Difficulty and Mist are fine. Wisps and morning clear up the mist just fine. If you want the mist gone in a wide area: use wisp torches.

The terrain is nice. I love having to navigate this cluster♥♥♥♥. It is a very welcome change of pace from sprinting across open terrain.

Stamina is the one thing they keep ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with and making worse. The problem is the glacial regen rate when you don't have the rested bonus. I get that they're trying to limit exploration range, but this is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ feeling way they could be doing this out of anything that's already in the game. Someone at Iron Gate really needs to play Dragon's Dogma and look at how they accomplished the same thing, where they make the player race the sun primarily due to environmental/world gen factors, and not from gimping the player. I love this concept, but the execution of it in Valheim is easily the worst part of the game.

My suggestion for this: Make the Rested regen rate the normal regen rate, cut the rested bonus time to 1/3 of what it is and make it give a 15% movespeed and healing tick rate buff instead. Rebalance the block stamina cost a little, and leave other costs as is. Then dial up night time difficulty with a few extra spicy mobs that avoid light and Meadows.