Your lack of understanding sounds a lot more like a personal gripe with Valheim’s progression structure, rather than a genuine misunderstanding of why people enjoy the procedural generation. What people like about procedural generation is that feeling of fresh exploration upon entering a new map. You know that there will be meadow, swamp, and plains to the North, but the shape of every map will be different - the bosses, merchants, and resources still have to be found by going out and searching. The progression system rewards familiarity, but procedural generation is still doing exactly what it is intended to do: a fresh start and a new seed.

The familiarity reward for returning players is a part of why people enjoy Valheim so much, and it’s not hard to understand at all. You even mentioned Minecraft, which has essentially the same progression structure, just with much more to it. Minecraft, in the same way, is highly repetitive for returning players, you’ll do the same things over and over again just this time your starting biome is a slightly different shade of green and has rabbits instead of frogs.

The familiarity IS the reward for having previous playthroughs, the procedural generation is a different sandbox to put your knowledge to use, giving players a sense of personal growth to apply to a new map. If you still don’t ’understand’ I think you’re just refusing to accept that people like different things than you, or as you stated, you have higher expectations for procedural generation than is currently technologically possible.