The planning involved in charting my main island by Karve, finding a swamp deep south of my base on basically the opposite side of the island, and actually getting some iron back to the center of the map has been a very unique experience.
The first swamp I found was ages ago, much closer to home but also turned out to be too small to find any crypts. That was a bummer, but it became a huge boon to me in the long run simply because of the experience (and sausages) I had picked up when I finally got to the real deal.
Getting to it in the first place took hours of searching. I had mapped out nearly the whole perimeter of my island with the Karve a long time ago and I had a general idea of where to look but it was quite a run from my elder portal, which was the closest I had to the south at the time. Once I finally found a substantial swamp, it was a matter of posting up a quick portal, busting through the nearest crypt till my pickaxe broke, and running back north through nothing but black forest until I finally showed up at my base with almost 300 pounds of scrap iron. Probably bringing a cart next time but that was weird enough terrain going without. I will also remember to switch to Eikthyr's(?) power because my wet, cold, dumb ass took ages to get home at full weight, even while staying decently fed. Didn't help that I was too lazy to manage my inventory and pop a few fires down on the way, either. Having small spots to rest will be really helpful when I start running it more frequently.
Anyway this game is fucking dope and I am extremely engaged. Learned so much about what I can do to save time on my next haul and I'm loving that I have a small inlet via portal to get back there fast with some materials and make me a nice treehouse somewhere in the center of the biome. I'll be mapping it all out next time I play, with a couple pieces of iron armor making things slightly less terrifying. π
I would not have been able to do this for myself, just saying. Had a huge adventure because ore can't teleport, and that's so okay with me. Every slight modification I make to my approach saves me so much more time. If I was able to pop down a portal for the iron, so many parts of this game would be rendered irrelevant. There is real impact in how I approach this and I am loving it. Thanks to the developers for a truly engaging adventure.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/me0vf3/if_i_can_be_a_broken_record_for_a_sec_i_made_my/