Iron Gate Studios has outlined its future aims for blockbuster building game Valheim, and the next major update will include a whole new biome called the Ashlands. Effectively a land of the dead-style landmass to the south of Valheim’s current areas, the Ashlands will be a single continuous continent, rather than the more usual series of islands. As befits its status as a land of the dead, the Ashlands will be chock full of undead looking creatures, including some truly disturbing creations, and will have a landscape based around volcanoes and volcanic activity.
A volcano continent sounds pretty cool and all, but it’s the new creatures we’re most excited to see. Iron Gate Studios showed off some awesome concept art of two new types of creature. The first, the Charred, are skeletons, complete with red glowing eyes, so they’re pretty basic, despite the variants with two heads. The second are the much more interesting of the two. The Morgen appears to be some sort of fleshy mouth with arms and legs, and it frankly looks horrific. Add in some nasty sounding voice work, and you’re likely to have a nightmare-inducing monster.
Unfortunately, this is all concept art for the moment. Iron Gate Studios is changing the way it approaches major updates like this, and promises much more transparency during the process. The last major update, the Mistlands, was basically put out into the world fully formed. Iron Gate says it did this to allow people to find and explore the world without too many spoilers, but with the Ashlands update, they want to try a more transparent approach. Including showing players elements which may not make it into the final game -- we have our fingers crossed that the Morgen survives.
While Ashlands is likely to be Valheim’s next major expansion, you can expect some more content between now and then. Valheim will be launched on Xbox early this year, and that will be combined with crossplay support between PC and consoles. Also on the way is something called "Hildir’s Quest", along the eponymous NPS Hildir, as well as tweaks to clothing, and a way to change your hairstyle.