Valheim Beginners Guide (Tips & Tricks)

Valheim Beginners Guide

All the basics for a quick start in the viking themed survival game. A full guide about Valheim. Find usefull information about Valheim and how it works.

You can check other Valheim guides:

• Valheim Admin Commands for Your Server
• Valheim How to Build a Ship
• Valheim Dedicated Game Server Setup Guide
• Valheim How to Get StagBreaker
• Valheim FAQ: Questions & Answers for Beginners

1. Craft system and how unlock recipes

Craft system:

There are four ways to craft items in this game:

• Basic crafts from your TAB menu.
• Crafting from a workbench or forge.
• Placing structures using the hammer.
• Processed items from smelter, charcoal kiln, cooking station.

How to unlock new recipes:

To unlock different recipes or structures you have to get at least one of the necessary items to make the craft. For example, if you want to get the recipe to craft a flint axe you need to find flint and wood first.

2. Sailing basics

There are at least three ships in the game, you can build ships by using a hammer.

• Raft: Small slow basic boat.

• Karve: Larger and faster than raft. You can unlock it when you gather Fine Wood from birchs.

• Longship: Much bigger than Karve.

The raft is the boat you are going to be using until you unlock the Karve.

• You use W to increase speed and S to decrease speed in the rudder indicator.
• You use A or D to turn the rudder left or right.

There are two indicators in our UI which will help us to sail.

1. Rudder indicator:

• Shows rudder direction. You can turn left or right 90º.
• Shows your speed indicator.

2. Wind indicator:

• Shows wind direction and if the wind is moving your ship. If the wind icon is white and is hitting the gold part of the circle the ship is getting enough wind to move. Gray wind and hitting the black part of the circle your ship will be not able to move using the sail.
• Shows your speed indicator.

Speed indicator info:

1. Small arrows in the wheel icon:

• One arrow up: Rowing speed forward.
• Two arrow up: Low sail speed.
• Three arrow up: Full sail speed.
• One arrow down: Rowing speed backward.

2. Icon above the wind circle:

• Oar: Rowing speed.
• Raised sail: Low sail speed.
• Lowered sail: Full sail speed.

If you fall out of your boat you can jump in again looking for the ladder in the back of the raft or in the left side of the Karve.

3. Cooking and Potions

There are three main crafting items you can use to cook and make potions:

Cooking station:

• Needs a fire under it.
• You can place two in the same campfire.
• You can cook two pieces of meat, fish and tail in each cooking station.
• You can craft it using Wood x2

Keep in mind if you don’t take the food when it’s ready it will burnt out and you will get coal.

Cauldron:

• Needs a fire under it.
• You can place one cauldron in a campfire.
• You can cook: Carrout soup, queens jam, sausages and mead base to make potions.

Fermenter:

• Needs empty space over it.
• You can use mead base obtained from the cauldron to get different potions:
  • Frost resistance.
  • Medium healing.
  • Minor healing
  • Poison resistance
  • Minor stamina
  • Tasty

• To use the fermenter put the base inside it and just wait until is fermented.

4. Crafting Recipes

List of differents items available for crafting:

Most of the crafts which needs a Hammer also needs a nearby Workbench to be able to place them.

You can use CTRL+F to search for an item on this list.

How to unlock new recipes:
To unlock different recipes or structures you have to get at least one of the necessary items to make the craft. For example, if you want to get the recipe to craft a flint axe you need to find flint and wood first.

