Overview
If you start a new game in Valheim and get lost thinking “What am I supposed to do?” then this guide is for you. I will avoid major spoilers, but there will be some minor ones (e.g. where to find certain materials, and some things you will want to build with them when you get them)The purpose here is to get the ball rolling for you, not to give you in-depth detailed explanations for every mechanic in the game, although I will give a basic run-down on home design and building mechanics.
Building your first shack
At the very start of the game, Hugin (the birb) will talk to you, telling you to pick up rocks and branches and make yourself a stone axe to chop trees and a hammer (with hammer, right click for building menu, middle click for dismantling) to make a workbench, but wait! To use the workbench you need a roof, so you need to build a house around it, enter your first shack!
Tip: Don’t forget to activate the Eikthyr Vegvísir before you leave the starting area, like Hugin says.
Part of the fun in this game is designing your own buildings, releasing your inner architect, sooner or later the thirst for crafting a beautiful huge longhouse will strike…
But I recommend putting those plans on hold and keeping it simple at the start. Just remember, just because you need to keep it simple doesn’t mean you can’t make it beautiful.
Before building the shack I suggest finding a good location to build it, there are quite a lot of options but these are my recommendations, in order of how highly I recommend them.
- Right next to the sacrificial stones/spawn area, literally as close to them as the game allows you to; This is good because later when you start building portals, you will not need to build 1 portal for your starting base and another for the sacrificial stones area, you can just use the same one, it’s a matter of convenience and efficiency later on in the game.
- Surrounded by other biomes. Your starting biome is meadows, run around a bit and you’re bound to find a black forest, run around a bit more you might find a mountain, you’re unlikely to find plains or swamps and you definitely don’t want to enter them yet, but if you do find a swamp then close to that is almost definitely good for example); my recommendation is building in the meadows, next to the sea, close to the black forest, and optionally also close to a mountain; it won’t get much more ideal than this.
- Wherever you want to. (After all, if you find a cool place and think “HERE! I WANT TO BUILD HERE!” then just go for it man!)
Note: If the ground isn’t flat enough to build on it, you can always fix that with a hoe (to even out and raise the ground level) and later a pickaxe (to lower the ground level/dig)
Next I plan to toss at you my recommended starter house, if not for you to imitate, then at least to get your creative juices flowing. Don’t be too hasty to start chopping half the forest down with your stone axe though.
The first order of business is to get a working workbench setup so you can make yourself a hoe, a better axe, and then upgrade that axe. Make this your priority for now.
Once you have a working (with a roof over it) workbench, you should find the ocean or a river and run along the beach to look for flint (little white stones), pick all of it up, get like an entire stack of it if you can.
With this you can build a flint axe. You can also build a Chopping Block which is quite important since it will upgrade your workbench to level 2, allowing you to upgrade your flint axe to level 2, making it even better!
Next order of business is chopping down half the forest to gather wood for building your house, but make sure to kill every boar you see until you manage to collect 8 leather, at that point make a bow, and some arrows, but don’t stop killing all the boars, keep doing that and start killing all the deer too!
Ĺ̷̤͆͂e̷̙̠͑̊̿͝t̵̩̐̿̔ ̶̖͇̈͋̓͝t̶͓̮̰̏́͠h̶̥̦͉͒͂͌̂e̷̛̮̟̓̂͜͠ ̷̱̄͗w̷̼̿̊͝i̴̤̜͐̌̈l̵̬͉͝ḍ̴̅̐l̶͔͓̒ỉ̸̖͍f̶̡̡͑̚e̴͖̎ ̵̤̫̫̍g̴̡̻͌̊e̷̻̍̍̊n̶̮̮̼̥͗̓̾͠o̷̰͈͊͗c̶̝͌̽i̷̪̜͒͋́ḑ̷͉̫͉̕͠ḛ̸̓̕͝ ̷̧̆̈́̚c̶̟̏̀͘o̴̢̫͙͂̏̑m̶̧͑͌̿͜m̷̼̬̠̾͝ͅȇ̴̹͂́͠n̷̤̹̘̹̆c̵̡̰̥̠͒̾ë̸̻̣͑̂!̷̛̪̟͐̄
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I recommend designing your first shack into something similar to this, I am going to walk you through my decisions when designing this shack.
