Multiplay is its own set of fun, it plays quite differently. Regardless of difficulty i'd recomend it just for interactions with others, enjoing stuff others crated together and all that fluff.

Combat gets a little easier, but if the other guy is similar skill it wont make that big of a difference as things scale a bit and more chaos in fights can be double edged sword.


Valhaim has quite a bit of RNG in difficulty due from randomy generated world. If one place is too hard look for somewhere safer. Swamp can at times be at times eerily silent and calm for whole day too, its not all combat there. But combat = noise and that attracts stuff from long way around.

Initially dont venture out at night, more bad things spawn.
Always keep rested buff on, plan on making stops before it expires.
Making a base on a different biome and approaching by land is often the best way of learning swamps, ship landing are advanced stuff.

And lastly, you die you learn. The more you die the more you know, so dont give up.
For draugs/wraiths/skeles shield parry is king. Just have to be patient.


...
ps: 60 to 20 bow skill is at least 21 deaths, thats a lot considering there is a "no skill drain" buff given to you on every death. Utilize it, as well as using the "corpse run buff", you dont need to be tip top to recover a body as long as you can pick yourself up in one swing - you have massive buff that should get you out of danger, just need to be prepared to use it.

Also bow is fun but its slow to kill at low levels, better to learn fighting melee before things start swarming around. I pretty much ditched the bow entirely from my arsenal for example.