Valheim developers celebrate the game's fifth anniversary with flower garlands, sweetbread, and Steam Deck optimisations

I’m going to a toddler’s birthday party on Saturday and I have it on good authority from Alva’s dad that there will be trays of sandwiches and a couple of cakes from M&S. There is no booze provided. I’m not sure if that’s because there should be no booze consumed at a two-year-old’s birthday, or only that we should bring our own. I guess I’ll find out for sure if they frisk on the door. However, if Valheim’s latest anniversary update is anything to go by, I am now looking forward to Alva’s fifth birthday.

To mark five years in Early Access, developer Iron Gate have released an anniversary patch that is a damn sight better than the prospect of watching a sad looking Colin the Caterpillar cake getting pawed at by hungry toddlers. There are flower garlands, mysterious axe heads, and a steady 60 fps on Steam Deck performance mode. Who doesn’t want mysterious blades at a birthday party?

While it may not be a name you would put on a banner, patch 0.221.10 offers a little something to both the players who love the idea of a party and those who would rather stay home.

For the partiers, there are Fey Lights to string up around your settlement, sweetbreads to bake and serve, and flower garlands to wear as you use the new Vibe and LoveYou emotes. If you want to keep things lowkey, you may just want to wear the celebratory cap.

On the midpoint of the partier to non-partier, you will find a pair of new materials – the mysterious axe head and the curious axehead. You’ll need both if you want to craft Early Axes, a new dual-wielded axe you can attain much earlier than the Berserkir Axes.

Then on the non-partier end of the scale you will find a stack of quality of life changes. Engine optimisations to improve performance, fixes to reduce armour stands’ exorbitant CPU usage, a less memory intensive minimap.

All those performance improvements have had a knock on effect for the Steam Deck’s performance mode, which now sees Valheim reaching the all-important 60 fps.

What I really appreciate about this patch is not the improvements it’s making the Early Access Viking simulation, but the gift ideas that it’s given me for Alva’s fifth birthday party. A nice cap and a pair of axe heads are easy enough to come by. And it saves me trying to work out which Famous Five books she’s already read.