Valheim Beginner Guide: Your First 10 Hours, Step by Step

Valheim drops you into the Meadows with nothing and expects you to figure it out. This guide is the short version: the first ten hours, in the order the game wants you to do them. The same loop carries all the way to the Deep North in 1.0.

What do you do first in Valheim?

Punch a tree, then a rock, then build a workbench and a bed. The opening loop is:

1. Gather wood and stone by hand (yes, punching trees works).
2. Craft a stone axe and flint tools once the workbench is down.
3. Build a small hut with a bed inside — sleeping sets your spawn point and skips night.
4. Hunt and gather food: deer, boar, raspberries, and mushrooms. You can hold three foods at once, so mix a health food and a stamina food rather than eating one thing. The food tier list explains the system.
5. Find the rune stones (vegvisir) that mark Eikthyr’s altar on your map.

Death drops your items where you fell — build a spare gear set at base early.

How do you summon and beat Eikthyr?

Sacrifice two Deer Trophies at Eikthyr’s altar. Deer trophies drop from hunting deer in the Meadows (a bow makes this far easier than chasing with an axe). Eikthyr is a lightning stag that mostly deals melee damage in a predictable pattern: dodge sideways from his charge, punish, repeat. See the Eikthyr boss page for the full breakdown.

His drops are the most important early-game items in Valheim: hard antlers craft the antler pickaxe, which lets you mine — the gate to everything after the Meadows.

What comes after Eikthyr?

The Black Forest, bronze, and The Elder. With the antler pickaxe:

• Mine copper and tin in the Black Forest; combine them into bronze at a forge.
• Craft bronze weapons and armor — this is your first real gear tier, and the weapon tier list ranks what’s worth the metal.
• Find surtling cores in burial chambers to build a portal network. Remember: ore and metal cannot travel through portals — plan smelting outposts near ore, not just at home.
• Gather three Ancient Seeds (Greydwarf Brutes drop them) and summon The Elder, the second boss. His crypt key opens the Swamp, the third biome.

The full chain — all eight bosses through 1.0’s Kall Fimbulbringer — is laid out in the boss order guide.

What mistakes should beginners avoid?

The four that kill most new runs:

• Fighting under-geared and under-fed. Food is your real gear — three good foods can double your effective health.
• Ignoring the rested bonus. Sleeping and resting near a fire gives a big stamina regeneration buff; the “wet” and “cold” debuffs quietly wreck you.
• Sailing far without a portal home. Always carry portal materials on exploration trips.
• Digging for treasure you can’t find. Buried treasure and ore detection tools come later (the wishbone, from Bonemass) — don’t grind for it in the Meadows.

Does 1.0 change anything for beginners?

1.0’s headline additions all live at the end of the ladder. The opening loop in the Meadows and Black Forest plays the way it always has (the patch notes do add world-edge variants of early biomes near the map’s edge); what’s new is the Deep North biome, the final boss Kall Fimbulbringer, rideable Moose, and the console command achievement rules. Play clean from hour one and your achievements stay intact.