First announced back in June, Valheim’s Hearth and Home update is finally upon us, and before you ask, the multiplayer survival sandbox game has still not exited early access, although it’s pretty cheap right now – $15.99 – on Steam if you’re so inclined. Hearth and Home is a pretty hefty update, particularly for crafters and builders:
“Focusing on enhancing the core base building and survival mechanics of the critically-acclaimed hardcore co-op survival game, the Hearth & Home update gives players even more tools to create the longhouse of their dreams and cook up a feast fit for an Aesir. […] While many features introduced in Hearth & Home have already been revealed by the development team on Steam and social media, not even Odin has spied some of the new features being added with the update, including something dark and mysterious that seems to spread across the plains. Builders and architects will surely toast the gods, as a slew of new Darkwood and stone building pieces will be available to players at launch. Whether it be Darkwood beams and poles decorated with intricate viking embellishments, a new Darkwood roof type and ornaments, or a stone throne for those who rule with an iron fist, Valheim’s building system will now offer an expanded selection of pieces to spark players’ imaginations as they build their settlements.” [Emphasis ours.]
There’s gobs more, including pet naming, map sharing, new plantable trees, the “obliterator extension,” cooking enhancements, new meat and food types, food overhaul, new gear, and so on. The studio is still riding pretty high on having hit 500,000 concurrent players on 7M sales last winter; while it hasn’t quite reached those highs since, it’s still seen almost 50K concurrent players on Steam just in the last month, not that far away from blockbuster survival title ARK Survival Evolved – a very good sign indeed.
