Valheim Update Roadmap Changes Push Hearth & Home To Q3 2021

It seems that fans of Iron Gate’s survival Viking game Valheim will have to wait a little longer for its much-anticipated Hearth and Home update as the developer has announced the launch is being pushed back to the third quarter of this year. Still in Early Access, Valheim puts the player in the boots of a recently deceased Viking warrior attempting to carve a path into Valhalla. In a vast and unexplored wilderness, players are tasked with building up a base, hunting down major enemies, and generally surviving.

The game opened to the public in February 2020 and attained an unexpected and astonishing level of popularity soon after, forcing Valheim‘s creators to slow down the game’s projected update timeline. The co-founder of Iron Gate Studio, Henrik Törnqvist, stated in an interview a month after Valheim launched that the unanticipated stress from millions of players jumping into the game had forced the team to focus more on squashing bugs than getting updates out of the door. However, in April the developer put out a statement showing off some of the content coming in the game’s big Heath and Home update. This gave fans hope that new items and mechanics would hit the game in the near future.

Today’s message on Steam (via the official Valheim Twitter) reveals that the game’s roadmap is being altered significantly. The studio admits it will not be able to launch four updates this year, as it had previously planned, and has taken down the update timeline to make adjustments. The post does not expand on what these changes will be, but it does assure players that the game’s Hearth and Home content is still coming out this year. According to Iron Gate Studio, the long-awaited update should launch sometime between July and September and the team will focus on the Mistlands update after that, though small updates may be pushed to the side for a while. Perhaps to counteract the disappointing news, the studio has shared a little more of what to expect from Hearth and Home including new roofing options, cooking station extensions, and more than ten new cooking recipes. Like in past communications, the studio points to the massive influx of players as a key factor behind the delay and thanks Valheim’s many fans for patiently waiting for the update who can check out the team’s AMA on Reddit tomorrow for more information.

Though the developer’s primary goal is to keep the current game experience running smoothly, that does not mean Valheim players have nothing fresh to check out. Yesterday, a patch was introduced to Valheim which will allow two events to be triggered in the game. The events, called “You are being hunted” and “The horde is attacking” will trigger at random, letting players take on a pack of ravenous wolves from the mountains and a throng of plains-dwelling Fulings.

It may be a little disappointing to hear Valheim will not be getting as many updates as expected this year, players can at least take comfort in the fact that the game’s Hearth and Home content will be coming in the next few months. The incoming items and features should give fans a wide array of new things to do and explore.

Valheim is available on PC.

Source: Steam, Valheim/Twitter

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