Valheim

[Dark Drakan]

I saw this game crop up randomly when searching and thought it looked interesting from the trailer. I saw the terms 'Early Access' and 'Survival' and red flags popped up with how many of them there are (most are rubbish). The GFX are nothing to write home about and are pretty basic but the systems already in place on its 4th day in Early Access are quite impressive.

However the Steam reviews currently sit at 96% Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam and thought it might be worth a look.

Seems like a cross between:

• Fable with its combat system
• Dark Souls with its respawn at camp when you die mechanic
• Skyrim with skills leveling up the more you use them
• Ark/Conan with the building mechanics and boss fights
• Monster Hunter/The Witcher type of enemies
• Has 2 - 10 PvE Co-op

ABOUT THE GAME​

A battle-slain warrior, the Valkyries have ferried your soul to Valheim, the tenth Norse world. Besieged by creatures of chaos and ancient enemies of the gods, you are the newest custodian of the primordial purgatory, tasked with slaying Odin’s ancient rivals and bringing order to Valheim.

Your trials begin at the disarmingly peaceful centre of Valheim, but the gods reward the brave and glory awaits. Venture forth through imposing forests and snow-capped mountains, explore and harvest more valuable materials to craft deadlier weapons, sturdier armor, viking strongholds and outposts. Build a mighty longship and sail the great oceans in search of exotic lands … but be wary of sailing too far...​

Key features:

• Huge procedurally-generated world - explore and inhabit mystical lands, from mysterious forests to imposing snow-topped mountain ranges and stunning meadows, complete with their own creatures of legend to battle and wildlife to hunt.
• Co-op PvE (2-10 players) - - Whether you want to brave the lands alone or venture with trusted allies, Valheim supports independent, player-hosted servers and unlimited world creation. We recommend playing co-op with 3-5 players.
• Punishing dodge & block based combat system with a wide range of weapons
• Build & sail ships - from flimsy rafts to imposing warships, build legendary vessels to conquer the seas and discover new lands.
• Summon and defeat vengeful primordial bosses of myth and legend, and collect trophies to progress and craft new powerful items
• Flexible house and base building system - raise mead halls, farms, settlements outposts, castles and more.
• Intuitive item crafting - forge the finest weapons and armour, and craft food and mead.
• Dedicated server- for players who want to run a persistent server. If you prefer not to run a server on your PC, consider renting a server at G-Portal.

VALHEIM ON STEAM​

 

[Dark Drakan]

Valheim hits 1 Million Sales

Valheim is currently the Number 1 Best Selling Game on Steam and currently still sits at a hugely impressive 96% Overwhelmingly Positive rating. It has been receiving rave reviews from the media and gamers alike and is also becoming a massive hit on Twitch too with over 127,000 peak viewers.​

 

[Steve]

Just bought a copy! Looking forward to getting some games in, DD!

 

[Dark Drakan]

Just bought a copy! Looking forward to getting some games in, DD!

Been looking for another good co-op game and it has some good potential for sure.

Managed to get about an hour in earlier to try and test out a few systems before we start properly and it’s quite addictive once you start unlocking things and advancing.

Starts out in the usual unremarkable survival game manner and the overly familiar cycle of chopping trees and gathering resources but it does quickly move forward. The more items you find the more crafting recipes you unlock and the more tools/weapons and armour you can create and venture further and further into the dangerous areas to unlock even more things.

Ventured a little too far and wandered into the Black Forest biome before I was ready and got battered by some enemies in there and had to trek back for my loot.

Found myself building a little house with bed to respawn and fire to cook for better health buffs and found myself playing with the building tools for that for a while. The building system is pretty good once you get the hang of it and with some more tweaks it could be fantastic.

 

[Quistrix]

Interesting...

 

[Dark Drakan]

Interesting...

Its actually really good and the gameplay loop becomes pretty addictive. The more you play the more crafting recipes you unlock, the more you upgrade & build the further you can explore and it’s really easy to jump in and out of and actually feel like you have made some progress each session. 1 - 10 player co-op sessions too and every player can bring their characters into anyone else’s world at will and take all character progress & found items back to their own games etc.