Weapons

Item Name	Resources	How to craft	Functionality
Wooded club	Wood x5	TAB Menu	First basic weapon.
Wood shield	Wood x5	Workbench	Allow you to block incoming attacks. Basic shield.
Banded shield	Wood x5, Iron x8	Forge	Allow you to block incoming attacks.
Bronze sword	Wood x2, Cooper x15, Tin x4	Forge	Melee weapon.
Cooper knife	Wood x2, Copper x8	Forge	Short and fast melee weapon.
Flint knife	Wood x2, Flint x4	Workbench	Short and fast melee weapon. Basic knife.
Bow	Wood x6, Hide x4	Workbench	Basic bow.
Wood Arrow x20	Wood x2	Workbench	Basic arrow.
Fire Arrow x20	Wood x2, Resin x2	Workbench	Put enemies on fire doing damage over time.
Flinthead Arrow x20	Wood x2, Flint x1	Workbench	More damage than wood arrow.
Ironhead Arrow x20	Wood x2, Iron x1	Forge	More damage than flinthead arrow.
Flint Spear	Wood x5, Flint x4	Workbench	Long weapon. Basic spear. It can be thrown.
Iron longsword	Wood x2, Iron x25	Forge	Strong weapon with different attacks.

Basic Items

Hammer

• Resources – Wood x3, Stone x2
• How to craft – TAB Menu
• Functionality – Basic craft tool, allow you to craft basic items.

Bed

• Resources – Wood x8
• How to craft – Hammer
• Functionality – Spawn point and sleep at night.

Chest

• Resources – Wood x10
• How to craft – Hammer
• Functionality – Store items.

Iron chest

• Resources – Wood x8, Iron x4
• How to craft – Hammer
• Functionality – Store items.

Firepit

• Resources – Wood x2, Stone x5
• How to craft – Hammer
• Functionality – Cook using a cooking station, get warm and allow you to sleep in nearby beds.

Cooking station

• Resources – Wood x2
• How to craft – Hammer
• Functionality – Cook items or burn them and get coal.

Workbench

• Resources – Wood x10
• How to craft – Hammer
• Functionality – Allow to craft and repair different items and build structures in the building area around it.

Charcoal kiln

• Resources – Stone x20, Surtling core x5
• How to craft – Hammer
• Functionality – Allow to burn wood to get coal.

Forge

• Resources – Stone x4, Coal x4, Wood x10, Cooper x6
• How to craft – Hammer
• Functionality – Allow you to craft and repair different copper items.

Smelter

• Resources – Stone x20, Surtling core x5
• How to craft – Hammer
• Functionality – Allow you to create Iron or Copper bars from ores. Needs coal.

Ships

Raft

• Resources – Wood x20, Hide x6, Resin x10
• How to craft – Hammer
• Functionality – Allow you sailing. Basic “ship”.

Karve

• Resources – Fine Wood x30, Deer Hide x10, Resin x20, Bronze Nail x80
• How to craft – Hammer
• Functionality – Allow you sailing. Much better than the raft.

Longship

• Resources – Wood x20, Hide x10, Resin x10, Elder Bark x10
• How to craft – Hammer
• Functionality – Allow you sailing. Much better than the raft.

Tools

Antler pickaxe

• Resources – Wood x10, Hard Antler x1
• How to craft – Workbench
• Functionality – Allow you to mine the first ores.

Bronze pickaxe

• Resources –
• How to craft – Forge
• Functionality – Mine ores, better than Antler pickaxe.

Iron pickaxe

• Resources – Wood x3, Iron x15
• How to craft – Forge
• Functionality – Mine ores, better than stone pickaxe.

Stone axe

• Resources – Wood x5, Stone x4
• How to craft – Workbench
• Functionality – Allow you to cut trees. Basic axe.

Flint axe

• Resources – Wood x4, Flint x6
• How to craft – Workbench
• Functionality – Allow you to cut trees, better than stone axe.

Hoe

• Resources – Wood x5, Stone x2
• How to craft – Workbench
• Functionality – Flatten, lower or elevate the grown. Build dirt paths.

Help with the stagbreaker hammer and abusing it.

5. How to Get StagBreaker

After beating the first boss, head towards the Black Forest. Once there, set up a small camp and basic workshop, go and cut fir/pine wood and you should pick up some “core wood”. It will give you the blueprint for the StagBreaker.

This is a 2H warhammer that does AOE damage and skills off the club levels. I still prefer the spear and shield personally.

