Valheim is celebrating its five year Early Access anniversary with Patch 0.221.10, which mixes playful new items with technical upgrades and a bunch of performance and stability fixes. The update adds a celebratory cap, new emotes and a radial emote menu, fresh hairstyles and decorative garlands to dress up characters and bases. On the gameplay side, players can craft the new Early Axes, a dual wield weapon line whose name nods to Valheim’s Early Access roots, as well as enjoy the Frosted Sweetbread consumable. Under the hood, the game has been moved to Unity 6000.0.61f1 and receives optimizations like lower CPU use for armor stands, reduced GPU overhead from some effects, and improved graphics presets across PC, consoles and Steam Deck.
Console users get higher resolution UI, better lighting and cloud synced per user settings, while Steam Deck players benefit from a tuned Performance mode targeting 60 fps and better battery friendly options. Alongside the patch, Iron Gate is marking the occasion with an anniversary message to the community, a Twitch concert by the Munich Radio Orchestra, and a reminder that the Deep North biome is still in development as the team aims for a 1.0 release sometime after this busy 2026.
