This update is for the Public Test branch of Valheim, and may therefore be unstable. Before we launch this update to the Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible.
Access the Public Test branch by right clicking Valheim in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’. In the new window, select ‘Betas’ and type in the code “yesimadebackups”. The Public Test branch should now be available for you to choose from.
As always, remember to be considerate towards players not partaking in the Public Test, in case they want to avoid spoilers.
As the password indicates, please make sure to make backups of your save files before playing.

This patch includes a lot of optimisations for many underlying systems of the game – this to improve in-game performance for both small and large worlds, network performance, load times and to drastically decrease save file sizes. We hope that these changes will be a significant improvement for some of you.

This does mean, however, that this patch is extra prone to have introduced some new and obscure bugs that we have yet to find, so any additional testing and bug reporting on this is greatly appreciated! Be sure to report them in our Discord in the public test channel or by filling out this form.

On a very important note, this patch makes your saves significantly less backwards compatible than other patches, so make sure you really do make extra backups this time. As always, we will do our best so that you will be able to continue with your save files when this goes live, but there is always a risk that you might have to restore your backups when playing on the public test.

Should this patch not be problem free, we will roll it back for the time being, and return to it at a later date. Therefore it is extra important that you make your backups this time.

* Many performance, memory and networking improvements for both small and large worlds
* World save file size greatly reduced
* Fixed hitbox issue for close combat and spear throwing issue
* Minimap pin input fixed on steam deck & big picture mode
* Added “UI scaling” to settings on Xbox
* Fixed endless loading of save manager when switching tabs too fast
* World save files that are corrupt, have load errors or have missing meta files can now be restored from the most recent backup directly from within the Select World menu by pressing the “Start” button.
* Save file stability & issues fixed
* Decreased load times in the Manage Saves menu.
* Fixed a bug that would cause the GUI to not update when deleting the bottommost backup in the Manage Saves menu.