I consider myself a "new" player, compared to a lot of other folks here on the forum. I've played 529 hours so far, and enjoyed every moment of it. My (adult) daughter and I were looking for something "new" to play and she asked if I'd ever played Valheim (knowing that I love survival/building/crafting games). I had not, so I got it and we started playing together. I fell in love with it immediately... the starting from scratch, building my first square box of a hut and trying not to die of smoke inhalation. Punching boars in the face because I forgot to equip my flint axe. Having a tree almost kill me when it landed on my head. Death by boar, drowning, setting myself on fire, falling off cliffs, packs of graydwarfs discouraging me from finding copper, then flat-out killing me when I did find it... and they brought Shaman friends. My daughter was the builder and I'd go out for materials, and we had an amazing time.... so I bought my son-in-law a computer and he started playing with us. My husband, not wanting to be left out bought himself a gaming computer and we decided it was time to get a server hosted because we didn't want to depend on any one person being in-game in order for the rest of us to play in our world we were creating. Then I gifted the game to my son and his wife. So now it's the 6 of us, having the times of our lives. Building, exploring, weekly dungeon runs, mining silver, clearing frost caves and all the fun stuff we can do together.

In between the expeditions, we all go our separate ways and work our own bases. Taming animals, growing crops, cooking food, making potions, sorting/organizing everything, smelting ore.... and when we just want to relax, we sit by the firepit I made at my "base" by a little inlet overlooking the ocean, with the sunset gleaming across the waters.... and just chat with each other in Discord. My daughter and her husband live on my property in their little house, but my son is in the Army and he and his wife are stationed in another state. My husband travels a lot for work, so it's nice when he comes home and we can all play together.

Valheim is an incredibly fun game... but it's not just a game for us, it's family time. It's not my first EA game, so I'm not going to get grumpy about new content not coming fast enough. As long as the Devs are still actively working on the game.... whether it's fixing bugs or creating new content, I'm fine with that. I didn't come into this game with a desire or need to "beat the game". I came because I enjoy exploring and building/crafting/farming and having critters. There are infinite maps (as far as I can tell), and there's an adventure waiting on every one of them.