Valheim's update schedule delayed, Hearth & Home will be out later this summer

In February, Valheim developer Iron Gate shared a roadmap laying out its plans for four updates over the course of 2021, along with other new features like multiplayer interactions, moon phases, and more unique locations, "if Odin wills it." Today it dialed back those plans, however, saying that the first planned update, Hearth and Home, won't be released until the third quarter of this year.

"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," Iron Gate said. "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 current roadmap has been taken down (although for now it remains accessible), and a new roadmap is in the works that will be "much smaller" than the one posted in February. After Hearth and Home is finished, Iron Gate plans to move straight to the Mistlands update, which had originally been planned as the fourth and final update on the roadmap. Smaller planned updates will be put aside "for now."

Iron Gate offered a look at some of the new content coming in the Hearth and Home update, including darkwood roof and window hatch building pieces, cooking station extensions like a spice rack, butcher block, and pots and pans, more than ten new recipes, and plantable onions. There will also be a new "food system" that changes the impact of what you eat on your health and stamina, which will also have a direct effect on combat: Increased health will boost your ability to deflect hits and absorb damage, for instance.

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"We’re pretty flexible when it comes to what we want to add to the game, and we’re often inspired by a meeting or an awesome comment from the community, which means our roadmap is always going to be fluid. Valheim is also a game about exploration, and we don't want to spoil that feeling of discovery for our players," Iron Gate said.

"That said, we do want to be more open with what we’re currently working on, even if it is just our artist Robin working on a piece of content that he's enjoying, but that might never make it into the game. Striking a balance between being transparent about what we are working on, while at the same time not spoiling it for those of you who want to discover it yourselves is tough, but we think it's important to be more informal and open as an Early Access game."

To that end, Iron Gate is holding an AMA tomorrow, June 11, at 5 am PT/8 am ET/2 pm CEST on the Valheim subreddit.