What is food good for?
Food is essential for increasing your maximum health & stamina, as well as regenerating health after taking damage.
Food is also used to tame animals.
When should I eat food?
Only when you’re making long-distance trips, expected to encounter enemies or farming.
If you’re spending time building, crafting or even mining in a safe place (such as a cleared Crypt), save your food!
How much time should I spend acquiring food?
Unless you want to go out of your way to stock-pile food, simply pick up any food items you come across on your adventures.
Hunt Deer, Boar, and Necks whenever you see them.
Additionally, get a small farm going. Something that can fit up to 100 slots for planting vegetables.
A farm of this size isn’t too difficult to manage but provides more than enough for one person.
It’s also worth investing some time into taming Boar!
Is a variety of types of food important?
No, not really. In real life, you need a balance between various fruits, vegetables, and meats.
In Valheim, you could live off of a specific food type forever, there’s no penalty for doing so.
How does food healing work in Valheim?
Each food item grants some healing per “tick”. A tick is 10 seconds.
So if you’ve eaten food that grants 2, 3 & 4 healing per tick individually, you’ll get 9 health every 10 seconds.
If you’re rested, regen rate is increased by 50%. So, you’ll be healed every 5 seconds.
If you’re wet, this amount is decreased by 25%.
If you’re cold, this amount is decreased by 50%.
These amounts are multiplicative. So if you’re cold, wet & not rested, you’ll only regenerate every 17.5 seconds.
How does stamina regeneration work in Valheim?
You have a base stamina regeneration rate of 1 per second.
If you are rested, stamina regeneration rate is doubled.
If you’re wet, this amount is decreased by 15%.
If you’re cold, this amount is decreased by 25%.
What is the max health & stamina you can get?
You have 25 base health & 90 base stamina.
Food exists to grant either 275 health, or 340 stamina.
The best combination of both you can get is a total of 245 health and 340 stamina.
How do I tame Boars in Valheim?
- Set up a rectangle of fences, with one fence missing, for an entrance.
- Find a Boar (preferably with 1 or 2 stars) and get it to attack you.
- Lead it into the rectangle, then close the entrance off with another fence.
- Throw food into the fence.
- Repair any damage done to the fence by the Boar, and give it some space to calm down.
- Over the space of 1-3 days, depending on the level of the Boar, it’ll eventually become tame. You can see the progress by hovering your view over the Boar.
10. Grilled Neck Tail
Health: 35
Stamina: 20
Duration: 15 minutes
Healing: 2
Ingredients:
Description:
Providing little in the way of health and staina, grilled neck tail ranks on this list for its easiness to obtain.
Each Neck has a 70% chance of dropping 1 Neck Tail, increased to a 100% chance for 2 and 4 neck tails at 1 and 2 stars respectively.
If you’ve built in a Meadows biome, you’ll encounter Necks frequently. Smashing them for their tails is an easy way of obtaining this food.
9. Cooked Meat
Health: 40
Stamina: 30
Duration: 20 minutes
Healing: 2
Ingredients:
Description:
Obtaining raw meat is as simple as hunting Deer or Boar. You can tame Boar very easily (described above).
Cooked meat is an essential food item during the early game, being your main source of health and stamina.
Raw meat has plenty of other uses, as it’s an ingredient in many high quality foods, as well as useful for taming wolves.
Once you’ve progressed through the biomes, you should have stockpiles of meat in your chests.
Best used as food items for building, farming and exploring, rather than in combat.
8. Sausages
Health: 60
Stamina: 40
Duration: 25 minutes
Healing: 3
Ingredients:
Description:
Available fairly early on, the health given by sausages is great and a huge boost to any adventurer.
Entrails are obtained by killing Draugr in the Swamp, which can be done with bronze gear.
The only reason sausages don’t rank higher is due to the reliance on thistles.
Thistles are fairly difficult to get in high numbers, although you can mark any thistle spawn locations on the map, as they respawn 4 hours later.
Crafting a bunch of sausages will yield 4 items, so it’s surprisingly easy to get dozens of them early on.
Make sure you save some thistles though, for better food items (see below) or Frost/Poison resistance potions.
7. Carrot Soup
Health: 20
Stamina: 60
Duration: 25 minutes
Healing: 2
Ingredients:
Description:
Carrots are exceptionally easy to farm, requiring some carrot seeds and a cultivator.
