This is just a grab-bag of ideas I've had, nothing super specific – there's some general things I think need to be improved in VH, eg. better aiming for melee weapons, make the parry system more intuitive and rewarding, same for blocking – redoing

Haldor – the Trader

Here's a bunch of small changes I think should be made to how players interract with Haldor.

Droppable map to Haldor

Probably after defeating the elder, and as a part of one of various events, eg. "The Ground is Shaking" – there should be a way of finding Haldor, maybe the trolls have a map, or the Draugr – but if you're unlucky with RNG he can be at the literal edge of the world near-impossible to find without an unfair amount of searching. Given elder also unlocks iron (outside sequence breaking) and the belt becomes integral, it's only fair there's benefits there.

Travelling Haldor

To make the above fairer, I think Haldor SHOULD be able to travel around, he's obviously setup as a travelling trader, so it's up to the player to find and create portals to his various locations in order to keep tabs on him.

Hard to implement on existing worlds, especially if a potential trader spot is already discovered, but could be fun.

Build your own Trader-post where Haldor will appear

And then to balance that – Later game (mistlands with black marble) we should probably be able to create our own trader-spot (a huge pre-built object that doesn't allow any additional building on it and can only ever be placed on earth) where he will appear, making him more likely to stay (as he'll only move when there's no players in his area).

…Should stock seeds (plant and tree) from the previous biome once you kill said biomes boss.

These can be prohibitively expensive, i.e 1000 gold per seed or similar, but it should still allow you to gain access to, say, onions once killing moder, rather than RNG screwing you on finding said seeds.

Can also extend to Tree seeds for potential mass-planting.

eg.

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This will just avoid instances where players have used more than cultivated, or when entire farms are destroyed – costs money to replace instead of time to find.

…Should stock the bait for a given biome's fish once you've caught one of (potentially each) such fish.

Fishing is massively improved, but the current "progression" doesn't actually earn any special rewards unless seeking specific fish, eg. Anglers (for breaded fish recipe) or Puffers (for their unique poison properties). Can likewise be very expensive, eg add 10 to the cost for every upgrade, with 100 per 20 for Heavy fishing bait – but having to farm trophies for fishing in addition to early fish feels arbitrary as a constraint – especially serpents.

Other gear/Items

Not specific to Haldor, could be sold as items by him or not.

Add a "leash" item, as an alternative to the Harpoon for use on friendly mobs.

The harpoon is endlessly useful for dealing with enemies or in the initial taming of animals, but once I've tames a lox or boar (wolves follow you anyway) it'd be nice to put a leash on them instead of having to shove a barbed harpoon into them(/put a saddle on them).
Could be made out of processed Linen and Jute, making it a Plains+ bit of gear.

Ability to plant Raspberry, Blueberry patches, and cloudberrys, and make some sort of mushroom log.

Make it require refined eitr, or make the seeds expensive from Haldor, but it doesn't matter, these are aesthetic and useful (and destructable) items that should be made more useful for players – plus in reality you can plant these as seeds/seed their spores into logs.

Higher level Cultivator that allows batch planting and/or batch reaping.

pretty self explanitory, allow an area of planting to happen all at once, and the reaping of the same – still have the bronze cultivator for precision work.

Could also lock the ability to plant the berry bushes from above to this tool.

Can require Yggdrasil wood, refined eitr and black metal, making it an end-game item, but should be doable.

Ability to create own custom mob spawners, eg. corpse piles and greydwarf nests.

It seems criminal that these are such useful resources to build around but one mistake or letting friendly mobs near them could result in losing it entirely. There could be massive restrictiosn on it, eg. can't have two within a certain radius of each other, but it'd be nice to be able to make entrail and wood farms more easily, or setup fun archery ranges for training.

Mobs can even be "Friendly" and theme it as "purifying" the world, and give us another defensive option (this makes the archery range a lot more cruel).

Should give us another use for Boss-spawning items, can can even expand to some other options, eg…

All at the Galdr table, likely with refined Eitr, so it's an end-game item.

Other skill-boosting sets.

let's be honest, skills should probably be completely re-worked as they're currently just a very boring linear scale, and losing a bit of progress either doesn't matter or is massively crippling, so let's just stride forward regardless and hope it gets reworked but if not these will still work with them.

Notably Crossbows feels like it needs a root-armour equivalent.

Crossbows and bows are the most impacted by skill loss (and improvement) as it not only increases their damage and staminda drain, but also their draw/reload speed. An item that adds 15 to the skill would help with levelling it, and be much appreciated, as well as give a "medium armour" to the Mistlands (where Eitrweave is the "light" mage armour).
Likely something made from blue jute and refined eitr and scale hide –
gives the appearance of a Medievel Gambeson, but with some of that viking flex.
-4% to movement speed (same as root) –
could also have resistance to slashing on the chest piece to keep that theming too.

A "serpent cape" and "serpent set" – swimming (partially a joke)

Serpent scales are criminally underutilised, featuring only one shield. It'd be cool to add a thematically appropriate armour set.

My go to would be something around the "wet condition" – eg.

waterproof – you don't get wet in rain/the swamps and if ever you are wet from being submerged in water it decreases similarly to being near fire.

Could be a full armour set that also increases the swimming skill (for what little benefit that has, more thematic), with the chest having resistance to pierce and the water-proof effect, and then separately a cloak that just has the water-proof effect.

Another cloak with an alternate effect, primarily useful in the swamp, and another way to get pierce resistance on a chest piece.

As for look – cloak would have a serpent pattern to it, while the armour could literally be like a full-body wetsuit.
Alternatively, and bonus points if the armour is a two-piece of goggles and trunks/swimsuit with no chest, but that might be asking too much.

Add a Sailing skill

This skill should have 2 components.
1) As the rudderman, improved skill lowers the size of the "dead wind" space – not massively but enough to be helpful.
It also keeps the momentum from the ship for longer.

Also, you can tap shift to "shout" for when everyone should row.

2) New role – rowers (on the longship or above) can sit in seats and begin rowing. This will let them hit shift to add to the speed of the ship, but will require timing with companions to be most effective.
Doing it in time will give the best bonus and least impact on direction.

Make ships reversible.

This is pretty simple, Viking ships are designed to go both forwards and back, this should be reflected in their design -only one rudder can obviously be active at a time. This will have the same benefit as a real ship – the ability to beach your ship, and launch without having to turn around.