It’s been eight months since Valheim’s launch, and my friends and I have finally completed our mission. We found the perfect location and built a beautiful heated pool overlooking the lake, to which we also installed lighting. Yes, all true: our Viking spa town was finally complete. Once stripped of our heavy armor, we jumped into the tub and started enjoying the surrounding landscape. The silence had suddenly fallen between us, with only a few deer that with the verses of him to interrupt that situation of calm.
Then someone said: “And now?”.
Anyone who has played Valheim since its launch knows the situation well: it’s up to the players themselves to set custom goals for what they want to accomplish in the game. The updates have been almost scarce and not very ambitious, limiting themselves to bugfixes and some new items to craft rather than introducing new chapters of the story. Valheim’s simple building system was enough to keep players busy for a while, but there are just more structures to build.
Much of the Valheim experience lies in creativity and adventure. But with a few surprises included in the post-launch updates, the world of Valheim that previously seemed boundless now appears a little more limited.
But Valheim never intended to be a real game as a service. Developer Iron Gate confirmed that at some point it will come to an end, and being an Early Access game on Steam it won’t run indefinitely. But according to the pace of development so far, it may take a long time to reach that moment. Despite its Early Access nature, the game felt like a complete product right out of the box. With low-poly graphics, an engaging crafting system, and challenging boss fights, players were drawn to the game and spent dozens of hours on it.
As a multiplayer sandbox game, it also provided a perfect place to connect with friends during the pandemic lockdown. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, publisher Coffee Stain explained that Valheim’s popularity has grown thanks to certain cultural and gaming trends. Among these we cannot fail to mention the revival of Viking culture led by Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and the HBO Vikings series, but also by the rise in popularity of survival games like Rust. All these factors combined meant that the Valheim launch went way beyond expectations. Three million copies were sold in the first 16 daysand at some point Valheim caught up and overtook 500k contemporary players on Steamfinishing eighth in the ranking of games with multiple users connected simultaneously on the platform ever, overtaking titans such as Fallout 4, Apex Legends and GTA 5 (via Steam Charts).
The success was well deserved, but it put the small development team in a difficult situation. At that time Iron Gate was in fact made up of only five developers. The advent of hundreds of thousands of players simultaneously accelerated the bug surfacing process, and the team inevitably had to prioritize fixing issues rather than creating new content. Iron Gate’s plan to release four updates during 2021 is gone up in smokeand the team decided to focus on delivering Valheim’s first major update, Heart and Home.
The initial decision to fix the glitches first was probably the right one for Iron Gate – with millions of players spending money on the product in its current state, it’s important to make sure the base game runs well. However, this prevented Iron Gate from capitalizing on Valheim’s massive popularity right after its launch. The game desperately needed to keep the moment of success alive and an update to the biome.
The narrative centerpiece Valheim is represented by Odin who assigns a mission that aims to take down a series of bosses, each of which presides over a specific region. Before getting to each boss you will have to take possession of his biome. This implies improving the equipment using the new resources available on the territory, defending against more aggressive enemies and living with more hostile environments. The boss-biome cycle is essentially the driving force behind Valheim’s gameplay, which marks progress in the game and at the same time entices you to continue. But it’s been a good 17 months and we still haven’t received a new chapter in this story.
Honestly, Valheim had so much content at launch that his story could have easily ended in the Plains biome. But the tantalizing promise of further adventures certainly catalyzed a bit of frustration between the community. In my group’s dedicated server, this led to a slow but inexorable change in the way we approached the game. In the first few days we felt fear and excitement, we constantly had the feeling that someone might come out of the trees and kill us.
After getting new equipment and settling in, we entered a new phase of coexistence with the world around us. With all the biomes already conquered and few factors that could put us in difficulty, we have dedicated ourselves to frivolous projects, such as the construction of a city-spa or a base at the North Pole. As a result, our interest in the game has waned over time. None of us have completely abandoned the game though, as there is always an interest in seeing what the Mistlands update will bring, but we are running out of building ideas.
While an update to biomes is definitely necessary, don’t downplay the importance of the other updates. Many patches have improved Valheim’s gameplay systems: for example Hearth and Home has added several building elements and reworked the food crafting system to make it more complex. But the updates have pushed the players even more to the adventure, since, for example, they needed certain types of wood to be collected in the forests to set up a camp in the Plains. The Caves update has added new dungeons in the Mountains biome and rekindled the emotions that were felt in the first days of the game’s life, namely those of mystery and discovery of new places.
Not much has changed since launch, but we must not forget that the very essence of Valheim is still that of a brilliant survival game. You certainly won’t experience the same feeling of mysticism and uncertainty in the second playthrought, but compulsive crafting, exploration and boss battles are always there. It is a game designed on the concept that any excursion away from the base can turn into a dramatic event, even a short ride to pick raspberries.
Additionally, Valheim has a very welcoming and supportive community. From the Body Recovery Team to help players recover lost items, to creative build appreciation on the Valheim subreddit, there is a feeling of warmth that dramatically enhances the gameplay experience.
When played alone, Valheim offers an inspired and alienating journey through the Viking afterlife, but it is a game that gives its best played in company. Players develop cohesion similar to that of platoons. When you find a good group of friends to share travels and adventures with, then it’s no surprise to find yourself playing after more than a year despite missing fresh content.
The motivation I can give to this phenomenon is simply the strength of Valheim as a sandbox game, with the beauty of its world. We often use it simply as a place to sit and chat in peace. One evening we spent an evening session building a fishing platform, after which we relaxed drinking mead and fishing while watching the sunset. A look at our server map currently shows outposts and bases scattered across continents with myriad location names that evoke specific travels and adventures, basically a testament to our collective experience over the past year. Valheim guides players to adventure, but let players choose their own path, be it short and easy or long and bumpy.
Soon, perhaps, we will see finally arrive the Mistlands biome update in all its glory. The long wait for this update has become frustrating, but we must also contextualize all the postponements. Valheim is a game that for just over € 15 is capable of providing hundreds of hours of entertainment. According to my 230 hours quoted by Steam, it’s hard to hold a grudge for delaying an update to a game that already tastes complete. So until this update arrives, you will see me patiently pursuing side activities. Anyone want to help me build a tree house?
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