When Valheim was released in early 2021, no one could’ve foreseen how successful it would become. A month after launch, it had sold over five million copies and was one of the most-played games on Steam. This had many people wondering whether a Valheim 2 release date would be announced. It’s not unusual for successful games like this to get a sequel, especially when it receives as much critical and commercial success as Valheim did.
The game is simple to pick up but it can be difficult to master. It’s a sandbox survival game that sees you thrown into a fantasy Viking setting, where you fight monsters and try to build a home there. There are biomes that each offer different resources, as well as various monsters that drop important loot.
For more Valheim content, check out our article about the upcoming Mistlands update that is due to release soon. We have guides on the best gear and items so you can prepare for the Mistlands, as well as a guide on how to find the new biome.
Valheim 2 news
Currently, there is no news surrounding a Valheim 2 release date. The development team is still very much involved in developing new content for Valheim. This includes the long-awaited Mistlands update that should be dropping soon.
It is unlikely that the developers will release a sequel after finishing development on the game. They have been quite clear that once Valheim is finished, then they will stop working on it. Until then, fans will be able to enjoy all of the official content that they have lined up for them.
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+ 3Difficulty options and single-player balancing
Valheim is a notoriously difficult and unforgiving game. It is harsh and the deaths can be particularly hard to recover from, especially if you can’t retrieve your items. While many fans adore this aspect of the game, it does limit the kind of audience that will have any fun with it.
While the argument surrounding ‘easy modes’ in games will likely wage on for many more years, it's undeniable that making it accessible to more people is always a positive thing. This is especially important when you consider that the game is built for co-op play, but many people play it in single-player. This makes an already tough game even more difficult to play.
Valheim 2 would benefit greatly from having some options to alter the gameplay in this regard. Having a dedicated single-player mode with altered stats would be very beneficial to players. Currently, you can’t even pause the game in single-player. This makes sense on a multiplayer server, but not when you’re the only player in that world. It would also be nice to see a split-screen option to play co-op locally!
Treehouses
While constructing treehouses is technically possible in Valheim at the moment, it’s very fiddly as the structures in the game require a certain level of reinforcement. This system makes sure that you build in a somewhat reasonable manner. However, this does limit the kind of bases that you can make in Valheim.
Now that these parameters have been set, it would be great to see Valheim 2 expand upon them. Rather than restricting players from making treehouses, make it a specific blueprint that requires a lot of materials. It could include the supports into the foundation of the treehouse, so that players just need to figure out how they want to build it from there.
click to enlarge + 3Automation of early game resources
A large part of the magic of survival games is the journey from starting with nothing, to eventually having a sustainable base that you can rely on to keep you alive. This is often through farming mechanics, such as seeds and animals, which give you a steady supply of food.
However, even in the late game, you still have to manually plant every single seed into the ground. It can take an entire in-game day just to replant a field of crops. It would be a huge quality-of-life improvement to have some way to automate a lot of the early game grind later on. This could be something like a seed totem, that automatically plants and harvests seeds within a small grid area.
An upgrade to smelters could make it so that it automatically feeds it coal without the need to manually do it. Fishing traps would supply a small amount of fish, and a tameable beaver could bring in a steady amount of wood.
All of these would keep the momentum of the mid-to-late game going in Valheim 2, without having to stop to catch up on these menial tasks. If it’s too difficult to implement a lot of different systems like this, then make one single tameable like a Greydwarf or a fairy responsible for running the base in these ways.
click to enlarge + 3A boat large enough to make a small base on
One of the biggest parts of Valheim is the base-building aspect. A lot of the game revolves around you having an established base with upgraded workbenches so that you can make a lot of the end game items. This can become difficult though, especially with the addition of new biomes and resources that can be cumbersome to get back to base. All players will remember the first time they thought they could portal ore back to their base.
One of the most requested features for Valheim 2 is the ability to make a mobile base. This would mean that players would be able to continuously explore their world while having all of their homely tools at their disposal while they do so. With a little bit of balancing, the risk of being attacked by sea monsters could offset the reward of being able to take your base with you wherever you go.
Dedicated caves for building
Due to the way that Valheim's terrain is generated, it is currently impossible to alter the mesh in a way to allow for underground building. Anything similar to this concept would require a complete engine overhaul. The developers have been very firm that this will never happen.
However, this is only approaching the problem from one direction. Fans have been begging for a way to build underground caves since the release of the game. If terraforming the world to that degree isn’t plausible, then simply make it so the players don’t have to try.
This could be achieved by spawning in one or two dedicated cave-like structures in the world that can be used to build inside of. This could be achieved by creating an opening in the side of a mountain and creating a wide, open cavern that players can move into. This would remove the need to make the terrain alterable, as the mesh can remain static and stable around the cave. Of course, the requirements for this to happen would be very strict, so it would be understandable if there were only a few generated per world.
That's it for our look at Valheim 2! While the wait goes on for a sequel, feel free to read up on the best free strategy games you can play right now.