Valheim Team Shares New Images, Talks Ashlands and General Biome Decelopment and Community Expectations

mmorpg.com:

Valheim is previewing a little of what we will see in the Ashlands, along with a new format video about the creative process behind creating a new biome, featuring work they’ve been doing on Ashlands.

Iron Gate shared a new video in a “Walk & Talk” series, which are shorter than their usual Fireside Chat presentations, but still packed with info. The team is planning to release a series of these, along with the fireside chat formula, so going forward we can expect various types of info on Valheim development. 

This first episode features developers Jonathan and Robin talking about the work that goes into creating a new biome,but specifically, Ashlands. “There are so many things that go into making a biome that there is no clear-cut recipe, I would say. But it starts with a vision,” says Robin. And their vision at Iron Gate was to create something “more undead”, with inspirations from things like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, fire, demons, lava golems, and more that were part of the initial vision development.

In some games creating a new biome is reskinning an area and just creating a theme.  Iron Gate is not looking to build an entire new game in each biome, but it is intended to feel like a different experience within the overall experience Valheim offers.

When the team developed Mistlands, which admittedly took awhile, they were a bit more secretive about the development process. They’d update and tell the community that it was coming and drop a screenshot or a detail once in a while, but were pretty secretive about the process. 

With Ashlands, transparency is the rule. However,  there are challenges in continuously taking time to develop and sometimes change course, and having the community weigh in all the time. It