Thank you Irongate for such great mod support – I almost quit, but mods saved the experience for me.

I'll start by saying I've overall had an amazingly wonderful time in Valheim, even vanilla. It's definitely one of the best all-around experiences that I can remember in recent gaming. I'm not sure what it is about it exactly, but the experience is just so gratifying.

However, I'm an old man – like in my 40s (gasp!). I've got a family, and a job, and a lot of commitments where I just don't have the time to play all day every day. Life is like that, sometimes.

I picked up Valheim sometime before Hearth and Home (don't remember exactly when) and played on-and-off when I have a few hours here and there. I've started a couple new worlds as the updates drop, and so never finished getting through the Plains – Yagluth remains undefeated by me, though hopefully that will change today.

When Mistlands dropped, I started a new seed and character (as ya do) so I could FINALLY have the motivation to take on Yagluth and see the new content. Everything was going swimmingly, I've enough experience at the game that I could get to the Swamp quickly and never felt overwhelmed. But then swamp-things happened.

On my run back from a crypt to the Longship, an abomination popped up (those weren't around the last time I was mucking about in the swap) – and while it wasn't the first time I'd had the pleasure of fighting one, this time I was loaded down with stamina rather than health so I could run the ore back to my ship. Bad Things Happened™. It was the end of a long day, and I didn't feel like doing a corpse run, so I signed off.

That was early December. Over the next several months, I'd keep thinking "I miss Valheim, I should boot it back up." And then, "Oh yeah, corpse run. Meh." I finally decided to bite the bullet end of February – jumped in my Karve, sailed across the world, and arrive just in time to watch the Abomination stomp my Longship into pieces. I almost cried as all my iron sank into water I knew was going to be next to impossible to retrieve it from.

But I was going to try. I had on my backup gear, had some decent food, and came prepared this time for a fight. I will clear the swamp, and retrieve what I've rightfully stolen!

I park the boat nearby (but out of aggro range) and jump out to take my revenge. As soon as I orient myself, I'm poked in the ass by a Deathsquito that came out of nowhere – one shot, and I'm back home in bed. I hadn't even had time to set up my portal! And where the F*$! did he come from?! It turns out there's like two tiles of Plains that almost completely disappear on the map.

Now I have no armor, no weapons, no decent food left, no portal, no boat, and honestly no motivation. It's like getting back together with an ex-girlfriend – you pretty quickly remember why you broke up the first time. I don't have time for that anymore, I don't have friends who play and can help me out of a bind, and I don't want to feel that sad when I'm trying to have fun.

That was when I started looking at mods. Up until now, I'd always played pretty much vanilla. I had a couple mods to do stupid little things like keep my torches burning, but overall wanted to keep the vanilla experience. To play it the way it was meant to be played. Screw that, I need to play it the way it fits into my life.

I'm now playing with a small handful of mods – nothing that radically overhauls the IDEA of the game, just takes the frustration out and allows me to spend my precious few hours actually having fun. Here's what I've got going:

• Plant Anywhere – I can bring home a few mushrooms, a few berries, and a few thistle so I don't have to spend nearly so many hours foraging. Also, my base looks really nice with a hedgerow.
• Death Tweaks – I respawn at base with my equipped items, but leave everything else on my corpse. It gives me a fighting chance of not dying 4 times on my way to the gravesite, but still gives me a reason to do corpse runs.
• Valheim Plus – quick sort, craft from chests, autofuel smelters, just general QoL improvements that don't radically overhaul the game or make it "easier", just take away some of the unrewarding grindy bits.

Now I'm back in love with Valheim. Death is something I still avoid fiercely, but it no longer makes me actually depressed. It's a sting to remind you to do better, not a punch in the gut that leaves you reeling. I never managed to find any Vegsivirs to reveal Yagluth's location, but luckily that creepy hand sticking out of the ground can be seen from quite a ways away. I turned it off last night having had a ton of fun wiping goblins off the face of the Plains, I've got a plan for today, and I'm feeling good about life in the afterlife.

Thanks Irongate, and thanks mods! (No, not you Reddit scoundrels! j/k)

Edit: I guess I was wrong about mod support from Iron Gate, and I've been thoroughly corrected. As someone who plays the game solo and doesn't get out much, I'm not familiar with the history behind the topic. I'll update to say thank you to Iron Gate for not squashing mods, and the incredible mod community for continuing to make them even when they break after updates. This doesn't materially change my experience in any way, shape, or form. I think it's great that there's a healthy mod community, and hopefully Iron Gate recognizes that the community is taking this on as a labor of love.