Hearth and Home Update

0:05 Hearth & Home was the first major content update for Valheim, released on Sep 16, 2021 as patch 0.202.14, seven and a half months after the game entered early access. As the name promised, it concentrated on cooking and building: a food system in which each meal favors either health or stamina, twelve new dishes and the stations to cook them, a large set of Darkwood building pieces and furniture, and an overhaul of blocking and weapon balance. It also hid two surprises, rideable Lox and tar pits in the Plains (Iron Gate, "Update: Hearth & Home arrives!").

0:00 Cinematic trailer

Quick facts

Background

Hearth & Home headed the four-update roadmap that Iron Gate Studio published for 2021, ahead of Cult of the Wolf, Ships & the Sea and Mistlands, and it was the only one to arrive that year. On Jun 10, 2021 the studio conceded that it could not deliver four updates: the flood of players after launch had exposed a mass of urgent bugs, and it had only been able to put its full resources on Hearth & Home in May. The roadmap was taken down, the update was set for the third quarter, and Mistlands was named as the one to follow (Iron Gate, Jun 10, 2021). The wider story is on Development History.

The same post previewed the contents: Darkwood roofs and window hatches, a spice rack, butcher's table and pots for the cauldron, plantable onions, and a food system that would make players choose between health and stamina. From August Iron Gate published a series of one-minute spotlight videos on the new food, ingredients, weapons and blocking, and announced that its team of five would grow to eight, adding an animator, a QA manager and the programmer Jonathan Smårs (Iron Gate, Aug 25, 2021). Only a small group outside the studio played the update before release; public tests began with the next one (Iron Gate, Mar 1, 2022).

Announcement

0:12 The release date was announced on Aug 25, 2021 with a cinematic trailer shown at Gamescom Opening Night Live and animated by the Swedish studio Brikk. After a short verse about a hearth and home that will always be waiting, it cuts from fights with a dragon and other monsters to a mountain climb and a stormy sea crossing, and ends with three Vikings feasting around the fire in a cabin in the woods. The same trio returned in Brikk's animated trailer for the Mistlands Update fifteen months later (Iron Gate, Dec 6, 2022).

Food, blocking and weapons

14:27 The central change was to Food and Cooking. Before the update most meals raised both health and stamina, so three good dishes filled both bars; afterwards most foods gave mainly one or the other, and the food display was redrawn to match. The patch added twelve new things to eat, among them Eyescream, the Shocklate smoothie, wolf skewers and onion soup. Iron Gate explained the thinking in a fireside chat published three days before release.

16:28 Combat changed with it. Blocking was overhauled so that a character's maximum health, and so the food eaten, largely decides how well a shield absorbs a blow, and a stagger bar appeared on screen; even a strong shield now let a sliver of damage through. The design intent was that a tanky, health-fed Viking would block far better than a stamina-fed archer (Iron Gate, Jun 10, 2021).

14:26 Every weapon was rebalanced so that each could serve as a main weapon with a more distinct style, and tooltips gained stamina, block, parry and knockback figures; bows lost their near-instant draw at high skill. New arms were the Crystal battleaxe, Silver knife, Bone tower shield and Iron buckler, plus a Butcher knife made for slaughtering tamed animals, which friendly-fire settings otherwise now protect (Weapons and Shields).

Building and cooking

4:15 For builders the update added Darkwood pieces, including shingle roofs in two pitches, beams, doors, window shutters and carved ornaments such as a wolf head and a raven; crystal walls that serve as windows; stacks for showing off wood, coins and treasure; and furniture from a stone throne to a wood-fired hot tub. Darkwood needs tar, which only the new tar pits supply (Building and Structural Integrity; Furniture and Decoration).

0:44 The kitchen grew as well. The old spit now takes only two pieces of meat, while a new Iron cooking station holds five and is needed for tougher meats such as Lox and serpent; the cauldron gained three upgrades, the Spice rack, Butcher's table and Pots and pans; and a stone Oven bakes the new bread and pies (Crafting Stations and Upgrades).

2:27 Two long-requested conveniences arrived as buildable pieces. The Cartography table merges the explored map of everyone who reads it, and the Obliterator, built with a Thunder stone bought from Haldor, calls down lightning on whatever is put inside it and destroys it.

Lox riding and tar pits

0:37 Iron Gate kept part of the update secret. Tamed creatures could now be named, and tamed Lox were given a use: with a saddle crafted from black metal a Lox can be ridden, the first mount in the game and the start of the Riding skill (Carts, Mounts and Vehicles; Farming and Taming). Riding at first was rough: the Lox is steered with the camera, keeps walking until told to stop, charges enemies on its own and flattens trees in its way, but could not be made to attack while ridden.

