Valheim finally has a finish line. Iron Gate and Coffee Stain have put a date on 1.0, September 9, 2026, and it lands with the Deep North, the last major biome, which closes out the progression that started back in early access in 2021. We've hosted Valheim since day one, through every one of those updates, and I'll say up front: this one is a bigger deal for server owners than a normal biome drop, because two separate things arrive on the same day. The final biome, and consoles.
We're about three weeks out as I write this, which is the window where the decisions are still cheap ones. Which platforms you're inviting, whether you're running mods, and whether the world you're on now is really the world you want to finish the game in. Here's what's actually coming, and more importantly, what you as a server admin want to think about before the ninth. If you're standing a world up fresh for launch rather than carrying one over, the options are on our Valheim hosting page.
What Deep North actually adds
Iron Gate have been deliberately sparing with specifics, so I'm going to stick to what they've actually shown rather than what the rumour mill has filled in around it. The Deep North is the frozen cap at the top of the map and the last major biome. What they've confirmed and shown so far includes a Frost Foundry, a shovel built for digging through deep snow, and new building pieces including a 67-degree roof set. They've also said there's new content elsewhere in Valheim, not only up north. That's the confirmed list.
One caution, because there's a lot of confident detail circulating and some of it has been repeated here before. The animated Hervor shorts do feature an Elaking, but Iron Gate have said plainly that those shorts depict "a Deep North that's a little bit different" from the one that ships. Specific enemy names, armour tiers and weapon lists doing the rounds are not confirmed. Treat them as fan speculation until launch day.
For a server owner, the takeaway from a whole new biome is the same regardless of what's in it: more world, more assets loaded, more to keep an eye on with memory. More on that below.
The console launch is the real story for server owners
This is the part that changes things. Valheim 1.0 brings the game to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2 alongside the existing PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S versions, and it does it with full crossplay across every platform. All of them, at once. A hosted, always-on server is genuinely the cleanest way to get a PC player, an Xbox player, a PS5 player and someone on a Switch 2 into the same world and keep it running when everyone logs off.
There's a decision baked into that, and it's worth making on purpose rather than tripping over. It's also worth stating more precisely than this post did originally, because the version of it that circulates online is wrong.
Crossplay does not stop BepInEx loading. Turning it on moves the server onto a different matchmaking backend and leaves the mod loader alone. Server-side mods keep working on a crossplay server. What you'll read almost everywhere, including in an earlier version of this post, is that the crossplay backend hooks the same DLLs as the mod loader and kills modding outright. That explanation isn't true. It never was.
The real constraint is simpler, and it comes from the console side. Console players can't install mods at all. So any mod that needs to be on the client shuts out your PS5, Switch 2 and Xbox players, whatever the server is doing. On top of that, mods written assuming every player is on Steam, typically anything reading a SteamID64 for admin lists or leaning on Steam networking, can throw errors when a console player joins.
Which lands you in roughly the same practical place, but for reasons that hold up:
- If you want your console friends in the world, run vanilla or stick to server-side-only mods.
- If your group is all on PC and you live for the mod scene, keep crossplay off and mod away.
Decide which world you're running before you invite people, because switching later means either kicking your console players or stripping your mods. Our mod installation guide covers the modded path. One practical note while you're planning: crossplay isn't a toggle in Settings. It's set by which predefined line your server starts with in Commandline Manager, and only the Additional Configuration line carries the tokens for world presets and extra arguments, so switching between them can drop tuned settings. Open a ticket if you need crossplay and custom arguments together.
Your console players won't use an IP address
Worth knowing before launch day, because it catches almost everyone the first time. On a crossplay server your console and Game Pass players don't connect by IP and port at all. The server registers itself with the crossplay backend when it starts and gets back a six-digit join code. That code is what you hand out. Six digits, nothing else. Worth knowing that crossplay has to be enabled on the player's side as well as the server's, and on Xbox the toggle can be hidden by parental control settings. There's a full walkthrough of join codes, console connection steps and the mixed-platform admin lists in Valheim Crossplay and Join Codes on Dedicated Servers.
The simplest way to read it is from inside the game: join your own server, open the pause menu, and the join code is there to click and copy. It's also written to the server log, which is the route when nobody can get in yet, and there it doesn't turn up instantly. The line you want reads Session "Your Server Name" registered with join code 604510. If you go looking a second or two early you'll find the session announced with the code still blank, which reads like something has failed when it just hasn't come back yet. Give it a moment and read the log again.
Your existing world won't magically fill with Deep North
This is the question we'll get most, so let me get ahead of it. If you've been playing on the same world for a year, you may be expecting to log in on September 9 and find the Deep North waiting on your doorstep. That's not how Valheim works. It catches people out with every biome update.
