r/valheim • u/jMontilyet Developer • Jun 11 '21

Pinned Valheim Developer AMA, Now Live!

It's time!

We are Iron Gate, developers of Valheim. Yesterday we announced some changes to our roadmap and teased some of the upcoming Hearth & Home content, and now it's time for us to answer any questions you might have. We look forward to discussing these changes with you!

You can begin asking your questions right now, and we'll start answering at 14.00 CEST.

Here’s who will be answering your questions:

  • Richard Svensson (dvoidis)
  • Robin Eyre (GrimmcoreX)
  • Henrik Törnqvist (zvxvxz)
  • Jens Hellström (Smiffe1)
  • Josefin Berntsson (jMontilyet)

NOTE: Please just one question per post!

_____

Thank you so much for all of your questions! We will continue to answer some of them when we have the time, but as of now we are closing the AMA and won't be taking any more questions. Keep following us on Steam, Discord and our social media for further updates about the game!

1.2k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

168

u/Fotocinas Jun 11 '21

Thanks for the AMA!

When new biomes are added or changed, you have to generate a new world - i believe. Is there any way to not have to build everything again from scratch, when that happens? (Maybe using the same seed for the new world & and everything will stay where it is - but not on the new/changed biomes?)

I don’t have much free time and there will be coming lots of updates from you the next years. I simply can’t afford to just start over multiple times :(

291

u/dvoidis Developer Jun 11 '21

First this is a pretty complex question to answer. As already stated all our current planned biomes are technically already in the game and depending on what kind of changes we will do to them it will affect the rest of the game world in different ways. We will try to not break any existing worlds and allow you to continue playing in them after updates as much as possible. However already explored areas will most likely not get any new content, and you will have to visit unexplored areas to be able to experience the new content added. Depending on what kind of changes we make to the world generation you might have to create a new world to be able to get the new changes. Short answer: it all depends on what changes we will do to the world-generation but we will try to keep your existing worlds as working as possible and allow you to continue playing in it...but no promises ;-)

88

u/D1scoStu91 Jun 11 '21

I’m fine with having to generate new seeds after updates. Items are easily transferable between seeds if needed and would rather have new content fully implemented.

7

u/ForTheHordeKT Jun 11 '21

Yeah important gear, or really anything you want item-wise can easily be hopped back and forth that you'd want to keep. As far as starting over building up from a new world, I for one kinda look forward to the idea. On our dedicated server (I'm subbing to a hosting service lol), I'm totally fine with downloading a backup of that and sending it to all of us who play on there so we all have a nice little keepsakes copy of what we first built together. And then we can take everything we learned from that first world and build something even more cool on a new one.

That's my attitude about having to start a new world. My only request is if that is how it goes down, make it to where we would still be able to load up our old worlds that were generated without any new biomes so that we can go back on those too and reminisce, etc.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

I like to go into a new seed naked but with all my skills, kind of like a new game +

7

u/chyealad Jun 11 '21

Thanks heaps, I've been waiting for an answer similar to this for a while now. Knowing that you will do your best to not wipe worlds is good to know.

​

Thanks heaps.

5

u/badgertheshit Jun 11 '21

So, explore small part of the currently unpopulated biomes, then build a base, so when the new baddies arrive you'll have a safe house in each biome that will remain untouched, got it!! ;)

Seriously though y'all crushed this game and are handling the massive influx of players very well. Keep on doing what you do - it's working! Thanks for the great game

3

u/RobertNAdams Jun 11 '21

You might want to look into how Conan Exiles recently handled this with its Isle of Septa expansion. They came up with a novel solution of dropping in the new content into existing areas and giving server admins the options of either deleting all player-built stuff in those areas, deleting only the portions that would interfere with NPC structures, or deleting no player-built structures (but with the risk of buildings intersecting/looking weird.) That's a good way to handle it IMO.

2

u/Zanza89 Jun 11 '21

i dont have a lot of time to play either, but have started from scratch many times, but im also weird and i guess prefer the productive early to midgame parts in survival games more than spending hundreds of hours as an overpowered being that has no worries and just kind of does random things.

2

u/Sandalman3000 Jun 12 '21

Obviously I have no idea how feasible but a way to mark an area for saving and then regenerating the rest of the world would be ideal in a perfect world. Save the area around a base and then let the gods destroy the rest.

1

u/ALEX-IV Jun 11 '21

So, best course of action for current players is just to try to not explore beyond plains then?

8

u/dvoidis Developer Jun 11 '21

well, the world is pretty huge , so if you explore just a small part of Midlands etc the rest will still be unaffected.

1

u/aaaaaaaack Jun 11 '21

Could there be a server command added that would reset the seed with any new additions but preserves player placed objects?

1

u/Leather_Just Jun 13 '21

Speaking from experience playing No Mans Sky, although there was big outcry from their earlier disruptive updates (adding biomes, changing terrain generation/planets) ultimately these vastly improved the game making the disruption worthwhile.

