On a fresh play-through, pre-iron, the Black Forest is the most exciting time in the entire game, because of just how much you're about to unlock: including mining, farming, dungeons, and encountering your first "big" enemy; the trolls. For the first time, your base location and defence matters. And so many things to build and make now.

But it's precisely because you spend so long here that I think people take it for granted, but it's my belief this biome and its associated systems are the reason the game is rated so highly.

It's at this stage where I am completely addicted, and this lasts right through to the end of the Swamp. The swamp is also fantastic but in a completely different way: atmospheric and scary, and at the beginning quite challenging. And of course, it's likely you've got a need for sailing at this point to either transport the iron or to search for new sources of it.

By the time I'm at the Mountain the excitement has plateaued, but I'm probably 60+ hours in at this point, depending on how much I've been building. Mountain is still fun but it lacked the depth and variation of The Black Forest - until of course the frost caves, which make things far more compelling.

The Plains are perhaps my least favourite zone, while pretty and a welcome return to normal land, they seem fairly bland, and lack the dungeons of the previous three biomes, though the encampments are a bit interesting, I'm not a big fan of the Fuslings. It'd be nice if we saw more Viking-esque ruins and dungeons to explore here.