4Game

First, this isn't a Valheim inexperience or "git gud" problem. I've got, as of today, 1000+ hours in Valheim. 30 minutes before writing this post, I killed a 1-star Seeker while taking no damage in the process. Earlier today, I killed a 1-star Seeker Soldier while taking no damage in the process. I know how to kill the mobs that inhabit the mistlaands, and I know how to navigate the mistlands.

I just don't like to. It isn't any fun.

With one exception, the Infested Mines, the mistlands just aren't any fun:

• It's not fun that you can't see anything past the distance that you can throw a rock. What is the first thing that new Valheim players say about Valheim? How good it looks. The mistlands throws that away. Fine, have a mistlands. But does the wall of the mist really have to be that close?
• It's seriously not fun that for your first 20 hours or so in the mistlands, you're basically helpless because to succeed in the mistlands, you need mistlands gear which you don't have yet. Everyone think back to before you had a feather cape… if you can bear to.
• It's not fun to lose your spear in the mistlands's endless fucking rocks after you throw it at a gjall, and it's even less fun to fight them with anything except a spear.
• It's not fun to get yourself wedged into a crevasse in the mistlands's endless fucking rocks and fight the camera to find a direction to get out.
• It's not fun to get about 15 meters before you have to stop for a full minute to wait for your stamina to recharge. Again. And again. And again. Even the mountains weren't this bad.
• It's not fun to get ambushed by something you can hear but you can't see because it drops on you from above while your wisplight is completely unhelpfully clearing the mist behind you.
• It's not fun to endlessly, endlessly, endlessly search for sources of soft tissue which as far as I can tell is both not given in sufficient amounts to support more than two players on a server and is not a sustainable resource.
• It's not fun to accidentally destroy a heavily damaged single piece of black marble at a dvergr tower only to have the entire population of that tower seek to destroy you in return. And it's seriously not fun to try to recover from that if they succeed.
• The less said about getting that first dvergr extractor, the better. It's no coincidence that Youtube is full of "how to get a dvergr extractor with this simple trick" videos.
• Nothing about hares is fun except watching them explode on stake walls.

To be fair, the Infested Mines are amazingly fun; there just aren't enough of them and they're mostly fun because they toss out most of the concepts of the mistlands.

I love this game! And I absolutely, absolutely applaud the continuing development of Valheim and I know it's definitely going to be my longest-played game in terms of number of hours. But I'm also positive that in a year or two when we're all fighting in the ashlands and deep north, we're all going to regard the mistlands as something to be endured. I predict it's going to feature at the bottom of a lot of "best and worst biomes in Valheim" lists and Youtube videos in years to come.