Originally posted by RequiemsRose:

My husband and I have played this one together but I'm not sure it fits all of your requests.

-PVP is an option both players opt in for if you want to engage in, so its not something you have to have at any point.

-usually if a server is hosted "peer to peer" (meaning one of you hosts it privately on your machine) then the host would need to be present to run the server but technically speaking they dont actually have to play either (and thats true for a lot of co-op games), or you could set up a small cheap dedicated server that is still private but always online (barring things like maintenance, update, or general internet issues). If one of you ends up playing more often than the other though it could also be just fine to have that person host, and they can play privately without you but you can also join them when you are able to (you can even share map discoveries once you unlock the cartography table, so you can learn what the other has while you were away).

-There isn't a whole lot of story yet, but it's also early access so it's possible that could change. For now, the general idea seems to be you are technically an already dead viking essentially trying to prove your worth to enter Valhalla by overcoming the trials of Valhiem (with the trials being the bosses most likely). So as it stands right now, not a super fleshed out story and what does exist is already focused on why it is you do need to constantly fight and improve. There are a few friendly NPCs besides the enemies, but they are not incredibly fleshed out either. One is basically the tutorial crow, Hugin, if you know mythology it makes a lil more sense but realistically its not necessary to know either. The crow just pops up to inform you of stuff as you encounter new things. The other big one that comes to mind exists to be a trader, so nothing super special there to discover either. Otherwise, it is indeed mostly just "fight this thing to get the next key to progression so you can go over there and get strong enough to fight the next thing which gives you the next progression key to then go over THERE and....." you get the idea. Though you can still enjoy a whole lot of other side activities as well, like i personally enjoy building and find gardening to be a bit soothing as well, especially when you get a kitchen set up.

technically the normal monsters like greydwarves have some lore