To craft it you need some special core wood ((20) from fir and pine trees in the Black Forest), 5 deer trophies, 2 leather scraps and a workbench/chopping block setup.

Levelling clubs

So this warhammer skills out of clubs. I just discovered as shown in the screenshot, an easy way to level clubs is destroy derelict buildings you come across using the StagBreaker! It hits multiple parts of the building in one swing increasing the amount of xp. I grew 2 levels from destroying the small hut in the screenshot.

Sneaky cavern crawls

I also found using the StagBreaker, when caving for sultor cores or similar, you can aggro the skeletons, close the door on them and continue to hit them through the door with the AOE of StagBreaker. Unfortunately I don’t know how to record it so…

• Aggro skeleton
• Run through door and close
• The skeleton should be just the otherside
• Start swinging the big badonkadonk and get your loots.

6. Fishing (How to Fish)

To be able to fishing you need a fishing rod and fishing bait that you can buy in a merchant.

How to Fish:

1. Equip your fishing rod and get some bait in your inventory.
2. Look for fishes in the sea, lake or similar. Don’t randomly throw your hook in to the sea.
3. Left click using the fishing rod. Longer you hold left click further away the hook will go. You will spend one bait every left click.
4. Wait until a fish hit your hook, when the hook goes down press right click and hold it until the fish is close enough to be able to pick it pressing E.

7. Taming (How to Tame)

You can tame some animals in the game this allow you to make a little “farm” and multiplicate them to get more food.

The following guide on how to tame animals it’s made by Judaspriester. Special thanks to him:

Material needed:

• Hoe
• Wood (30 should be enough)
• Vegetables (berries, shrooms etc. preferable 20+)

Steps:

1. Use the Hoe in order to make a plane space for your pen.
2. Build a pen with Roundpole Fences. It doesnt need to look fancy, but it should not contain holes.
3. Add a door to your Pen in order to enter and leave it.
4. Drop the Vegetables inside the Pen.
5. (The difficult path) Find some wild boars and make them attack you (getting close enough is usually enough). Now run to your pen and make sure they follow you.
6. Once they are in, make sure to get out and close the door without them leaving.
7. Wait, it will take like one hour to tame them, but you can do other stuff in between.
8. Once they are tamed, you can pet them in order to keep them happy. for further feeding just drop food on the ground.

To hide UI press CTRL+F3.

To open the game console press F5 and type “help” to show all available commands.

8. Console Commands (Cheat Codes)

Basic Commands

Here is a list of all the basic commands available for Valheim.

• help – Show all available commands.
• kick [name/ip/userID] – Kick the user.
• ban [name/ip/userID] – Ban the user.
• unban [ip/userID] – Unban the user.
• banned – Shows a list of banned users.
• ping – Send a ping to the server to ger your latency.
• lodbias [number] – Set distance lod bias. If empty shows actual lodbias. By default 1.5
• info – Print system info

If you type “imacheater” in console to turn On/Off cheat mode and then “help” you will be able to get another list of commands. Like teleport, freeview, godmode and more.

Other Commands

Here is a list of all the other commands available for Valheim.

• god – enables god mode
• pos – print current player position
• goto [x,z] – teleport
• killall – kill nearby enemies
• exploremap – explore entire map
• resetmap – reset map exploration
• tame – tame all nearby tameable creatures
• location – spawn location
• freefly – freefly photo mode
• ffsmooth – freefly smoothness
• event [name] – start event
• stopevent – stop current event
• raiseskill [skill] [amount] – raise skill lvl (example: raiseskill run 100)
• resetcharacter – reset character data
• dpsdebug – toggle dps debug print
• save – force saving of world
• removedrops – remove all item-drops in area
• resetwind – resetwind
• players [nr] – force difficulty scale (0 = Reset)

I highly recommend don’t use cheat commands to don’t ruin your ingame experience. This commands could be usefull if you get stuck: Use “pos” or “goto [x,z]” to teleport yourself and get unstuck.