After a stretch of time developing the recently-released Mistlands, (and keeping everyone updated during the long process) the Iron Gate team is back and announcing Valheim’s next chapter. The Ashlands update will be Valheim’s next biome update. Addition to unveiling this, the team is looking towards the future in terms of features and showing off some early concept art.
The concept art includes “The Charred” , some skeletal soldiers, and Morgen, a creature that is also bearing some skeletal structure, a sinewy looking body with knife-like teeth, and a few skulls in what looks like its mouth. These definitely set the tone for the new biome, “our current design vision for the Ashlands is that it’s a land of the dead, as well as a place with quite a volcanic nature”. So what can we expect? Building out the new biome will take some time, but as with Mistlands, we will likely hear about progress and get some sneak peeks along the way.
Valheim will also release on Xbox this year, And the team is also hinting at and showing off some other stuff we can look forward to in the in-between updates until we eventually get Ashlands. They're in the process of adding new difficulty settings and something called Hildir’s Quest. Not only will this feature a new NPC, Hildir, but additional ways to customize your character, including re-customizing things like hair. One of those ways is new clothing designs for characters.
Ashlands pre-production is underway, but other parts of the team continue working on little updates like this that will be rolling out before the next major update.
The Valheim team is also going to improve upon and add to the accessibility features in the game. They’re looking for feedback on what types of features to include, and especially want to hear from those who might find new features like this helpful.
You can read the full update over at Valheim.
