Originally posted by Webbman:

Most peoples complaints with the game are the stamina system which is linked to the skills system. The skills system is crap so their experience differs greatly from someone with maxxed out skills which you generally wont get with regular play.

I don't know what he means exactly, but if it comes to the skill penalty he is right. The skill penalty isn't well implemented.

On the other hand the skill system itself is one of the best things of Valheim. In other games as soon as you outscale low level enemys you leave them completely because you don't gain xp for it anymore.

In Valheim even in endgame - every enemy is worth facing. So you can even hunt in the meadows without having the feeling of wasting time later on. Every step into a fight you take gives you reward. The game reminds you of that later on, if you have done well or barely fought enemys.

So there is one tip from me which comes with the downside of the skill penalty and it's by far the best one when it comes to leveling skills:
- don't die
- if you do, ask yourself why exactly you died and make sure to never die this way again
- take every event, every enemy, every confrontation actively - don't hide behind walls

I'm on my 2nd playthrough atm. (I want to experience Mistlands solo) and I just died once at the beginning of the run as I quickly tried to eat something while a troll followed me. I underestimated his speed, maybe they tweaked it since Mistlands-Update and I didn't realised it in our first Mistlands run, because we played as group. Just make sure that this kind of mistakes don't happen again.