In a development update, Valheim's Iron Gate Studios has shed some light on upcoming features and content included in the much-anticipated Hearth & Home update. Players have been eagerly waiting for any specific details on when to expect the update to launch since the game's content roadmap was slowed down after becoming a sleeper hit on Steam.
The immense popularity of Valheim took its developer by surprise, heavily altering Iron Gate’s plans to support the crafting/survival title with a steady flow of new content. Instead of focusing on new features, the dev team has rushed to fix critical bugs and issues affecting the core gameplay. As the size of the player community was growing exponentially at laucnh, so was the pressure on the small indie team consisting of just five people to get its immediate post-launch plans right. In that regard, the initial content roadmap had to be revised so as to relieve some stress from developers, pushing Hearth and Home back a bit. Content-wise, players have more or else been playing game in its release state since February, largely relying on fan mods to spice up the base game.
On Steam, Iron Gate Studios has published an informative rundown detailing several upcoming Valheim features and teasing some of the content coming in the Hearth and Home update. The most exciting part of the developer udate is that despite all the time being invested into polish, the studio has still made headway on the update's development. Players can expect new items and even gameplay mechanics to be added to Valheim, although no specific information is being shared at this point. The devs did, however, include a couple of tiny teaser images hinting at what the team is currently working on. The first picture seemingly contains a slice of a Skyrim-like jarl’s throne, while the second is a trench that could potentially point to irrigation or canals. For now, the update still doesn’t have a solid release date, so Iron Gate says it’ll simply be out once it’s ready.
Although the developer is grateful to its vast fan community for all the support and patience, the wait for any additional content in Valheim seems to have slightly discouraged highly active players. On places like the dedicated Valheim subreddit, some are expressing their impatience with memes, as brilliantly demonstrated by one gamer who used the “Sad, Lonely Man” meme template as an example of what the wait has felt like.
The encouraging piece of the developer’s news regarding the Hearth & Home update for Valheim has the potential to inspire those players who are slowly burning out, giving them ample hope that new content is on the horizon. At the same time, Iron Gate is lucky to have such a passionate and supportive community, which hasn't abandoning the survival title despite the usual fickleness of popularity in the indie game scene. That’s concrete proof of Valheim's quality, which likely only motivates the small studio to deliver on its promises even more.
Valheim is available on PC.
Source: Steam