@Steve shared this review with me and it covers most aspects well.

 

[Dark Drakan]

The developers announced yesterday that the game has now sold 2 million copies in 13 days and they have reached a new peak concurrent player milestone on Steam of 360,000.

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[TRA Rotid]

I have a dedicated Valheim server running if anyone wants to join. I'm working to smooth out some bumps at the moment (like autoupdate) since I'm fairly new to this. I can pm you info you want (we have one and a half active players).

 

[Dark Drakan]

Only 3 weeks into their Early Access Launch and now they have reached 3 million sales.

Statement by Irongate

Greetings!

This February has been truly wild! Less than three weeks into Early Access, we’ve already hit another milestone. Valheim has now been purchased by over three million brave Vikings looking to survive the 10th world of the Yggdrasil - or die trying - probably crushed by a falling tree.

To keep up with the old norse references, this is now equivalent to 74,319 longhouses stuffed with Vikings singing songs and celebrating victory with some great tasting mead, so.. SKÅL!

We’re also continuing to break records! Here’s what we’ve achieved together in the last week:​

• Over 60,000 ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ reviews​
• Officially entered the Steam’s Top 250 best reviewed games of all time (we’re 78th and climbing!)​
• Currently 7th most streamed game on twitch, surpassing CS:GO, Dota 2, Minecraft and Rust​
• Over 20 million hours of gameplay already watched - now help us find a Viking reference for this one!​

What is even more incredible is all the great content you have already been sending our way. We’ve seen amazing art, read great stories and heard awesome music - all inspired by Valheim, all in the space of 17 days.

The Iron Gate team wanted to share one more big thank you to everyone who has already joined us on this exciting journey of mythological proportions.

Speak to you soon <3

Praise Odin!

The Iron Gate Team​

 

[Dark Drakan]

Valheim tops 500,000 simultaneous players, beating four more records in the process and sells 4 million units.​

On Sunday 21st Feb, the game reached 500,000 simultaneous players, according to SteamDB, breaking four other all-time Steam player count records. The game reached a concurrent player count of 502,387.

They also announced today that they have sold 4 million copies of the game in 3 weeks.

IRON GATE STATEMENT

Vikings!

When Valheim first hit Steam Early Access just three weeks ago, we hoped that all the hard work our small team put into the game these past three years would get the attention it deserved.

Little did we know just how much Valheim would resonate with all four million of you.

That’s right! Three weeks into Early Access, and we’ve hit another milestone, four million brave souls embarking on the most dangerous feat in over a thousand years of Viking history - trying to make Odin proud.​

Some of the latest:

• This past weekend, we hit 500,000 concurrent players - this puts Valheim in the top 5 most played games in the history of Steam.
• Valheim has already been played for a combined total of 10,000 years! That’s 3,649,980 more days than the 20 days it has been on Steam Early Access.
• Still climbing the Steam’s Top 250 best reviewed games of all time, now sitting in 57th place!
• 81,000+ Overwhelmingly Positive reviews

For the fourth (and surely not final) time - thank you!!! We couldn’t have wished for a more engaged, passionate and supportive community, and all of your amazing creations and ideas are keeping us motivated to deliver the Valheim you all deserve.

Praise Odin!

The Iron Gate Team​

 

[Dark Drakan]

Valheim hits 5 million sales milestone

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[Quistrix]

I still need to properly play this. I think by the time I do the hype will have died. ;_;

 

[Dark Drakan]

I still need to properly play this. I think by the time I do the hype will have died. ;_;

Still around 2 years until its official full release (after early access) and its only 50% content complete and 75% feature complete at the moment so plenty more things to come (plus with the money from sales their ambitions have skyrocketed).

Put just over 20 hours into it myself so far and really enjoying it still and cant wait to get back into it (only done 1 boss so far).