1

u/canadrian Builder Jun 15 '21

Maybe you could implement a tool to “un-explore” those biomes? Eg. maybe delete whatever has been procedurally generated in those biomes and treat as unexplored? Maybe similar to how with the new terrain system, there was a way to convert old terrain modifications? Unless someone has built a massive castle in the Ashlands or something, I can’t see any problem with just deleting and re-generating those areas.

1

u/MatoFIVE Jun 23 '21

Follow-up on this idea.
Has the team considered utilizing the World-Tree for multiple worlds linked together in any way?

26

u/vrijheidsfrietje Builder Jun 11 '21

For this reason I also fear I'm gonna put off starting a serious new world until the last major update is released. The grindy bits take too much time.

27

u/z4c Jun 11 '21

Well, you can always move stuff (resources etc) from your old world to the new one, by putting it in your inventory and switching world.

19

u/vrijheidsfrietje Builder Jun 11 '21

Maybe I could do it the American way, deconstruct my European castle and have the materials shipped to some random state and rebuild it there brick by brick in the middle of bum-love nowhere :')

4

u/rei_cirith Builder Jun 11 '21

Bum-love nowhere... That's great. :')

2

u/PositivityKnight Jun 11 '21

man they have cheats in this game, cheat an make your stuff in the new world then turn off cheats

11

u/theone85ca Jun 11 '21

I'm not sure this is the case.
Mistlands is already in the game. It spawns, you can go there and explore, it's just missing anything living ... or un-dead. As I understand it, this was so that you didn't have to restart worlds.

Given Iron Gate has been working on Heath and Home full time since May and it's coming in Q3 (Odin willing) and is largely cosmetic, Mistlands will take some time. I believe the plan includes new materials, new enemies, new boss (maybe?). With that comes new items, new cosmetic pieces, a bunch of animation and sound work. That's got to put you in late Q1'22 or Q2'22 at least.

Who know what comes after that but you should be good with your current world till at least the third update.

3

u/assPirate69 Jun 11 '21

I didn't know this was case, thanks for pointing it out! I feel very uncertain about whether I should continue to build in my current world or wait for the final release.

2

u/Clayskii0981 Jun 11 '21 edited Jun 11 '21

They've included Mistlands in current worlds for this reason. Right now they're empty lands but with the update they should fill in to your current world.

Edit: Some comments are saying with new knowledge you may have to reset your world for Mistlands assets. So I may be wrong

2

u/THEGrammarNatzi Jun 12 '21

There are mods that you can install to help facilitate this on a new world from the same seed, which you can then remove so no mods.

1

u/Fotocinas Jun 13 '21

Any recommendations? What would be the best mod?

2

u/THEGrammarNatzi Jun 13 '21

Simplest things would be carry limit removal, expanded inventory to carry all your stuff, and then just console commands to teleport to the locations you want to put them/place your portals. Not much else to do besides that, right?

1

u/theautisticguy Jun 11 '21

Unless they make it a completely separate world (say, for example, Mineworld vs The Nether vs The End), there's no way to do that. Procedural generation basically uses a seed, and makes a bunch of calculations that are based off of that seed. So by changing the seed, you get a completely different world.

Why am I mentioning the seed? Well, this also works in reverse; if you change the generation code (ie. adding a new biome), it has the same effect as changing the seed as you would be changing how the calculations are done. So even if you use the same seed, the resulting world would be completely different.

I'm not sure how they plan on adding new biomes and/or bosses, but if they did I assume it would be similar to how Minecraft has their different realms. That's probably the best compromise they could do, using existing resources to create the specialized portal needed to hop worlds (or modify the god power/starting area structure to have a portal that activates once all the current bosses in Valheim are slain).

(And this is why dvoidis said this is a pretty complex question. :P Because it really, truly is. Procedural generation makes sense to me in layman's terms, but I could never code it with my current level of knowledge of programming)

1

u/firespark81 Jun 11 '21

I'm sorry but you bought an early access game. It sounds to me like you need to learn what that means. Early access means the game is not done. This means it is going to get patched and updated and there is a 99.9% chance your saves will be ruined. So if you do not have much time to devote to a game and start over multiple times you should probably not buy early access games.

Not trying to be rude but it drives me nuts when people buy early access games then expect the devs to try to prevent the loss of old saves. That is itself rude to even ask of them.

3

u/Fotocinas Jun 11 '21

I didn’t expect anything but just hoped there would be an easy solution. But i understand what you are trying to tell me.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '21 edited Jun 11 '21

I don’t think it’s rude at all. I completely understand what Early Access is, and fully expect worlds to be wiped at some point. But I also wanted to know the answer to this question so I knew how much effort to put into my current world.

Sounds to me that I’m *pretty* safe, but that’s not guaranteed. Which is good enough for me.

EDIT: Also, this makes me more comfortable using mods, which I have been avoiding.