Info about Valheim:

Official game description:
**Valheim** is a brutal exploration and survival game for 1-10 players set in a procedurally-generated world inspired by Norse mythology. Craft powerful weapons, construct longhouses, and slay mighty foes to prove yourself to Odin!  
**EXPLORE THE TENTH WORLD**  
Explore a world shrouded in mystery. Discover distinct environments with unique enemies to battle, resources to gather and secrets to uncover! Be a viking, sail the open seas in search of lands unknown, and fight bloodthirsty monsters.  
**BUILD MIGHTY HALLS**  
Raise viking longhouses and build bases that offer reprieve from the dangers ahead. Customise buildings, both inside and out, with a detailed building system. Progress through building tiers to upgrade, expand and defend your base.  
**GATHER, CRAFT AND SURVIVE**  
Struggle to survive as you gather materials and craft weapons, armor, tools, ships, and defenses. Decorate your hearths and sharpen your blades, grow crops and vegetables, prepare food, brew meads and potions, and progress as you defeat more difficult bosses and discover new recipes and blueprints.  
**KEY FEATURES:**  
*   Massive procedurally-generated world where every biome is immersive and distinct, with unique enemies, resources and crafting recipes to discover.  
*   Play alone or with up to 10 players on player-hosted dedicated servers and experience unlimited world creation and enemies that scale in difficulty.  
*   Staminabased combat that rewards preparation and skill. Utilize weapon types with unique attacks, different blocking styles, ranged combat, dodges and parries to fight your enemies.  
*   Rewarding food system where you cannot starve and are not punished for not eating, instead you gain health, stamina and regeneration buffs depending on what foods you consume.  
*   Intuitive crafting where recipes are discovered as you explore the world, and pick up new resources and ingredients.  
*   Flexible building system that takes structural integrity and ventilation into account. Build a small shelter or an entire village, make outposts or claim abandoned buildings as your own. Then customize to your liking.  
*   Sail boats and ships to reach distant lands and explore the sea that offers riches to claim and monsters to fight.  
*   Epic boss fights that will test even the best prepared vikings and offer rewards that help you on your journey.  
    **Community-translated languages:**  
    In addition to the officially supported languages, Valheim has several community-translated languages. As the name would suggest these are all translated by fans and members of the community, and is an ongoing process. **We can't guarantee the quality nor completeness of any specific translation effort.**

Release date: 2 Feb, 2021

Categories: Survival, Open-World Exploration, Cooperative Multiplayer, Crafting, Base Building, Real-time Combat, Resource Management, Character Progression


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Exceptional & Addictive Survival Experience (weight 1): Players overwhelmingly praise the game as an exceptional, highly addictive, and immersive survival experience, often calling it their favorite in the genre. Many highlight its replayability, value for money, and the unique blend of challenge and relaxation it offers, making it a standout title.
- Robust & Creative Building System (weight 0.54): The building system is consistently lauded as intuitive, flexible, and deeply satisfying, allowing for immense creativity from simple huts to elaborate Viking fortresses. Players enjoy the physics-based mechanics and the sense of accomplishment derived from constructing and improving their bases, often considering it a core strength of the game.
- Expansive World & Rewarding Progression (weight 0.47): The game features a vast, procedurally generated world with diverse and distinct biomes, each offering unique challenges, resources, and atmosphere. Players find the exploration highly rewarding, with a well-paced progression system that constantly introduces new content and a strong sense of discovery, motivating continuous engagement.
- Immersive Atmosphere & Art Style (weight 0.36): The game's unique low-poly art style, combined with exceptional lighting, atmospheric sound design, and dynamic weather effects, creates a deeply immersive and visually stunning world. This aesthetic choice is praised for its ability to evoke a strong sense of place and adventure, proving that high-fidelity graphics are not essential for immersion.
- Challenging & Rewarding Combat (weight 0.24): Combat is described as challenging yet fair, with satisfying mechanics like parrying and dodging that reward strategic play. Boss battles are particularly highlighted as epic, unique, and rewarding encounters that require preparation and teamwork, providing a strong sense of accomplishment upon victory.
- Enhanced Fun with Co-op Play (weight 0.22): The cooperative multiplayer experience is a major highlight, significantly enhancing enjoyment and fostering camaraderie. Players consistently report that the game is much more fun with friends, whether for building, exploring, fighting bosses, or simply sharing humorous moments, making it an ideal social gaming activity.
- Active Development & Mod Support (weight 0.14): The game benefits from active developers who provide continuous updates, new content, and bug fixes, demonstrating a strong commitment to improvement. Additionally, a vibrant modding community significantly enhances the experience with quality-of-life changes, new content, and increased replayability, allowing for extensive customization.
- Engaging Start & Strategic Depth (weight 0.13): The initial hours of the game are highly engaging and fun, drawing players in with its unique mechanics and sense of discovery. The game also effectively teaches players the importance of preparation, strategic planning, and perseverance, rewarding thoughtful engagement over rushed gameplay.
- Authentic Viking & Norse Theme (weight 0.1): The game successfully captures a strong Viking and Norse mythology theme, from its setting and music to its building aesthetics and overall atmosphere. Players appreciate the opportunity to live out their Viking fantasies, making the world feel authentic and engaging for fans of the genre.

