There is a lot to do, to build, and to see in Valheim in spite of the fact that the game is in Early Access only. Valheim has been at the top of the sale charts on Steam for a while, but there are still some secrets hiding in the depths of the game that players have come across and wondered what they could be.
The Ashlands
Players who have ventured far from the center of the huge Valheim map may have stumbled across new biomes. The biome to the north is called the Deep North, and the biome that takes up the bottom portion of the map is called the Ashlands. The Ashlands are currently an unfinished biome; there's not much going on there with the exception of a plethora of Surtlings and ash. While it's a good way to kill a lot of Surtlings and get cores and coal, there's not much else for a player to do.
However, if a player has brought along an iron pickaxe on their mission to sail to the far south, they can also farm a mysterious metal called Flametal in the Ashlands of Valheim.
Flametal Ore
Flametal ore can only be mined in the Ashlands, and it can only be smelted in a Blast Furnace. In order to build a blast furnace, players will have had to kill Moder, get her tears, and build a Valheim Artisan Crafting Table. Just like other Valheim metals, players cannot teleport it. Once the Flametal ore is processed, it becomes Flametal bars. While this metal does not currently have a use in the game, there are a few clues that Valheim's developers have snuck in that may give some hints as to what this metal may do in future updates.
The Future of Flametal
The game's description of the Flametal ore is: "Warm to the touch with glowing veins of strange metal." The description of the smelted bars is: "the pure, shimmering core of a meteorite." While not as heavy as Silver Ore, Flametal weighs in at a whopping 12 weight, making it heavier than tin ore, copper ore, or the ore that is turned into Valheim iron: scrap iron.
The weight, the description, and the name of the Flametal might be giving hints at what this metal will be used for as soon as the Ashlands is an active biome. As the Flametal ore is warm to the touch and is made of the "core of a meteorite," players can assume that it is made of extremely compressed, dense combinations of iron and nickel, just like real-life meteorites. That, along with the visuals and enemies found in the Ashlands, hints that armor made from Flametal will most likely give players fire resistance similar to the fire-resistant mead. It would most likely be similar to the freeze-resistance of Valheim's Wolf Armor.
This also could be a hint that there may be a fiery, volcano-style enemy in the works as a boss to plague the Ashlands in the future of Valheim.
Valheim is currently in Early Access for PC.
Source: NASA, Wiki, Community Hub