Save world seeds safe on major updates?

[MythN7]

Can i safely keep playing my world after the hearth and home update?

[Mr. Moustache]

In a recent tweet, one of the devs cautioned that you may have to create new worlds with new updates, especially biomes. He also mentioned that, regardless, old worlds will still be accessible.

Such are the vicissitudes of early access.

[Ashley]

Possibly. Possibly not. They don't know for sure from what i've seen. You should be able to keep playing on old worlds just fine I imagine. But accessing the new biomes on an old might not happen.

[MythN7]

so spending hours flattening out a massive land plot with chests of stone and wood might be a waste of time.

[Dreaminway]

Posted this in another topic so I'll repeat it here:

A lot of games with world generation need you to make a new world for updates to show. That is just how it is. Look at Minecraft, Starbound and Terraria, and other games with random world gen. When they added new world gen/biomes to the code, you needed to make new worlds to see them. There's no way to just 'dump them' into an existing world with out screwing something up badly or overwriting areas they shouldn't.

Adding new stuff is likely going to do the same thing it does to Minecraft, change how the world 'seed' is laid out. Only Minecraft can generate 'new chunks' if you not explored an area yet, and get them janky chunk borders where the new world gen starts along with old already loaded biomes no longer matching what they were before due to the whole biome map changing.

Valheim's world however unlike Minecraft is fully there even if you not explored it yet much like Terraria, so yeah, any new biomes, world gens they add, new boss shrines, mob spawns, resources etc will need you to make a new world to include them.

This isn't just an 'early access' thing. As new updates come out, and they add more stuff to the game you will in time need to make new worlds to see all the new added things. But its not like its that hard to relocate items across worlds, just a bit time consuming. Or just keep your existing world and make a new one to explore the new stuff.

Heck I still have a few old Terraria worlds that I did mega builds on but they have none of the newer world gen on them as they were made in much MUCH older versions of the game. But I still have and play on them, bringing the newer stuff over from another world.

That's just how games like this are. It's not a waste of time building up as you can right now just because a new update is coming out to add in new stuff.

Plus if you don't want to rebuild on a new world, there is a mod that lets you save your build and 'paste' it into a new world if you want to grab it all and resume.

[Ashley]

Is it really a waste though if you had fun and the world still works? And assuming you could always just import resources from the new world. Or you know play the games in seasons. New update = new character and world and play the whole game over again. Possibly with new additions if they update the old biomes.

Granted I know that's not fun for some people. But it has been fun for me in the past with the likes of Terraria and minecraft.

[Buntkreuz]

Originally posted by MythN7:

so spending hours flattening out a massive land plot with chests of stone and wood might be a waste of time.

Its ever a waste of time because building anything in Valheim is cosmetic and doesnt do anything for progression.
You only need a small hut, basically 4 walls and 2 roofs are enough for any workbench.
Building in such games is ever a matter of having fun to be creative, not to progress.
In fact, you dont need any building at all in Valheim to progress, you can play entirely nomadic.
If you consider building a waste of time, then dont do it.

[Mr. Moustache]

Originally posted by MythN7:

so spending hours flattening out a massive land plot with chests of stone and wood might be a waste of time.

No. The dev confirmed that old worlds will still be accessible. Keep in mind that _IF_ new biomes/updates require new worlds to be generated, you may have to start new worlds multiple times until this game is out of early access. If this is unacceptable, table the game until it's in release. Plenty of other games in the meantime.

[Ataxio]

ARK pulled this off w/o needing to reroll a save when they updated the island to include the snowy areas.

Why cant we simply regenerate X biomes? The crossovers between biomes seems to be a hard line in the sand which suggests this is possible in theory.

There may even be generic placeholder objects in our existing worlds which can simply be updated.

From the way i see things on a technical standpoint it should be extremly possible to continue your initial save file into release. But only time will truely tell.

[RasaNova]

Originally posted by MythN7:

so spending hours flattening out a massive land plot with chests of stone and wood might be a waste of time.

Not if you enjoy building.

But it's an incomplete game, and at this time nobody (including the devs) can say what the effects of future updates might be. Maybe it will all work seamlessly. Maybe we'll be able to play an old map with an old version and just not get the new mechanics & content. Maybe we'll have to start over from the beginning due to changes in voxel/mesh/structure mechanics, or character skills & progression.

So yeah, assume you may lose everything (although we probably won't) and if that's unacceptable then put it aside til it's a complete game.

[BGratz]

Originally posted by MythN7:

so spending hours flattening out a massive land plot with chests of stone and wood might be a waste of time.

Not if you keep playing the old version until you restart anyway

[Dreaminway]

Originally posted by Ataxio:

ARK pulled this off w/o needing to reroll a save when they updated the island to include the snowy areas.

Why cant we simply regenerate X biomes? The crossovers between biomes seems to be a hard line in the sand which suggests this is possible in theory.

Because ARK isn't a random generated world. It's a pre set world so any map changes and updates will follow through with out need of a restart.

When you have worlds that are randomly generated like this game, or Minecraft or Terraia, They cant just 'update' what you have already generated. The code, biome map, and world gen will change depending on what they add to the codeing for the world gen. Where once was a swamp, could be in another update be a dark forest. Just like in minecraft where each update changes the biome map, so the same seed's give differing worlds due to the new stuff they added to world gen.

Minecraft however as I said before you can just go into unexplored chunks, and see where the old world gen ended and new started. But in games like this or Terraia, the whole world is already loaded even if you haven't explored it, theres no way to add in new world gen, biomes, spawners, items with out making a new world.

[RasaNova]

Originally posted by Ataxio:

ARK pulled this off w/o needing to reroll a save when they updated the island to include the snowy areas.

Why cant we simply regenerate X biomes? The crossovers between biomes seems to be a hard line in the sand which suggests this is possible in theory.

There may even be generic placeholder objects in our existing worlds which can simply be updated.

From the way i see things on a technical standpoint it should be extremly possible to continue your initial save file into release. But only time will truely tell.

But... Ark DID do server wipes, as well as biome re-structures that reset huge areas of the map...

[Ataxio]

Missing my point completely, ARK was one example. Ive got 1600 hours into ARK and hosted the games largest vanilla PvE server for a while from the start, there was never a map wipe, just a partial one in the northern areas of the island where they regenerated the terrain on the existing map. If your talking about official servers thats absolutely not what im referanceing.

Valheim seems to be built in a way that the biomes can be regenerated or edited on an existing map. I am purely speculateing but this seems logical and is absolutely possible.

[BrainRain]

Carrots

[RasaNova]

Originally posted by Ataxio:

Missing my point completely, ARK was one example. Ive got 1600 hours into ARK and hosted the games largest vanilla PvE server for a while from the start, there was never a map wipe, just a partial one in the northern areas of the island where they regenerated the terrain on the existing map. If your talking about official servers thats absolutely not what im referanceing.

Valheim seems to be built in a way that the biomes can be regenerated or edited on an existing map. I am purely speculateing but this seems logical and is absolutely possible.

And then there was the time when they wiped nearly everything south of the volcano to add the swamp and redwood forest areas. My only point was that even Ark wasn't entirely safe from losing months of work.

Ark, Minecraft, 7 Days to Die, Night of the Dead, Terraria, Subnautica, many more all had partial or complete wipes, or required restarts. Some (such as 7D2D) still gave the option to roll back to previous versions and keep playing your old saves.