Valheim has finally released its first major patch, Hearth & Home, and with it comes a bevy of improvements. The update introduces new mechanics, furniture, building pieces, food, weapons, optimizations, and more.
Originally delayed from the first half of this year until Fall 2021, Hearth & Home focuses more on cooking and building than anything else that comes with the patch, which makes sense considering its name. It's not like the Iron Gate doesn't have all the time in the world given the success of Valheim, so it's nice to see that they took their time on this in order for it to come out right.
What's in Valheim's Hearth & Home patch?
General improvements include weapon rebalancing, with all weapons being rebalanced to be more viable and so that there's more unique playstyles. The blocking system has also been overhauled, with maximum hp now greatly effecting your character's ability to block attacks. To facilitate this, a stagger bar gui has also been added.
There's also an auto-pickup toggle added, which is a lot cooler in my opinion, and graphics settings for Active point lights & Active point light shadows, which is good. The more graphics settings in gams the better.
Food has also been rebalanced, with food items now mostly giving stamina or mainly health to make food choices more interesting for the players. There are 12 new things to eat as well, and with these food changes the food GUI has been overhauled to work better with these new additions.
If you're the type of person to give your Pokemon nicknames, you can now do that in Valheim as well, as you can nickname tamed animals, which is cool I guess. They can also be affected by the friendly fire setting if you have it enabled. As you might expect from this, Tamed Lox now have a purpose, which you'll find more about in-game.
Crystal battleaxe and Silver knife are the two new weapons in this patch, and the two new shields are the Bone tower shield and Iron buckler. You can use a Butcher knife to butcher tamed animals, and buy Thunder stones from traders. There's also a Lox accessory you can get.
There are new Darkwood building pieces such as shingle roofs, beams, decorations, and more. New types of furniture include a stone throne and a Viking hot tub, which is interesting. There are also crystal walls and new types of stacks to show off your treasure and other resources. For your cauldron, there are various improvements like the addition of a spice rack, butcher's table, and pots and pans.
There's also a cartography table for sharing map-data with players, an oven added for baking bread and pie, and obliterator added (which is just as it sounds, it obliterates items), and an iron cooking station that is required to cook some types of meat.
Starting a new run in Valheim? Check out the six essential buildings everyone should have in order to get the most out of your game!
