Ashlands feels like a never-ending battleground.

Disclaimer: I'm about 5 hours into Ashlands, so I might be foolish for making early judgments, but here I go anyways.

One of the things I love about Valheim is the difficulty, and how well the curve is tuned from one biome to the next. I remember Mistlands feeling quite overpowering at first, but manageable if you were careful and planned your adventure well. Enemies were a massive challenge, but became mostly a distraction by the end. Combat was a big deal, but there were also stretches of exploration and discovery.

Having said that, I feel like all I do when entering Ashlands is fight. All the time.

When I destroy a spawner, I look away for a moment and suddenly there's 5 new enemies out of nowhere. Whenever I return to Ashlands, the previously cleared grounds are fully populated again. 90% of my time is spent constantly fighting enemies in the same exact area as last time, over and over, until I manage to get past them and reach new ground.

I hope this gets better as I upgrade my gear and smaller enemies become more trivial. But so far not having the chance to look around and explore is quite exhausting, and at times frustrating.

I know, I know. Ashlands is hard as it's supposed to be. I'm not complaining about that. But for me, Valheim clicked so well due to it's pacing and I believe keeping this balance in check is important. There's time for intensive face-offs, and there's wind-down time of base management and exploration.

Do you think the spawn-rate balancing is something that should be tuned? What are your thoughts on difficulty?