I have finished Valheim when it first released with a friend in 2 player coop and had a very good time. I then started a new game on my own about 2 weeks ago and had difficulties in progressing after the ancient and going into the swamp. I posted a thread here saying that the game now felt too hard and asking if I was missing something since I haven't played since the combat rebalance with H&H update. I also said that the difficulty felt so high it made me want to flat out quit. I have been downvoted into oblivion, so I deleted that post.

Since then I found the cause of my problem, I just had to not try to fight everything 😂. I have also realised that difficulty wouldn't be a problem if the game functioned like most – if not all – solo games: if I could simply save and load my progress manually. Because honestly, going to retrieve my corpse in a dangerous plain after our ship got wrecked super far before we could put a portal was fun with a friend, but it's just tedious and frustrating in solo. Having to reload the game in a previous state is punishment enough for me. So I made a script that allows me to save/load whenever I want and I shared it here. Guess what happened? Downvoted into oblivion.

What the hell is wrong with wanting to tune the difficulty to the level that gives me challenge and enjoyment? It doesn't change YOUR game or the way you play it. Why wanting to impose a difficulty level on other players when they're clearly not enjoying the game with the current settings? That will only drive those players away. Jim Sterling's "A Difficult Subject" is quite a good video on that topic.