Valheim update makes hoeing less expensive

One of the worst feelings in Valheim is wanting to create a big old hill, then almost immediately running out of stone. Huh? Who got my rocks off me?

It turns out the hoe tool charges a whole bunch of stone to raise the ground, making it quite expensive to complete dirty projects. But at long last, developer Iron Gate has stepped in to solve this issue with an update.

The patch notes released on Steam explain that Iron Gate has "lowered the amount of stone required to raise ground using the hoe". Previously one use of raise ground would cost you four stone: that number has been halved to two. So that's double the amount of hoeing for your resources, hooray!

In other ground-related news, the update also introduces a new "terrain-modification system" that should "reduce the number of network instances and make loading faster and smoother". If you've already made a number of terrain modifications in an area, you may need to enter the console command "optterrain" to convert all the modifications to the new system. To do this, you'll need to go to Valheim's properties and add "-console" as a launch argument (under the general tab). When in-game, you can then open up the console with F5, type in devcommands to enable commands, then optterrain.

On top of all this, the patch also tweaks world loading so that ships and buildings will no longer get damaged while loading. Hopefully this will stop those unexplainable hits on your boat in the middle of the sea.

There are a couple of other fixes in the patch: draugrs have been prevented from spawning inside stones, and torches can no longer be used to support constructions. We're still waiting on further news about Valheim's upcoming Hearth and Home update, which is the next major update in Valheim's development roadmap. A wooden bird is involved, somehow. But with that small tweak to the hoe, at least we can now make it terrain more easily.

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