To help you out with your playthrough of Valheim, we’ve prepared these Valheim Beginners Tips where we’ll be going over the most important tips and tricks you need to know when starting out in Valheim.
Valheim Beginners Tips
Valheim is an exploration and survival game set in a brutal viking world currently available in Steam Early Access.
To get you started in the harsh world of Valheim, we have prepared these helpful tips to ensure your survival.
What to Do When Starting Out
When you start out your playthrough of Valheim, you might think that you need to craft dozens of things and build a mega fortress to survive, but that’s totally not the case.
Instead, you can start out modestly. All you really need is to build a basic house on a flat stretch of ground. To do this, you just need to create a hammer and chop down some trees to get the wood needed for the house.
To collect wood, you can simply punch little trees. You may also find wood in the form of fallen branches on the ground.
You can then put a bed and workbench down in there and craft some basic tools and armor. Make sure to put some shingles in there to be safe from the elements. Remember that you cannot craft fishing rods; for this purpose, find a Merchant in Black Forest Biomes.
You’ll also need a campfire to keep yourself warm and be able to rest in bed.
When constructing your house, make sure to build some sort of chimney or window so that the smoke from the campfire can escape. If you don’t do that, the smoke will damage the walls of your house.
One of the essential things that you will need very early on in the game is Flints. You can find these grayish-white colored rectangular-shaped items on the edges of various water bodies.
It is also essential to realize early on in the game that there is no quick way to train your skills. You will train your abilities as you perform various tasks.
Gather Food
Now that you have a place to live, your next objective is to gather food. There are two ways to gather food: hunting and harvesting.
If you want to go out hunting, you’ll have three options for food: boars, necks and deer.
Boars are quite dangerous since they attack you when you approach them, so you shouldn’t hunt them just yet.
Necks are tiny reptiles that drop their tail when you kill them. You can then cook their tail and eat it.
Deer are very hard to hunt as they’re very agile. You’ll need a bow or flint spear to hunt them.
When it comes to harvesting, you can harvest blueberries, mushrooms and raspberries. They’re not as satiating as meat, but you can harvest a lot of them, so they’re still a great source of food.
If you don’t know already, you can only eat three items at once and you can’t have two of the same type of food. For example, you can’t eat Deer meat twice in a row.
You’ll gain some health and stamina from each item of food you eat. The more food you have the merrier, especially when you’re starting out. It’ll allow you to explore the world more freely.
Build Storage
As you explore the world of Valheim and gather resources, you’ll soon realize that you need some place to store everything since your inventory is quite small.
You should craft at least 5 chests at this point to store your items. This will require a lot of wood, so try to make harvesting wood a hobby of yours so you’ll have wood whenever you need it.
In Valheim, you come across various destroyed buildings. When you come across such buildings, consider setting up a workbench near these locations.
You can use your hammer to destroy these buildings and obtain various resources to add to your storage.
One essential tip for maintaining your storage is to split your stack of items. You can simply do so by shift-clicking on an item to bring up the custom menu.
Another essential tip for organizing your storage is to purchase the Megingjord item from Haldor.
This merchant will sell Megingjord for nine hundred and fifty Gold Coins. This item will allow you to carry weight up to 450 and maximize your storage capacity.
Defeat Eikthyr
Eikthyr is the first boss of Valheim. You’ll find out Eikthyr’s location from the runestone located in the area where you started out.
When you’re fully settled in the game, meaning you have a house, food and an abundance of resources, it’ll be time to fight Eikthyr.
To summon Eikthyr, you’ll need a couple of deer trophies. Once you have them, head to the location you learned from the runestone and present the trophies at the altar to summon him.
Eikthyr is a giant elk with antlers made out of lightning. The best way to go about this boss fight is to use a bow of a spear since Eikthyr is very deadly up close.
Eikthyr will drop a Forsaken trophy and hardened antlers. These antlers can be used to make an antler pickaxe that can mine copper and tin, so it’ll allow you to progress further into the game.
Build Outposts and Continue Exploring
The world of Valheim is massive. There are a ton of abandoned houses and ruins for you to explore.
After defeating Eikthyr, make sure to go out exploring further and try to use these abandoned houses to create some outposts for yourself. The more outposts you create, the more you’ll be able to explore.
Repair Tools
During your Valheim venture, you will craft and utilize many tools to gather various items and resources.
