Valheim thrusts players into the boots of a Viking warrior on a quest to defeat a big bunch of bad guys threatening the existence of the Norse afterlife. If you’re a survival-crafting fan, then you should already have a general idea of what you need to do here, but Valheim does things a little differently compared to other games in the genre. If you’re a completely new player, or if you want a refresher on all the things you need to do to start this game on the right foot, here’s a little compendium containing everything you need to know.
What Exactly is Your Goal in Valheim?
Apart from building bases and getting progressively better equipment, your ultimate goal in Valheim is to slay eight bosses, one in each non-ocean biome. When you first land on your procedurally generated map, you’ll find a bunch of stone steles forming a circle — each stele represents a boss, and once you beat them, you can mount their heads here and claim a part of their power for yourself.
Each boss is significantly stronger than the last, but each biome also contains new resources that will make you even more powerful. Biomes also tend to require specialized equipment, which means you’ll need to play through the game one biome at a time in this order:
- Meadows
- Dark Forest
- Swamps
- Mountain
- Plains
- Mistlands
- Ashlands
- Deep North
How to Find Boss Locations
While exploring each biome, you may run across a Vegvisir, which is a small stone tablet with a glowing inscription on it. Interact with the Vegvisir, and you’ll reveal the location of your current biome’s boss on the world map.
Crafting Equipment
The first thing you’ll want to do is pick up some wood and stone (preferably Flint from riverbanks), then build a basic set of tools and a Workbench. You can build almost anywhere in Valheim, but you can only do so within the buildable vicinity of a Workbench.
You need a hammer if you want to place building pieces and crafting stations. Also, most crafting stations will only work if they’re surrounded by walls and covered by a roof, though you can easily make small sheds to account for this.
Simple items can be crafted in your inventory, while the majority of recipes can only be made by using the right crafting station. Thankfully, the process itself is as simple as picking the stuff you want to make from a list and hitting the Craft button. You’ll need to have the right materials in your inventory in order to craft items and buildings.
Upgrading Crafting Stations
Some recipes will be locked behind higher-level crafting stations, and to get these, you’ll need to build and place certain Improvement buildings near the station you want to upgrade. For example, to upgrade a basic Workbench, you’ll need to place one of the following Improvements near it:
- Chopping Block
- Tanning Rack
- Adze
- Tool Shelf
Build all four of these near one Workbench, and you’ll upgrade the crafting station to level 4, allowing you to build more stuff with it. The same general idea applies to all other crafting stations.
Repairing equipment in Valheim is completely free. Just go to a Workbench, click on the hammer icon next to the crafting menu, and repair as much as you want.
Building
To build bases and crafting stations, you need to use a hammer (you can craft one from your inventory). Equip the hammer from your hotbar or inventory, then press the Right Mouse Button to open the build menu. Here, you can select all the building pieces and crafting stations you’ve unlocked so far.
Chimneys
If you want to sleep inside a house you’ve built, you need to make sure it’s sufficiently warm inside. You can do this by building a Campfire near your bed. However, having a fire inside your house will cause smoke to build up, and when it gets thick enough, you’ll start choking. To remedy this, you need to build your fire in a chimney or a chimney-alternative. Just make sure that the smoke is leaving your house, and you’ll be good to go.
Building Stability
Valheim has a structural integrity system that you need to plan around. Your buildings need to have the right support pillars and columns, or they’ll fall apart otherwise.
While in Build mode, hovering your cursor over a building piece will highlight it as either green, yellow, or red. If it’s red, then the next building piece you attach to it will fall off because it’s not properly supported.
A good rule of thumb when building is to always make sure that your foundation is connected to the ground. Also, if your supporting pillars are made of tougher materials, they’ll be able to support more building pieces than normal.
When building, I strongly recommend starting with a foundation. Place beams and pillars first before filling them in with walls, roofs, and floor pieces.
Cooking
Eating food is absolutely crucial to finding success in Valheim. This is your main way of increasing your maximum health and stamina values, and later on, you can make meals that unlock the use of magic as well.
