Changelog

Battles become a focused combat workspace

The Battle Board now opens a dedicated, screen-filling workspace instead of placing the arena beneath the settlement map. Encounter selection and combat sit side by side on larger screens, while mobile players can switch between them without scrolling through the page.

The Battle Board fits the settlement

The carved Battle Board is now scaled to the settlers and rendered as foreground scenery, so workers visibly walk behind it instead of across its face. Its invisible touch target was tightened to match the new proportions on desktop and mobile.

Settlement instruments and a proper war board

The guide rail now carries Northrend's lighthouse mark and a compact floppy-disk save status. The world clock has a working analog face, the animation toggle is gone, and the Battle Board has been redrawn with carved timber, pinned notices, crossed weapons and a central shield.

A clearer guide and an unobstructed Battle Board

The compact settlement identity now leaves more room for an expanded at-a-glance guide. The illustrated Battle Board itself is the touch target instead of being covered by a circular button, and successful saves briefly pulse a fading floppy-disk indicator.

The settlement map becomes the command center

Battles now begin at a physical battle board on the map, Records live in the Great Hall archives, and the right rail is dedicated to the Adventure Guide. Settlement identity and account status have moved into that rail, reclaiming the space above the map on desktop and mobile.

Warband opens with your crew

Opening Warband normally now resets the popup to Crew & Equipment. Purposeful preparation, expedition and battle-report links can still take players directly to the boss workspace.

The update button knows where you are

The in-game release banner no longer mistakes inactive, hidden Hunting or Battle canvases for live minigames. Players standing at their settlement can reload immediately, while an arrow in flight or active fight remains protected.

Night shifts and worksite lighting

Passive production now slows after dark, while the Great Hall hearth and player-built work torches keep more workers on shift. The clock shows current night efficiency, lit worksites glow on the map, and fewer workers move at a slower pace overnight.

A cleaner site-wide server menu

News and Discord now live beneath a compact Valheim Server menu across the public site. Server overview remains available inside the same menu, while Support stays visible as its own top-level destination.

Hunting is a true single-screen activity

Opening the Hunting Grounds now authoritatively replaces the settlement map instead of allowing both canvases to stack. A prominent, touch-friendly Back to settlement control stays anchored inside the hunting scene on desktop and mobile.

Every popup close control now uses a larger capital X centered precisely inside a consistent square button.

The Great Hall becomes the settlement’s heart

Every new settlement now begins with a protected grant of 100 wood and 60 stone that can only raise its first Great Hall. All other building, gathering, crafting, fighting, and expedition commands remain locked until that founding step is complete. A one-time reveal then explains what opened.

Workshop and Warband have moved off the map and into two service cards inside the Great Hall window, leaving more of the settlement visible while centralizing its core management.

Workshop window on the settlement map

Workshop is now a physical map destination instead of a permanent adventure-rail entry. Its hammer marker opens the complete crafting route, gear wall, stations, cooking, materials, and recipe controls in a large responsive window. Backpack, Guide, Town Hall, and NEXT STEP recipe links all open the same Workshop window and preserve their exact recipe targets.

Chimney smoke visibly moves

The unmoving smoke baked into the Great Hall artwork has been removed from the live renderer. At dusk and night it is replaced by a faster, higher-contrast stream of twelve expanding puffs that curl sideways and rise through a complete cycle roughly every five seconds.

A warmer, lived-in settlement

The Great Hall chimney now releases layered, drifting smoke during dusk and night. Two hand-drawn hall torches flicker continuously through the full day, with their glow becoming warmer and wider as darkness settles over the map. Reduced-motion and Pause animation settings continue to stop the ambient movement.

Resource HUD stays inside the map

Wood, Stone, and Settlement Power now form a small anchored HUD in the settlement’s upper-left corner instead of competing with the clock and map controls in one oversized row. The redundant Home · Meadows chip is hidden, and narrower screens automatically collapse the HUD to three icon counters.

Resources and field activities move onto the map

The old full-width Wood, Stone, and Settlement Power bar is now a compact set of illustrated counters in the map’s upper-left toolbar. Full values remain visible while production details tuck away as the screen narrows, preserving substantially more room for the settlement.

Hunting Grounds and Gathering Trails are now real destinations at the forest edges. Hunting opens directly into the playable range with a clear return to camp, while Gathering opens a focused expedition window over the map and reports whether a party is away or materials are ready.

