Valheim Hearth and Home changes - all the new stuff

The Valheim Heart and Home update brought with it loads of cozy changes. The content brought with it plenty of creature comforts to engage in, from chilling like a Valheim Viking in your bathtub to polishing your spoils of war in the treasure chamber. After all, even Norse warriors need some downtime.

There's a lot to get through in this update, including adding onions to your collection of farmable Valheim seeds and the ability to build your own Greydwarf dungeon. After a long day of riding boar and lox, here's what you can expect to get up to in the Valheim Hearth and Home update.

Rebalanced Valheim Hearth and Home food system 

This is probably one of the first things returning players will notice: the Valheim food system works quite differently. Before Hearth and Home, you could just eat the same three types of food over and over again and it would easily keep both your health and stamina high.

In Hearth and Home, you’ll have to choose between health foods (marked by a red fork icon in your inventory), stamina food, (a yellow fork), and hybrid food (white). Furthermore, instead of the somewhat complicated, multi-colored food bar, you’ll see timers on the three food slots. As before, these will indicate when it’s time for your next Viking dinner.

Naturally, this means that Valheim players will have more freedom to develop their own playstyle. You can focus on stamina and just hack away at those Greydwarves, or you can choose to become more of a tank by prioritizing health food and using a shield. 

New Valheim Hearth and Home cooking stations, foods, and recipes

What’s a new food system without new foods to cook? According to Iron Gate, Hearth and Home brings us twelve new things to eat. You’ll also be able to farm onions, oaks, and birch trees. On top of that, you can craft an Iron Cooking Station and a Stone Oven. The first will allow you to cook new recipes, while the latter is used to bake bread and pies. Some examples of new recipes: 

• Boar Jerky: 20 HP, 20 Stamina.
• Muckshake: 10 HP, 50 Stamina.
• Deer Stew: 40 HP, 8 Stamina.
• Minced Meat Sauce: 45 HP, 9 Stamina.
• Wolf Jerky: 30 HP, 30 Stamina.
• Wolf Skewer: 65 HP, 13 Stamina.
• Onion Soup: 12 HP, 60 Stamina.
• Black Soup: 50 HP, 10 Stamina.

Furthermore, Hearth and Home introduces different kinds of meat. After killing an animal, it will drop the meat type belonging to its species: ‘lox meat’, ‘deer meat’ etc. Naturally, different recipes require different meat types, so you better start planning that hunting trip!

Finally, Hearth and Home will also add the rather nasty bukeperries (it’s probably not a typo) to the world of Valheim. What’s a bukeperry, you ask? Well, let’s put it this way: if your Viking regrets their dinner, the bukeperry is the quickest way to empty the stomach. So no worries if you accidentally consumed a stamina boost when you needed HP. 

Valheim Hearth and Home shield, weapon and combat changes

Just like the food system, Valheim’s shields received some tweaks as well. For starters, the big tower shields will be stronger and have a higher knockback power compared to other Valheim shields, and is therefore helpful when facing larger groups of enemies. 

Naturally, the tower shield is rather slow. If you prefer faster combat, you should try the smaller buckler shield instead. It doesn’t have the same blocking power, but you’ll be able to parry incoming attacks. The good old round shields offer a bit of both, so it’s a great option if you can’t decide between the heavier tower shield and the lighter buckler.

Hearth and Home also adds a stagger bar during combat. If an enemy repeatedly hits your shield, the bar may deplete and you’ll stagger (which could well result in an untimely death). If you need better defenses, you should use better health food as blocking power now scales with your maximum health. 

Finally, you’ll find some alterations to the Valheim weapons. For example, bows will have a longer draw time, while the two-handed axe gains better cleaving and stagger capabilities. 

New Valheim Hearth and Home shields and weapons

Here’s an overview of every new shield and weapon introduced in Hearth and Home: 

• Iron Buckler. A relatively small shield for the agile warrior.
• Bone Tower Shield. A large, intimidating shield made from (you guessed it) bones.
• Crystal Battleaxe. As the name suggests, made from Crystals (Golem drops).
• Silver Knife. The fifth knife in the game, handy for the mobile warrior.
• Butcher’s Knife. To slay your tamed animals. 

New Valheim Hearth and Home build options

So, what about the home improvements? Hearth and Home adds a bunch of new building materials, as well as the option to destroy items (you can get rid of your useless old trousers at last). Perhaps the list doesn’t seem that long at first glance, but the new items will offer a lot of creative freedom: 

• Darkwood building pieces. Including lots of new build shapes (more creative freedom) and various decorative options. Offers the best-looking double doors so far.
• The Raven and Wolf home decorations. As they’ve been teased before, it’s worth mentioning them separately: you can finally place these cool Darkwood carvings as a nice finish on your longhouse. 
• Crystal Walls. It’s like a window, but made of Stone Golem drops.
• Cartography Table. Used to share map-data (locations you discovered) with other players on your server. 
• Viking Hot Tub. You may not necessarily need it, but you probably want this Hearth and Home item.
• Cages. There’s Iron Grate for floors, ceilings, and walls. Everything you need to create a beautiful dungeon (filled with Greydwarfs, for example).
• Stone Throne. Well, we can’t be expected to sit on a simple stool, can we?
• Treasure decorations. You can place coin stacks or treasure chests (much fancier than the ordinary wooden ones).
• Cauldron upgrades. Create more recipes by placing a Spice Rack, Butcher’s Table, and Pots and Pans. As mentioned earlier, there’s also a new Iron Cooking Station and a Stone Oven.
• Obliterator. Throw anything in, and it’ll get destroyed within seconds.

Valheim Hearth and Home Plains Biome, Tar, and lox mounts

Perhaps not as important for your survival as the food system, but this is arguably to best part of the Hearth and Home update: lox mounts. After you tame a lox (found in the Plains as before) you can equip it with a Lox Saddle. Hop on and go exploring together! Oh, and before we forget; you can also name your tamed animals from now on.

By the way, we’d suggest paying a visit to the Plains Biome for other reasons besides finding a lox to tame. Unless finding something ‘dark and mysterious’ (as Iron Gate calls it) doesn’t sound appealing to you, a visit to the Plains may get you the new Tar material used to create Darkwood items. Just be ready to face whatever comes out of those pits!

And that sums up everything new in Hearth and Home. Good luck with the lox taming!

Already looking forward to what's next? Check out the Valheim roadmap.