Iron Gate Studios rang in the New Year by announcing plans for the 2023 Valheim (opens in new tab). The Viking Survival Sim launched in Early Access in February 2021 and despite its high level of completion and great reception, it remains in that state. The studio believes the game will be complete once three biomes are included: the first is Mistland, which was the subject of a major update last year, and this year's Ashland.

Ashland is said to be "quite different from what we're used to" and will be "a large chunk of land far south of the map, rather than a small group of islands spread across the world." And unlike "Mistlands," whose development was kept under wraps until close to release, the studio has remained transparent, saying it wants to "show you more of the process."

Given that "Mistlands" was released just last month, development of "Ashlands" is in a very early stage, with concept art of a nasty skeletal enemy called "Charred" and a mouth with basically flesh on its legs called "Morgen." frankly horrifying looking, make an appearance. The Ashlands is supposed to be a land of the dead and a volcanic area, so there are glowing interiors and skulls sticking out all over the place

The release date for The Ashlands is not yet set, but it is certainly not imminent, and Iron Gate is working on a small The game, which will be released on Xbox in March, will feature cross-play, and the developers are considering adding a new difficulty setting. The quest will add a fashionable outfit, aptly named "Hildiria," as seen in the header image, and, most importantly, the ability to change the character's hairstyle.

Along with updating content, Iron Gate stated that it is also working on ways to improve the accessibility of the game (which it said is "long overdue"). As part of this, they are particularly interested in hearing from people with disabilities and other factors that affect their gaming experience, and have provided this contact email (opens in new tab).

The Ashlands expansion is still in pre-production, so don't expect it to be ready anytime soon (although it is technically already one of the game's "secret" biomes, as described here (opens in new tab)). Valheim was a huge success at launch and was developed almost entirely by three people, so as Iron Gate itself has said in the past, it took considerable resources and time to scale well to accommodate it. However, nearly two years after its early access launch, Iron Gate is operating on a much larger scale, and one would expect that it will complete this biome a bit sooner.