Valheim update adds a temporary maypole and makes monsters more violent

Valheim house update — (Image credit: Iron Gate AB)

The latest Valheim update lets players build a maypole and has tweaked enemies to become more aggressive.

The Valheim patch is available bringing the game to version 0.155.7 and mostly targeting AI issues. However, developer Iron Gate has also revealed that because it's midsummer in Sweden, a buildable maypole has been temporarily added to the game so that players can celebrate.

There are also a bunch of other fixes, with the main portion of the update changing the enemy AI behaviors. Monsters will now become more aggressive, particularly when they're unable to attack the player. They'll focus their attacks on structures and other things in the area, making themselves somewhat more intimidating and giving the player more to manage. Additionally, when fighting bosses, they won't run away from players anymore.

There's also a Blob event that has been enabled and Greydwarfs can now throw better. Event triggers have been tweaked as well, the Wolf event only triggers after Bonemass has been killed, and Moder army can trigger in mountains are some of the examples given.

For fixes, SFX volume settings have been fixed and a save bug issue where world corruption could occur when shutting down has been patched up. Containers also won't need to be clicked multiple times to open.

Valheim is a Viking-themed survival where players can craft their own camps and survive against the elements and monsters. Earlier this year, the game hit 1 million players after only a week in early access, and shortly after that, it set a new concurrent record on Steam and then topped itself again by hitting over 400,000 concurrent players.

The studio did have a roadmap laid out for future content but has changed things up a bit. Instead of releasing 4 updates, it now plans to release a Hearth & Home update later this year. This was detailed in an update earlier this month where the studio says that the influx of players has highlighted "a thousand new problems" and as such it says the "priority has been to make the current experience as stable as possible and this has meant new content has taken a backseat."