Following the advice of Reddit after my last post (tldr; took a raft into open water, ran into a swamp, got followed by a leech and draugr, found plains, got followed by a mosquito, somehow survived until I got to a meadow), I built a karve and set sail across the ocean to find a swamp with some crypts.
1. Straight across the ocean was the plains… thankfully, no mosquitoes this time
2. Then found the swamp, decided to dock there
3. Immediately get swarmed by two skeletons, a blob, and two draugrs… die
4. Respawn at my base, don’t have enough material to build a new karve, but after a lot of running, realize that the chain of islands I’m on forms a U shape – I sailed across the top of it, but I could have just run and swam the long way around
5. Go the long way around on foot with no weapons or gear
6. Somehow get to my tombstone while avoiding the draugrs and blobs, grab my stuff, run back to a patch of Black Forest I found on the way there
7. Immediately build a portal
8. Go back toward my boat… not realizing that the swamp is bordered on the other by another set of plains… get mosquitoed while in the swamp
9. Respawn, go through the portal, run to my tombstone, get my stuff, get about 20 feet before the mosquito catches me… repeat 5 times until the mosquito is replaced by a one star draugr… repeat another 2 times
10. Finally have all my gear, get into a crypt, mine some iron, get back to where my karve sank, use the resources to rebuild it (while dodging arrows from skeletons/draugrs), start sailing away
11. Realize that I left the iron ore on the ground because I had to make room to pick up the materials from the sink karve
12. Circle around, jump out, get the iron, jump back in, sail home, make it safely
Took quite a bit of dying, but finally had the iron I wanted to start building my new base… also, got to see a mosquito fight a wraith after killing me, so that was neat 🙂
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/u047o8/another_harrowing_sailing_experience/