I've realized that to me, the ideal way to play Valheim is like viking animal crossing (or I guess stardew valley).
By this I mean like, I mostly just want to make a cool house and set up a cool little area for the crafting stuff and all the cooking stuff, and make a little farm where I can harvest carrots, and research new types of soups and then try to make a building with a big central chimney around the area where you cook over the fire in the center, and then sometimes you go out to find some boar meat so you can make jerky for your friends, and someone you're playing with comes back with a bunch of materials and makes you a cool helmet, while your mead ferments in the mead fermenter...
and then SOMETIMES you get on a boat and go to a cool island you haven't been to before
...oh yeah, also, one of my favorite things to do is building and maintaining a fancy covered bridge. I really like making infrastructure that other people then use to transport materials with.