Common complaints:
- Excessive Grind & Tedious Gameplay (weight 0.67): Players frequently report that the game becomes excessively grindy and tedious, especially after the initial biomes. This is often perceived as artificial difficulty rather than a genuine challenge, leading to a lack of enjoyment and a feeling of wasted time. Many aspects of the game, including combat and progression, are described as clunky, unbalanced, and unfinished, contributing to a frustrating experience.
- Frustrating Late-Game Biomes (weight 0.45): The later biomes, particularly Mistlands and Ashlands, are widely criticized for their extreme difficulty, overwhelming enemy spawns, and frustrating environmental design. Players find navigation difficult due to dense fog and steep terrain, and constant enemy attacks make exploration and resource gathering a chore. The Ashlands biome, in particular, is frequently described as unbalanced, unplayable solo, and a significant source of player burnout.
- Unfair & Flawed Combat Encounters (weight 0.17): Combat encounters are often deemed unfair due to issues with enemy AI, hitboxes, and overwhelming numbers. Players report enemies having infinite stamina, hitting from unreachable positions, and constantly spawning, making fights feel like a chore rather than a skill-based challenge. The difficulty scaling between biomes is also criticized, with new enemies often one-shotting players even with upgraded gear.
- Punishing Death Penalties (weight 0.17): The death penalty is considered excessively harsh, with players losing all items and a percentage of skill levels upon death. This leads to frustrating 'corpse runs' and a feeling of lost progress, especially when dying in dangerous, distant areas. The skill loss is particularly demotivating, as skills are already slow to level and can be easily wiped out by frequent deaths.
- Restrictive Inventory & Resource Transport (weight 0.13): The inventory and weight management systems, coupled with the inability to teleport ores and metals, are major sources of frustration. This forces players into repetitive, time-consuming trips for resource transportation, especially when playing solo. The limited inventory slots and low weight capacity further exacerbate the grind, making base building and resource gathering feel like a chore.
- Problematic Stamina System (weight 0.13): The stamina system is a significant point of contention, with players reporting rapid depletion and painfully slow regeneration. This impacts nearly every action, from combat and running to gathering and building, making the character feel constantly fatigued. The system is often seen as an artificial difficulty mechanic that hinders dynamic gameplay and leads to frustrating situations.
- Clunky & Unpolished Combat System (weight 0.12): The combat system is frequently described as clunky, unpolished, and lacking depth. Issues include poor hitboxes, especially on uneven terrain where players struggle to hit enemies at different elevations, and a general lack of variety in weapon movesets. This often leads to frustrating encounters and a feeling that combat is more about exploiting AI or finding flat ground than actual skill.
- Slow Content Updates & Early Access (weight 0.08): Players express frustration with the slow pace of content updates and the game's prolonged Early Access status. Many feel that the development team is not efficient, leading to long gaps between major updates and a perception that the game's full potential is not being realized. This slow development can cause players to lose interest or feel that the game is unfinished.
- Poor Solo Player Experience (weight 0.07): The game is widely considered to be poorly balanced for solo play, with many mechanics and challenges designed for cooperative groups. Solo players often find the experience lonely, tedious, and significantly more difficult, particularly when it comes to resource gathering, boss fights, and navigating dangerous biomes. This leads to a less enjoyable and more laborious experience for those playing alone.
- Restrictive & Janky Building System (weight 0.06): The building system is criticized for being janky, restrictive, and lacking quality-of-life features. Players encounter issues with piece placement, stability, and the need for roofs on crafting stations. Performance also degrades with larger builds, and the limited variety of building pieces can stifle creativity, making the building experience less enjoyable.
- Limited Weapon & Armor Variety (weight 0.05): There is a perceived lack of variety in weapons and armor, with many items feeling similar or becoming obsolete quickly. Interesting weapon types are often introduced too late in the game, and some weapon classes are poorly represented across different tiers. This limits player choice and makes progression feel less exciting.