Note: In this build the dimensions are 6 by 6, and I am using the 45° roof (roof choice is mostly just for aesthetics), I do not recommend going much bigger or much smaller than this for your first house, but if you want to go bigger I suggest elongating the house rather than evenly increasing the dimensions, to limit the roof size (due to the building physics explained in the next section)
First, the ‘elevated’ roof section at the top of the shack will stand out a bit to you I imagine, the reason for that is because you need airflow for the smoke from the fires, if you don’t want to die from carbon monoxide poisoning 😀
It’s a makeshift chimney.
A simpler & faster (but uglier) design for such a chimney, if you’re lazy, would be creating an open hatch design like this:
On the other side of the house, you will find an opening at the side where you can access a loot storage area (chests)
The reason for this opening, is for convenience, as you progress a bit you will want to build a smelter and kiln outside of the house, and you will also start using carts to haul materials back and forth over long distances (carts allow you to circumvent encumbrance)
Being able to run with your cart to the side of your house and have full access to all your chests both inside and outside becomes very important at that point.
Next let’s check out the interior, starting with the fireplace.
The fireplace design is also simple, 3 campfires side by side with 3 cooking stations above each campfire on the sides, leaving the one in the middle open.
The reason the one in the middle is left open is because it is reserved for the cauldron you’re going to build over it later, which is very important. Besides, I doubt you’ll often be cooking more than 12 meats at the same time so it’s not like you need more cooking stations.
Also the little wood beams I built along the side of the fireplace are not just aesthetic, they’re like a fence to prevent you from walking into the fire accidentally 😉
As for the rest of the interior…
There’s plenty of space for multiple beds (therefore multiple players), extra chests or furniture you want to put on one side of the shack, as for the other side we have the chests and workbench, and I would reserve the opposite corner from the workbench for the forge, because it’s really convenient for the forge and workbench to be right next to all the chests; makes it easy to grab materials for whatever you’re trying to craft from your chests.
And that’s it, all the windows and everything else are purely for aesthetics to make it feel less stuffy, I recommend when the time comes to build the smelter and kiln to create a little outdoor area next to the chests where you can park your cart and build the kilns, and maybe even drop a portal, I recommend putting a roof over this area also to avoid nuisances like rain, and to protect wood you stack up next to the kilns from wear.
You may also want to build stakewalls and gates around your house for protection, but it is not really necessary, whenever your house gets raided just run outside, the monsters will come to ‘you’ not ‘your house’ so you can easily lead them away from your stuff, but the stakewalls are cool regardless so I recommend building them anyways, just make sure to make the fenced area big enough, kilns and smelters take up a lot of space and you may want to start a farm at some point.
This should be a good little house that you can use for a long time.
Building Mechanics
I know I said I wouldn’t go too in-depth into the game’s systems, and I won’t, but this stuff just needs some explanation…
First off, the simple thing is that bad weather (rain) will wear out your built structures, you will notice in rain that if you say have an incomplete house lying around, your building pieces (floor & walls) will start decaying, which is quite an alarming sight.
There are only three things you need to know about this.
1: If there’s a roof over the piece in question, it will not wear.
2: If the weather conditions are wearing down your wood, fear not, because ti will only be worn down to 50% HP, wear will not destroy your structures so it’s not the end of the world, it’s mostly just a matter of aesthetics really in the end.
3: Not all structures wear in bad weather conditions (for example: portals, fences and smelters don’t wear in bad weather)
Because of this system, you will want to build your walls and roof first, and your floor last when making a house. (Although technically the floor is entirely optional, you can just leave it as dirt if you want)
Second, and perhaps more importantly, there is the building physics(?) system.
This system is also really simple, but somewhat confusing as the game doesn’t explain it to you directly, so imma do that here.
The building physics makes it so that the further from solid ground your piece is, the lower it’s ‘support’ level.
When it’s too far away it will simply break apart a few seconds after you try to build it.
This system is color coded, a piece that’s touching the ground directly is ‘Blue’ when you look at it with your hammer equipped.
Any piece directly touching it but not the ground is bright green.
Then as you move further and further from the piece that’s touching the ground, the more the color starts to shift towards red.
That’s as far as it will go, the next piece I would place will break apart like this.
What this means is that often you may end up finding yourself struggling to complete your roof if, say, you try to build a tall structure, because the roof is not supported properly.
The only ways around this are either making structural support pillars that reach the ground (remember they must touch the soil, your floor tiles are not the ground, the soil under them is!); building smaller houses, or building from stone (needs stonecutter, explained later).