Open settlement view and richer nights

The wood yard, Warband camp, and mine now use small illustrated map pins with compact live counts instead of large plaques. The world clock sits directly to the left of Guide, Map, Backpack, Equipped, and animation controls in one top toolbar, while Gather is a small corner action. This marker system preserves room for future clickable locations without covering the landscape.

Dusk now brings an unmistakable warm sunset wash before the settlement settles into deeper layered moonlight. The moon crosses the sky, stars twinkle, fireflies drift through the grass, and the campfire brightens against the night.

Mobile settlement cleanup

Phones now show the interactive settlement map before the adventure menu. The redundant scene caption is gone, the top controls are compact, and the Town Hall, wood yard, mine, Warband camp, world clock, and Gather action occupy separate touch-friendly lanes instead of overlapping. The retired Warband sidebar tile is also forcibly hidden while its map popup remains available.

Warband camp window and living world clock

Warband management now opens from a live camp plaque on the settlement map instead of occupying a separate adventure page. The plaque shows how many Vikings are ready, and its large transparent touch target opens the full crew, equipment, recruitment, and boss-expedition workspace in a scrollable window designed for desktop and mobile. Warband objectives and activity links open the same window directly.

The settlement now follows a synchronized 25-minute visual day: 18 minutes of daylight and seven minutes of night. An on-screen clock names dawn, daylight, dusk, and night while the scene eases into moonlight, stars, and deeper firelight without changing gameplay timers.

Informative map building plaques

The wood yard and mine now carry readable map plaques showing the building name, current level, stored wood or stone, and a clear “Tap to open” instruction. Their click targets use explicit transparent styling so generic browser button colors never cover the scene.

Working wood yard and mine

The wood yard and mine on the settlement map are now tappable production sites. Each opens a compact window with its live level, stored resource, production rate, shortage guidance, and real build or upgrade action. Unbuilt sites display their own worksite markers, and the controls remain touch-friendly on phones.

Town Hall management window

Tapping the wooden shack or Great Hall now opens settlement management in a focused window over the map, matching Backpack and Equipped instead of placing the controls on a separate page. A one-time prompt teaches new and returning players to tap the building, then disappears permanently on that device after the first visit.

The settlement map becomes the game menu

The Settlement, Guide, and World map destinations now begin on the animated settlement itself. Click the wooden shack—or the Great Hall after it is built—to open settlement management, use the book for the player guide, and use the folded-map control for the shared world. The Guide now explains raid eligibility, protected resources, live defense, and unattended-loss limits before a settlement reaches the milestone.

Interactive settlement raids

Settlements with 20,000 combined wood and stone now attract increasingly frequent raids as excess wealth grows. The first 20,000 resources are permanently protected, raid stakes are limited to 4–12% of excess stores, and unattended losses are capped at half the displayed stake. Online players receive a ten-minute warning and can defend everything in an animated, touch-ready battle; weapon, armor, Combat training and the Great Hall improve automatic defense.

Mobile actions keep their real timers

Gathering and other timed actions now capture the server clock as soon as the response reaches the phone, so slower mobile rendering can no longer be mistaken for another 10–15 seconds of cooldown. The shared world also waits until its tab is visible before drawing, reducing unnecessary work after every action.

Mobile account form no longer gets stuck

The Sign in and Create settlement button now reliably returns to an active state after verification, timeouts, errors, and phone browser back/forward navigation. Submission also stops immediately with clear guidance if verification has not supplied a usable token.

Clearer mobile sign-in and account recovery

Signed-out players now see the account form before the game scene, with verification, progress, and error messages kept beside the button on small screens. Account creation opens the settlement directly, existing accounts are routed back to Sign in instead of another registration attempt, and mobile-app links retain the secure session more reliably.

Boss expeditions return automatically

Five-minute boss expeditions now resolve as soon as their timer ends. Returning to an older open game also resolves any completed expedition immediately, so the settlement scene cannot remain trapped in an endless boss animation waiting for a hidden outcome button.

Server-locked commands and Players Online

Gameplay commands now reject every field outside their action-specific allowlist, preventing modified clients from submitting fabricated resources, scores, odds, victories, or save data. The game header also shows an aggregate Players Online count based on recent authenticated activity, without exposing player or session details. The existing update-ready alert remains active: open games detect a newer release, wait through fights and arrow shots, and offer a safe reload without interrupting play.

Backpack inventory window

The Backpack now opens a game-style inventory window over the current adventure instead of navigating to a separate Inventory panel. Its compact item slots show grouped gear, provisions and materials with quantities and equip actions, while wood and stone remain visible inside the bag. Players can switch directly between Backpack, Equipped and Workshop views.

