Valheim Hits 1.0 Today With the Deep North, Five Years After It Ate Everyone's Winter [UPDATE]

It's done. After more than five years in Early Access, Valheim has hit 1.0, and the Deep North, its final biome, is live as of today. If you already own the game, all of it is free. If you don't, the price has gone up from about $20 to $30 as of launch, so the free-for-owners bit is a nice reward for the people who bought in early.

What you're getting

The Deep North is a frozen endgame biome with its own hazards, enemies and loot. New in 1.0: three armour tiers, a set of Nord weapons, the Frostfire Crossbow, and a grappling hook for swinging and hauling yourself around the terrain. The new enemies include tree-trunk-hurling Gammeltrolls and the burrowing Elakingar you'll meet in the Winding Tunnel dungeons. Crucially, your existing worlds and characters carry over, so nobody has to start again.

There's also full crossplay now across PC, Xbox, PS5 and Switch 2, which is a bigger deal than it sounds for a game a lot of people only ever played co-op with the same three friends.

The honest bit

Leaving Early Access is more of a symbolic line than a hard finish, and Iron Gate's slow, tiny-studio pace frustrated plenty of people over the years. But the game held up the whole time, and the 1.0 content looks like a proper send-off rather than a rushed "right, we're calling it done." Roughly 17 million people bought Valheim on the way here, which for a Viking survival game from a handful of developers is genuinely mad.

The grappling hook alone is worth reinstalling for. Go build a stupidly tall tower and swing off it.