Valheim Beginners' Guide: Best tips and tricks for getting started

Valheim is the latest survival sandbox RPG game that's currently all the rage on Steam.

The Valkyries have ferried your soul to Valheim, the tenth Norse world, and now you need to try and survive by any means available and explore the world you have been thrown in.

Valheim is a game that's a combination of a survival sandbox game like Terraria, but with added monsters, exploration and surroundings like in ARK: Survival Evolved.

It offers a lot of challenges and fun gameplay, but you will need to understand what you are doing at the beginning, so we hope that this guide will help you get started.

(Picture: Iron Gate AB)

The world of Valheim is full of danger, a lot of things will try to kill you, from the world's wildlife and surroundings to the dangerous and mysterious foes.

To start off on the right foot is of utmost importance because then it will be much easier to continue your explorations at later stages of the game.

The first thing you will do is to create your character and generate your first world. Worlds are procedurally-generated, although you can check online for some seeds to get some already known worlds.

But you don't have to, just create some random fresh world for your first playthrough. That's the best thing for your first experience with the game.

Once you create your character and the world (and of course, give them names), you are ready to start the game!

Valheim: what to do when start playing the game

The game starts when a huge raven drops your body near a shrine in a forest, and from there your first goal is to simply survive and setup rudimentary base that will help you develop further.

The goal of your early hours in the game is to survive, collect materials, food, and create your first tools, a workbench, a campfire, and a bed.

If everything is done properly and with a little bit of luck, all of this can be achieved before the end of the first in-game day, and that's our goal with this guide.

Gather Wood

Wood is the first type of resource you will need to kick off the game. In order to gather Wood, you will need to punch trees and collect branches.

(Picture: Iron Gate AB)

Since punching takes a lot of time, the best way to do it is by punching the small trees which will drop wood, and simply pick up branches from the ground. When you have enough wood, make Club, which will help you defend your self from early enemies.

Find food

As with any survival game, making sure that your character is well fed is one of the bases of gameplay. In the beginning, it will be enough to simply grab some berries and mushrooms, but later on, you will also start hunting animals. Boars will probably be your first targets, as they will attack you the moment they see you, so kill them and collect meat and their Leather Scraps. Like in real life, the variety of your diet is important, because you will get different benefits from different food, so keep that always in mind. 

Create your first tools

In order to start making more advanced things, you will need some basic tools. The first few things you will make are Axe and Hammer, which you can create in the crafting menu.

For these two tools, you will need more Wood as well as Stone. You already know how to collect Wood, while Stone, at this early stages, you need to collect from the ground in a form of small rocks. They are not exactly abundant, so you will need to roam around a bit until you collect enough.

You will need enough Wood and Stone for Axe, Hammer, Workbench, and Lean-To, so make sure to have enough resources. As soon as you have enough for Axe and Hammer, create your first tools.

Build a Workbench and Lean-To

The very first immovable object you need to build in the game is a Workbench. The Workbench is required for repairing things and creating buildings, and it cost 10 Wood.

While you can't move your Workbench, you don't need to worry too much about its position, because in Valheim you can salvage almost anything and recover the cost, so there are practically no penalties if you destroy things and build them elsewhere.

(Picture: Iron Gate AB)

Lean-To is a primitive canopy which will provide you with some basic protection. Basically, build 3 walls around your Workbench and then put a roof on them.

The roof is the most important part because you won't be able to sleep without having a roof. If you did things right, you will be able to access more crafting options. If other options aren't available to you, then you didn't do something right.

Build a Campfire and a Bed

We are now near the end of your first day in Valheim. All that is left for you now to do is to make sure that you have a nice warm bed to sleep after an exhausting first day.

In order to sleep, you will need to have both a Campfire and a Bed. Your bed is both your resting place and a respawn point, making it one of the most important things in the early stages of the game.

(Picture: Iron Gate AB)

Your Bed needs to be protected with a roof, so check Lean-To and see if you've made it wide enough in order to have space for both your Workbench and Bed. You will get notified that your bad is exposed if it is not protected enough, in which case you will need to expand your walls and roof until they are covering the bad.

Once that is done, create a Campfire near your bed (it needs to be beside the bed in order for you to sleep), and that's it!

• Read more: Valheim Crafting Guide: All recipes, upgrades, items, weapons, and armour

Congratulations, your first day in Valheim is completed and you've successfully survived and created your very first base. It is not much, but it is enough to keep you going for another day.

Good luck warrior, and have fun! But be careful, all kinds of monstrosities are lurking out there in the wild!