These tools will break quite a lot of time, but this doesn’t mean that you will have to craft them over and over again. Instead, you can repair your tools. The best part about fixing is that it is ultimately cost-free.
You can save yourself from the hassle by finding a Workbench or a Forge where you initially crafted these tools.
To repair these items, click on the hammer button next to tools in the crafting menu. You can bring your tools back to their original condition by clicking a few times.
You can craft a wide variety of armor sets, weapons, tools, etc. You can even repair structures like walls and much more.
Increase your comfort level
Providing comfort to your character is an essential part of Valheim. You can use several different ways to do so.
One way to comfort your character is by providing it with comfortable items such as shelter, chairs, fireplaces, and other such necessities.
Shelter is the most essential comfort item to keep your character warm in the cold weather. After protection, fire is critical to provide both light and heat. It would be best if you build a chimney around this fire.
More items that give you comfort include decoration pieces such as Deer rugs, benches, standing torches, etc. Standing next to fire gives you three bonus points; the same goes for Deer rugs.
You only obtain a bonus when you are standing near the object. The objects placed inside your house only add to your comfort so, external objects won’t give you bonus points.
How to avoid damage
Your Valheim journey is filled with challenges; keeping a few essential health-preserving tips in your mind will help. Let’s discuss a few ways that will help you avoid maximum damage.
A common mistake is getting in the way of the trees that you chop. As soon as you chop a tree, move out of the way so that it falls away from you.
One crucial technique to defend yourself from enemy attacks is by parrying. Learn how to dodge correctly to stay safe. Moreover, a shield will go a long way; craft a shield to protect yourself.
It would help if you also carried your weapons on your back. You can sheath them by pressing R.
One important tip is to know when to retreat, don’t shy away from giving up when the pressure of damage from enemies gets too high.
Lastly, don’t swim too much. Swimming uses up a lot of your stamina; it is better to avoid it as much as you can.
Heal through a Health potion
As a Viking, your journey can be quite tough and challenging. The damage inflicted by your enemies will be quite heavy, so you need to restore your health somehow.
Although Valheim provides a basic regeneration system, another way of doing so is by crafting a potion. Potions will help you, in the long run, to restore your health whenever you want.
The recipe for a potion includes a fermenter and a cauldron. For both these items, you will need some resources. Fermenter requires fine wood and bronze whereas, the cauldron needs ten tin.
Now you need to collect some plants and fruits, use the fermenter and cauldron with these items. You will craft your very own health potion.
It is important to note that you will find both cauldron and fermenter later in the game. So before that, you will need to rely on the game’s basic health regeneration.
The regeneration process will be slow, so make sure to keep away from significant damage.
Important Health potion Recipes
Some essential health potions include a Healing mead base. This potion can be crafted by adding ten honey, ten blueberries, ten Raspberries and, one Dandelion to the cauldron and fermenter.
You can craft minor and medium potions, each with its health perks. A Minor recovers 66 health in a short time of thirty seconds, Medium recovers 75 health in only ten seconds. You can use a Medium potion for urgent healing purposes.
Use Map Markers
Map markers are a very efficient way to guide yourself as you move in the game. Press M to open the map; you will spot five icons towards the right corner.
Select the marker icon and double-click the location you would like to mark; you can name the area however you want to. To remove the marker, right-click the location from the map.
Spawn point
Another vital tip to help you avoid getting lost is by creating spawn points. A spawn point can be built by crafting a bed or a campfire. Build these items and place them in your base location.
Once you sleep on the bed, a spawn point will be created. Remember that you can only have a single spawn point. So in the case of multiple campfires, you should make a wise decision.
Cheats and Console Commands
Some interesting cheats and commands will help you enhance your game experience in Valheim.
The first tip is fundamental, and it’s not exactly a cheat. If you want to take some beautiful screenshots of the game, you can remove the HUD. The HUD can be removed by pressing the CTRL key along with the F3 key on your keyboard.
Secondly, if you’re playing in single-player mode, then you can use several cheats. First, you will press F5 to summon the command box. Activate the cheats by typing “imacheater”. You can enable cheats only for single-player mode.
Cheats are a fun way to experiment and explore the game when you’re playing in the single-player mode. These cheats will allow you to kill enemies, teleport from one place to the other and start some interesting events.
