"Alright warrior," Valheim's raven narrator Hugin told me when I first booted up the game. "Odin's counting on you to slay a bunch of horrible creatures then ascend to Valhalla. It's a perilous journey and you'll need to arm yourself properly to defeat the Forsaken. Are you up for the task?"
"Sure, sure," I said in reply. "But those small huts over there look kinda cute."
If you hadn't yet guessed, I've spent most of my time in Valheim simply building and renovating small cabins. The survival game is split into several biomes, each with its own unique enemies and materials, but it took me at least 15 hours to leave the first – and I've once again found myself constructing tiny homes in the second. Whenever I stumble across ruins I feel obligated to fix them up, like some sort of Viking real estate show. I'm calling it Homes Under Thor's Hammer.