Greetings vikings!

Today marks the five year anniversary since Valheim was first released into Early Access – and what an incredible five years it’s been!

We want to thank everyone who has been a part of our journey and our community since then, whether you started playing on day one or have just been carried by the valkyrie for the first time. We greatly appreciate every single one of you, and we’re so glad to have you walk this path with us.

For this anniversary you will find a patch live right now for everyone, with some new celebratory items and emotes, along with some quality of life fixes!

If you want to keep the celebration going throughout the week, you can tune in to Twitch on Thursday, where there will be a livestreamed concert by the Munich Radio Orchestra! They will be playing music from a bunch of video games, including Valheim.

As you all know, we’re working on Deep North, which will be the final biome update that brings the game into 1.0. While we can’t give an update on that today, we can share that 2026 is going to be a great year for Valheim.

Once again, thank you so much for being with us for five whole years!

Skål!!
/The Iron Gate team

Abbreviated Patch Notes:

* A celebratory hat!
* Early Axes
* Frosted Sweetbread
* Added a radial menu for emotes
* New emotes
* New hairstyles
* 2 new buildable garlands
* Engine Upgrade
* Multiple bug fixes and improvements

Detailed Patch Notes:

New Content:
* New Emote: Vibe
* New Emote: LoveYou
* New Buildpiece: Flower Garland
* New Buildpiece: Fey Lights
* New Consumable: Frosted Sweetbread
* New Weapon: Early Axes
* New Hat: Celebratory Cap
* 2 New Materials: Mysterious Axe Head, Curious Axe Head
* 3 New Hairstyles (Champion, Chronicler, Sunbringer)
* Added radial menu for emotes

Fixes & Improvements:
* Tweaks to multiple hairstyles (Castellan, Painter Curls, Pulled Back Curls, Tidy Curls)
* Tweaks to berserker armour
* Carapace Buckler now provides 5 adrenaline instead of 10 on perfect block, just like other shields
* Updated Game Engine to Unity 6000.0.61f1
* Added localization string for tombstone container

Reworked graphics settings:
* Replaced “Render scale” percentage slider with “3D resolution limit” dropdown with fixed resolutions – improves use case as performance target
* Added new “Upscaling method” setting with new “Pixelated” option
* Added new “Low” SSAO quality option, which achieves a similar look to the existing SSAO quality (now named “High”) with a significantly lower performance impact
* The frame rate limiter can now be used together with v-sync (chooses the lowest submultiple of the monitor refresh rate that is greater than or equal to the selected value)
* The frame rate limiter setting is now applied during the splash/loading screen
* The resolution dropdown setting now sorts resolutions from highest to lowest, instead of the other way around

Optimizations:
* Change engine settings to improve performance in areas with many instances
* Massively reduced CPU usage of armor stands
* Skip texture copy for image effects (shield dome and heat distortion) when those effects aren’t being used, which should reduce GPU overhead in most areas
* Grass vegetation is no longer included in environment reflections, improving performance
* Ensure one-shot sound effects are started the same frame they’re created, reducing their latency by up to one frame
* Reduced memory usage of minimap
* Only load graphics presets for the current platform, rather than all platforms, reducing memory usage
* Removed a duplicated matchmaking manager that wasted performance in the start menu

Bug fixes:
* Fixed “Generating” progress bar not always being shown during world generation
* Fixed server list sometimes failing to save when quitting from the start menu
* Fixed crash that could occur in multiplayer when a T.W.I.G. throws a rock at a player who is at the edge of a shield dome
* Fixed crash that happened when hovering the cursor over a bee hive without being the network owner of that bee hive
* Fixed audio stutter that occurred when a lot of sounds were playing simultaneously
* Fixed Yggdrasil not being visible in environment reflections

Mac App Store:
* Improved error message shown when trying to play online without being logged in to Game Center

Steam:
* Player list now successfully shows profile pictures of non-friends too

Xbox:
* All settings are now stored per-user and synchronized to the cloud, rather than being shared between all users on the console
* UI is now rendered at native resolution (up to 4K) on Xbox Series S|X and Xbox One X
* Improved graphics:
* Xbox One and Xbox One S: Added SSAO and increased number of point lights
* Xbox One X: Increased number of point lights
* Xbox Series S: Increased number of point lights and enabled point light shadows
* Xbox Series X: Increased number of point lights, enabled point light shadows and adjusted resolutions
* Reduce power draw even more when the game is running in the background

Windows, Linux, MacOS:
* Reworked graphics presets and unified them across the three platforms
* Fixed automatic render scale sometimes being set incorrectly in windowed mode

Steam Deck:
* Improved graphics presets:
* Performance mode now reaches 60 fps
* Optimized preset settings for battery life
* Native resolution is now used on first start, instead of 1366x768

For modders:
* Sprite atlases are now included in the extended manifest file for Asset Bundles