Calling all Vikings! The Valheim Mistlands update is now live on the public test branch

It's been a long, long wait for the Valheim Mistlands update, but now it's here! Mostly. While the new Mistlands biome hasn't been fully launched or added to the base game of Valheim yet, it is accessible on the public test branch and you can check it out for yourself right now. Finally!

And if you haven't played on Valheim's test branch before, not to worry, we can help with our guide on how to use Valheim's public test branch.

What's in store for your brave little Vikings in the Mistlands? Originally the biome was planned as a realm filled with dead trees and sticky spiderwebs, but as you can see in the new gameplay trailer above it turned out quite differently. There are some tantalizing glimpses of jagged rocky peaks, giant scuttling insects, massive hovering blimp monsters, towering castle ruins, powerful storms, and the dense mist that cloaks the new biome.

But that's not all. You can also spy a sick-looking new workbench, new weapons and gear, a mysterious door with glowing runes, and… wait, is that a player using a magic staff? Can your Viking become a Mistlands mage?

Turns out there's a lot more than just mist in the Mistlands update. In fact, we've already played with a build of the Mistlands and we found some pretty interesting and surprising stuff hidden inside. You can read about it right now, too: Here's all the exciting new features we've found in the Valheim Mistlands update.

Valheim Mistlands stronghold — (Image credit: Iron Gate Studios)

Again, this isn't the official launch of the biome, and Iron Gate Studios still hasn't announced a date for that yet. For now, it's just available for testing. But any player who wants to check it out now can hop onto Valheim's public test server and see it for themselves. And given the long wait we've endured for the Mistlands, I imagine that'll be just about everyone.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.