It’s not entirely hopeless if you want to build a tall structure though, this huge house here was entirely made out of wood.
Note: You see the portals lined up against the wall? This is my teleportation hub, every base I build has portals leading to this place, so whenever I want to go between bases I just go here and then teleport wherever I want. You may want to plan for such a hub as your 2nd base.
So the trick to build a tall wooden structure, is to use so called ‘log poles’ made from core wood (get this by chopping down pine trees; find pine trees in black forest biome)
The good thing about log poles is that most wooden structure pieces are at most 2m tall (The height of a basic wall in the game), but a log pole can go up to 4 meters. This means you can build twice as tall with log pole pillars as you could with normal wooden pillars!
But I suggest saving this strategy for your 2nd base, when you have more experience building things and you might have more of a reason to build such a large structure…
In this game there are buffs/debuffs, an example debuff would be poison, an example buff would be the rested effect, which allows you to regenerate your stamina 100% faster and your health 50% faster.
Needless to say, this is something you want to have at all times if you can help it.
You get the Rested Effect for, well, resting. There’s also an effect called comfort, and the comfort level determines how long your rested effect will last, at comfort 1 you get 7 minutes, at comfort 17 you get 24 minutes with the buff.
Sitting at an open fire gives you comfort 1 and therefore if you sit there for long enough (20 seconds i think) you will get the rested effect for 7 minutes.
If you have a roof over your head and walls around you, you get the sheltered effect (which is needed for the workbench to work, and for the bed to work; the bed also needs a fire nearby to work.)
When you are either sitting (press X) near a fire, or you have both the sheltered and fire effects active at the same time, you will get the resting effect, which makes you regenerate health and stamina super fast.
Quickly! To The Next Level!
This is the ‘quick start’ part, or rather guidance, for what to do as you progress, so you always know the next step.
Tip: Your health and stamina, as well as base health regen are determined by the food you’ve eaten most recently. Higher quality food = more health and more stamina, this becomes very important as soon as you progress beyond the black forest biome. All the best food is made in the cauldron.
Tip: Keep all valuables you find (gold and gems), you’ll eventually need them when you find the trader, Megingjord is gonna be your new best friend when you do.
Tip: Middle Click to use weapon special attacks (for instance for the spear, this would throw it)
So now we’ve built ourselves a house and… and now what? We now again have this question right from the beginning “what now?” because it’s not immediately obvious how to progress from here.
Lucky for you it’s fairly simple, we need to kill Eikthyr (he looks scary but he’s a total pushover, I can kill him with nothing but a shield and a flint axe! But I recommend using the bow the first time you fight him.), he drops an item that allows you to craft a pickaxe, a pickaxe allows you to mine tin found along the shoreline and copper; both are found in the black forest biome.
Another thing you’ll find in the black forest biome are dungeons (burial chambers) which usually have skeletons littered around their entrances, in there you can find Surtling Cores, which are a vital item in order to create a smelter which is needed to process Tin and Copper, I also strongly recommend creating a set of 2 kilns and 2 smelters. Sometimes you need to smelt a lot of ores, which requires a lot of coal so 2 pairs is better than 1.
First order of business is to make a forge from smelted copper, next you should create bronze from smelted copper & tin in said forge, then make bronze nails from it and now you can make yourself a cart! Use it to haul more copper!
You should also make a cauldron now, and get yourself some jam.
Then you want to upgrade your gear, Bronze Pickaxe and Bronze Axe are necessities
You will probably also want some new weapons (I’ll leave it to you to figure out which weapons you want, just make sure to always have a bow, once you have the bronze axe you can chop down birch and oak to get fine wood and make a finewood bow, so you definitely want that at least; also you didn’t hear this from me, but having a mace never hurt anyone. Certainly not any bosses… *wink wink*)
Oh and uh Bucklers > Tower Shields
If you haven’t yet, I suggest you get intimately acquainted with the dodge and parry mechanics of the game too, you’re gonna need that going forward.
If you make yourself a cultivator you can farm carrots and turnips; so that’s nice as well (carrots in particular since they can be used to domesticate boars; turnips because you can make a mean stew out of them, but you won’t get them till you go to the swamp)
You also have a choice, either make yourself troll leather armor (higher movement speed), or bronze armor (higher armor rating and much more easily upgradable for even higher armor rating)
Now enjoy your craft grinding.