Gameplay feedback:
- Extensive Crafting and Building (weight 0.5): The game heavily emphasizes crafting and building, allowing players to construct everything from basic shelters to elaborate Viking settlements and fortresses. This system is deep, flexible, and often compared to Minecraft, with progression tied to discovering new materials and recipes. Resource gathering and management are central to this loop, requiring significant time and effort to collect, transport, and process materials for crafting and upgrading gear.
- Challenging Biome Progression (weight 0.32): The game features a diverse world divided into multiple biomes, each with unique resources, enemies, and environmental challenges. Progression involves moving through these biomes in a specific order, with each new biome presenting a significant increase in difficulty and requiring upgraded gear. The Ashlands biome, in particular, is noted for its extreme difficulty, high enemy density, and challenging resource acquisition, often requiring extensive grinding and strategic planning.
- Boss-Driven Progression and Skills (weight 0.31): Progression in the game is primarily driven by defeating a series of powerful bosses, each tied to a specific biome. These boss battles are epic, challenging, and require significant preparation, strategy, and often teamwork. Defeating bosses unlocks new abilities, higher-tier equipment, and access to more difficult biomes, which in turn introduces new crafting recipes and resources. The game also features a skill-based progression system, similar to Skyrim, where skills improve with use.
- Norse-Themed Open World Survival (weight 0.18): The game is an open-world survival and crafting experience deeply rooted in Norse mythology, where players embody a fallen Viking warrior tasked by Odin to defeat ancient foes. The world is procedurally generated, ensuring a unique map for each playthrough and enhancing replayability and exploration. This setting, combined with the survival elements, creates an immersive and adventurous Viking journey.
- Punishing Death Mechanics (weight 0.14): The death penalty in the game is notably punishing, involving the loss of a percentage of skill levels and dropping all inventory items, including equipped gear, at the death location. Retrieving these items often requires a challenging and time-consuming 'corpse run,' especially in dangerous biomes. While recent patches and custom world settings offer options to mitigate these penalties, the default experience emphasizes the harsh consequences of dying.
- Strategic Combat System (weight 0.13): The combat system is described as simple yet solid, often compared to Souls-like games due to its emphasis on stamina management, timed blocks, parries, and dodges. While some players find it clunky or lacking variety, others appreciate its strategic depth and the need to learn enemy attack patterns. The game offers a variety of weapon types, each with unique damage types and roles, encouraging players to adapt their combat style.
- Diverse Weapons and Sailing (weight 0.12): The game features a variety of weapons and armor, with different types and damage categories that encourage strategic choices against diverse enemies. Sailing is also a significant mechanic, with various ship types available for exploring the procedurally generated world and transporting resources across vast oceans, often encountering sea creatures and challenging weather conditions.
- Customizable Difficulty and Settings (weight 0.08): The game offers extensive customization options through difficulty sliders and world settings, allowing players to tailor their experience from casual building to hardcore survival. These settings can adjust resource drop rates, combat difficulty, death penalties, and portal restrictions, catering to different playstyles and preferences, whether solo or cooperative.
- Portal Item Restrictions (weight 0.07): A notable and often contentious mechanic is the restriction on transporting certain items, particularly metals and ores, through portals by default. This forces players to use ships for long-distance resource transportation, encouraging exploration and strategic base placement. While this restriction can be modified in world settings, it significantly impacts gameplay and resource management.
- Extensive Playtime and Replayability (weight 0.07): The game offers a substantial amount of content, providing hundreds of hours of gameplay for a single playthrough, especially for those who explore thoroughly and play on vanilla settings. Many players report spending hundreds of hours without completing all content, highlighting the game's longevity and replayability. Mods can further extend and customize the experience.

Performance notes:
- Inconsistent performance and FPS drops (weight 0.08): Despite generally good optimization, many players experience inconsistent performance, including frequent frame drops and stuttering, even on high-end systems. These issues are often attributed to ongoing optimization challenges, especially in early access.
- Good optimization for low-end PCs (weight 0.07): Many players report that the game is well-optimized and runs smoothly on low-end PCs, often referred to as 'potato PCs.' It also has a small file size, making it accessible for various systems.
- Small game file size (weight 0.02): The game has a remarkably small file size, typically around 1-2 GB, which is appreciated by players for its minimal storage footprint.
- High GPU temperatures (weight 0.01): Some players report that the game causes their GPUs to run hot, even on modern hardware, suggesting potential thermal management issues or high resource usage in certain situations.
- Unity engine performance concerns (weight 0.01): There is speculation that performance issues, particularly with large builds and city creation, might be linked to the overhead or limitations of the Unity engine.
- Mob pathing and teleportation bugs (weight 0.01): Some players have encountered bugs where mobs can pass through walls or teleport, affecting gameplay and immersion.
- Critical crashes and data loss (weight 0): A few players experienced severe crashes that forced system restarts and resulted in lost progress, indicating critical stability issues for a small subset of users.

