At Gamescom Opening Night Live, Valheim developer Iron Gate revealed that the game's Hearth & Home update will launch on September 16. The first major update for Valheim, Hearth & Home adds a bunch of new features and reworks existing systems such as health and stamina.
To celebrate the launch date reveal, a new animated trailer for Valheim also debuted at Opening Night Live, which you can see below:
Iron Gate had previously mentioned in an update that Hearth & Home will have some big changes for how food works in the game. While the current build allows for health and stamina to be restored after food has been eaten, the update will make most food items restore only one of these gameplay elements. Some food items will restore both stamina and health, but with mixed results. The food bar will be replaced with timers to provide a more accurate indicator of how empty your avatar's stomach is, as the food icons will still start blinking when they're halfway depleted.
Stamina is of course needed for survival tasks and building, while health serves a traditional role of ensuring that players will know exactly how close to death they are if they take too much damage during combat.
To compensate for these changes, players will be able to prioritize one of the stats during gameplay, as either a stamina-focused combat style that allows for more attacks on enemies can be used, or a health-focused combat style allows for more defensive options. Blocking power will now be based on maximum health, and a new stagger mechanic to topple enemies is being introduced.
Valheim is currently available right now on PC through Steam Early Access.