Iron Gate Studio has revealed its future plans for Valheim, and they look pretty exciting. As part of a new developer update blog, the team detailed Valheim’s upcoming major update, which will introduce the Ashlands biome.
After expressing its heartfelt thanks to fans following the release of the Mistlands update, Iron Gate moves straight to the next step in the game. The Ashlands biome is currently in pre-production, and “will be nothing like what we’re used to, as the Ashlands is the southernmost large swath of land on the map.”
Iron Gate then went on to detail how secretive it was about its previous update, Mistlands, saying it wanted to be more transparent with the next update. More of the process of developing this update will be shown to help players better understand the development progress.
As someone who enjoys witnessing the development process from concept art to the game itself, this is great news, and I can’t wait to see what’s planned for Iron Gate. To give us a sneak peek, Ir on Gate also showed off some new enemy concepts.
Since the Ashlands are the land of the dead, imbued with volcanic properties, enemies take the form of charred bones. The first shown is literally The Charred, followed by an even weirder-looking enemy named Morgen.
With the Ashlands update in pre-production, I don’t need to tell you that it might be a while before we actively explore biomes. That said, Iron Gate is well aware of this, while also planning a few other things for players.
Valheim will release on Xbox later this year with support for cross-play, new difficulty settings are being added, and the team is currently working on something called Hildir’s Quest. Also, it turns out that the QA folks got creative in tackling the Mistlands update, which means we’ll be getting new clothes for our characters!
Last but not least, Iron Gate Studio also talked about how to make Valheim more accessible, so that more people can enjoy the survival game. So, the team asks, “If you have a disability or anything else that affects the game, you’re more than welcome to email us and tell us a little bit about that and any solutions you can think of that would improve your experience.”
If this is you and you think you can help, please email Iron Gate Studio!
What do you think of the upcoming update? It might be a while, but I do have a thirst to survive, and I think it’s time to revisit Valheim.