Valheim – Hearth and Home

Valheim will be receiving its first major update, “Hearth and Home,” this week and it promises to bring a significant amount of new content and improvements to the increasingly more popular Viking-inspired games available on Steam. This update focused mostly on improvements to not only house building, but home decor. But it’s not all about the home! The developers have also devoted some of their attention in this update to improving combat! That is to say, there will also be a rework of the blocking and staggering system. Basically, instead of being based on stamina, it will now be based upon your maximum health.

This is accomplished because “Hearth and Home” will also dramatically rework several aspects of how food and cooking work. According to the developers, the intent is to make the food system more dynamic and place “more importance between boosting health and stamina, making food choices more interesting based on your playstyle,” adding that they have “made some changes to how stamina/health affects your poise in combat. If you want to play a tanky, defensive Viking you should now stock up on health, since this will boost your ability to deflect incoming hits and mitigate damage.”

Basically, food can be attributed to improving either your character’s health or stamina. Stamina will now be important for attacking more, while your maximum health is more important for your defensive capabilities, like blocking and protecting your character from being staggered. The developers have also added in a new and very helpful ‘stagger meter’ which indicates how to stagger your character is and if filled will allow enemies to knock you prone. Also to help keep you from being staggered, they have also added the new ‘tower shield’ which has a significant defense against being knocked back, although it is much slower than the ‘buckler’ which can be used to parry attacks.

Apparently, the kitchen is going to become a lot homier by the addition of various extensions such as a spice rack, butcher table, and pots & pans. They are also adding at least ten new recipes. Another interesting decorative feature added will be the ability to display your treasure. Like a dragon hoarding loot, you can now bask in the golden glow of your accrued wealth in mountainous piles. To help protect that treasure you can now build lockable iron gates.

Another interesting thing to note about this update is the rework of certain foods, particularly with meat. Currently, any animal the player slays simply drops raw meat regardless of the animal, but this new update has changed it so that each animal drops its own unique meat, meaning that deers drop deer meat, and wolves drop wolf meat. Additionally, different meats will have different stats, which can be used for different purposes. The developers have also added a few new plants, including the onion which can be farmed, and something called a Bukeberry, which will cause your Viking to vomit their last meal.

According to the Valheim development roadmap published by Iron Gate back in February, there are already plans made for the next three updates. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know when exactly these upcoming updates will be released. The next update is called ‘Cult of The Wolf’ and may include improvements to combat and interactions with other players, and perhaps new content for the mountain biome. The third update ‘Saga Worthy Seas, Even More Ships’ will almost certainly add content related to boats and the Ocean biome. The last update that’s been revealed is ‘Voyage to the Mistlands’ which will add an entirely new biome, enemies, items, resources, and a new boss. We can’t wait to see what new exciting adventures there’ll be!