It depends what you’re doing really, I’ll say I haven’t played much in a couple years but owned since launch. Early game you need to get more resources for fuel and life support. Eventually you won’t really need to gather a lot, you can set up bases to do mining / farming to grab what you need or just buy it without a ton of hassle. Eventually fuel seems like an afterthought, you end up with tons of stuff. If you want to buy ships with more cargo or better class you’ll need to grind either credits or the upgrades for them. Depending what you want to achieve you may need to do specific things, like to get a living ship is a process or you may need to kill waves of sentinels for a drop that only comes from the last wave but the previous waves drop high priced items so it’s decent.

I haven’t played valheim but to me it seems less grindy than the YouTube videos I watched of pretty much all the survival games including Valhein. It’s more you explore, travel and if you need something you focus on that for a bit. The early game is the worst for the grind, and I’ve started over a few times and it only takes a bit (couple hours at casual) for the game to properly open up.

If you watch YouTube, I caught a new player on a channel Jonsandman plays, and it shows the early game pretty well since he had no idea though he gets tips from his chat. He only started a few months ago so if you don’t want to play but watch to see I’d recommend checking it out. Though he does get a bit excited sometimes heh.