Sort of similar games?

[Nixxen]

I am looking for single-player or coop games with an Action/RPG style emphasizing exploration and discovery.
I dislike the grindy aspects of this game.
Does anyone know of any good contenders?
I guess what I am looking for is Valheim without the survival and building aspects.

[Glaugast]

Can check these out OP, most are in EA, some are releasing soon.

- Examina
- Shadows: Awakening
- Smalland: Survive the Wilds
- Forsaken Realms: Vahrin's Call (not out yet)
- We Who Are About To Die
- Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy
- Sands of Aura
- Titan Quest & Titan Quest 2 (not out yet)
- The Bloodline
- Len's Island
- Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
- Salt & Salt 2 (not yet out)
- Tunguska: The Visitation
- En Garde!
- Tales From The Dancing Moon
- Lilium
- Svarog's Dream
- Gedonia & Gedonia 2 (not out yet)
- Outward & Outward 2 (not out yet)
- No Rest For The Wicked

[jonnin]

I will second a call out to no man's sky. Its space themed, but its a lot like this game in that its survival aspect is rather easy, even on the hardest settings, with only your first planet experience being 'difficult' and after that, if you use common sense, you should never be running for your life again. So its way over on the 'relaxing exploration and building' side of the meter and way off from the 'survive and fight' meter. Don't let that lull you though... hard mode first hour or two WILL kill you if you don't know how to play -- its like going into the black forest immediately without even a club in V -- if you know what you are doing, that can be tolerated, but if you do it as a beginner, its probably fatal. That said, its not what you asked for: the survival is in your face until you gear up, and the combat is minimal, exploration is repetition after a while.

--------------------------------------------
I hate the game I am about to mention. Let me be clear about that and if you want all that rant you can dig up my review of it.

That said, for what you asked for, there is a game called starfield that is
- a looter-shooter type combat
- fairly good exploration (space themed, planet exploration, random POIs** )
- simple main quest line, like valheim
- side quests you can do or ignore
- survival is not a thing. You don't have to eat, farm, or any of that stuff. The environment can damage you but you just need to learn to not wade in the lava or visit planets that are like 5 degrees kelvin. If you get hurt by the environment, you have to use a healing kit (buy or find). Its not complicated.
- building is 100% optional. You probably WILL want to build your own space ship, but you don't even HAVE to do that, its just that you are better at it than the devs. By a lot. Your cat can probably build better ships than the provided ones by randomly dancing on the keyboard.

Its exactly what you did ask for, this kind of game without the grind or survival. There are some SMALL grinds that you can minimize, on par with skyrim where you have to do something a number of times to unlock a skill, eg if you want to fly a better ship you have to shoot down 50 ships, which you WILL do eventually but if you want a better ship NOW you 'grind' it instead of letting it happen. Your choice, as again, it WILL happen eventually. The biggest grinds are still simple things like that. You can buy almost everything in the game and money comes in fast after a just a few starter levels where you are poor.

** one of the many problems is that there are like 30 main POIs that repeat so you will do the same maps over and over. Its not game breaking, but it dulls the experience a bit.

[Mharr]

And given that it's literally Skyrim... In Space to the degree that it needed the same UI improvements, it also has all the usual Skyrim style mods if you want that classic explore Nexus, install mods, troubleshoot mods, play for ten minutes and uninstall experience!

[Malic]

Originally posted by Nixxen:

I am looking for single-player or coop games with an Action/RPG style emphasizing exploration and discovery.
I dislike the grindy aspects of this game.
Does anyone know of any good contenders?
I guess what I am looking for is Valheim without the survival and building aspects.

The Long Dark. It's basically all exploration and survival against nature. It's been out for a decade, its fleshed out well. There is a survival mode and a story mode. It's very different from Valheim in a lot of ways but fits your "asks".

[Nopax]

exploration, survival - beautiful and addictive ... subnautica and subnautica 2 -- its an alien underwater world .. your ship crash landed .. survive :) --even after having finished the story .. i come back every once in the while to play again .. very good games.
trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7BzngvURrk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz2SNm8VguE