Valheim News

Greetings vikings, and welcome to this month’s status report!

All things Valheim are continuing to move forward over here, though they have been happening a bit more behind the scenes. Piktiv and Fishlabs are still hard at work with solving Xbox issues, and we’re currently testing the most recent patch on our Public Test Branch. Please test it if you haven’t already, but also please note that it’s extra important to make backups this time! If we discover any issues with this patch, we will roll it back for the time being, and return to it at a later date.

This potential rollback would be so that we can get the Hildir’s Quest update out to you as soon as possible. That particular update might also get a slight name change upon its release, as Hildir’s Quest was mainly intended as a working title, but rest assured that the name change doesn’t change what the patch actually contains. If everything works out the way we hope it will, this should be the last blog post before the update is released for testing, so we want to give you one last teaser image before then:



We’re of course continuing to work away on the Ashlands as well! We’re currently trying to nail down some story aspects with the help of our lore writer Lee. If you want to do a more deep dive into the Valheim lore, we can recommend that you check out the podcast episode he was a guest on the other week!

Last time we mentioned that we’ve been making some drops for the Ashlands enemies, and now we thought we’d show some of them off. Here we have a feather, a tooth, and a heart – looks almost like we’re setting up for some sort of ritual sacrifice! What they’ll actually be used for though, you’ll have to wait and see:



As hostile as the Ashlands biome might look, however, it’s not only going to be filled with fearsome enemies. Some creatures will still be more afraid of you than you are of them, like this little fellow for example! We’re currently calling it “cadaver-Bengt”, but that’s most likely going to change…



[h3]Build of the Month[/h3]

For the chosen build this month, we want to highlight this island fortress by Karakasnik – nicely done! If you want your creation to be featured, use the hashtag #ValheimBotM on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. You can view previous builds in this thread on Steam.



Until next time!

/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!

This update is for the Public Test branch of Valheim, and may therefore be unstable. Before we launch this update to the Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible.
Access the Public Test branch by right clicking Valheim in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’. In the new window, select ‘Betas’ and type in the code “yesimadebackups”. The Public Test branch should now be available for you to choose from.
As always, remember to be considerate towards players not partaking in the Public Test, in case they want to avoid spoilers.
As the password indicates, please make sure to make backups of your save files before playing.

This patch includes a lot of optimisations for many underlying systems of the game – this to improve in-game performance for both small and large worlds, network performance, load times and to drastically decrease save file sizes. We hope that these changes will be a significant improvement for some of you.

This does mean, however, that this patch is extra prone to have introduced some new and obscure bugs that we have yet to find, so any additional testing and bug reporting on this is greatly appreciated! Be sure to report them in our Discord in the public test channel or by filling out this form.

On a very important note, this patch makes your saves significantly less backwards compatible than other patches, so make sure you really do make extra backups this time. As always, we will do our best so that you will be able to continue with your save files when this goes live, but there is always a risk that you might have to restore your backups when playing on the public test.

Should this patch not be problem free, we will roll it back for the time being, and return to it at a later date. Therefore it is extra important that you make your backups this time.

[h2]Patch notes:[/h2]

* Many performance, memory and networking improvements for both small and large worlds
* World save file size greatly reduced
* Fixed hitbox issue for close combat and spear throwing issue
* Minimap pin input fixed on steam deck & big picture mode
* Added "UI scaling" to settings on Xbox
* Fixed endless loading of save manager when switching tabs too fast
* World save files that are corrupt, have load errors or have missing meta files can now be restored from the most recent backup directly from within the Select World menu by pressing the "Start" button.
* Save file stability & issues fixed
* Decreased load times in the Manage Saves menu.
* Fixed a bug that would cause the GUI to not update when deleting the bottommost backup in the Manage Saves menu.

Welcome to another peek behind the Valheim scenes!

First things first: Xbox players will likely (unfortunately) be aware of some issues that are still persisting with the console version, but you can rest assured that our Xbox teams at Piktiv and Fishlabs are working as hard and fast as they can to solve these issues. Keep an eye out on our website and our social media channels for updates and patch notes!

On a more fun note, we of course have some new content to tease you with this month as well! The Ashlands are continuing to develop, both art-wise and mechanics-wise. Last time we mentioned that something called “Fortress time!” would be an important aspect of the biome, and you might have seen something relating to that on social media recently. Here’s another look at that particular something, because you can’t have Fortress time! without some sturdy siege engines, right?



Of course, it won’t be just the fortresses themselves that are challenging, but also the creatures who guard them. We’ve already shown you some concept art of the Charred a while ago, as well as some earlier models of the Fallen Valkyrie, but now we want to show you their current state:





And though it won’t be guarding the fortresses, we also want to give you a new look at what shape the Bonemaw Serpent is taking, though it’s still a work in progress! As you can tell, the Ashlands creatures have been getting quite a bit of attention lately, and we’re also working out what their drops will be. And then later comes the question of what those drops will be used for…



When it comes to Hildir’s Quest, things are starting to really fall into place! There will be mini-bosses, new clothing, a wide range of server modifications, and more! With mostly testing left to do, we hope to be able to bring it out to the Public Test Branch and Flight in the next month or two. For now, we want to show you one more sneak peek of the clothes you’ll be able to add to your viking’s wardrobe – though they will not be all that easy to obtain:



[h3]Build of the month[/h3]

This month we have our eyes on this longhouse that Versaugh1 built! If you want your creation to be featured, use the hashtag #ValheimBotM on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. You can view previous builds in this thread on Steam.



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!