs. Once you enter the biome, try to find level ground, and go from there. You can go very far on level ground. Eventually you will meet some terrain you need to jump over, but it most certainly does not consist in the majority of the time you will spend in the mistlands. Also, unlike other biomes, you shouldn’t just walk and explore everything, this area demands actually tracing the places to be able to navigate them, and here too there are things you can do to make the game easier for you. You could, for instance, build a path of lights as you navigate a certain area. Once you are completely done exploring that area, unbuild the lights and move on the next area. That way you won’t get lost and you won’t have to deal with the mist too much. This will take a lot of time and materials, but like I’ve said before, you can grind to make the game easier or you can try the hard way. In short, unlike other biomes where you will run into it and explore as much as you can, in the mistlands you should take every step carefully and trace your path as you go. It’s my opinion that the haste to explore it causes more frustration than the terrain itself.

It’s not my intention to minimize some very real problems of the biome. Slope combat mod for instance, was very helpful in the mountains, but now it’s almost mandatory, and I truly hope they fix this. However, as I mentioned in the first point, the focus of the game should be exploration. You should be thinking “how do I go about exploring and discovering this place?” instead of “where is the good stuff so I can build the best gear already?”. Playing is a conversation between you and the devs, where the devs will ask what you want from the game and you ask what the game wants from you. And I know different people like to play in different ways, but it will be very a very frustrating process if you play against core elements of the game design.