Having teased the introduction of difficulty modifiers to its viking survival game Valheim back in January, developer Iron Gate Studio has now offered a first look at the feature’s progress.
Word that Iron Gate was looking to introduce difficulty settings to Valheim first came as part of an very early glimpse at the game’s upcoming Ashlands biome. And now, three months on, development has reached a point where the studio is able to share more.
As detailed by Iron Gate’s Jonathan Smårs on Twitter, Valheim’s difficulty settings will take the form of both pre-set and customisable “world modifiers”. Some you’d expect – Easy, Hard, and Hardcore variations are all present and correct, for instance, impacting combat difficulty, the frequency of enemy raids on player bases, and items kept on death – but Iron Gate is throwing in a number of more unusual presets too.
Immersive mode, for instance, disables portals and the map, while Casual is about as close to a peaceful experience as you’ll likely get in Valheim. Here, enemies only only attack when provoked, and even then combat difficulty is dramatically reduced. Additionally, base raids are disabled, resources are increased, and players can retain all skills and equipped items on death.
And finally for the presets, there’s Hammer mode, which retains all standard difficulty settings but makes monsters passive, and – most importantly – makes all buildings free to build, essentially functioning as a kind of creative mode.
If none of those appeal, though, Smårs has also offered a peek at Valheim’s work-in-progress customisation sliders, enabling players to individually determine the difficulty for combat, death penalty, resource rate, and raid rate – as well as providing check boxes for portal items, no build cost, player based events, no map, no portals, and passive enemies.
There is, then, a huge amount of flexibility available for those that find Valheim’s existing difficulty just a little bit much to be dealing with – although a pop-up shown during Smårs’ video notes that world modifiers can negatively impact the core experience if used incorrectly, suggesting players stick with the default settings at first.
Smårs also notes the modifiers – which can be applied to existing worlds, and not just new games – have yet to be finalised, meaning things are still subject to change. It’s certainly promising stuff, but there’s still no word on when the new options might arrive.
Alongside Valheim’s new world modifiers and its forthcoming Ashlands biome (which is still seemingly a long way off), Iron Gate also previously teased a “little” early access update it’s calling Hildir’s Quest. This introduces a new NPC (the titular Hildir), new clothing, and a new way for players to restyle their character’s existing hair.
