After spending a considerable amount of time throughout the Valheim, players will likely want to find a place to breathe and prepare themselves for their next adventure. That’s why it’s incredibly important for players to take the time to build a home base to which they can always return to. So what should you do? In this guide, I will share my knowledge that I have gotten from more than 100 hours in the game.
Beginnings
When you first start Valheim, you will find yourself vulnerable to different monsters, so you will need a simple shelter to survive the first night before you decide where to build a proper base. There is no bad place to build in the meadows, however, an open place would be better than densely wooded areas. If you find a ruin as I have done below, you can save time and resources by building your first shelter around it.
Put a bed, crafting station, workbench, a campfire and a chest Inside this makeshift house. Then go on and kill the first boss. Doing that will unlock different upgrades and items.
Things To Keep In Mind When Building Your First House In Valheim
- After you’ve made a hammer and a workbench, build some walls and a roof around it.
- Use the workbench to make a hoe(5x Wood, 2x Stone).
- Then use the hoe to level the area where you will build your house.
- After leveling the floor, start placing the floor pieces. This gives you a solid foundation to work on.
- Then connect some walls to the floor. Raise the walls as much as you want by putting more walls on top of the existing walls (if you raise too much, your building will collapse).
- At this point, depending on the width of your building, the roof you will make may be in danger of collapse. To prevent this, you will need to put support beams at certain intervals.
- You can add a second floor if you’ve got your walls high enough.
- To do this, put some floor pieces to the walls above your first floor walls, and then build stairs that connect to that floor.
- When you look at a building piece you placed while in build mode, you will see a color: blue, green, yellow, orange, or red. These colors represent structural rigidity. Blue is the strongest structures that have direct contact with the soil, while red is the least rigid one. Do not add to the red pieces.
- At this point, you need to put a support beam on that piece. You can do this by connecting parts of your structure to the floor with support beams. You can also connect different parts outside the floor with beams to achieve a similar effect.
- Don’t be afraid to tear down to replace a part if needed, as you will get all your materials back when you do this.
- Campfires that you need for cooking and heating cannot be placed on the ground, but you can put a campfire in the ground beneath it by destroying a piece of it from the ground. Alternatively, you can apply the following tactic:
- Campfires produce smoke and without ventilation, this smoke will suffocate until you die. Therefore, you will need a fireplace to let the smoke escape from your base without letting the rain in and extinguish the fire.
- There are many ways to achieve this, such as leaving the roof piece open over the fire, building a walled chimney next to the fire, and leaving part of your upper walls open. (You will see examples above and below) Try placing your ventilation system near your campfire so the smoke doesn’t have to travel far to escape.
Valheim Advanced Building Tips
After a certain time, the base you build will start getting attacked by different enemies. For this reason, you have to protect your base and build some defenses. Let’s look at what you can do to achieve this.
- As you see in the picture above, if you dig a deep trench around your base, you will be protected from most enemies in the Valheim.
- Also, build some walls for enemies with long range attacks.
- If you find trenches ugly, you can also use spikes, however, this will result in a much weaker defense.
- If your base is right beside the sea, it will provide convenience for you when you will bring back the resources with a ship. You also will not have to worry about enemies attacking from the seaside. (enemies don’t spawn at sea)
- Building a tower on your main building will make it easier for you to repel enemy attacks. Apart from that, if you have a large base, it will be useful to build extra towers.
- When you access stone structures in the later parts of the game, I suggest you use stone instead of wood. Stone structures have much more health and are not damaged by rain.
- The huge trees in the swamp biome are also sturdy enough to act as a foundation. Building tree houses around these trees will protect you from most enemy attacks in the game.
- Keep in mind that instead of making multiple portals, you can navigate wherever you want using a single portal. If you use this tactic, be sure to change the name of the portal at your home base in advance before exploring a new location.
Valheim Rain Damage
Any wooden building piece will be damaged over time by rain. All buildings have a durability value and will continue to go down to a minimum of 50% health if it rains on them. You will understand this because the pieces of wood will change to a different color and look over time.
The decay rate is very slow, and you can repair a building piece using a hammer, it doesn’t cost anything. It also never rains in the plains biome, so building a house in that biome is advantageous in this regard. Of course, it is worth mentioning that it is much more dangerous.
Using Shift Key For Precision Building
You can hold down the “Shift” key while building. This will allow you to place the pieces exactly where you want by turning off auto-snapping to nearby objects, allowing you to build with finer precision.
Valheim How To Stack Chests
Since your inventory space will be limited, you will need to make chests for your valuable items. The first chest you can make can hold 10 items, while the reinforced chest can hold up to 18 items. However, each chest takes up space and you will quickly realize that your home has limited space. You can solve your problem by stacking the chests without building a bigger house. You need to get a little creative as the chests can only be placed on the floor. Start by putting your chest on the ground. Next, open your building menu and place a 1×1 wooden floor right above the chest. Putting chests side by side looks better, however, if you put them in parallel you can stack more chests in the same place.
How To Unlock Stone Structures
Stone structures have much better durability than wood, allow you to build higher structures and are immune to rain damage. If you place a wood component on a stone piece their durability level will count as if you put that piece on the ground. This brings a whole new construction level for us to be creative in terms of design. To use stone, you have to make a stone cutter. To do this, you need to find iron from the muddy piles of scrap, melt them and get iron. You can make a stone cutter with 2 iron ingots, 10 wood, and 4 stones.
Don’t Forget to Fill Inside of Your Home!
The rested effect is one of the strongest things in Valheim. Rested effect will increase Health regen by 50% and stamina regen by 100%, it will also add a 50% boost to all skill experience earned. You should always see the rested effect in the upper right corner. Depending on your building comfort level your rested effect will last longer. So, when you start making larger and more complex bases, make sure it has a high level of comfort.
The comfort level is determined by the items inside a specific area. As you progress through the game, you will unlock more items that will increase your comfort level (as seen above). Until then, putting the following items in your home will bring net you around level 9 comfort.
- Campfire
- Bed
- Rug
- Table
- Chair
- Banner
Gather All Crafting Stations Into a Single Spot
By gathering all your crafting stations under one roof, you can save time in case you are dealing with heavy items. Make sure you have enough room for further upgrades while doing this.
Valheim Home Construction in Different Biomes
As you progress throughout the game, you will have to travel across different biomes. Each biome poses a different threat.
Black Forest
This biome consists of hills filled with trees and rocks. You can find copper and tin, but you’ll also encounter skeletons, trolls, and dwarfs. So although having a base in this biome is beneficial, you should build a well-protected house. My advice is to dig trenches around your base. For troll and archer skeletons, it will be useful to build extra walls.
Swamp
Swamps are generally very dangerous places. Even a small leech can kill you if you do not have protection against poison. So in this biome, I advise you to build treehouses on top of the large unbreakable trees found in the swamps.
Mountains
Generally, I wouldn’t recommend building houses in the mountains. Drakes will destroy all kinds of homes after a certain period of time. Golems are also difficult to kill and cause heavy damage. So don’t make the mountains your home base. Instead, build a small hut in a biome near the mountains and put a portal in it.
Plains
Currently, plains are the hardest biome in the game. Even prepared adventurers can die in one wrong move. I would not recommend building a base here if you are not a seasoned adventurer. However, I would like to point out that the best biome for agriculture is plains. At the end of the game, you will have to use these biomes for farming flex and wheat. In such a case, set up a farm as I showed above and dig a trench around it. Then connect it to your home base with a portal.
Thanks for reading our guide. If you have a question in mind, you can use the comments section below. Click here to read about our other Valheim guides.
