tl;dr: Final Boss Only Run. In simple terms, with only a wishbone you can get everything you need to defeat Yagluth.
Make a new character on a new world and you may bring/spawn a wishbone for the character. Your objective is to kill Yagluth without killing any other bosses. I also used Megingjord but I didn't even need it until silver. You can also have each boss altar marked or discovered. And refrain from using world generators or map hacking, unless you're really considering quitting. Then by all means maphack. It's about fun after all. Enjoy!
Long Text: I finished the game but I wasn't done with it yet. I looked into mods but they mostly seemed to make the game easier while I was looking for something more substantial. A challenge. I read about a no boss run but I didn't want to make the game tedious, just harder. I didn't want to hunt oozes for a few pieces of iron that might not drop and I didn't want to go randomly digging through the mountains to find silver or hope for one sticking out.
When I found out the wishbone can find iron in the swamps I knew I had a found my way. You now have to dig in swamps fighting off draugr leeches skeletons and wraiths. And you'll have to explore multiple swamps. Unlike in crypts where you can pick off enemies easily and mine in safety.
What I found out were that crypts really take away a lot of fun from the game. There is too much iron in crypts and not enough danger. This way, I skipped crypts and had to dig in the water in swamps. I had to make several boat trips and sail around searching for swamps that did not border plains. I felt like I was finally playing the game proper (going on a boat to find and raid an area and taking it back) for the first time. Unpopular opinion: ore yields are way too high. We should be traveling to multiple biomes to get all the ore we need and boating them back to base.
As I played this game, I imagined it was Loki's way of undermining Odin and causing mischief. If I were to make this into a mod with a questline, this is how it would go: You finished building your first base and just got rested when Loki appears with an alternate quest. (or you visit an altar for the first time)
- To prove you are cunning and skillful enough you must dance with the trolls in the black forest and make a bronze pickaxe then make your way to the elder's altar.
- Loki grants you the wishbone and tasks you with finding iron in the swamps and creating an iron pickaxe then making way to bonemass's altar.
- Loki grants you Megingjord and tasks you with crafting a silver shield and finding moder's altar.
- Loki grants you 5x ymir flesh and tasks you with crafting frostner (can't use black metal), gathering 5x fuling totems and finding yagluths altar.
- Loki now tasks you with slaying Yagluth.
- More to come later.
The game was a lot of fun this way. I finished in 99 in game days. A full 29 of those days and nights was spent finding yagluth's altar. (That vegvisir needs a higher spawn count for real.) This is my abomination of a base the day after defeating Yagluth.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/n71k5v/up_for_a_challenge_try_lokis_quest/
