First playthrough, good fun, my remarks

So we've almost completed a group, blind playthrough of valheim (fully vanilla) over the past three-four weeks and we're at the final mistlands boss. It's been a very enjoyable experience.

A few remarks/comments we've noticed as a group.

This game is very fun in multiplayer, but dear lord the netcode is absolute junk. One person hosting an area, where the latency, cpu power, etc. depends on that one person is an extremely bad decision. Let the server handle all of that. (I hacked a DLL to increase the sendq a bit and it resolved a lot, but it's still not ideal)

The progression system not depending on levels is great. It means that someone that hasn't been on for 2-3 days is not massively behind. Pick up a few items and get better food and armor and you're 80% back on track.

The food system could use some balancing though, it goes FAST and it doesn't last very long. And constantly having to farm bloodbags, entrials, etc. gets very tedious very quick. I reckon making food timers simply last longer will solve a lot of my frustration here. But I -do- like the way the food system works as a mechanic lot.

Stamina drain is also way too punishing. Why does farming or building cost so much stamina. And the 'wet' and not having 'rested' perks active makes it an absolute chore to get through areas of land… Walk a bit… wait for stamina to regen… walk/climb a bit… wait for stamina to regen. The system itself isn't bad, but it can use a bit of mellowing to become less "god I need to wait AGAIN to just jump over this little bump"

Maybe some FPS optimizations in crowded areas. We built a town with 5-6 people and the framerate is atrocious. Maybe unload some assets we don't see anyways. Like inside buildings for example, load it when we get near a door and unload when we're moving away. Or load some low-poly models not in view.

Cheap trash mobs… like deathsquito's and ooze enemies. Their attacks are cheap and just frustrating. Two ooze's? Let's perma stunlock you until you die. Deathsquito buzz from above out of nothing, and you're dead. These are not fun mechanics

Boats. Make their hitboxes on friendly fire a bit less punishing. If you're being buzzed on a boat by a deathsquito you'll wreck half your boat just swinging at the thing.

The magic system.. why not introduce this wayyyyy sooner? Only at endgame we get cool magic shit. Why not allow a piece of wood and a sultering core make a low level basic magic missle staff for example. I feel this could've introduced into the game way sooner for more versatile team dynamics.

These are really the only big 'flaws?' I've encountered in our playthrough so far. They may be very personal opinionated.

That being said, I did not expect to have this much fun with our group in this game. It's a hidden gem and it amazed us all. Every new biome we went "oooh ahhh" when discovering new stuff as we went in fully blind. The discovery progress is extremely satisfying and fun.

GG on the (small) dev team for this game