11:17 The second surprise, trailed only as "something dark and mysterious that seems to spread across the plains", was the tar pit: a sticky pool in the Plains guarded by black Growths, whose floating globs of tar are awkward to pull free. Like other new locations, tar pits generate only in parts of a world not yet explored. The update also let players plant birch, oak and onion seeds (Plains Creatures; Materials and Resources).

Reception

On release day Valheim reached 66,264 concurrent Steam players, its highest figure since early May, and climbed back to tenth place on Steam (PCGamesN). SteamCharts records a September 2021 peak of 109,793, against 29,764 in August (SteamCharts).

The food rework was the most disputed change. Many players, solo players above all, found that a health diet left them short of stamina for running, archery and melee, while a stamina diet crippled their blocking; PC Gamer pointed to serpent stew, which had given 80 health and 80 stamina and now gave almost no stamina (PC Gamer, Sep 17, 2021). Iron Gate answered the next day with patch 0.202.19, which added stamina to health foods (serpent stew's rose to 26) and health to stamina foods, lowered the stamina cost of bows, weakened Fulings slightly and fixed tar pits not spawning on dedicated servers (Iron Gate, Sep 17, 2021). Within a week a mod restoring the old food values was circulating (PC Gamer, Sep 22, 2021).

25:48 The building and cooking additions were welcomed with little argument; an early walkthrough judged the update a major change to the game, with the new pieces its main attraction. In October Iron Gate described Hearth & Home as a big milestone and said the Lox-riding surprise had been especially fun to watch players discover. Its next projects, it said, would lean towards adventure and exploration rather than building: the Mistlands, and caves for the Mountain that became the Frost Caves Update (Iron Gate, Oct 22, 2021).

Frequently asked questions

When did Hearth & Home come out? On Sep 16, 2021, as patch 0.202.14, seven and a half months after Valheim entered early access.

What did Hearth & Home change about food? Before the update most meals raised both health and stamina; afterwards most gave mainly one or the other, so three dishes could no longer fill both bars. Twelve new foods arrived with it, among them Eyescream, the Shocklate smoothie, wolf skewers and onion soup.

Why was the food rework controversial? Players found that a health diet left them short of stamina for running, archery and melee, while a stamina diet crippled their blocking. PC Gamer pointed to serpent stew, which had given 80 health and 80 stamina and now gave almost no stamina. Iron Gate answered the next day with patch 0.202.19, and within a week a mod restoring the old values was circulating.

What did Hearth & Home add for builders? Darkwood pieces, including shingle roofs in two pitches, beams, doors, window shutters and carved ornaments; crystal walls; display stacks for wood, coins and treasure; furniture from a stone throne to a wood-fired hot tub; and the Cartography table and Obliterator.

What was the secret content in Hearth & Home? Two things Iron Gate held back: tamed Lox could be ridden with a black-metal saddle, the game's first mount and the start of the Riding skill, and tar pits appeared in the Plains, guarded by black Growths and the only source of the tar that Darkwood needs.

Sources

• Update: Hearth & Home arrives!, Iron Gate Studio (Steam news), Sep 16, 2021
• Patch 0.202.19, Iron Gate Studio (Steam news), Sep 17, 2021
• Roadmap changes, Hearth & Home content, & reddit AMA, Iron Gate Studio (Steam news), Jun 10, 2021
• Monthly developer update: Hearth & Home coming on September 16th!, Iron Gate Studio (Steam news), Aug 25, 2021
• Development Blog October: Moving Forwards After Hearth & Home, Iron Gate Studio (Steam news), Oct 22, 2021
• The frozen caves have thawed…, Iron Gate Studio (Steam news), Mar 1, 2022
• Patch 0.212.7 – Mistlands!, Iron Gate Studio (Steam news), Dec 6, 2022
• Valheim reaches its biggest player count in five months after Hearth and Home, PCGamesN, Sep 16, 2021
• Valheim's food rebalance has already been rebalanced, PC Gamer, Sep 17, 2021
• This Valheim mod reverts all the changes Hearth and Home made to food, PC Gamer, Sep 22, 2021
• Valheim Steam charts, SteamCharts
• Version history, Valheim Wiki (weirdgloop)
• Valheim: Hearth & Home Gamescom 2021 Cinematic Trailer, Iron Gate and Brikk, YouTube, Aug 25, 2021
• Valheim Hearth & Home – Out now!, Iron Gate, YouTube, Sep 16, 2021
• Valheim Hearth & Home: Fireside Chat, Iron Gate, YouTube, Sep 13, 2021
• Everything you need to know about Valheim: Hearth and Home, Jacko, YouTube, Sep 17, 2021