Hail warrior! Building is the cornerstone of survival in Valheim. Without a shelter, you are but a slave to the elements and dangers of the world. You will not survive long without at least building a small home or camp for yourself. Along with using the building as a place to rest there are many other reasons to build structures.
Contents
Selecting any of the headings below will jump you straight to the relevant section of the page.
What Types of Structures Can Be Built?
How Do I Start Building?
How to Craft a Hammer
Using the Hammer
Building a Ship
What structures can be built in Valheim?
Valheim features a modular building system where you are not limited to only creating pre-built structures. You can customize the building to your hearts desire, the choices are limitless! Do you want to build a grand hall where you can have feats with your Viking brethren, perhaps a small workshop where you can build axes and shields constantly. Whatever you wish to build, in whatever direction, you can in Valheim.
How Do I Start building?
You can build very early on in Valheim. It is the cornerstone to success in bringing down Odin’s enemies. To begin building, you will first have to craft a Hammer. You will use the Hammer to build all the different types of structures and furniture in the game. This tool is an absolute must have for any warrior worth his salt. The in-game description for the Hammer reads; “With this in your hands, you can raise high halls and mighty fortifications.”
How to Craft a Hammer in Valheim
To craft a Hammer in Valheim you will need to collect 3 units of wood and 2 units of stone. Once you have these items in your inventory, access the crafting menu. On the left panel, you can see the option for Hammer. Select this and click on Craft at the bottom of the UI.
Finding Wood in Valheim
You can find wood and stones lying on the ground. Wood can be collected by finding branches in the forest and picking them up with the ‘E’ key. Alternatively Wood can be collected by cutting down trees.
Finding Stones in Valheim
Stones can be found on the floor in all biomes in Valheim. If you have having trouble finding stones, try mountainous areas or parts of the map with steep slopes. There can also be a good amount of stones, (along with Flint), found where water meets the land either in a river or at sea.
Congratulations! you have crafted your first Hammer, a tool for building. now it’s time to learn how to use it!
Using the Hammer to Build
Once you have acquired a Hammer it’s time to put it to work! Equip the Hammer by opening up your inventory and dragging it into the quick bar at the top of the inventory UI. You will notice at the top row of the inventory the boxes have different numbers. Once you have dragged an item into one of these boxes you can simply press the number associated with the item to equip it straight away.
Once you have the Hammer equipped it’s time to build. With the Hammer equipped you will see a new control overlay at the bottom right of the screen. (See the image below). This tells you the different controls that you can use for the Hammer. We will go into detail about each of the controls listen in the UI.
Mouse 1 – Place
Use the left mouse button to place an object or building piece once you have selected something to build. Pretty basic. This is going ot be how you put your builds down into the world.
Mouse 3 – Remove
Use the scroll wheel button (Or whatever you have set as your mouse 3 for your mouse) to remove the structure you are currently looking at. You can remove each piece or item. Removing an item will refund all of the materials used to build it, so this will be the way that you move around objects that you are not happy with. Once you remove an object all of the materials that were used to craft it will drop on the ground where it was.
Mouse 2 – Build Menu
Pressing the 2nd mouse button (right-click by default), will open up the build menu. This is the menu where all of the currently available building will be located. What things you will be able to build will depend on what items you have picked up and what level your workshop is at. From this menu you will be able to build pieces of a structure such as walls, roofs and floors and also ships and other furniture items.
Toggle snapping/options
You can use the left shift button on your keyboard to toggle whether or not you want the building pieces to snap together, or you want to build segments of the house with free control mode.
Rotate Building Objects
To rotate objects in Valheim when you are building, use the scroll wheel. Once you have decided what you would like to build through the Build Menu, you will be able to rotate the object clockwise or counter-clockwise by using the scroll wheel on your mouse.
Now that we have the controls out of the way what can you build? Well you can build houses and structures using the modular building system in Valheim. You can build separate floor pieces, wall pieces and roofs and rotate and place them wherever you want. The only limit is your creativity! To begin with you will probably be starting out creating yourself a small cabin to get through the night but once you have a real grasp on the game you will be building up castles in no time!
Building a ship in Valheim
You will also be using the Hammer and building menu to build ships in Valheim. Once you have the Hammer and have found your first building materials you will be able to make your first vessel for naval travel, the simple, but effective Raft. The raft can be built through the build menu by selecting the tab marked as Misc. You will have to have a Workbench near a body of water to be able to put your Raft down.
That covers our short guide on building in Valheim! We hope you’re enjoying the game as much as we are and hope that this guide has helped you and your friends bring order to the 10th realm!
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