Valheim's Hearth & Home update brought a house-worth of new content, including revamped foods, new Viking cuisines, new furniture, new weapons, new shields, and new features like an auto-pickup toggle and new beast taming mechanics. However, it seems that Hearth & Home also took away a mechanic that some players were using to level up their skills without actually having to do much of anything.
As of the most recent update, players can no longer swing their weapons at a rock or tree to level up their corresponding skills. This was confirmed on the Valheim subreddit courtesy of Reddit user OldGuyWhoSitsInFront, who posted a video showing how skills remain static even after bashing several rocks and trees.
Although a tedious process, players could previously wail away at inanimate objects to receive an experience benefit. Some used this to power-level before venturing out into a permadeath run to mitigate the risk of combat, but that's no longer an option.
Most responses in the comments say that this change was a good one as it doesn't really make sense for your Viking to gain experience from taking an ax to a rock all day long. Some argue that the 5% experience loss penalty for dying needed some easy-regain offset, and that striking rocks and trees was a reasonable feature.
One compromise that seems to be gaining traction is to implement a training dummy that requires some resources but would eventually be destroyed, essentially allowing the player to trade resources for experience. This would be good for high-level players who can lose several levels' worth in skills with each death.
Iron Gate has proven to be quite open to suggestions from fans. When the recent food revamp was deemed "too harsh" by players, Iron Gate came out with a patch that rebalanced the HP and stamina values to be a little more forgiving, letting players receive a more balanced benefit from eating most foods.