You know,I wonder if there's a connection to some of the disappointment and when the last time was that someone actually picked this game up and played it. Kind of like how we remember something a certain way in our mind then we come back to it after a length of time and find that it wasn't as charming or enchanting as we recall and become a bit disillusioned.

For my PTB playthrough I found myself moving somewhat briskly through the first 5 biomes as i'd done it quite a few times before. When reaching mistlands I definitely felt my excitement turn to frustration which reminded me of trying to dock in the swamp with dragur, skeletons, leeches and blobs ready to greet you with death. This time it was mist, death blimps, mutant bugs, and deadly terrain.

I had to remind myself several times that there's no reason this should be easier or similar to any previous biome because this was end game. I can see where players get the feeling that mistlands departs too heavily from the previous biomes. It subverts your melee combat style, it pushes you to stack stamina to traverse its terrain, it cuts your sight off and forces you to use other senses to calculate risk, and in some case can just downright dog pile on you if a poor choice was made.

However, in the end I think it highlights the path the devs wanted to go down very well. Magic is the star of the show and it appears we'll see more of it as we move into the last 2 biomes where traversal and enemies will once again require creative solutions to overcome. The new biome does an excellent job presenting a challenge and giving you the tools to overcome it if you can endure the initial difficulty. I do hope the devs continue to push into the more fantastical side of viking lore and give us even more powerful magical items that enhance traversal and combat.

Sorry to anyone that feels disappointment with this update. I know there are a lot of people that thought this was some kind of medieval high fantasy soulslike survival sim or something along those lines. I'm sure there are players who misunderstood this to be some kind of live service game that had big plans for constant ongoing updates and multiplayer expansion. There's people that also think it's a casual base building sim.

As open-ended as valheim can be at times, it cannot be all things to all people without disappointing someone somewhere. For the casual player mistlands feels "too punishing". For the player that overindulged themselves on the game initially, they notice more flaws in the game then they do qualities. To the player who created unrealistic expectations about this update it feels underwhelming to them. For the player that likes the Souls style melee combat of this game mistlands feels like too much of a departure. To the casual base builder mistlands isn't fun to build in "because mist." etc. etc.

In the end valheim has always been a viking power fantasy that pits you against powerful enemies and challenges you to conquer them with the tools you have at your disposal. The challenge increases with each new biome and will continue to do so until the inevitable ending of the game. That's it. There's no broader scope to this project. No big plans to make this some kind of multiplayer hit, base builders dream or open-ended create-your-own viking experience. That's a long way to say that the developers haven't lost sight of what valheim is, you have.