Originally posted by H E L I O S:

I've wasted countless hours on early access games that were just not ready and on ones that just sat in early access in a never-ending purgatory and ended up never fully coming to fulfillment.

In my experience the situation is not at all different from purchasing "complete" games. You just need to know what you want and look into what the game in question offers. But as others have said, there's no date for Valheim's release out of early access.