Valheim builds the world zone by zone, the first time anyone loads each zone. Once a zone is generated it's written to your world file with its terrain and biome baked in, and the game never goes back and re-evaluates it. So when Iron Gate ships Deep North, the new generation only applies to zones nobody's visited yet. Generated zones are permanent. Anywhere you've already explored stays exactly as it is, which is good news for your base. It's not going anywhere.
The way you actually experience Deep North on an existing world is to head north into water and land you haven't explored yet. Those fresh zones generate with the full 1.0 content. Sail, and you'll find it. If your base already sits right at the old northern edge, the unexplored zones just past it will have it.
Worth knowing that "explored" is broader than it sounds: it means any zone generated for anyone on that world, including coastline somebody sailed past at night. The in-game map isn't a reliable guide either, because generation reaches a few hundred metres further out than the minimap ever reveals.
If you've already explored the whole northern stretch and you want Deep North content forced into those already-generated zones, that's possible but it's a different job. It takes a world-editing tool, the community's Upgrade World, whose upgrade deepnorth operation clears the generated Deep North zones and nearby water so they come back under the new rules. Terrain it leaves to the base game rather than rewriting itself, so this isn't the river-moving operation some of that tool's other options are. It does empty the zones it touches, though. Base protection is the only thing standing between that regeneration and anything you've built up there. It's a BepInEx tool, which on our servers means it goes through support rather than a self-serve upload, since we block customer .dll uploads for security. Take a backup and open a ticket and we'll walk through it or run the pass for you. It'll also need a build that works against 1.0, and Iron Gate say in their FAQ that they can't guarantee any mod is functional at release, so this isn't something to plan launch week around. Honestly, for most groups the easy answer is simpler. Sail into fresh territory, or start a clean 1.0 world. There's a fuller walkthrough in Deep North on an existing Valheim world.
Should you start fresh?
There's no forced wipe. Your world carries over and 1.0 will happily load it. But "it loads" and "it's the best way to see the final biome" aren't the same thing. A brand-new 1.0 world generates every zone under the new rules, so the whole map, not just the north, reflects the finished game. If your current world is long in the tooth or your group's been drifting anyway, a fresh start on launch day is a clean way to experience the ending as intended, and everyone progresses together.
If you've got a base and a world you're attached to, keep it. Just take a manual backup from Cloud Backup in the panel first, so you've got a safe point before the update touches anything. And if you want to bring a local single-player world up to the server to continue it, how to move a Valheim world to a dedicated server covers what carries over and the safe order to do it in, with the exact file mechanics in our world upload guide.
A short prep list before September 9
The date is close enough now that these are worth doing rather than noting:
- Take a manual backup once you know the date's close. If you've got Cloud Backup on a schedule those keep running on their own. But one taken deliberately the day before the update is the one you'll be able to pick out as your pre-1.0 point when you actually need it.
- Make the crossplay-versus-mods call and tell your players, especially if console friends are joining. If they are, find your join code and send it round before everyone piles in.
- If you run mods, expect them to break on the update. A version bump this size means BepInEx and most Thunderstore mods will need updating before they work again. That's normal, not a fault, and Iron Gate have said the same themselves. Plan to run vanilla for a few days and add mods back as authors ship 1.0 builds. Our top Valheim mods list is a good place to watch for what's caught up.
- Keep half an eye on how worlds get stored. A public test build back in May introduced a reworked save system. A world lives in a folder of smaller chunks now, instead of the familiar
.dband.fwlpair, with backups in folders of their own, and only the chunks that changed get written on each save. Iron Gate haven't said whether that ships with 1.0, and the live build hasn't moved. So it's a maybe, not a plan. If it does land, any instructions you've saved about copying two files by hand stop being right that day, and a world that isn't chunked yet gets converted the first time it loads, with a backup taken first. - Glance at your RAM if you run big builds or a heavy modlist. Vanilla Valheim is light. But the final biome plus a sprawling base plus mods adds up, and you can bump memory from the panel any time.
- On the day itself, updating is just stop, Steam Update, start. Expect the usual launch-day version-mismatch window where clients update before your server does and throw "failed to connect". Update the server and it clears. That's all it is. Our connection troubleshooting guide has the detail.
That's the whole server-owner picture. Deep North is the content. But the console launch and the crossplay decision are the parts that actually shape how you set your server up, and the existing-world question is the one worth understanding before your players start asking why the north looks the same. We've run Valheim servers since the game launched and we'll be on the new build the day it drops. If you want to get a world going before then, the getting started guide will have you up in a few minutes.