Recommendations:
- Highly Recommended Survival Adventure (weight 0.53): The vast majority of players highly recommend the game, praising its unique blend of survival, crafting, exploration, and Viking-themed adventure. Many consider it a must-play, especially for fans of the genre, and frequently give it high ratings.
- Best Played with Friends (weight 0.39): Playing with friends significantly enhances the game experience, making it more engaging and enjoyable. While solo play is possible, many reviewers strongly suggest co-op to mitigate grind and overcome challenges, often calling it a 'must-play' with a group.
- Late-Game Progression Issues (weight 0.13): A notable segment of players expresses strong dissatisfaction with the game's progression, especially after the Mistlands biome, citing increased grind, balance issues, and a drop in enjoyment. Some even advise stopping play before these later biomes or avoiding the game entirely in its current state.
- Mods Improve Quality of Life (weight 0.12): Many players find the vanilla game, particularly solo, to be excessively grindy, tedious, and frustrating due to certain mechanics like ore transport limitations. A significant portion of the community recommends using mods or adjusting world settings to improve the quality of life and overall enjoyment.
- Anticipation for Future Updates (weight 0.05): Players are eagerly awaiting future updates and the full release of the game, hoping for continued development, new content (especially biomes), and crucial quality-of-life improvements. Many believe that addressing current flaws will elevate the game to its full potential.
- Patience and Customization Advised (weight 0.02): Reviewers advise new players to approach the game with patience, play at their own pace, and not hesitate to adjust difficulty settings or use modifiers, especially for solo play, to ensure a more enjoyable and less frustrating experience.
- Consider Buying on Sale (weight 0.02): While many feel the game is worth its full price, a considerable number of players recommend purchasing it during a sale. Some believe that at full price, there might be better alternatives, or that the game's current state warrants a discount.