Even a small farm the size of a house can yield hundreds of carrots in a few days.
Pair your veg with some mushrooms, another easy-to-get item, for some carrot soup.
High stamina granted is great for exploring, or boss fights. In many situations, stamina is a far greater resource than health.
6. Bread
Health: 40
Stamina: 70
Duration: 30 minutes
Healing: 2
Ingredients:
Description:
Once you get a simple farm set up in the Plains, you’ll have access to hundreds of barley.
Found in Fuling Villages, you get a return of 2 barley for each one planted.
Over time, stockpiles can be built up, with 10 being needed to make bread.
Decent health and great stamina make bread a staple of any late-game adventures, building sessions or explorations.
5. Serpent Stew
Health: 80
Stamina: 80
Duration: 40 minutes
Healing: 4
Ingredients:
Description:
With the joint highest bonus health/stamina of all food items in the game, serpent stew is certainly a hearty meal.
It ranks 5th for its difficulty to obtain. A 0-star serpent will drop 6-7 serpent meat, with 1 piece of meat needed for a stew.
Since the serpent spawn rates seem to be uncommon, serpent stew is not a reliable food item to obtain in large numbers.
Many players recommend harpooning a serpent, dragging it onto land, and then finishing it off.
I’m in the other camp, simply wield a bow with your best arrows and shoot it from your boat. If you’re a half-decent shot, you’ll kill it in no time!
4. Turnip Stew
Health: 50
Stamina: 50
Duration: 25 minutes
Healing: 2
Ingredients:
Description:
A nice balance of health and stamina is amazing for how ridiculously easy it is to get tons of turnip stew.
Turnip seeds are first found in the Swamp biome, which are then planted for 3 turnips, which grow into 9 turnip seeds.
You’ll want to replace your carrot farm with turnips straight away. Or have a farm for each, if you have the time to tend to them both.
3 turnips are required to craft one turnip stew, alongside 1 raw meat.
Turnips are also an excellent resource for breeding Boar.
3. Blood Pudding
Health: 90
Stamina: 50
Duration: 40 minutes
Healing: 4
Ingredients:
Description:
Sporting the highest health bonus of any food in the game is the blood pudding, granting high healing per tick and a long duration.
Bloodbags will be your biggest detriment in obtaining several stacks of blood pudding, as you need to murder a lot of Leeches.
It’s best to save your blood puddings for long expeditions or boss fights, it’s a very valuable resource so don’t waste it mining or fighting greylings!
2. Fish Wraps
Health: 60
Stamina: 90
Duration: 40 minutes
Healing: 4
Ingredients:
Description:
Requiring just 2 cooked fish and 4 barley to craft, fish wraps are an incredible late-game food item.
Both of the ingredients are easy to get in large droves. Each day lasts 21 minutes in Valheim, so you can get a full in-game week worth of fish wraps for just 7 fish!
What is the best way to get fish in Valheim?
Fishing is the most reliable way.
Buy a fishing rod, and some bait, from the trader.
Got to any large body of water and throw your cast.
Wait until you get a bite, then reel it in. Simple!
That method is quite tedious, but there are other ways…
If you’re close to a shoreline, fish will often spawn in the water.
Wait for unstable weather, so the tide is constantly coming in and out.
Fish will often be beached on the shore, in groups of 1-10. That’s an easy 2-30 raw fish right there!
Either that or pickaxe a thin path from the ocean into the land, making an artificial lake that you can walk/run through.
Fish will swim into the lake, you can simply run to them, and press E to pick them up.
They’re very speedy, so be patient and wait for them to get close to you.
1. Lox Meat Pie
Health: 80
Stamina: 80
Duration: 40 minutes
Healing: 4
Ingredients:
Description:
For a combination of health, stamina and easiness to obtain, look no further than the Lox Meat Pie!
Cloudberries are easily acquired by the hundreds, found in large groups across the Plains, often on the border too for safe foraging.
Cooked lox meat is also easy to get, each 0-star Lox will drop 4-5 meat. They have 1000 health, so hunting them can seem daunting but it’s not bad at all.
An upgraded Finewood Bow with Fire Arrows will kill a Lox in 14 fully-charged shots.
To avoid taking damage, stay at a fair distant when you first attack. Pace backwards while you fire your follow-up shots.
If you’re accurate, the Lox will be dead before it reaches you!