Valheim: the first three hours done right

§The first ten minutes

1. 1Pick up Stone and Wood — click every branch and rock you walk past.
2. 2Craft a Stone Axe immediately. Everything starts with the axe.
3. 3Chop Beech trees for Wood and grab the Wood Core from stumps.
4. 4Craft a Hammer and a Workbench. The Workbench is your progress gate.
5. 5Roof the Workbench with a simple 2x2 shack. Uncovered benches stop working in rain.

§Food is the actual health bar

Your max health is whatever your three food slots say it is. Fighting on raspberries is why you keep dying.

• Raspberries, Mushrooms and Honey for the first evening.
• Kill boar and deer, then cook Grilled Neck Tail and Cooked Meat on a Cooking Station over a Campfire.
• Honey from a Beehive is the best early filler — passive, free, keeps forever.
• Never let all three slots run empty at once. Eat at the halfway mark, not at zero.

§Gear checklist before the first boss

• Flint gear: Flint Spear and Flint Axe from the shoreline flint. Big jump over stone.
• Bow (Crude Bow) plus a stack of Wood Arrows. Almost everything in the Meadows and Black Forest dies to kiting.
• Leather armour from Deer Hide and Scrap. Two pieces is fine, do not delay the boss for a full set.
• A Wood Shield, and learn to block-parry. Parrying is the real combat mechanic; blocking is just surviving.

§Base, then portals

1. 1Build near water, in the Meadows, close to a Black Forest border. Water gives you boats, Meadows gives you safety, the border gives you copper.
2. 2Add a Bed and sleep through nights you do not want to fight.
3. 3Put your Workbench, Cooking Station and chests under one roof.
4. 4Once you have Fine Wood and Greydwarf Eyes, build Portals in pairs and label them the same word. Portals are the single biggest quality-of-life unlock in the game.

§Eikthyr without the pain

• Find the mystical altar in the Meadows, hang two Deer Trophies on it.
• Bring a bow, 50+ arrows, a spear, and full food.
• Fight in open ground with a few trees to break his lightning charge.
• His charge is telegraphed — dodge sideways, then hit him three times and back off. Do not greed a fourth swing.
• Drop his Hard Antler into a Workbench recipe for the Antler Pickaxe. That is your ticket to copper and the Black Forest.

§Mistakes that killed me repeatedly

• I fought with an empty food bar and 40 max health.
• I built my first base in the Black Forest. Greydwarves visit constantly and they bring friends.
• I ignored parrying and tanked hits until I ran out of stamina, which is how you die in this game.
• I chopped trees on a slope and got flattened by my own tree. Twice.