Originally posted by Nerevar:

its supposed to be punishing. death is something you should want to avoid as much as possible. and valheim does provide the options in gameplay to actually avoid 95% of deaths. it simply punishes reckless play or not beeing probaly prepared.

but with the next update you can set the game to casual difficulty in the world settings that are comeing. this will disable the death penalty entirely. no gear drop on death and no skill los anymore either.

I dont mind the gear drop its just the skill loss that is annoying it feels like its just a huge waste of time