Exceeding three million players less than three weeks into the Early Access launch, Velheim is sweeping over the gaming community. In Valheim players are able to live as Vikings and explore a huge fantasy world that takes inspiration from Norse mythology. Players can enter the 10th Norse world on their own or tackle the massive map with friends.
As of now players can take the same character and jump between their own servers and those belonging to friends. Through this players can have servers specifically for building great halls along with separate PVP servers. The creatures of Valheim pack a punch, and it is not uncommon to accidentally lose equipment. One of the most important craftable items in-game is going to be a spawn point.
8 Entering Valheim
After creating a Viking avatar, and entering their first world server the game will provide a short sequence explaining how and why players are in Valheim. Upon spawning in players will notice they are standing on an altar. The altar features stones representing each of the main bosses they will have to face. This also becomes the first spawn point set.
Now as players adventure throughout the world dying and respawning in the starting area, can become a problem. Dying a second time without collecting items left behind means having to recraft those items.
7 Hugin and the meadows
After initially spawning in Odin's raven, Hugin will arrive at the altar. Hugin becomes a player's best friend, as the raven provides tips for different aspects of the game. These can be milestones or helpful survival tips, such as dealing with the cold.
After speaking with the raven, players are now free to explore the meadows and begin building a starting base. The meadows have plenty of basic materials such as wood and stone. The area also has several lurking enemy types. Being unarmed the first thing players should do before confronting enemies is collecting branches and stones on the ground, along with mushrooms and raspberries.
6 Crafting and survival
Survival in Valheim is a bit different in comparison with other survival PvE games. Rather than take damage from the cold or hunger, health and stamina regeneration are slowed down. Fortunately crafting beginner tools is simple. It is recommended to craft a stone axe first.
The stone axe makes cutting down Beech trees easy, resulting in faster wood collection. The axe requires only five wood and four stones to craft. It also doubles as a weapon, with plenty of enemies around it comes in handy. Once a player cuts down their first tree, the club (six wood) and hammer (three wood and two stones) are the next items to craft.
5 Creatures of the meadow
The meadows are full of animals such as birds, deer, and boars. However, all players should be wary of the more aggressive inhabitants. Boars will charge and gore adventurers without hesitation. Greylings also inhabit the biome and can attack players and craftables such as beehives and bases.
Greylings are easily taken down with a few punches or swings from the axe. The tree-like creatures frequent the forest areas. The Neck, are amphibian-like creatures that can be found near water. Though a bit rarer in the area, players can still cross paths with Greydwarfs, which are the more mature version of Greylings.
4 Health and Stamina
As players explore they may notice that there are two sets of bars near the bottom of the game screen. The gold bar in the center indicates the players stamina, while the red and grey bars on the left-hand side represent health and hunger. Stamina is one of the most important aspects of survival in Valheim, because it affects how hard a player can work. Getting wet from rain, exceeding the carrying capacity, sprinting, and harvesting wood and ore can all drain stamina over time.
The hunger meter (the grey bar next to the player's health) impacts both stamina and health regeneration. Starting out players will find plenty of raspberries and mushrooms, to keep those meters relatively high. As they craft weapons hunting deer and boar, becomes easier and the raw meat those animals drop can be cooked over a campfire on a cooking station. If players are lucky, they may eventually find a beehive and can domesticate the bees to produce honey, which greatly increases health and stamina for a short period of time.
3 Picking a location
Once players have crafted a hammer, the recipe for a workbench (ten wood) will be added to the crafting menu. This can be found by equipping the hammer and clicking the right mouse button. Before crafting the workbench, players may want to explore the biome a bit more, to find a suitable base location.
When players have a location picked out, place the workbench and repair any tools and equipment. It is important to note that the hammer can be used to destroy or repair structures. Since using the hammer returns all resources that went into crafting the item, this makes moving things around a lot easier.
2 Building a starter base
Now that the workbench is built, new recipes will appear under the hammers crafting menu. Players will need to build a temporary shelter to protect themselves and any items. Wanting to jump into heavy base building may be the first thing on anyone's mind, however, building a simple structure is recommended.
Using the wood gathered build a few walls, surrounding the workbench leaving enough space for a bed and fire. A floor is optional at this point, but a roof is a requirement to gain the sheltered status effect.
1 Campfire and spawn point
If the players plan to completely seal off the base, with a door, make sure to add several windows or a chimney. Do this before adding a campfire, to allow the smoke to escape. Smoke deals damage in Valheim if not properly handled.
Next use the hammer to craft a bed, with the remaining wood. The bed will be under the furniture section. Place the bed near the campfire, to make it usable. An option to claim the bed will appear, a single bed can only be claimed by one player on the server. If there are no enemies nearby and it is during the afternoon or night, players can now sleep and set their first spawn point.