Welcome back to This Week in Valheim, our weekly look at Iron Gate's Viking survival crafting game. We've got some cool mods, community creations, and even a contest from the developers to explore!
If you've been living under a rock, you might not know about Valheim. This is an open-world, survival crafting game set in a fictional Norse realm that's kind of like purgatory. Odin wants you to battle his most brutal enemies, and it's not an easy challenge. The game's community has cooked up some pretty neat stuff this week—let's check it out!
This Week in Valheim News
This week, we got our hands on a patch with some unfortunate nerfs. Furthermore, the developers have announced a new contest where you can win a copy of the game!
Valheim Update Makes Cheats More Difficult, Nerfs Campfires
The biggest piece of news this week is a nerf to Campfires. Why, you might ask? Well, some players were using them in combination with spawners for easy farming of enemies. Now, Campfires will take damage as they damage players or enemies, eventually getting destroyed—and putting a serious damper on AFK farming.
Easter Contest Gives Creative Players a Chance to Win a Steam Key
Iron Gate has announced an Easter-themed contest for the game with a pretty cool prize: five winners will score a Steam key for the game!
Here are the contest rules according to the tweet announcing the contest:
- Paint a Valheim-inspired egg (or [egg-shaped] object) to use as decoration.
- Post your submission on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram using the hashtag #ValheimContest
- Deadline is April 4th (12 p.m. CET) and five winners will be revealed April 7th
- (That's 7 a.m. ET, 4 a.m. PT)
- You can apply as many times as you want and even if you already own the game
This Week in Valheim Community Creations
The community is always cooking up cool stuff, whether it's fan art, awesome builds, or something else entirely. Here are our picks for some of the coolest stuff we saw this week!
Star Wars Homage Fends Off the Rebels
There have been all sorts of neat community creations, but some people just want to go for silly builds. That's exactly what /u/mctavern showed off on Reddit: he created an Imperial AT-AT walker from Star Wars. Sadly, it doesn't come with functional laser cannons.
Heimdall Watches Over You
Leading this week's community creations is a massive tribute to Heimdall in the Mountains biome. Heimdall (or Heimdallr) is a god charged with protecting the Bifröst, a magical rainbow bridge that connects the nine realms of Norse mythology; this character is represented in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Idris Elba in the Thor movies. Rather appropriately, he also happens to be watching over several Portals—check out the original Reddit submission by /u/Di-zzy and you can see the inside of the building, too!
Alex Chen's Fantastic Comic-Style Fan Art
We're throwing in some fan art this week, especially because there have been some pretty fantastic releases. Alex Chen is working on a series of Valheim prints, and the three he's already created (seen above) evoke a comic-book style in fantastic form. You can check out Alex's other work on Artstation, and you can buy any one of the above three prints on his Etsy shop for $17.00 or your regional equivalent.
Lisa Ayre's Beautiful Biomes
Closing out this week's community creations is some more fan art by Lisa Ayre of a different type—these portraits take Valheim's deadly biomes and make them look downright beautiful. Sadly, these creations don't look like they're available for purchase, but you can follow Lisa's other work by checking out her portfolio.
This Week in Valheim Mods
Modders got right to work as soon as this game was launched, and there's already a fair amount of custom content available (and much more on the way, I'm sure). Here are some of the cooler mods we've seen this week!
Valheim Modder Creates Northrend from World of Warcraft
Building on last week's cool creations with the Better Continents Mod, a modder has created the entire island of Northrend from World of Warcraft. What makes this particular build stand out is the use of unfinished biomes like the Mistlands. These biomes don't have any content of their own, but playable content was able to be placed in this biome through the use of existing assets.
Valheim Twitch Integration Lets Chat Screw You Over
This can be a pretty challenging game in its own right, but Valheim Twitch Integration makes it so your chat can interact with the game. Your chat can do benign things such as printing messages in the game... and not-so-benign things such as spawning enemy mobs. You can grab it on Nexus and Thunderstore.
Community-Made Anti-Cheat Combats Hackers
Believe it or not, there are some very sad people in the world who want to cheat at Valheim. I'm not talking about people using creative mode to build cool stuff, mind; rather, I'm talking about people abusing cheats in situations where you don't want them to such as on a PvP server. You can get this anti-cheat mod on Nexus and Thunderstore, but do keep in mind that it's still early in development.
Plant Anywhere – Farm in Any Biome
One of the little-known facts about the game is that you can't plant your crops wherever you'd like to—Flax and Barley can only be planted in the Plains biome. The game's fifth biome has a lot of dangers, and that means farming these crops can be a challenge for a new player. There's where the Plant Anywhere mod comes in; it lets you plant crops in any biome, regardless of whether or not it makes any sense. You can get it on Thunderstore.
FastTools Fixes Recent Nerfs
Our last highlighted mod makes a very simple change to the game. This week's patch slowed down the ability for players to build and plant crops quickly. The FastTools mod on Thunderstore reverses this change back to the game's original behavior.
Valheim Must-See Moments – March 20–27, 2021
Some things have to be seen to be believed—here are some of the crazier happenings from the Valheim community for the last week!
Operation Viking Trolldier was successful. I think this might be the first Market Garden in Valheim history pic.twitter.com/Ntmy4MSXlb
— SoundSmith (@SoundSmithTF2) March 22, 2021
He's Gonna Do the Superhero Landing!
A longstanding bug has allowed players to abuse the Harpoon and catapult themselves into the sky. Naturally, the Viking Space Program has evolved to include a weaponized payload—namely a massive Warhammer.
Halfway to a Carnival
We've seen our fair share of boat ramps and even a rollercoaster last week, but /u/_Snebb_ on Reddit took a different approach by getting a Longboat stuck under a bridge. The result? Pretty much the Viking equivalent of a swinging ship ride.
An Uninvited Guest
There are certain people I play with that have trouble with the concept of closing doors (you know who you are). Now, one Redditor shows why it's important: an uninvited guest has no problems just waltzing through your living room. Check out the amusing experience from /u/landon1397 on Reddit!
And that's it for This Week in Valheim! We'll see you next week — be sure to check out our growing list of Valheim guides!