Valheim is a game that throws players into the center of a cruel purgatory world, filled to the brim with dangers and enemies like Valheim's monstrous stone golems. The map of this treacherous place is massive, procedurally generated, and contains five biomes for players to explore. But just how big is this massive map in real-life terms?
Maps in Games
While it can be very difficult to translate an in-game map to real-world sizes, it's possible to get a feeling for the size of a map in the game by estimating running speeds and the amount of time it takes to get from one place to the next. While some open-world games are contained in a small map, games like Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Valheim all embrace the feeling of wild open spaces. Players have calculated the approximate size of the maps of all three of these games, and now everyone can see how Valheim lines up with the other big-mapped games that came before it.
Calculating the Size
It's more important to understand the map size in Valheim than it is in other games, mostly because players have to be within a two-kilometer radius of the trader to find him. This mysterious dwarf sells some items that players will definitely want to help them along in the game like the fishing rod, a belt that increases carry weight called the Megingjord, Ymir flesh to make a top-tier Valheim weapon called Frostner, and more.
Based on Valheim's circular map, one clever Reddit user has calculated how big the map is. Using the F5 console and cheat commands, u/Patchumz figured out the exact amount of map that 10,000 meters/tiles are in Valheim.
u/mclovins_6 followed up by comparing the map to Skyrim's flat map, which is 20 km^2. "But if Valheim is a circular map that has a radius of 10 km then it actually has a map area of 314 km^2." This puts the map as one of the largest maps in video games. While it doesn't quite compare with Minecraft's 3,600,000,000km^2, the map is still huge. YouTuber How Big is the Map? walked all the way across the map from one end to the other and it took four hours and 41 minutes.
Considering that the map contains oceans, all the biomes, and dangers from one end to the other, the sheer size can be a little overwhelming, especially when looking for the trader in Valheim. But with enough friends or enough adventuring spirit, players can discover the whole map and their trader too.
Valheim is available for PC.
Source: Reddit