for me it is the concept that building is necessary for survival. in so many games all you need as a base is just plopping down storage and crafting stations. in valheim, these crafting stations need to be in a building and the vuilding system with its structzral stability thing is just fantastic.

and bcs there are things u cant teleport (until you reach ashlands tier portals) it doesnt make sense to have one central base bcs you need to transport all unteleportable resources via ship, meaning you have to set up bases in most biomes individually.

and that causes you to build accordingly. in the meadows and the forest, where all you have access to is wood, you only build small huts, in the mountain and plains where you have access to vast amounts of stone, it is mighty halls of stone, in the mistlands you have extremely difficult terrain requiring you to build an interconnected mess of small buildings and the ashlands are a super hostile place, so you have to design ur bases there with defense from enemies and elements.

this combination of requiring to build to thrive and hhaving completely different circumstances to build is just why i love spending hours building there

The only thing I continue to play Valheim for is the building system and the aesthetic. Because the actual combat and stuff is jank and the number of enemies that constantly spawn is frustrating (I swear to God, even with mods that make the no-spawn zone around your base bigger, the constant trash mob dwarves make it impossible to settle down and just build).

The building system is really fun, as it requires you to think about structural integrity while also having smaller bits to do really gnarly architectural designs that a lot of other block-based builders don't have.

I have not played Valheim, I have just heard the name, and don't follow streamers. So genuine question, what do you mean by "beloved by politics"?