Repeatable battle paths and visible Mountain encounters

After clearing every available personal battle, repeat runs now continue from Boar to Neck and onward so Combat XP remains renewable. The encounter picker now renders every server-provided biome, including the Mountain trio, and the battle guide identifies both sources of wolf pelts: Wolf victories and Mountain gathering trips.

Backpack navigation hotfix

Opening the Backpack now replaces the settlement map with the Inventory ledger immediately, instead of leaving the inventory below the fold where it appeared that the button had done nothing.

The Mountains and worn equipment

The fourth biome is now a complete chapter: an illustrated snowbound arena, animated Wolves, Drakes, and Stone Golems, a sharply higher combat curve, Mountain rewards, and a five-minute animated Moder expedition that uses frost mead, favors bows, awards the Dragon tear, and discovers the Plains.

Inventory moved from the adventure sidebar to a compact Backpack control on the settlement map. A neighboring Equipped control opens a slot-based worn-item view inspired by classic paper-doll interfaces. Players can equip crafted weapons, shields, and pickaxes from the Backpack, then right-click to remove them on desktop or use visible Remove controls on touch devices. Empty gathering camps now disable party controls and route directly to recruitment.

Empty gathering camps point to recruitment

When a selected biome has no available Vikings, Gathering now disables and visibly dims every party-size control, shows zero assigned, explains what is missing, and provides a prominent shortcut to that biome’s Warband recruitment control.

Clear gathering-party departure

Renamed the misleading “Send all ready” control to “Select all ready Vikings.” Selecting everyone now confirms the number chosen, highlights and focuses the actual departure action, and that action states exactly how many Vikings will be sent.

Controlled gathering reward variation

Gathering trips no longer return formulaically identical quantities. Resources now vary inside balanced bands around the party’s expected haul, while surviving Vikings continue to increase the average. Surtling Cores use clear capped rarity tiers: a trip can return 0, 1, or 2, with 3 a genuinely uncommon result. Other gathering materials receive the same controlled quantity variation without reducing their long-run expected supply.

Risk-and-reward parties and animated boss fights

Gathering now uses Vikings from the selected biome camp. Every survivor makes independent randomized loot rolls, including a 30% Black Forest chance for a Surtling core, so larger parties materially improve common and rare rewards. Biome danger can kill Vikings; shared armor provides the strongest protection, with weapon tier and Combat level also helping. Return reports explain each casualty and recovered haul, recruitment grows costlier with roster size, and departures and returns enter the detailed activity log.

Boss expeditions are now five-minute animated fights instead of Vikings marching in a circle. Parties form battle lines, advance on Eikthyr, The Elder, or Bonemass, exchange attacks, and display fight progress. Victory ceilings now reflect shared equipment, packed food, Combat training, and the selected weapon style, ensuring preparation visibly changes the displayed odds even for a full party. This release also fixes crafting quantities: repeatable batches reset to 1 after success and one-time items always display a fixed quantity of 1.

Tougher combat, visible Inventory, and safer updates

Raised the pressure across all nine Battles with stronger enemies, shorter attack cycles, committed counterattacks, and enraged final phases while preserving mobile blocking and dodging. Inventory is now its own adventure-bar destination with grouped gear, food, relics, and materials. Open tabs detect new releases without interrupting an active fight or arrow shot, and the homepage invitation now reads “Your Vikings await.”

Sustainable settlement economy

Rebalanced passive wood and stone so levels 1–5 remain friendly while levels 6–20 add progressively smaller production gains instead of creating runaway stockpiles. Upgrade prices now provide a meaningful mid-game runway. Great Hall prices scale more sharply after level 5 because every Hall level strengthens both production chains. Existing buildings, inventories, and saved resources are preserved.

More varied, skillful Hunting

Each outing now rolls one to five deer and boar, with two most common and four- or five-animal herds rare. Prey occupy varied distances, briefly react to arrows, and mix species per outing. Gentle visible aim sway adds challenge while the existing shared weapon tier steadies the bow, improves draw and nocking speed, softens wind, and lowers the clean-hit threshold—without adding another equipment system.

Clear out-of-arrows hunting state

When the fifth arrow is used, Hunting now shows a prominent in-scene OUT OF ARROWS banner, an explicit wait notice, and a live countdown until the next hunt. Finishing every animal receives the same clear cooldown treatment.

NEXT STEP moved to the top

Moved the current objective to the top of the adventure sidebar, directly above the navigation tabs, so the recommended action is visible before players choose a section on desktop and mobile.

