The unfinished Valheim biomes, Ashlands and Deep North have received some love and attention from a couple of modders who revised both the areas, introducing new mobs, places of interest, and more. That’s one way to expand the available content in the game while the next official update still hasn’t been given a release date.
Valheim’s well-deserved popularity came as a surprise to Iron Gate Studios, the developer of the indie hit title. While ultimately, drawing massive interest from the gaming community is great, the small team had to postpone any updates in order to focus on fixing the basic experience. But according to an informational post on Steam Community, Valheim‘s Hearth & Fire update hasn’t been abandoned as the studio continues to work on it. The devs even shared a few details on what to expect from the upcoming content, teasing a couple of new features and sharing the first look at updated mobs’ visuals. Unfortunately, there’s no ETA on the update’s date of arrival.
While the wait for Valheim’s official content updates continues, a couple of enterprising modders decided to take the initiative by completing the game’s unfinished biomes (as reported by Eurogamer). The first mod, courtesy of Alree on NexusMods, is called Forgotten Biomes implying that the developers left a few slices of content behind. The user’s work is focused on revamping Ashlands and Deep North by adding minable ores, landscape decorations, and various points of interest. After installing the mod, players can catch fire when simply walking across the flaming biome. A more peaceful approach has been applied to Deep North as the biome was treated to restored random structures that can naturally generate after being enabled in the mod’s settings. For everything to work properly, it is recommended to start a new game.
The second mod, Monsternomicon by belasias on NexusMods, adds a bit of hostile life to empty Ashlands. It introduces four new types of mobs that are exclusive to the burnt areas of the forgotten biome. Additionally, the location spawns a secret boss that is the fire-breathing Drake, which appears similar to Minecraft’s Ender Dragon. New creatures will probably attract lapsed players, let alone offer a new challenge for speedrunners. The latest record of beating Valheim’s five original bosses has been set by a dedicated adventurer who spent less than 90 minutes defeating the powerful enemies.
Although Valheim mods are dealing with the problem of insufficient content quite efficiently, there’re players who prefer not to modify the game at all sticking to what’s offered in vanilla experience. For them, the wait for any official updates is times more exhausting, which can negatively affect the title’s online numbers. The situation is putting a lot of pressure on developers, but thanks to inventive modders, at least a portion of Valheim’s audience can be satisfied by taking advantage of user-created content.
Valheim is available on PC.
