Valheim Hearth & Home Pushed Back To Q3 2021, Roadmap Updated

valheim hearth and home darkwood roof banner

Valheim is getting new content later this year with the Viking-themed sandbox survival games first major update called Hearth & Home. The update was originally scheduled to launch in the first half of 2021 but has new been delayed to the third quarter of this year. Hearth & Home will come with new building additions, including new window hatches and darkwood roofs. Cooking Stations will also be getting a makeover with the addition of pots and pans and options to install a butcher table and spice rack.

On the subject of cooking, the Hearth & Home update will also introduce a new food system that will allow players to choose which food items will benefit their playstyle by having some foods boost health and others boost stamina instead of simply boosting both stats. As part of the new food system, the devs will also be changing how stamina and health affects players in combat.

“If you want to play a tanky, defensive viking you should now stock up on health, since this will boost your ability to deflect incoming hits and mitigate damage,” said developer Iron Gate.

The update will also include new recipes and plantable onions with “pretty onion flowers.”

Iron Gate also addressed the lack of new content being added into the game, admitting that they were overwhelmed with the number of players that flooded the game upon its early access release.

“We weren’t prepared for such a large influx of players, and this highlighted a thousand new problems and bugs that needed to be fixed urgently,” they explained. “Our priority has been to make the current experience as stable as possible and this has meant new content has taken a backseat. To put it clearly; we haven’t been able to focus all of our resources on Hearth & Home until May.”

The studio has also taken down the development roadmap they released in April and will be replacing it with a smaller roadmap that focuses on bigger content updates.

“We don’t want to launch an update that we’re not confident in, and that isn’t deserving of your time. With that in mind, the new roadmap will be much smaller, but we’ve made the decision to focus on the big Mistlands update directly after we’re done with Hearth & Home, putting aside the smaller updates for now...”

“7+ million customers puts a lot of pressure on us to live up to our own standards of what one should reasonably come to expect from the game in terms of quality in both content and gameplay,” added Iron Gate Co-Founder Henrik Törnqvist in a recent AMA on Reddit. “In hindsight, putting out the roadmap with four updates for the first year was (obviously) not a good decision, as this only exacerbated the pressure with the days going by without us being able to actually work on those promised updates.”

The team is also looking at possibly adding the option to delete items. In the meantime, if you’re having trouble getting rid of unwanted items, simply drop them outside a base building or into deep enough water and they should automatically be deleted within two game days.

More information can be found on the Valheim Steam Page and on Reddit.