I have about 300h in and done about 5 playthroughs. The last one was full melee (except killing smol drakes on mountain for freeze gland) and the game progressed much smoother than previous runs.
Things I noticed:
– all bosses are way easier with melee
– trolls are easier in melee
– no need for farming feathers and wood for arrows
I did this run without using a shield and once in the mountains I swapped to unarmed with flesh rippers and never used heavy armor. So fenring armor all the way. Plains got a bit tricky with fuling villages and those hordes and there was a lot of kiting and pulling a couple of them at a time. Also early game tombs were quite hard with nonupgraded leather set.
Once I got to swamp, only got iron for pickaxe and went to mountains to get silver with stagbreaker. So I had fenring set before bonemass.
I hope they add some mobs tha require bow like drakes, in the mistlands update, as they have a new bow also coming.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/unuuyj/anyone_use_bows_anymore/