First-five-minutes idle-game guidance

Added a live starter checklist that teaches Gather → Buy → Produce → Upgrade, advances through the first Woodcutter, Stone Quarry, Workbench, and Great Hall, and links directly to each current action. Building buttons now say Buy or Upgrade instead of looking like passive price labels, show exactly what a purchase does, and explain shortages. The full guide now explains every major tab and how to read disabled controls.

Actionable guidance and self-service resets

NEXT STEP no longer opens a disabled equipment upgrade. It prioritizes collecting completed trips and routes each material shortage to its real source. Players can also reset their own settlement from Save Details after re-entering their password and confirming the warning; the account and names remain, the claimed plot is released, and a recovery snapshot plus activity record are retained.

Drag-between-direction touch controls

The D-pad now follows the control currently beneath a held finger: sliding between arrows changes direction immediately, leaving the arrows releases movement, and lifting still works normally. Multi-touch actions remain available, and iPhone selection handles and callouts are suppressed.

Always-visible D-pad and prominent combat training

The on-screen Battles controller now always uses a real D-pad and grouped action controls instead of ever falling back to a horizontal row. Training & Experience now appears above roster management with a stronger visual treatment and a direct Train in Battles action.

Changelog and cleaner Warband guidance

Added this dated release history below the independent-project notice. Removed redundant Warband shortcuts, separated crew and boss explanations into their proper views, tightened the crew layout, and changed Eikthyr’s NEXT STEP route to highlight weapon and armor upgrades before opening the boss planner.

Mobile Battles controller and Warband default

Added a two-thumb mobile controller with a virtual D-pad and large Attack, Block, Dodge, and Pause actions. Desktop WASD, arrows, mouse, Space, Shift, and Q remain unchanged. Crew & Equipment now appears first and opens by default.

Passive production made obvious

Added a prominent settlement explanation for Woodcutters, Stone Quarries, and Great Hall production, plus a direct jump from Gather & grow to the building upgrades.

Boss expeditions explained

Renamed the Warband’s primary progression view to Fight a boss and added direct explanations of biome bosses, first-victory unlocks, boss relics, preparation, and risk.

Clickable NEXT STEP guidance

The persistent objective card now opens the correct tab, selects the relevant recipe or boss view, scrolls to the exact action, and briefly highlights it throughout the progression path.

Cleaner Warband planning and grounded Great Hall

Split Warband into focused planning and crew/equipment views, created a compact choose–prepare–review boss workspace, removed the troublesome post-fight popup, and corrected the Great Hall’s visual grounding.

Invisible terrain-aware combat boundaries

Replaced visible arena outlines with hand-shaped boundaries matched to each biome’s real clearing, preventing fighters from entering water, trees, rocks, and unreachable scenery.

Nine real locomotion cycles

Replaced bouncing enemy images with grounded four-frame movement cycles for all nine opponents, including consistent scale, contact points, charge pivots, and distance-driven animation.

Illustrated Battles and tougher early enemies

Added three illustrated biome arenas and nine distinct enemy sprites. Improved charges, hit effects, particles, fog, rain, and projectiles; increased Boar and Neck difficulty by 20% and Greyling difficulty by 50%.

Clean hunting sprites and lighthouse branding

Isolated deer and boar frames to eliminate trailing-image artifacts and added the Northrend lighthouse to the left of the wordmark across shared site headers.

Smoother animal running

Linked prey animation cadence to real travel distance so cautious movement, bursts, turns, and boar gait animate smoothly without frantic leg flailing.

Cinematic Hunting and gentler early costs

Rebuilt Hunting with an illustrated Meadows environment, richer prey behavior, trajectory and wind feedback, headshots, mist, foliage, and stronger impacts. Reduced early Woodcutter, Quarry, and Great Hall costs.

Dedicated Gathering tab

Moved timed gathering trips out of Workshop into their own destination-focused tab with active timers, material explanations, and no-Viking-risk guidance.

Prominent persistent objective

Promoted NEXT STEP into a high-contrast gold-accented sidebar card that remains visible and readable on desktop, tablets, and phones.

First gather onboarding

Made the opening Gather supplies action unmistakable, explained its first reward, connected the scene button to the real action, and automatically removed the coachmark after success.

World camps, progression route, and administration foundation

Added the shared Meadows camp map, biome-specific 20-Viking camps, the visual Workshop route, nine-fight progression, beginner guide, secure Owner activity history, administrative reset/removal controls, and a verified fresh Idle start.