Valheim Review Update – Call to Arms

It’s hard to believe it’s been four years since I first set sail and fell in love with Valheim. As a fan of survival crafting and all things Norse, it’s one of the best experiences out there in both regards. And while it still feels fairly familiar at the outset – and somehow it’s still calling itself “early access,” whatever that means anymore – it’s gotten a mountain of patches since launch, with a list of changes that would take longer to read than the rambling tangent about some side character’s great-grandfather in a viking saga. From new biomes and new bosses to crafting and combat improvements, the version of Valheim you can download today cuts like a blade that developer Iron Gate has been sharpening winter in and winter out.

All of that still holds true today, except that the world has gotten much bigger and just about every system has been improved on in some small or large way. Except greydwarves. They’re still annoying as hell. But we’ll get to that.

Good news for melee builds

This revisit is based on the opt-in beta patch announced at Gamescom 2025, known as the Call to Arms update, and that’s fitting because it’s brought some of the most significant changes to combat yet. Trinkets are a new equipment slot that lets you build up adrenaline by skirmishing – basically a super meter if you’re familiar with fighting games – with different effects at full adrenaline for different trinkets. They’ve also added a “perfect dodge” that makes it possible to run a melee build without a shield, as long as you’re good at timing enemy attacks. And perfect blocks no longer cost stamina, which makes that build way more viable too. Finally, the reign of the stealth archer may be coming to an end! Well, probably not entirely, but at least it won’t be so far ahead of other playstyles. Just like nearly everything else that’s changed in Valheim over the years, combat is the same system that’s always been here but just a bit better and deeper.

We finally get (killed by) bears!

The mascot for this patch, though, is the lumbering bear enemy. Why did it take this long to put a bear in the viking survival game? I don’t know, but I’m glad she’s here now. Sitting somewhere between greydwarves and trolls in terms of difficulty, bears add some much-needed enemy variety to the early areas where most people end up spending a majority of their time anyway. And collecting bear parts lets you build a new weapon and armor set that really lean into the super-aggressive melee playstyle. I’m worried that these items will be completely underpowered in the mid-late game, but it’s nice for the first leg of your adventure to be able to go full berserker.

Journeying through mist and flame adds mythological flair

In the bigger picture, Valheim has become a much more complete saga since I originally reviewed it. Two additional biomes, the foggy Mistlands and burning Ashlands, have been added along with their attendant bosses, but I haven’t been able to check the latter out yet on this fresh save I made for the patch where I’m about 25 hours in. As a matter of fact, even with well over 100 hours in Valheim overall across multiple playthroughs, I’ve still never seen the Ashlands – added just last year – at all, actually. The world is huge! And that’s very exciting. There’s still a bit left to go on the roadmap, with one major boss and one biome still missing, but it’s much closer to the finish line than it is to the start.

Even in my initial Early Access outing, I said I could barely tell this is an Early Access game, and that’s only become more and more true. The amount that’s already here could take you months to chew through playing off and on like I do. The final 1.0 release might be out already by the time you finish the Ashlands if you start today. The sheer amount of time it would take to even run into a proverbial Under Construction sign puts them out of reach of what most of my playthroughs have even come close to accomplishing. And I have to ask: if it takes 60-plus hours for me to even notice something isn’t finished, is it really unfinished at all? Or am I just waiting for an expansion to come out? It kind of feels more like the latter.

Swamps are still a bummer

Every new area has fresh enemies, unique survival challenges, new recipes to discover, and a strong theme. Higher-level biomes pull in more mythological elements that really remind you you’re not in Kristiansand anymore. Moving from the Black Forest into the Swamps is still a rough transition with how much more unforgiving the terrain, enemies, and status effects become – right at the same time that travel distances are becoming an issue, and before you can unlock portals. It’s no surprise to me that that’s where a lot of my runs have ended. Plus, who likes a stinky poison swamp anyway? It’s definitely my least favorite biome, even in the latest patch. But it’s worth getting through to see what comes after it.

Greydwarves are still annoying as hell

Greydwarves in the Dark Forest remain annoying little pests that come to bother you all the time and present very little combat challenge. If we could craft a trinket that scares away lower-level enemies, I think that would be great. Remember the Morrowind mod that added a belt that would zap cliff racers out of the air? Are Valheim players too young to remember Morrowind? You know what, don’t even answer that. I don’t want to know.

Mining feels less grindy, but maybe that’s just character development on my part

Gear progression feels a lot less grindy now as well. I haven’t compared the numbers to see how much of that is actual changes to ore drop rates and carry weights and how much it’s just that I’ve gotten used to how time-consuming it is. I no longer feel like I’m spending hours and hours teching up from stone to bronze. And while I was initially annoyed by the lack of realism in the fact that repairing items doesn’t cost crafting mats… I have to admit I was wrong. It’s a great little quality-of-life feature that I don’t have to go hunt down extremely rare materials to keep my best gear nice and shiny. It’s good to know that once I craft something, it’s mine forever.

The building system could still use some work

Building is one area where I think other survival crafting games have kind of left Valheim behind, mainly in terms of how fiddly it can get. I know part of this is that it’s meant to be fairly realistic, and I respect that. But the variety of structural building pieces, especially early on, is still kind of disappointing. And it remains a massive pain to work on rooftops or anything high up due to how stairs, ladders, and slopes behave. As unrealistic as it is, I find myself wishing for something as simple as Minecraft scaffolding, which lets you ascend up to whatever height you need just by holding jump. I know we can’t have Dune: Awakening-style hovering in fantasy Scandinavia. Maybe I could send a raven up there to help me place stuff? Just some ideas.

One of the best survival crafting games ever has only gotten better

I adored Valheim when it was roughly half the adventure it is now. The world has gotten so much richer and the progression so much deeper in the four years since, while even mechanics I was interacting with on my first day of a new playthrough have improved in small and subtle ways. If it doesn’t lead the pack for the whole genre outright, it’s at least very close to the front, howling gleefully as its charming, low-res 3D art style beckons me into calm meadows and foreboding dungeons. I haven’t ever really stopped playing it for more than a handful of months at a time since it launched in early access, and the idea of starting a new world always gets me excited even if I know the first few verses of the saga by heart at this point.