Valheim is currently well received by tens of thousands of players. The new survival game impresses with great content, a huge world and there is a lot to do. But just how big this world really is has given MeinMMO author and survival expert Benedict Grothaus a bit of a scare ..
Since the Early Access release of Valheim I have played for almost 50 hours by now. I probably played "normal", like most people: collecting resources, improving my equipment, exploring the world. If you want to read more about it, you can find the reasons why it is so good in my play report of Valheim.
So I didn’t dawdle and above all I was on the road a lot – or so I thought. To me and certainly to many other players it is important in a survival game to explore everything. For this you finally get a world in which you are supposed to survive.
Valheim surprised me though. After I am already accustomed to reasonably extensive maps from Fallout 76, Conan Exiles and Rust, my expectations were quite high. But Valheim has surpassed it.
How big is the map of Valheim?
This is how the map looks like: First of all, the map may seem relatively small. But that’s because you simply see them in a zoom when you open them in the beginning. When I looked at the map for the first time after a few hours, I thought, "Oh, got quite a bit done already."
That much I have already uncovered in the meantime. Looks really a lot, doesn’t it? Think.
I was happy about this and continued to play. But after it dawned on me that there is not enough room for all the content on this piece, I took a closer look and found out that you can scroll out.
So I opened the map again and had a look. Looking at the entire map, I then noticed that not even a tenth of it is even revealed. I discovered 5% – if that:
This is how my current world looks in the overall view … If you want to see it for yourself, the seed is: QyB7WVDHvb
How long does it take to explore? For fun I measured the world once. Now I’m no mathematician or surveyor, but basic calculations I can still get right.
Through admin commands I have uncovered the whole world and traveled it via teleport commands. A list of the admin commands for Valheim can be found at the colleagues of GameStar.
The world is a disc with a radius of 10.500 units. When running on a level you cover about 420 units per minute, not counting stamina. Let’s do some quick math on this:
- 10.500 units radius is 21.000 units diameter of the disk
- which corresponds to 346.360.590 units of length squared in area – already very considerable
- at 420 units per minute you would need about 13.744 hours to travel everything on foot
- The range of vision is much broader – if we calculate about ten times, we are still left with 1.374 hours for the whole map
This is now a rough milkmaid calculation and at most a guideline. Finally, I’m assuming here that you can sprint across mountains and oceans and run permanently – which, of course, you can’t do. Besides, the numbers are only rough estimates. But you can roughly imagine how freaking huge the map is this way.
What can I discover there?
The world of Valheim consists of different biomes. Currently you can travel and actively play on six of them:
- Grasslands you mostly start in
- Dark forests, a heavier area where you get heartwood for better weapons and tools
- more dangerous swamps with new enemies and lots of poison – there is iron to get here
- Mountains you can climb only with antifreeze. You need mead to protect you from cold. In our guide you will learn how to brew mead in Valheim.
- Plains, barren deserts full of goblins
- the vast oceans between Valheim’s many islands, where special materials and enemies can be found
Each biome (except the ocean) has its own properties, resources, and even its own boss, which serves as a sort of chapter-closer. We have already listed all the bosses with tactics and requirements for you in our guide.
In addition, there are three more biomes, one of which the developers have already revealed in the roadmap: Fog Lands. There is still nothing to discover. However, you can see two more biomes on a fully revealed map: the Deep North and the Ash Lands in the South. Currently there is nothing to do there yet, although there is a new type of metal in the south. However, we do not yet know what this is for.
I have a new world to test all uncovered. In the north and south you can see the new biomes.
Special treat: every world is different
What makes the Map of Valheim so special, however, is not just its size. Each world is procedurally randomly generated. That means: every world is different. Your "seed" decides what it looks like in the process.
The "seed" is the source of the generation of a map and determines how it is structured. You can start like this right next to a plain, surrounded by dangerous forests or right next to useful places like a merchant.
More on Valheim:
So even if you’ve explored your map at some point, you can still discover completely different worlds at a friend’s place. However, this system also makes it harder to communicate with others about where to find which boss or resource.
There’s plenty to watch in Valheim for that. If you keep a lookout, you may even find Thor, the god of thunder, in the sky.