At first, you’ll only have access to a basic campfire and Cooking Station, which you can use to roast all sorts of meat and vegetables. To cook your first few meals, do the following:
- Build a Campfire
- Place a Cooking Station over your Campfire
- Put raw food in your inventory
- Press E on your Cooking Station to place uncooked food on its hooks
- Wait until the food is cooked
- Take them out of the Cooking Station before they burn
Early on, the best food you’ll have access to are boar and deer meat for health, as well as mushrooms for stamina. If you’re having trouble hunting deer, craft a Flint Spear and throw it at them.
Later, you’ll get access to larger fire pits and cooking stations that will let you cook meat from larger animals, such as loxes and sea serpents.
You can eat up to three different meals at a time. Check the bottom-left of your screen to see how long each meals’ buffs will remain active.
Comfort Levels & The Rested Buff
Having the Rested buff active is the third most important thing you need to keep in mind when playing Valheim (right next to upgrading gear and cooking food). This significantly increases the regeneration rates for your health, stamina, and Eitr (mana) while also giving you an XP gain bonus. You can get this buff by chilling inside your base, and the higher your base’s Comfort level, the longer the Rested buff will last.
You can increase your base’s Comfort level by adding furniture and decorations to it. Chairs, stools, tables, beds, rugs, and banners will increase this level, but only one piece of each unique furniture type will contribute to your Comfort level. This means you can’t just fill your house with beds to get the maximum benefit.
Combat
There’s a bit more depth to Valheim’s combat than you might think. Sure, you can win most fights just by swinging your weapon wildly, but there are mechanics in place that reward players with quicker kills and a much stronger damage output if used correctly:
- Parry enemies with perfectly-timed blocks to make them Stagger.
- Hit enemies enough times and they’ll also Stagger.
- Staggered enemies receive more damage from hits (this applies to you as well).
- Weapons have different damage types that are effective against different types of targets. Skeletons, for example, are weak against blunt damage, while animals are vulnerable to pierce damage.
You will heal passively, though you can also consume healing items for a quick shot of health.
Blocking and Parrying
The game has the following factors in play:
- Block Force determines how much damage you can block or parry. If an attack exceeds your Block Force, the residual damage will go through your block and damage you directly.
- Parry Force refers to how far you’ll knock enemies back when you parry them.
- Parry Bonus increases your Block Force by a certain amount upon a successful parry.
You can block and parry using your weapons, but you get much better defenses when you do this with a shield. Different shields have different Block Force, Parry Force, and Parry Bonus values.
Tower Shields offer the highest Block Force out of all shield types, but they can’t parry attacks.
Adrenaline
As you fight enemies, you’ll build up Adrenaline, a combat resource used to activate Trinkets. Once your Adrenaline meter is full, you’ll automatically activate the effects of whatever Trinket you have equipped. Adrenaline can be gained even while a Trinket’s effect is ongoing, so you can theoretically keep a buff up throughout an entire fight if you can sustain its Adrenaline cost.
Rapid Fire Tips & Tricks
- You can farm crops using a Cultivator (made with Bronze and Corewood).
- You can fast-travel by setting up portals.
- There are merchants around the world; find them to secure an additional source of materials and resources.
- Refresh your Rested buff while exploring by building small camps/shelters and sitting next to a Campfire.
- Animals can be tamed by dropping food near them while they’re not hostile to you. They can then be bred if you lead them back home.
- You can make coal or smelt ore faster by sleeping at night.
- Don’t forget to add markers to your map whenever you find resources or dungeons.
- Enemies will occasionally attack your bases. Make sure to build proper defenses, and always be ready for a fight.
- You have skills (more like proficiency levels) for pretty much everything you do. If you die, you lose some XP for your skills.
- Released
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February 2, 2021
- ESRB
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r
- Developer(s)
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Iron Gate AB
I’m Abhishek Sharma, an author at TigerJek.com. I enjoy exploring games, testing different strategies, and turning what I learn into clear, useful guides. My goal is to help players understand the game better and improve without the usual confusion.
