For fans of the open-world survival game Valheim, waiting for content updates has been quite the affair. The game reached immense popularity when it released into Early Access in February. However, outside of patches, players have been experiencing the same game for months. However, the developers at Iron Gate AB have been slowly trickling out news for the game’s first major content pack: Hearth & Home. Today, the developer offered a new glimpse into what’s in store. In a Hearth & Home spotlight video, Iron Gate dove into the new food system, which changes how food affects your health and stamina.
Since Valheim is a survival game first and foremost, working you way towards better food recipes is essential. Eating food would increase your health and stamina by equal amounts. Once you eat something, your health bar will expand, adding whatever amount of health the food item is offering. For example, if you eat something that gives 50 health, it’ll add that much in hit points. Over time, the amount offered will slowly decrease until you need to eat again.
The new food system in Valheim – Hearth & Home changes all that. It removes the food bar completely, and replaces it with three boxes with icons of what you recently ate with timers counting down. Food items will also be split into three categories, with colored forks signifying what they do: red for health, yellow for stamina, and white for an equal blend of both.
Time to plan out your meals
The developer states that the reason for the change is to let you “be more creative and varied in your play style.” In other words, if you’re still working on that 1:1 replica of Castle Grayskull, you should focus on food that offers a lot of stamina. However, if you’re running out to skin the blue asses off some trolls, then maybe you should scoff items that give less stamina and more health.
At least, I think that’s Iron Gate’s goal here: to allow more flexibility. Having played Valheim for dozens of hours myself, though, I’m curious about how much the new system will change the game. In the video above, you can see how some food will give you 50 health points, while another offers 70 points of stamina. However, one of the “white icon” food items in the video shows it’ll provide 25 points in each. With that in mind, when going off to battle you may consider two food items for health and one for stamina. But with combat relying so much on stamina, I feel that the system might be a little too constricting.
I suppose we’ll have to wait to find out. The Hearth & Home spotlight video is the first of more to come. In the next video, Iron Gate will go into how the new food system affects combat.
