Valheim Getting Started Guide: Your First Meadows Base and Eikthyr Route
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Make a serviceable base before a big house
Start in the Meadows and use the nearest bright, open patch with trees, hunting ground, and a clear route back to the rune circle. Do not build deep in the Black Forest because you saw a copper boulder. Your first base needs to repair gear, cook food, set a respawn point, and hold supplies; it does not need a hall.
Pick up Wood and Stone, then make a Hammer with 3 Wood and 2 Stone. With the hammer equipped, open the build menu and place a Workbench for 10 Wood. Put walls and a roof over it before trying to use it. Add a Campfire (5 Stone, 2 Wood), a Cooking station (2 Wood), a Bed (8 Wood), and two or three chests. The fire needs a path for smoke to escape, so leave an opening high in the wall or roof. Claim the bed only when it says it is sheltered and has a fire nearby.
That compact loop matters more than a fancy roof: come home, repair, cook, store, sleep if darkness is closing in, then leave with Rested active. A falling tree can kill a new Viking just as quickly as a Greydwarf, so stand to the side of a trunk when chopping rather than downhill from its fall line.
Fill the three food slots and find the next landmarks
Food raises your health and stamina; it is not a hunger timer. Hunt boar, deer, and necks in the Meadows, cook the meat and tails, and eat three different available foods before a long trip. Keep an extra cooked stack in the chest beside the bed. The exact mix will improve as you unlock recipes, but a full set of food icons and the Rested buff are a better starting target than rushing leather armour.
Make a Stone Axe, Club, and Crude Bow when the recipes appear. Carry Wood Arrows, a repaired weapon, and enough food for the return. Walk the Meadows edge in daylight and mark four things on the map: your base, a Black Forest edge, a shoreline, and any red runestone that points to Eikthyr’s Mystical Altar. The altar can be a long walk from the starting stones, so mark it instead of trying to remember the route after a death.
Hunt until you have two Deer Trophies. They are the offering for Eikthyr, while leather scraps and deer hide are useful for the starter workbench upgrades. Do not use the trophies as wall decoration before the boss is down; another pair means another hunting trip.
End the Meadows phase with a clear job
Before summoning Eikthyr, leave a small recovery kit at home: cheap food, a club or bow, and clothing you can wear if the boss trip goes wrong. Start the fight after repairing gear and refreshing food, not with food bars already fading. Eikthyr covers the arena and reward route.
Eikthyr drops the Hard Antlers that open your first pickaxe. The next job is not to sprint farther into the forest. Return to a covered Workbench with 10 Wood and a Hard Antler, craft the pickaxe, then set up the copper-and-tin loop in Copper, Tin, and Bronze. A base that can keep you fed, rested, and repaired makes that loop repeatable.
Returning with an old character or world? Returning to Valheim covers world generation, achievement eligibility and joining friends across platforms.