Valheim update history for server owners, 2021 to 1.0

Valheim has had eight big content updates since Early Access opened on 2 February 2021, ending with 1.0 and the Deep North on 9 September 2026. For a server owner, only three questions matter with each one: does the server need updating before anyone can join (always), does it break mods (almost always), and does an existing world get the new content (only in the parts nobody has explored yet). This post goes through each update in order and pulls out what it changed for people who run a dedicated server, rather than what it changed for people who play on one.

The dates and patch numbers below are taken from Iron Gate's patch notes as collected on the community wiki. Smaller patches between the big ones are left out unless they changed something a server owner had to act on.

The pattern every update follows#

Before the list, the three things that have been true of every major Valheim release so far. Knowing them saves you rereading patch notes in a panic.

1. The server must match the client exactly. The dedicated server is a separate Steam app (896660) from the game (892970). Players' games update themselves; the server updates only when SteamCMD or your host runs an update. Until it does, everyone gets "Incompatible version". Updating a Valheim server and fixing version mismatch covers the mechanics.
2. BepInEx mods break. Mods patch the game's code directly, so a content update usually breaks some of them, and occasionally BepInEx itself. A modded server should stay on the old build until the mods it depends on have been updated.
3. Explored land keeps what it had. Valheim generates each zone the first time a player walks into it and then stores it in the world file. An update that adds a dungeon, a camp or a reworked biome only puts it into zones generated after the update. That single rule is the reason for most of the "where is the new stuff" questions, and it is covered properly in old worlds and new biomes.

There is a fourth, more recent rule: since patch 0.216.9 (June 2023) a world saved by a newer version of the game can no longer be loaded by an older one. Rolling the server back after an update therefore means rolling the world back too, to a backup taken before the update. That is why a manual backup before every update is not optional.

Timeline at a glance#

Hildir's Request is dated 19 August on some lists and 22 August on others; the patch number is the reliable reference. If you need the exact build a world was last saved on, the server log prints the version near the top of every start.

2021: Early Access and Hearth and Home#

The Early Access launch build shipped the dedicated server we still recognise: no configuration file, everything set by launch arguments, a 10-player cap, two UDP ports from 2456, and the three list files for admins, bans and an allow list. The world was a .db and .fwl pair, and Steam Cloud handled saves in a way that later caused trouble.

Hearth and Home (0.202.14, 16 September 2021) was mostly a rules update. Food was rebalanced so that dishes lean towards health or stamina, blocking and parrying were overhauled, weapons were rebalanced, and new building pieces arrived along with the cartography table, the oven, the obliterator and the iron cooking station. Tamed creatures could be named.

What it meant for servers:

• The cartography table changed how groups share maps, because maps are per character and the table is the only vanilla way to pool them. It still is; see the cartography table and shared maps.
• Onion seeds were added to Mountain chests. Chests that had already been opened or generated before the update did not get them. This is the first case of "the new item is missing because the world is old", and the Upgrade World mod still has an operation for it.
• Every mod broke. Hearth and Home touched combat, food and building code, which is exactly what most early mods patched.

2022: Frost Caves, the save split, crossplay and Mistlands#

2022 is the year that changed server administration the most.

Frost Caves (0.207.2, 1 March 2022) added a dungeon to the Mountains, with Ulv, Cultists and bats inside and the Fenris armour as the reward. It also added full gamepad support and the Steam Deck layout. For servers, the important part is that the caves only generate in Mountain zones created after the update. A group that had already mapped its local mountains found nothing until it sailed somewhere new.

The save split (0.209.8, 20 June 2022) moved local saves into worlds_local and characters_local and stopped syncing them to Steam Cloud; cloud saves went to a separate folder. This is why a world you are trying to upload to a server is sometimes not where an old guide says it is. Where Valheim keeps its files has every path.

Crossplay (0.211.7, 29 September 2022) is the update that changed what a server is. It added:

• the -crossplay launch argument, which routes connections through PlayFab instead of Steamworks;
• a six-digit join code printed in the log and regenerated on every restart;
• the Manage Saves screen for restoring and removing worlds and backups in the game;
• a reworked Join Game tab that shows favourites and whether a server supports crossplay;
• a default_old Steam branch for playing the previous version.

Crossplay is also why admin and ban lists started to need platform-prefixed IDs such as Steam_76561198012345678 on crossplay servers. Xbox players arrived when the console version launched the following March. Crossplay and Xbox players goes through the details.

Mistlands (0.212.7, 6 December 2022) added the biome, the Queen, the Seeker and Gjall enemies, the Dvergr, eitr and magic, black marble building, and new console commands including recall. It also changed world generation so that there is more Mistlands on the map. Worlds created before the update keep their original biome layout; the Upgrade World mod can switch an old world to the newer layout, with real risk to existing bases because rivers can move. Tar pits in the Plains, needed for Mistlands-era crafting, are another feature an old world only has where the Plains are unexplored.

Mistlands was also the first update where clients, not just servers, started to struggle on older hardware. The mist and the giant Yggdrasil roots are expensive to render, which the server cannot help with.

2023: Hildir's Request and world modifiers#

Between Mistlands and Hildir there were two server-relevant patches. 0.215.2 (April 2023) improved backup restoration and handling of worlds with missing metadata, and 0.216.9 (June 2023) reduced world file sizes, added backup restoration, and introduced the rule that worlds from a newer version cannot be loaded by an older one.

Hildir's Request (0.217.14, August 2023) added Hildir's camp in the Meadows, three new dungeons with her chests as rewards, and the world modifiers screen with presets when starting a world. It was a quiet update for servers at first, because modifiers were set on the start screen and a dedicated server has no start screen.

