Valheim will be getting its Hearth & Home update this week on September 16th, a release confirmed at Gamescom last month. The Iron Gate devs released a new fireside chat video going into some of the work they've been doing on Hearth & Home and what you can expect.
Hearth & Home will bring new furniture, new building piece options, the new food system, weapons, and more. In the video, we see some new building pieces, including roof options, but the discussion quickly turns to the development process. How tinkering around with building options led to adding more enemies and how "just add more enemies" is a much more involved process than most imagine. Their overall philosophy is to add things that add some real purpose to the game outside just how it looks, but sometimes you just add cool things anyway.
Regarding the update, they note that this is important in its own way but the update is aimed at one side of the game, but getting this right will impact what they can do in subsequent updates. So if you're looking for combat and exploration changes, those will be coming but they need to get things like the food system right. Since food is important, making sure this part works will also let them add some new bosses and challenges without having to rebalance them all later if the enemies had come first. They make it clear that this update will lean very much on one part of the game but more will be coming with this update beyond that.
Some further details include that there are some new skills, some new weapons, and " a little bit of everything" that is similar to a "bunch of mini patches". While the new content will not change anyone’s existing buildings or explored areas, you’ll have to go to unexplored areas to start finding some of the new content. For more on the update, check out the video dev diary or visit the Valheim site.
