It's not a novel concept or anything new, the boat has been around from the start of the game. But that said I feel like a lot of players looking for advice have missed out on using the boat to it's full potential. (Honestly skip the raft if you can, imo).
Literally after mining your first copper node, and a couple tin nodes, instead of messing with the cart you can build the karve and explore everything faster more efficiently and in a safer way.
Need iron? Instead of trudging all the way to the swamp from a forward base you felt you had to build, try building a boat at your main base, explore, find a crypt off the shore clear the immediate area, plop down a repair bench, plunder the crypt of all it's iron, and sail it back to your base. Yes, the second tier boat can only hold 4 slots, but that's 120 iron, which is more than any single crypt will have. After that you can easily build a longboat, which holds a ton. This saves you the multiple trips back and forth between the swamp and your forward base, plus you fight WAY less enemies.
I've recently got the game myself a few weeks ago and for the last week I've almost exclusively been raiding and pillaging what I need out of my longboat, and man is it waaaaaaaay easier/better than what I had been doing.
Also always keep reagents for a portal + have an open portal ready to go at your main base.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/swqi63/having_trouble_with_silver_or_iron_is_the_plains/