Other player notes:
- Highly Addictive & Replayable (weight 0.16): Players have invested hundreds to thousands of hours into the game, often since its early access release in 2021. Despite its long early access period and some frustrations, many find it highly replayable and addictive, frequently returning to the game.
- Unique & Charming Art Style (weight 0.13): The game's unique low-poly, pixelated art style, often compared to PS1/PS2 graphics, is widely praised for its charm, coziness, and ability to create a stunning, immersive atmosphere. This aesthetic choice also allows the game to run smoothly on lower-spec hardware.
- Immersive Atmosphere & Sound (weight 0.09): The game excels in creating an immersive and captivating atmosphere through its beautiful lighting, diverse and unique biomes, and an incredible soundtrack. This combination enhances exploration and makes the world feel alive and engaging.
- Engaging Norse/Viking Theme (weight 0.07): The game's deep integration of Norse mythology and Viking themes is a major draw, creating a unique and appealing setting. This thematic consistency, combined with the atmosphere, makes players feel like they are truly part of a Viking adventure.
- Better with Friends (weight 0.07): While playable solo, the game is widely considered to be significantly enhanced when played with friends, especially in groups of 2-4 or more. The cooperative experience adds to the fun, though solo play can still be immersive and rewarding.
- Strong Modding Community (weight 0.06): The robust modding community significantly enhances the game experience, offering solutions for quality-of-life improvements, new content, and addressing perceived gameplay issues. Many players consider mods essential for long-term enjoyment and customization.
- Great Value for Price (weight 0.05): Many players feel the game offers exceptional value for its price, especially when on sale. Despite some flaws, its longevity and engaging content are seen as well worth the investment, making it an accessible and rewarding purchase.
- Ongoing Updates & Future Content (weight 0.04): Players appreciate the ongoing development and content updates, such as new biomes like Ashlands and Mistlands, which expand the game world. However, there's also anticipation and some impatience for the full 1.0 release and future biomes like Deep North.
- Genre-Defining Survival Experience (weight 0.04): The game is highly regarded within the survival sandbox genre, often setting a new standard or being compared favorably to titles like Minecraft and Dark Souls. It's praised for its unique blend of survival, building, and exploration elements.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.26): Players feel satisfied by overcoming challenges, defeating bosses, and progressing through the game's well-designed systems. The game's replayability, extensive content, and creative building mechanics also contribute to a fulfilling experience, often enhanced by cooperative play and continuous developer support.
- Frustration (weight 0.17): Frustration stems primarily from punishing death mechanics, such as skill loss and item retrieval, and the excessive grind for resources. Players also experience annoyance with limited inventory, tedious travel, and perceived imbalances in combat and later biomes, often exacerbated by quality-of-life issues and optimization problems.
- Excitement (weight 0.12): Excitement is driven by the sense of discovery and adventure in exploring the world, anticipating future content updates, and engaging in epic boss battles. The game's addictive nature, modding potential, and the thrill of overcoming challenges, especially with friends, contribute to a highly engaging experience.
- Disappointment (weight 0.09): Disappointment arises from unfulfilled potential, slow development, and a perceived lack of quality-of-life improvements. Players are also let down by design choices that lead to tedious grind, uninteresting bosses, and performance issues, particularly in later biomes, often feeling the game has declined since its initial release.
- Joy (weight 0.07): Joy is frequently experienced through cooperative play with friends, creating memorable moments, and the overall fun and engaging gameplay loop. The game's beautiful graphics, satisfying building mechanics, and the unique sense of adventure also contribute to a deeply positive emotional experience.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.06): Players enjoy the game's dynamic combat, engaging progression, and the freedom of exploration and building. The cooperative experience, immersive atmosphere, and the ability to enhance gameplay with mods further contribute to a highly positive and sustained engagement with the game.
- Anger (weight 0.04): Anger is primarily caused by perceived unfair game design choices, such as unbalanced enemies, punishing death mechanics, and excessive grind. Players also express anger over developer decisions, lack of quality-of-life features, and technical issues, often feeling that the game disrespects their time and effort.
- Appreciation (weight 0.02): Players appreciate the game's unique art style, immersive atmosphere, and thoughtful sound design. The developers' responsiveness, ongoing updates, and the game's balanced mechanics, especially the building physics and resource management, are also highly valued.
- Amusement (weight 0.01): Amusement often comes from the game's deceptive difficulty, leading to humorous and unexpected deaths, particularly from falling trees or small enemies. Shared struggles and chaotic situations in multiplayer, along with self-aware exaggeration of challenges, also provide comedic relief.
- Admiration (weight 0.01): Admiration is directed towards the game's overall quality, unique art style, and immersive atmosphere. Players admire the attention to detail, the blend of mechanics, and the developers' dedication, often considering it a superior title within its genre.
- Immersion (weight 0.01): Immersion is fostered by the game's rich Scandinavian setting, atmospheric sound design, and dynamic weather effects. The vast, procedurally generated world, elegant visual style, and captivating soundtrack combine to create a deeply engaging and believable environment.
- Addiction (weight 0.01): Players find the game highly addictive due to its engaging gameplay loop, continuous progression, and immersive atmosphere. The desire to keep playing, explore new content, and the overall captivating nature of the game contribute to its strong hold on players.
- Engagement (weight 0.01): Engagement is maintained by the game's challenging progression, diverse activities, and immersive world storytelling. The need for strategic planning, cooperative play, and the constant cycle of exploration and experimentation keep players deeply involved for extended periods.
- Awe (weight 0.01): Awe is inspired by the game's stunning atmospheric world design, stylized graphics, and the sheer scale and beauty of its landscapes. Players are often moved by breathtaking visuals, dynamic lighting, and the majestic World Tree, creating a magical and immersive experience.
- Hope (weight 0.01): Hope is centered on the anticipation of future improvements, content updates, and the game's eventual full release. Players express a desire for existing issues to be addressed and for new features to be implemented, believing in the game's potential for a better experience.
- Love (weight 0.01): Players express deep love for the game's overall quality, immersive experience, and unique blend of wilderness, challenges, and building. The game's visual style, cooperative play, and the personal connection forged through epic gaming moments contribute to this strong affection.
- Annoyance (weight 0.01): Annoyance stems from time-consuming material farming, a lack of quality-of-life features, and frustrating combat on uneven terrain. Players also find specific enemy encounters, limited inventory, and the tedious sailing experience to be irritating.
- Surprise (weight 0): Surprise often comes from exceeding initial expectations, particularly regarding graphics or genre preference. Players are surprised by how much they enjoy the game, its depth, and its ability to captivate them despite initial reservations or typical dislikes for survival games.
- Challenge (weight 0): The game's challenging nature, including difficult boss fights, hardcore survival mechanics, and the increasing difficulty of biomes, is a significant cause. Players are challenged by strategic planning, complex aspects of gameplay, and the repeated loss of gear.
- Desire (weight 0): Players express a desire for specific quality-of-life features, more cooking options, and additional game modes or content. There's also a strong wish for NPC companions and better in-game guidance to enhance the overall experience.}