Late to the party as ever, through my blog feed, I recently saw “difficulty settings” and “Valheim” mentioned in the same span, and I just had to investigate. I knew that the game’s developers were in the throes of putting together a new update/biome, a volcanic region called the Ashlands. What I didn’t know until I searched further was that, yes, they have also been toying with adding various difficulty settings to the game.

Are your ready for hardcore mode in #Valheim? ☠️
..or do you prefer something more chill?

Note: Actual settings are not final! @valheimgame #gamedev #indiedev #gamedevelopment pic.twitter.com/9OtOxDpkAo

— Jonathan Smårs (@jsmars) April 17, 2023

Well, that’s enough to set my heart all a’flutter! (Also lovely to hear that they are working to take care of some lingering issues in the Xbox version of the game.) When I last left the game, I found a lot to like in its world and crafting mechanisms; I was less enamored with its “brutal survival” elements. But, as I explored the limits of what I could and couldn’t handle personally, I found my own groove. I remain a very clumsy player in most respects, but as the game offered plenty of room for me to make my own decisions as to how to survive and eliminate enemies, I did exactly that despite my own shortcomings.

Though, as much as I wanted to progress, I found that I wanted to explore much more. This urge completely distracted me from tackling the game’s second major boss, The Elder. I become engrossed in building rafts and learning how to sail (a very finicky process on the Xbox). Having stayed “safe” in the first two biomes, the Meadows and the Black Forest, for a prolonged amount of time, I was blindsided when I stumbled into the Swamp, and I promptly perished thanks to a quick ambush from new enemies. Even so, this led me to consider my map and wonder how so many different biomes were connected. Yes, The Elder still out there, but all I wanted to do was fill in my island, so to speak.

This brings me back to those potential, new difficulty settings. If they are actually released and are anywhere near as detailed and flexible as what the devs showed, I’ll hop back in to the game immediately. I would jump at the chance to spend a few sessions with the game in any sort of non-violent sandbox mode, one where enemies don’t bother me, and I can explore my own little “Valheim,” gathering and crafting as I please. And then, when I feel ready, I can hike the settings back to the “normal” I want and start becoming a “real Viking” then.

I say that mildly tongue-in-cheek, but you get my point. Valheim, as it stands, is a great game that’s challenging and can be, at times, fun. The developers have created in a wonderful world that’s worth diving into if survival games are your passion or if, like me, a genre you’re curious about. It’s easy to become hooked on its gameplay loop, and if world modifiers are added to it, there’s a good chance it’ll only become more addicting. We love to modify games to our particular tastes, making them easier, harder, or weirder. I look forward to the day when I can do all that, and maybe even more, in Valheim.

Lede image taken by author during Xbox gameplay of Valheim (Game Preview), © Iron Gate Studios.