Valheim launched into Steam Early Access in February 2021 and quickly garnered attention, launching with over 500,000 peak concurrent players on Steam and still counting over 20,000 daily concurrent players at the time of writing. Now, over five years after the Early Access launch, the open-world survival-craft game is finally launching out of Early Access, with a slew of new content and a new biome in-tow.

Aside from new content, including weapons, new traversal options, a new dungeon type, and a new mount, among others, Valheim 1.0 also sees the game get an official Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5 launch, and it makes cross-play available for all platforms. The update officially launches on September 9 on all platforms, including Windows, Linux, macOS, the Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2.

As suggested by the update's "Deep North" moniker, it introduces the Deep North biome, which includes rideable moose, new enemies to fight, abandoned villages and the underground Winding Tunnels to explore. It also adds the Frost Foundry crafting table, where players can craft new weapons and items from the icy resources found in the Deep North, and myriad new weapons, including Nord axes, greatswords, bows, shields, and the Frostfire crossbow.

There are also new boss fight cinematics, new lore to discover, and over 50 new achievements for players to earn, and the update adds a finale to the character's journey. The 1.0 update also introduces optimizations to reduce micro stutters and faster saving. Coffee Stain and Iron Gate say that there are still more updates coming after the Deep North update, however, there are no more large-scale updates currently planned—although they are not ruled out, either.