Playing Enshrouded – It’s Worth Getting Into!

Posted on August 14, 2025 by Aywren

Enshrouded is an adventure survival game that we started playing near the game’s initial release to Early Access last year. I wrote about my first impression of the game here, and since then, it’s been one of our go-to games when we’re in the mood for fantasy questing. It’s become my third-most played game on Steam at 249 hours, following only 7 Days 2 Die and No Man’s Sky.

The lovely thing about Enshrouded is that the dev team has been very dedicated to continuing to support the game through massive content patches and small tweaks. Since last year, we’ve seen several new biomes, the introduction of living NPCs who walk about your home base, pets, animal husbandry, a cosmetics system, a dye system, a NCP that changes your character’s looks, a music system, visual upgrades, and lots more.

Earlier this year, we introduced the game to the Posse (who seemed a bit uncertain about yet another survival game at the time), and they were super hooked once they got into it. That lasted a time, and was pretty fun (though it’s hard to start a new character from scratch for me), but as of now, Syn and I have gone back to our original world and original characters.

The game continues to deliver in bite-sized bits of lore and story quests, which we really enjoy. It’s become all the better since they introduced placeable NPCs, who are pure souls of the past you can bring back to life, often just your average person. It’s made our home base so much more lively to have others walking around, acknowledging your own character, and sometimes gathering around to watch a bard show!

When I was ill earlier this year, and simply didn’t have the energy to do much gaming, this was one of the games we tended to fall back on. Quests are often short enough to complete during a sitting, allowing me to engage in some gaming even while still having a very low energy level. Then, afterwards, we could just chill while Syn built on to the base, farmed, or we organized stuff for crafting.

A Few Minor Frustrations

Some of the newest updates did leave us a little frustrated, however, especially when it comes to just how much crafting materials you have to gather now. As an example, the new recipes for magic boxes requires gathering a ton of stuff that never existed before. This was done, I’m guessing, to give the player more to do during the mid-level gameplay. But for us, who (thankfully) had lots of boxes already crafted, it was more of an annoyance and felt like busy work – we knew the difference of how it used to be.

The other frustrating bit was the final Hallow Halls gameplay. This required a LOT of precise gliding and battles with dangerous bosses throughout. There were many deaths, and I think at one point Syn was pondering just stopping for the day. But me being stubborn, I encouraged us to push through, and we did complete it. I feel like it’s a bit over-tuned compared to the rest of the game.

Breaking into the new ice biome was also a challenge that we chipped away at a little at a time. There was some annoyance there, but we’re finally getting to a place where we’ve got the gear to overcome hypothermia for a little while. We’ve just lit all the beacons to initiate some sort of boss dragon fight, which we need to do in order to give our flame level a boost to help protect even more against cold weather.

Final Verdict

That being said, we’ve adjusted to all of these very minor frustrations, and they’re fairly small in the grand scheme of things. Especially given how much improvement the game has seen, and how much there’s yet to see – we’re really looking forward to water in the biomes, for example! You can check all this out on the roadmap!

The final verdict?

Over a year into playing this game, which doesn’t feel like Early Access, and we’re still finding new secrets, enjoying exploring the world, and have many quests yet to complete. Enshrouded is absolutely worth picking up if you haven’t tried it yet, and are looking for a fantasy survival adventure in a world that’s hand-built to tell a story, and is wrapped in a bow of fascinating lore.

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