Valheim News

Hello Vikings!

First of all, thank you for all the kind messages during our five year anniversary earlier this month. We wouldn’t be here without all of you!

You might also have noticed that we announced that Valheim is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 later this year! We’re really excited for this, and as usual we’re very thankful to have Piktiv helping us out with the port. Please note that the release will only be for Nintendo Switch 2, and not for the first Nintendo Switch console. More information about the release will come in time, but for now you can wishlist the game on the Nintendo eShop.

With these two milestones behind us we also want to share with you the final part of the Voyage of Hervor Bloodtooth:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Now, it must be said that Hervor’s story took place quite a long time ago, in a Deep North that’s a little bit different from the biome that you will explore yourselves, but perhaps there might still be some traces left of her for you to find…

One thing that will still remain standing despite the passage of time is of course the massive structure that marks the end of Hervor’s journey. What lies beyond this gate shall remain a mystery for all but the truly worthy, however.



And while this marks the end of Hervor’s story, we will of course keep having further teasers in our Words from the Devs in the months to come, rest assured! The Deep North continues to take shape with every passing day, and we really look forward to sharing it with you all once it’s ready.

[h3]Build of the Month[/h3]

It was particularly hard to choose a build to highlight this month, you have been busy! In the end, we want to shine the spotlight on “Eikthyr’s Pedestal” by Porter. Well done!



If you want your creation to be featured in this section, use the hashtag #ValheimBotM on social media. Please also send us a DM or email with a link to your post, to make sure that we see it. Now you can also submit builds on Discord, by posting in the build-of-the-month forum channel! No DM is necessary if you post there, as that’s our own forum.

Skål!

/The Iron Gate team

If you’d like to discuss the content of this post, please visit our Discord, or our forums on Reddit and Steam, or make a comment on social media!

We've got a couple of fixes for you today!

Please also note that playing using Vulkan might currently cause Valheim to be unstable and/or crash. If you want to continue using Vulkan, you can disable the FPS limiters in e.g. the Nvidia Control Panel for a hopefully smoother experience. Rest assured that we're working on a solution for the Vulkan issue, however, and that it should hopefully be back to normal soon!

[h2]Patch Notes:[/h2]

* Added release-to-select in the radial menu: If you continue holding down the radial menu button/key after the radial menu appears, you can select an emote by releasing the button/key.
* Reverted crouching being unintentionally changed to a press-and-hold action on gamepad. Now it’s back to being a single press again.
* Fixed annoying resolution setting behavior in windowed mode when changing settings.
* Fixed crash on startup on Windows that triggers under specific conditions when using Vulkan.
* Fixed audio stutters in Ashlands.
* Fixed sometimes not being able to apply graphics settings properly the first time after updating from an earlier version.
* Fixed some minor UX issues in the graphics settings menu.

For modders:
* Fixed a null reference exception that started happening in 0.221.10 when mods directly or indirectly accessed preferences at startup (for example via the localization system).

I'm going to a toddler's birthday party on Saturday and I have it on good authority from Alva's dad that there will be trays of sandwiches and a couple of cakes from M&S. There is no booze provided. I'm not sure if that's because there should be no booze consumed at a two-year-old's birthday, or only that we should bring our own. I guess I'll find out for sure if they frisk on the door. However, if Valheim's latest anniversary update is anything to go by, I am now looking forward to Alva's fifth birthday.

To mark five years in Early Access, developer Iron Gate have released an anniversary patch that is a damn sight better than the prospect of watching a sad looking Colin the Caterpillar cake getting pawed at by hungry toddlers. There are flower garlands, mysterious axe heads, and a steady 60 fps on Steam Deck performance mode. Who doesn't want mysterious blades at a birthday party?

Read more

Valheim is celebrating five years of Early Access with a big upgrade that should make it perform better everywhere, especially on the Steam Deck.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/02/valheim-gets-a-big-birthday-update-with-optimizations-steam-deck-upgrades-and-new-content/

Greetings vikings!

Today marks the five year anniversary since Valheim was first released into Early Access – and what an incredible five years it’s been!

We want to thank everyone who has been a part of our journey and our community since then, whether you started playing on day one or have just been carried by the valkyrie for the first time. We greatly appreciate every single one of you, and we’re so glad to have you walk this path with us.

For this anniversary you will find a patch live right now for everyone, with some new celebratory items and emotes, along with some quality of life fixes!

