I saw a runestone in Valheim once that stated something in the realms of "beware the giant ones", but I haven't seen it since. It was on the border of the mistlands and plains and back then I thought I had found something!
In my head there had been a "war" for the mistlands between giants, some distant relatives to Ymir, whos skulls litter the ground, and some sort of arachnids because of the webs all around.
"There were once a lot of giants around until the spiders came in masses and killed of most of them. One day a giant united the remnants of the families of the giants to hunt and kill the spider queen, of which the whole brood descended from. After years of wars and countless battles the spiders were finally wiped from the surface of Valheim, but the giants were on the brink of extinction too. They seperated, each one returning to their now empty home in the mistlands. That is were they dwell in seclusion, falling into a deep slumber.
Beware traveller, who wanders the mistlands, do not draw the rage of the giant ones, for they have been lonely for too long."
In this case giants would be a stronger enemy, but they'd be hard to find, they might be in a deep slumber and covered in earth/ stones/ trees and awoken by interaction with the area (cutting down trees, mining, digging, etc.). The void the spiders left in the ecosystem would be filled with some mob that has different variations (like the greydwarfs/ draugr/ fulings), maybe some sort of (dark) elves that are able to harvest and use the spider webs.
New crafting materials could be:
- spider silk, that can be interwoven with the strings from flax (or even leather!) to create a more powerful light armour
- Ymir bones (dug up/ mined from parts of skulls/ dropped by elves/ giants)
The boss could be a kind of two phased battle, first one would encounter a leader/ king/ whatever of the elves, but the battle would be on the sleeping ground from the giant that once united all the giant-tribes. One would think the elf would be the boss here (but being just a liiiiittle bit too easy for a boss), but the giant would awake as soon as one killed the elven leader, and he is filled with rage, being the actual boss.
