Originally posted by Grathkaal:

Thanks for your kind answers.
I'll leave the game on my wishlist for now.

If you can still get it on sale I'd recommend that you pick it up now. It will probably never be cheaper than it is right now. The grind isn't bad unless you insist on fully upgrading every single piece of your gear as much as you can before you venture into new biomes. It's not even remotely necessary to do that unless you really want to or unless you're simply not able to grasp how combat works in the game.

There's no need to fully upgrade leather armour unless you're really, really struggling with combat. You get other options so quickly that it's simply not worth the time investment to upgrade it fully. Get a good shield, decent weapon, basic leather armour then move on.

Please understand that many players think the grind is bad, but they choose to spend time mining when they don't have to. If I sat in one place trying to get ore for 3 or 4 hours straight I'd probably feel like the game has too much grind as well, but there's no reason to do that. Yes, some of the ore (iron, copper) takes a while to mine but you really don't need all that much of it. Get a few dozen pieces, then go explore. Get a few dozen more pieces later and then go explore. If you just sit and mine all day then you're choosing to sit and hit a rock all day. Don't do that. Mine a bit, toss it in the smelter, go do something else while it's smelting.

So much of Valheim hinges on what you choose to do, and it can be as grindy or exciting as you make it.