At the beginning I put in hundreds of hours playing pure vanilla.

Then harvesting wood and rocks became old and grindy. I don't do grindy - it doesn't give me a sense of accomplishment, except maybe to the devs who've accomplished wasting our time (applies to all grindy games, not just Valheim).

After 10,000 trees and rocks I simply don't harvest them anymore, they get magically created. I still end up having to chop down trees & stumps, and break up rocks to clear out areas to build, and that's plenty of that excitement for me.

Regardless, this is not a game you dabble in, whether you're an explorer, builder, harvester, or combat seeker they all take an investment in time.

Also. just go to the web site of any game server host (found via the magic of Google) and they'll show you a list of games they want to rent you servers for. Pick one of those.