Valheim is not a nice place to live. With my personal experience, I can hope this information will alleviate some of your struggles.
Before we Begin
This guide I present to you is about many things I have picked up on. I am sure many other players know a lot about some of these things, but I am sure there will be one thing on here most others may not know about. I am not here to proclaim “Look how smart I am!”, but to provide information for other players to reference. Heck, I am sure there are many things other players may know about that I don’t!
But anyway, with this out of the way, Let’s get started.
Building
Hen it comes to building the “perfect lodge”, there are always many things to consider. However, there are also some things many players may not consider. This isn’t Minecraft!
How Far is Too Far?
When building a structure, keep in mind how well it is supported. You can do this by, while holding your wooden hammer, directly looking at a built object and seeing what color it is. Starting with the color blue, it means the object is touching the ground, after that, the colors will transition from green to red. When the object is blood red while you are looking at it, it means it is at the absolute limit of supporting itself. Go beyond that point, and the object you just placed will break almost immediately. This happens when your build is stretched too far without support or is stacked too high. Fortunately, if a breakage occurs, you will get a full return of materials. Like I said before, this isn’t Minecraft!
Fireplace? Put a Roof Over it.
Having a fireplace in your house will help you through cold nights, but what happens when it rains? The short answer: your fire will go out if proper precautions are not met. The best way to do this is to surround your fire with walls and put roofing right above it. The walls can be wood, so don’t worry about accidentally burning your residence down. What you do have to worry about, though, is the type of block you use to cap your chimney. It has to be an actual roof, or keeping the rain off your fireplace will not work.
Pro Tip: Make sure the smoke from your fire has an outlet to exit your lodge, or you may quickly find yourself choking to death while you are inside.
The Weather Outside is Brutal…
When it rains, there are some blocks that are negatively affected by it. They lose durability over time, weakening the object down to half health. Objects like wood walls, wooden pillars, and most furniture items fall under this category. Even the crafting stations are not safe from weathering. They also weather even faster in contact with standing water, but will also stop at half durability without weathering any more. Fortunately, all these items will not weather if any sort of roof is directly above them, even if they are already below another wall.
Resourcing
When you need to gather resources, where do you go to get those items? If you need regular wood, do you chop up tress and stumps to get them? However, with many things, there are better ways to get them.
Wooden Me This!
At first, getting ordinary wood from trees seems to be the best option. However, as time passes while turning wood into charcoal, those trees will recede further and further away from your residence, and if you do not have the means to replant them, you will have to walk longer distances to get more trees. But what about greydwarves? Sure, they are a menace to new players and quite the annoyance to others, especially the shamans and brutes. However, since they are so numerous, especially during the night, it can be real easy for an experienced player to collect a couple stacks of wood by sunrise. This only increases if you find a greydwarf spawner and decide to use it as a farm. So, by chopping greydwarves instead of trees, collecting wood quickly becomes environmentally friendly. Also, there is nothing wrong with a little pest control, right?
…Off to the Mines We Go!
When you first see copper deposits, Most people are sure that what they can see is really all there is. Incredibly, this is not true most of the time. Copper deposits have most of themselves stuck underground, meaning all that you see is just mining the tip of the iceberg! If you fully excavated a copper deposit and mined it, you are guaranteed to get at least three stacks of ore, likely more. Sure, breaking open this much ground can be brutal on your pickaxe, but it seems more wasteful to leave all that ore right under your feet. Putting in the extra effort at each copper deposit will seriously help in the long run!
Barrels of Fun
This is something I found out only four days ago upon writing this. At some stone structures in a black forest, there is a barrel sitting next to the door. I initially left them alone, but if you break it open, you can get some decent goodies! So far, I have found deer and boar leather, blueberries, coal, and tin ore in these barrels. If you find one out in the wild, break it open!
