Valheim

Valheim
Publication Information
Developer	Iron Gate AB
Publisher	Coffee Stain Publishing
Engine	Unity
Release Date	February 2, 2021 (Early Access) March 14, 2023 (Xbox Game Preview) September 9, 2026 (1.0)
Genre	Survival, Open-World, Sandbox
Modes	Single-Player, Online Co-Op, Dedicated Servers
Players	1 to 10
Platform	PC, macOS, Linux Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Game Information
Setting	Valheim, the tenth Norse world
Protagonist	A fallen Viking
Biomes	9
Bosses	8: 7 Forsaken and Kall Fimbulbringer

Valheim is an open-world survival game made by Iron Gate AB and published by Coffee Stain Publishing. Five people made it, and it sold five million copies in its first month.

You are a dead Viking. A Valkyrie carries you into Valheim, the tenth Norse world, and drops you in a ring of stones with nothing. Odin wants the exiled gods put down, and the Deep North adds a last boss, Kall Fimbulbringer. Nobody marks them on your map. What you get is a world generated from a seed, a raven who offers advice nobody asked for, and one rule that governs everything after: the further from the centre you walk, the more the world can kill you, and the better the metal in the ground.

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The Tenth World

Valheim is purgatory with trees. It is where Vikings who died without glory are sent, and it is overrun by the Forsaken, beings Odin banished here and never finished dealing with. Killing them is your job. The only instructions you get come from runestones and from Hugin, the raven who lands nearby whenever you are about to do something new.

Every world is procedurally generated from a seed, so no two players share a map and no guide can tell you where anything is. What a guide can tell you is how far out to look. The Meadows start at the centre. The Black Forest begins around 500 metres out, the Swamp and Mountain further, and the Plains further still. The Mistlands, Ashlands and Deep North sit out past the point where a small boat is a bad idea.

The lore is thin on purpose, but deep where it exists: runestones in a Burial Chamber, the name on a trophy, the layout of a Dvergr outpost nobody is left to defend.

Gameplay

Survival comes first, then building, then a boss. The loop is the same in every biome, and it never stops working: arrive with the wrong gear, work out what the biome is made of, build a base at its edge, and come back properly equipped.

• Building obeys physics. Every beam carries load, colour-coded from blue to red, and a hall built without thought falls down. Wood rots in the rain unless it is under a roof.
• Food is your health bar. You have three food slots, and what you put in them sets your maximum health and stamina outright. Cooking is not a side activity; it is your build.
• Stamina governs every fight. Attacks, blocks, dodges and sprints all spend it, and running out mid-swing against a Troll is how most deaths happen.
• Parrying beats blocking. A well-timed block staggers the attacker and doubles your damage on the follow-up. Every weapon has a parry value, and your shield decides how forgiving the timing is.
• Death costs skill, not gear. You drop everything where you fell and lose a slice of every skill. The gear waits for you, but the skill has to be earned back.
• Ten players can share one world. Play alone, host for friends, or run a dedicated server; enemies scale with how many of you there are.

Progression

You have no experience bar and no character level. Instead you progress by unlocking metal, and each metal is gated by a biome:

You summon each Forsaken deliberately by hanging the right offering at their altar. Each one drops a Forsaken power you can slot and swap: Eikthyr for stamina while running, Bonemass for resistance to physical damage, Moder for a following wind at sea. Killing one also unlocks the next tier of crafting, which is the real reward.

Skills level up through use, not choice. Swing an axe and Axes goes up; run and Run goes up. You never pick anything at a level-up screen, and death takes a percentage off all of it.

Biomes

Almost every biome is the domain of one of the Forsaken, and almost every one asks for a piece of equipment you cannot make until you have been there once.

Building

Building is half the game, and it is a structural engineering problem. Every piece has a weight and a support value, and the game shows you the load as colour: blue is sound, red is about to collapse. Stone will not sit on wood, and Iron beams carry further than either. A roof stops rot. A fire and a bed give comfort, and comfort sets the length of your Rested buff, which in turn sets how fast stamina and health come back.

Bases also have to defend themselves. A Workbench suppresses enemy spawns in its radius, and raids arrive on a timer once you have killed the right boss, so an earthwork ditch is more than decoration.

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