If IG could change the way new content was generated, they could build biomes in small pieces, testing and getting player feedback as they went.


Suppose a biome could be designated as "under construction," and when a player entered such a biome, the terrain and whatever objects are currently on the terrain would be regenerated, as if for the first time.

You could not build there (or if you did, whatever you built would be wiped out), but players could walk around and see what's going on, helping with the debugging and and design. Ghost mode would be turned on so that new mobs ignore players who wouldn't be ready for them when the biome was finished.

This would enable a process called "Rapid Evolutionary Development," and when it gets going it lives up to its name.

Big updates almost always result in drama. It's just hard to test a big update thoroughly enough, Little updates are way easier for everyone, and devs get continuous feedback (instead of spending hundreds of hours in meetings whose fundamental purpose is to guess what players want), and the result is not only faster, but more accurate development and happier customers. (That's us, folks!)


I have read that every update breaks mods. If that is true, then what we call "modding" is really closer to hacking. "Modders" are hacking into the C# CLR (I guess) and hooking or changing code in ways that break when the attributes of the objects being hacked change.

The perfect fix for this would be an official Valheim API that is guaranteed stable, but IG would need at least one programmer dedicated to creating and maintaining the API.

(Maybe this is something the modding community could do for themselves? If there was an unofficial API for mods to use, then just the UAPI would break, and fixing it would fix all the mods)

My personal view is that RED has so many advantages, it's worth the disadvantage of broken mods.


Currently, devs go behind the curtain and create a new biome which is then unveiled dramatically. This has a certain theatrical appeal. The curtain goes up. The stage is fully set. The audience oohs and ahhs.

And then the bugs come out, but never mind. Maybe its something the devs enjoy too much to give up. It's fun for us too, and REDing new biomes would spoil the surprise. So there's that.