Valheim made a huge wave in gaming on its release, reaching millions of players at record speed for an early access title. Fast forward a few months, and Valheim now has its biggest update yet: Hearth & Home.

Here’s everything you need to know about Valheim Hearth & Home, including all of the new features in its patch notes.

Hearth & Home Update Now Live

The Valheim Hearth & Home update went live on Thursday, September 17th. It’s a free content update, so you won’t have to pay extra to enjoy its long list of new features and improvements.

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Patch Notes

The Valheim team have really outdone themselves with the Hearth & Home update, adding a ton of new depth to the game that was already a long, perilous adventure to start with.

Whether you beat Valheim originally or quit before you could - this update is certainly worth coming back to try, and the team even recommends entirely restarting your game to really give the new update experience its due.

Here’s all of the new changes and improvements in the official Valheim Hearth & Home patch notes.

General improvements

• Weapons rebalanced (All weapons have been rebalanced to be more viable as main weapon and also have more unique playstyles)
• Blocking system overhauled (Current maximum hp now greatly affects your ability to block attacks, stagger bar gui added)
• Naming tamed creatures
• Gamepad sensitivity settings
• Auto-pickup toggle button added
• Graphics settings (Active point lights & Active point light shadows)
• Tamed creatures affected by friendly fire setting (i.e you can’t hurt a tamed creature unless you enable friendly fire or use the new Butcher knife item)
• Various other improvements and bugfixes

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Food

• Total food rebalance (Most food items now give mainly stamina or mainly health to make food choices more interesting)
• Food GUI overhauled to work better with the rebalanced food
• Over 10 new things to eat (Actually 12)

World

• Tamed Lox now have a purpose
• Slimy locations & creatures added to plains
• New plantable seeds: Birch, Oak & Onions

Items

• New weapons: Crystal battleaxe, Silver knife
• New shields: Bone tower shield, Iron buckler
• Butcher knife (Special weapon for butchering tamed animals)
• Thunder stone (Sold by trader)
• Lox accessory

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Building

• New Darkwood building pieces like shingle roofs, beams, decorations and more
• New types of furniture, including but not limited to a mighty stone throne and a steamy viking hot tub
• Crystal walls
• New types of stacks to show off your treasure and resources
• Cauldron improvements: Spice rack, Butcher’s table, Pots and pans
• Cartography table (For sharing map-data with other players)
• Oven added (For baking bread and pie)
• Obliterator added (Items be gone)
• Iron cooking station (Required to cook some types of meat)

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