If you want to keep the celebration going throughout the week, you can tune in to Twitch on Thursday, where there will be a livestreamed concert by the Munich Radio Orchestra! They will be playing music from a bunch of video games, including Valheim.

As you all know, we’re working on Deep North, which will be the final biome update that brings the game into 1.0. While we can’t give an update on that today, we can share that 2026 is going to be a great year for Valheim.

Once again, thank you so much for being with us for five whole years!

Skål!!
/The Iron Gate team


[h2]Abbreviated Patch Notes:[/h2]

* A celebratory hat!
* Early Axes
* Frosted Sweetbread
* Added a radial menu for emotes
* New emotes
* New hairstyles
* 2 new buildable garlands
* Engine Upgrade
* Multiple bug fixes and improvements

[h2]Detailed Patch Notes:[/h2]

New Content:
* New Emote: Vibe
* New Emote: LoveYou
* New Buildpiece: Flower Garland
* New Buildpiece: Fey Lights
* New Consumable: Frosted Sweetbread
* New Weapon: Early Axes
* New Hat: Celebratory Cap
* 2 New Materials: Mysterious Axe Head, Curious Axe Head
* 3 New Hairstyles (Champion, Chronicler, Sunbringer)
* Added radial menu for emotes

Fixes & Improvements:
* Tweaks to multiple hairstyles (Castellan, Painter Curls, Pulled Back Curls, Tidy Curls)
* Tweaks to berserker armour
* Carapace Buckler now provides 5 adrenaline instead of 10 on perfect block, just like other shields
* Updated Game Engine to Unity 6000.0.61f1
* Added localization string for tombstone container

Reworked graphics settings:
* Replaced “Render scale” percentage slider with “3D resolution limit” dropdown with fixed resolutions – improves use case as performance target
* Added new “Upscaling method” setting with new “Pixelated” option
* Added new “Low” SSAO quality option, which achieves a similar look to the existing SSAO quality (now named “High”) with a significantly lower performance impact
* The frame rate limiter can now be used together with v-sync (chooses the lowest submultiple of the monitor refresh rate that is greater than or equal to the selected value)
* The frame rate limiter setting is now applied during the splash/loading screen
* The resolution dropdown setting now sorts resolutions from highest to lowest, instead of the other way around

Optimizations:
* Change engine settings to improve performance in areas with many instances
* Massively reduced CPU usage of armor stands
* Skip texture copy for image effects (shield dome and heat distortion) when those effects aren’t being used, which should reduce GPU overhead in most areas
* Grass vegetation is no longer included in environment reflections, improving performance
* Ensure one-shot sound effects are started the same frame they’re created, reducing their latency by up to one frame
* Reduced memory usage of minimap
* Only load graphics presets for the current platform, rather than all platforms, reducing memory usage
* Removed a duplicated matchmaking manager that wasted performance in the start menu

Bug fixes:
* Fixed “Generating” progress bar not always being shown during world generation
* Fixed server list sometimes failing to save when quitting from the start menu
* Fixed crash that could occur in multiplayer when a T.W.I.G. throws a rock at a player who is at the edge of a shield dome
* Fixed crash that happened when hovering the cursor over a bee hive without being the network owner of that bee hive
* Fixed audio stutter that occurred when a lot of sounds were playing simultaneously
* Fixed Yggdrasil not being visible in environment reflections

Mac App Store:
* Improved error message shown when trying to play online without being logged in to Game Center

Steam:
* Player list now successfully shows profile pictures of non-friends too

Xbox:
* All settings are now stored per-user and synchronized to the cloud, rather than being shared between all users on the console
* UI is now rendered at native resolution (up to 4K) on Xbox Series S|X and Xbox One X
* Improved graphics:
* Xbox One and Xbox One S: Added SSAO and increased number of point lights
* Xbox One X: Increased number of point lights
* Xbox Series S: Increased number of point lights and enabled point light shadows
* Xbox Series X: Increased number of point lights, enabled point light shadows and adjusted resolutions
* Reduce power draw even more when the game is running in the background

Windows, Linux, MacOS:
* Reworked graphics presets and unified them across the three platforms
* Fixed automatic render scale sometimes being set incorrectly in windowed mode

Steam Deck:
* Improved graphics presets:
* Performance mode now reaches 60 fps
* Optimized preset settings for battery life
* Native resolution is now used on first start, instead of 1366x768

For modders:
* Sprite atlases are now included in the extended manifest file for Asset Bundles