Valheim's new terrain system should help things load faster and smoother
The new update overhauls landscape modification
Developers Iron Gate Studios have made a big update to their Viking survival sim Valheim, overhauling the game's terrain system. It should be a big help to players who struggle with Valheim's performance, and make the landscape look a little more natural for all your groundworkers.
"The new terrain modification system is made to reduce the number of network instances and make loading faster and smoother," the devs say.
"Technically it’s a pretty big change but hopefully you should not notice that much of a difference except some minor behaviour changes to the hoe and pickaxe and of course much smoother loading of areas with a lot of terrain modifications. All terrain modifications after this patch (using the hoe, pickaxe or cultivator) will automatically use the new modification system."
This won't update areas where you've already been doing loads of landscaping, though. Iron Gate are giving you the option to convert those areas to the new system yourself by using the new console command "optterrain".
In the patch notes thread on the Valheim subreddit, some players are reporting that the patch has increased their FPS, and terrain looks a little more "organic" now when you raise it. This mostly seems to affect those using lower-end CPUs though, as players with beefier PCs don't seem to struggle as much from frame drops.
Go careful using the "optterrain" console command on areas where you have loads of buildings and modifications, however, because it seems a little hit and miss. Some players say that it's causing their hard work to break, while others are finding the adjustments work just fine on their existing structures.
The 0.150.3 update came with a few other tweaks too, which you can check out in the patch notes here:
- Swamp draugr spawner location fix to prevent draugrs from spawning inside stones
- Lox pet-sfx fix
- Torches in locations should no longer support constructions
- Dolmen location stone size fix
- New terrain modification system
- Terrain-modification priority changed (Terrain modifications in an area should load before buildings, only applies to the new terrain modification system)
- World loading tweaks (to fix issues with ships and buildings getting damaged while loading)
- Stop server list download when leaving the start menu (to decrease network bandwidth usage)
- Lowered the amount of stone required to Raise ground using the hoe
If you're less of a landscaper and more of a fighter in Valheim, however, you might be more interested in this mod that lets you become a necromancer who can summon a band of skeletons. Or perhaps you'd rather be a thunder-wielding wizard.