When out in the world of Valheim, players will want to chop down all manner of trees to get enough wood to build a Valheim house, keep their hearths blazing, and make coal for their smelters. But Ancient Bark is unlike any other wood in-game.
Ancient Bark
This special wood is not used in constructing a house or furniture like basic wood, core wood, or fine wood in Valheim. Instead, players need Ancient Bark for only a few very specific recipes. These are:
- Ancient bark spear
- Battleaxe
- Draugr fang Bow
- Fang spear
- Frostner
- Iron sledge
- Bonfire
- Longship
Since the Draugr fang bow, Frostner hammer, and the Longship are all fairly important items in Valheim, knowing where to get Ancient Bark is important. Players will need to collect 40 bark just to build and upgrade the Draugr fang all the way. Thankfully, this bark is plentiful when players know where to look for it.
Cutting Ancient Bark
After summoning and defeating the Valheim boss the Elder, players will be ready to move from the Black Forest biome and begin exploring the Swamp. Once inside the dark muckiness of this new biome, players may notice that many of the trees cannot be cut down. There are only small, ragged-looking fir trees that give basic wood and Ancient Trees that can be axed. The Ancient Trees, instead of giving any of the three kinds of wood, give Ancient bark. Players need at least a copper axe to cut down these creepy, black trees.
There is another way to collect large quantities of Ancient Bark. When delving the Sunken Crypts with the Swamp Key for iron ore to smelt in Valheim, large amounts of Ancient Bark can be found in chests in the labyrinths of the crypts. Players can also find money and jewels for the trader, scrap iron, poison arrows, and Withered bones in these chests, so they are always worth looking into.
Using the Bark
Once players pick up their first bit of bark, they should get many of the recipes listed above. If nothing else, players will at least want to collect 40 of this precious wood in order to build the biggest and fastest ship in the game: the Longboat. While learning to sail this massive ship takes a lot of trial and error, it's worth it to be able to sail the Ocean biome with confidence to hunt Sea Serpents and discover uncharted territories.
Valheim is currently in Early Access for PC.
Source: Wiki