Valheim lets you name pets and build thrones with newly released 'Hearth and Home' update

What you need to know

• Valheim is a Viking-themed survival game currently in Early Access on Steam, from Iron Gate Studio and Coffee Stain.
• The team has been working on Valheim's first major update for a while now, and release day has finally come.
• The 'Hearth and Home' update is rolling out to Valheim players now with a ton of improvements and new features.
• Highlights include new building pieces, the ability to name tamed pets, changes to the Plains, and much more.

Our list of best PC games is a competitive place, but Valheim makes a good case for it as one of the better survival games on PC right now. Today, Iron Gate Studio and Coffee Stain are finally releasing the long-awaited Hearth and Home update, Valheim's first (hopefully, of many) major releases during its Early Access tenure. Hearth and Home includes a ton of new features and changes to look forward to for players, including all-new building pieces, weapon improvements, naming pets, new Plains features, and much more. There's also a new trailer to celebrate the update's release.

As the name suggests, Hearth and Home places extra attention on the players' homes in Valheim, and features all-new building pieces and furniture, ways to plant additional trees, new food items, new weapons and weapons balancing, and more. There are also a ton of general quality-of-life improvements like new graphics settings, bug fixes, and more. All-in-all, this is a major update for Valheim players, and even includes more new features beyond the changelog, especially in the Valheims Plains area.

You can find the full changelog for Valheim's Hearth and Home update below, or go download the release on Steam right now. If you haven't played Valheim yet, and are interested in one of the best PC survival games you can play right now, be sure to check out our Valheim beginner's guide for some tips and tricks on how to get started.

Source: Coffee Stain

The full changelog for Valheim's Hearth and Home update includes:

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

Food

• 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

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)