As the end of the year gets closer, the Mistlands update to Valheim looks more and more likely to be released next year. Since the game's early access release in February 2021, it has seen updates, fixes, and additions that have added in new items, enemies, and areas for players to explore. Aside from the Hearth and Home update to Valheim, which brought in new food, weapons, and building options, players have been waiting for the Mistlands update.
Aimed at giving a purpose to and fleshing out the Mistlands biome in Valheim, this upcoming update has been long expected to release by the end of 2022. With time running out, players await the release of the largest update to the game since Hearth and Home.
Valheim's Original Content Roadmap
Just a few weeks after its release, Valheim's developers announced a roadmap for the game listing multiple content updates. The first of these, titled Hearth and Home, reached the public in September 2021, making the following three updates unlikely to be released by the end of that year. Fortunately, it brought plenty of new content with new building items, revamped systems, and improvements to the balance of food in the world. The size of this update got players quite excited about the rest of the roadmap but helped reinforce a more realistic idea behind timelines for the next updates.
A month after the release of Hearth and Home update, Iron Gate Studio shifted part of its focus towards investing time into building out a new biome, Mistlands, as well as reworking Cult of the Wolf into what would become the Mountain/Frost Caves update for Valheim. The latter of these two was finally released in March of this year. By late March, the team had shifted its full focus on to finishing the Mistlands update with teases being released by the developer throughout the year.
By August, the developers had announced this was set to be "quite a chunky" update, and by September, came to the conclusion that some steps in the Mistlands progression weren’t in the right order and announced a special new extractor item. Since then, there haven't been any notable updates from the development team as to when players can expect the update to land.
Player Expectations for Mistlands
When it comes to expectations for this content update for Valheim, players have been awaiting it since the end of last year and expectations have therefore been a bit elevated because of this. Especially considering the amount of teasers that have been released so far. Players can already expect to see a whole host of new creatures in this redesigned biome when it drops. On top of this, players have already been told about a new crafting station which implies new metals and armor to gather and craft.
One thing that appears certain for this upcoming update is a theme centered around insects and arachnids. The developers have released concept art and photos of massive ticks attacking players, cobwebbed dungeons, and insectoid creatures in recent posts about the update. These indicate that players can expect to see something completely different from the built out biomes in Valheim at the moment. While there is always the chance that some of what has been shown will be altered, there has been enough evidence over the past months that this theme is set in stone.
For the moment, it remains unclear whether the goal of publishing this update by the end of 2022 will come to fruition. While it seems as though most of the hard work has been complete for the Mistlands, there have been rumors and rumblings that the developers are continuing to work on the boss for this biome. Without any specific timeline, players are going to have to remain patient and continue to check the updates to Valheim that Iron Gate Studio releases.
Valheim is available now for PC, and releases in 2023 for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.