They are working on bug fixes and have released quite a few patches already and another is imminent as well as the first content update soon (4 big content updates planned this year) so hype wont die down for a while yet.

Only 5 developers (currently hiring) so the updates will take a little while to get out but the main developer has been very vocal on social media about where they are at and keeping fans updated.

​

 

[Dark Drakan]

Teaser of upcoming update

No actual information yet but that hasnt stopped IronGate from not only revealing they passed 6 Million units sold on 19th March but the Hearth and Home update should be coming soon.

Development news

Vikings! A little over six weeks has passed since the release of Valheim, and a lot has happened since. We have sold 6 million units and our community is steadily growing bigger and stronger, which is absolutely fantastic!

A lot of things are happening within Iron Gate too. We are still working from home, and although we miss our time together at the office, we’re not letting that slow us down! We are very honored to have gotten the opportunity to take part in several interviews, from podcasts and gaming newslets to Swedish television! It has been a hectic time, but worry not! We are of course still working on the game.

Our programmer has since launch worked hard (and still is) on high priority bugs and issues that have been reported by you players, for example networking issues and balance tweaks to our most evil bug, the Deathsquito! If you have any bugs to report, please do so here: https://valheimbugs.featureupvote.com/. There you can see what bugs we have fixed, and are working on!

(We are currently waiting for a Steam update from Valve before we push our next patch, thank you so much for your patience!)

A lot of you have reached out and asked about the road map. How’s “Hearth and Home” coming along? Much of our focus has been on play testing and bug fixing, but as things are calming down since launch, we can spend more time working on our first big update! Our lead artist even graciously provided a sneak peek:

We have a lot of exciting things planned for this update, and we have of course listened to your feedback and suggestions, and can barely wait until we can show you more.

Here is a picture of the team from our last Hearth and Home-meeting, going strong from our home offices. Have a fantastic weekend, and happy Ostara!

 

[Quistrix]

A Valheim Player Is Rebuilding Fable 2's Massive Fairfax Castle

 

[Dark Drakan]

A Valheim Player Is Rebuilding Fable 2's Massive Fairfax Castle

Saw that the other day, some of the building projects in it are insane. Don’t know how some people can think them up because the larger projects take a hell of a lot of work and designing.

They are working on performance too at the moment because performance drops with huge structures like that.

 

[Dark Drakan]

Being a small team of 5 people (recently been hiring extra staff) it seems that the planned update for Q2 2021 has been pushed back to Q3 2021 instead. See the link for more detailed information...

Roadmap changes, Hearth & Home content, & reddit AMA

Hi Everyone,

We want to start by thanking you all for the patience and kindness you’ve shown us since we launched in February. We launched into Early Access because we want to build the game with you, but never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined how many of you want to join us on this journey!

As we’re sure lots of you suspected, we won’t be able to deliver four updates this year. Instead, we’re now planning to launch Hearth & Home in Q3 2021, and we’re temporarily taking down the roadmap whilst we make some changes. We are sorry it’s taken us so long to update you.

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. 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.

We hope that one of the reasons Valheim has resonated with so many of you is down to attention to detail. 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...

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. 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.​

 

[Dark Drakan]

The Future of Valheim - Big and Small Updates and Developers answers to the Reddit AMA.

 

[Dark Drakan]

Valheim passes 10 million units sold

Development team Iron Gate Studio have announced that their Viking survival game Valheim has now surpassed 10m sales just over one year since its Steam Early Access release. They also revealed that it had an all-time player peak of 502,000 players and almost 300,000 'Overwhelmingly Positive' reviews and development of the upcoming Mistlands biome is ongoing.

Personally I am eagerly awaiting the new biome as I have been wanting to get back into the game for a while after playing a lot of it at launch.​

 

[Dark Drakan]

Valheim is coming to PC Game Pass in 2022​

Valheim was a certified smash hit when it launched into early access in 2021 and became one of the years biggest game launches. During the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase Phil Spencer announced that Valheim is one of the many games coming to the PC Game Pass service in 2022.

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