Valheim's trolls are getting hench

What's going on over at Iron Gate these days? Giving trolls sculpted biceps, apparently, as the dev team has unveiled some upcoming changes to Valheim's creatures - and that includes toned muscles for the big blue boys.

In a dev blog on Steam, Iron Gate gave players an update on how development is progressing, and what they can expect from upcoming patches. Along with more tweaks and fixes, some graphical updates are coming for the second and third bosses to give their models "new fresh looks, and have their designs better fall in line with how we envision the enemies of Valheim". Trolls are also getting a facelift, with "more hair, nairs and more defined muscles". Here's a before and after:

These graphical changes are due to arrive in the next patch, but Iron Gate also teased a couple of images for Valheim's first major update, Hearth and Home. We've already seen a wooden bird image for this update, and now we have a pair of shoes and a rock-filled trench to add to this cryptic mix. The latter is apparently a "pretty big part of the update, with many new items relating to it".

Iron Gate said that while its developers had been working from home, it expects the team to grow and potentially move into a bigger office. Valheim released with a dev team of only five people, and with a bunch of updates planned for the future, I imagine the studio will want to upscale to keep Valheim's considerable player base engaged.

Although much of the Valheim community has been waiting on the big Hearth and Home update, Iron Gate has continued to roll out smaller improvements in a series of patches. The last one included a terrain-modification system to speed up terrain loading, and a small but important tweak: hoeing will no longer cost you the earth.

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