When you feel ready (Upgrade finewood bow and troll leather/bronze armor as much as you can, and get comfortable with a melee weapon of your choice) it’s time to move on to the next stage, iron & stone, I recommend not lingering in bronze for too long because it’s really not that hard to get iron as long as you’re careful when mining it; and fully upgraded bronze armor = stock iron armor, for reference.
By careful I mean stay out of the water and make sure to keep your distance from the slimes.
Anyhow before you go looking for iron, it’s time to kill the Elder. (Hint: Bring lots and lots of arrows… Flinthead, Bronze or Fire ones)
Once that’s done and you got the key item 😉
You need to go looking for a swamp. If you’re lucky, there is a swamp on your starting continent somewhere after you run far through the black forest, but if not, you’re gonna need to set sail, and you have everything you need to build a Karve. Also check this guide out it will help you a lot with sailing better. Be careful at night because sea serpents roam the sea at those hours, which is completely safe if you have 1 or more friends with you, but quite dangerous if you’re alone.
Never sail without arrows, and while we’re at it, NEVER sail too close to plains… or they will come…
Either way, eventually you find a swamp, look for green lights (torches) or black rectangular structures in order to spot crypts, when you find one, enter it and make sure you brought that key item and your (bronze! or better) pickaxe because you’re about to mine till your pickaxe breaks! (So called muddy scrap piles drop iron).
Now enjoy your craft grinding again, don’t forget to make a longboat, cuz it’s so much better than karve, and you can also make a stonecutter table which allows you to build from stone! Your dreams of building a castle can finally be realized! 😀
If you haven’t already, you should also get around to building a fermenter now (Allows you to make potions, some of which are very necessary to survive (Hint: Frost/Poison Resistance…))
Silver can be found in the Mountain biome, although it’s hard to find (not impossible, just a bit hard) without the item dropped by Bonemass, it is technically possible to go to the mountains first and getting silver gear before you finish with the swamp (you just need the iron pickaxe, even without frost resistance potions you can survive in the mountains if you abuse campfires); it’s definitely not easy, but it’s possible, and if you do get yourself that sweet wolf pelt armor set, and special weapons craftable from silver, the swamp will be a lot easier to navigate.
You will also find obsidian on mountain tops, which is a required mineral to create a level 5 workbench 😉
That’s about it, all you need to do in the mountains is mine obsidian, silver and kill every wolf and drake yo usee to get their drops. This is a really simple biome because there’s just a lot less in it than the swamp. The only real danger you’ll face are the stone golems…
The last biome you’ll get in the current state of the game, is Plains; there’s ashlands, mistlands and deep north biomes, but there’s just about nothing in them yet because they’re all WIP (early access game!)
I just know Mistlands are gonna be very scary when they’re released… Not good for arachnophobes.
Anyhow, you need to defeat Moder to get a special item which allows you to build a special (Artisan) Table which allows you to build a blast furnace in order to work black metal.
Black metal can only be used to make weapons, but if you want better armor you can farm the Flax found throughout the plains and use them in the Spinning Wheel that Artisan Table allows you to make; to create Linen, which allows you to create Padded Armor, which is the best in the game currently.
Be very careful in the plains, everything you’ve fought until this point is a joke compared to even the smallest fly in the plains (no literally, those ‘deahtsquitos’ are absolutely horrifying!); never let anything hit you in the back… And bring a shield.
Extra: Mods!
The game is moddable, there’s a nexusmods page for the game here: [link]
The game’s kinda recent so there aren’t that many mods yet, but these are my favorite mods that will improve the gameplay experience but can’t really be considered cheating (e.g. quality of life stuff).
First Person View[www.nexusmods.com]
Craft & Build From Containers[www.nexusmods.com]
Quick Stack Items from Inventory to Chests[www.nexusmods.com]
Improved Build HUD[www.nexusmods.com]
Delete Items[www.nexusmods.com]
Faster Teleportation[www.nexusmods.com]
Clock[www.nexusmods.com] (See in-game time without deciphering the color of the skies; to be honest this should be an in-game item)
Be careful when modding the game and playing multiplayer, as some mods play a bit wonky with servers (make sure to thoroughly test it with a friend). Also these mods need a special mod loader to be installed, so it’s not just drag & drop like in most moddable games (at least not for now).
And that’s it for this guide! Hope you liked it!