That gap was closed in 0.217.22 (October 2023): dedicated servers could set modifiers and presets with launch arguments and admin console commands. These are the arguments you use today:

-preset casual-modifier combat hard -modifier raids less -modifier portals casual-setkey nomap

Modifiers are stored in the world, so a server can change them later with a restart. World modifiers and presets lists every value. Hildir's camp and her dungeons are, again, only placed in unexplored zones; an old world with its Meadows fully explored may have no camp at all.

A later patch, 0.217.46, is worth knowing about for very old worlds: terrain edits made before Mistlands did not blend with newer ones, and the fix was to run the optterrain console command to update them.

2024: Ashlands and the Bog Witch#

Ashlands (0.218.15, 14 May 2024) rebuilt the southern biome that had existed as a placeholder since 2021. The new Ashlands is cut off from other biomes and reachable only by sea, with lava, fortresses, Flametal, siege weapons and Fader as the boss. It also added a world modifier that lets fire spread outside the Ashlands.

For servers, Ashlands had two consequences:

• Old worlds had old Ashlands. Anyone who had sailed south before the update had generated the placeholder terrain, and that terrain stays. New Ashlands content appears in the parts of the south nobody had loaded. The seam between old and new is often visible.
• It is the heaviest biome on the server and the clients. Lava, fire, many creatures and siege fights put real load on whoever owns the zone. Ashlands and Fader on a server and performance by biome cover what to expect.

The Bog Witch (0.219.13, 29 October 2024) added a trader hut in the Swamps, feasts and new skills, and fixed a save location bug in the Mac dedicated server. Like Hildir, the hut is placed only in unexplored Swamp, which matters for long-running servers where every nearby swamp has been mapped and cleared. The traders on a server covers finding her.

2025 and 2026: Call to Arms and 1.0#

Call to Arms (0.221.4, 9 September 2025) added trinkets, adrenaline, bears and new vile enemy variants. For server owners the relevant change was under the bonnet: the server list was rewritten for performance and reliability. If you remember the community list taking ten minutes to show a new server, this is the patch that was meant to address it. New locations from this update, such as the bear caves, follow the same unexplored-zones-only rule.

1.0 and the Deep North (9 September 2026) is the largest change to servers since crossplay:

• The Deep North. The final biome, with Jotun, snow mechanics and a grappling hook. In old worlds the north was a barren placeholder; any of it already explored stays barren. The patch notes also describe alternate versions of earlier biomes at the outer edges of the world.
• A new save system. World data is now split into chunks so that a save writes only what changed, and the format is designed to survive a write interrupted part-way. Third-party write-ups describe the world as a folder of chunk files rather than the old .db and .fwl pair, with the pre-1.0 files kept and renamed on first load. Look in your own worlds_local folder after the first 1.0 start before you change a backup script.
• New player IDs. 1.0 introduced a new ID format, shown in the patch notes as V_123456789. Hotfix 1.0.12 fixed ban and allow lists that were only accepting the new format, so old Steam_ entries work again.
• Early hotfixes that matter. 1.0.16 fixed terrain edits in the Deep North reverting when an area unloaded. 1.0.17 fixed a rare bug that could erase all objects in parts of a world when a large chunk file was split. If your server is on an early 1.0 build, update it.

// adminlist.txt after 1.0 - check the server log for the exact formSteam_76561198012345678V_123456789

What to do before the next update#

Valheim is at 1.0, but patches have not stopped; several hotfixes followed in the first month. The routine below costs ten minutes and has saved more worlds than any mod.

1. Read the patch notes before updating. Look for the words "save", "world generation", "ID" and "dedicated". Those are the changes that affect you rather than your players.
2. Back up the world and copy the backup off the machine. The built-in backups sit beside the world. Valheim backups and world corruption explains why that is not enough.
3. On a modded server, wait. Check each mod page for the new game version, and update BepInEx and the mods together. What to do when a mod update breaks has the rollback plan.
4. Test big updates on a copy. The public test branch is open before most major releases. Running the public test branch on a server shows how to try a patch on a copy of the world without touching the real one.
5. Decide about new content as a group. An update that adds a biome is the moment to choose between exploring further, using Upgrade World, or starting fresh. That decision is easier before anyone has sailed into the placeholder terrain.

On RE:NODE a backup is one button on the Backups tab, it is stored off the machine it protects, and it can be locked so scheduled rotation never removes the copy from before an update. Restoring it is also one button, which is the whole rollback plan for a world that did not survive a patch.

FAQ#

Do I need to start a new world after a big Valheim update?

No. Old worlds load and keep working after every update so far, 1.0 included. What you lose is new content in zones you have already explored. If the group wants a new biome or dungeon close to home, that is when a fresh world or the Upgrade World mod comes in.

Why can players not join right after a patch?

Their game updated through Steam and the server did not. The dedicated server is a separate app that only updates when something runs an update on it. Restart it with updates enabled, then check that the version in the log matches the one on the main menu.

Can I roll the server back to the previous version?

The server software, yes, through Steam's older branches. The world, only to a backup taken before the update, because since mid-2023 a world saved by a newer build will not load on an older one. With 1.0's new save format this matters even more.

Did 1.0 change the admin and ban lists?

It introduced a new player ID format alongside the old platform-prefixed IDs. An early hotfix made the lists accept both again. If an admin loses their rights after updating, have them join once and copy the ID the server log prints for them.

Which update changed Valheim servers the most?

Crossplay in September 2022, because it added the PlayFab relay, join codes and platform IDs. 1.0 comes second, because of the new save format. Content updates change what players do; those two changed what the server is.