4Game

One of the biggest missed opportunities for me in the current version in Valheim is the lack of unique/rare points of interest in the world to encourage exploration, in particular in already 'completed' biomes. E.g., once you've moved on to the Swamps, there's not really much point in searching any of the Black Forests you come across, let alone no reason at all to bother exploring any Meadows – any loot you find is likely so inferior that it's not worth the hassle of carrying it back to your base.

One way to fix this that I can see is to add several mini-boss enemies to each biome, that can only be defeated once, and drop unique items with starts corresponding to a max upgraded weapon from that current biome. Likewise, the next biome's materials would be need to upgrade it, keeping it relevant throughout the next biome if the player desires.

Boss spawns would work similar to Haldor. On worldgen, a set of 'mini-boss' spawn points would be calculated for each biome, with them being generally sparse and rare. Once the player discovers one of these points, the game spawns in one of the mini-bosses the player has yet to defeat from that biome. This means, that unless you explore potentially most of the world map, you will probably not encounter all of a given biomes mini-bosses in a single playthrough – but it is achievable to get all of the unique items in a single world. Ideally each biome should have 5+ different mini-bosses. On average you would maybe see 1 or 2 minibosses from a given biome from natural progression/exploration, which will keep each playthrough a bit different and interesting and upset the regular item progression.

The devs have also added several new skills to the game that don't fit into the regular equipment progression, so the boss loot could also be a chance to let players in earlier biomes play with the more exotic weaponry.

Examples of mini-bosses:

Meadows:
* a giant named boar which drops a unique axe based on its tusks
* a white stag that drops a unique crossbow based on its antlers and skin
* a queen neck that drops a unique fist weapon based on it skin and teeth
* a special graydwarf brute that drops a unique wooden/stone club

Black Forest:
* a troll king, wielding for him a small iron sword, but wielded as a two-handed sword by the player
* a skeleton ranger who drops a unique bow
* a skeleton warrior who drops a unique atgeir

Et cetera.