Valheim is an early access survival game from Swedish developer Iron Gate Studios and publisher Coffee Stain Studios. It’s inspired by Viking lore and has the player trek out into a dangerous wilderness full of enemies and monsters that could end your journey of survival early.
This game has made some big waves since its early access launch in February of 2021. With its popularity comes the natural gamer tendency to complete Valheim’s objectives in record times—in other words, speedrun Valheim. Today, we are going to provide some tips and tricks to speedrunning the Viking-themed survival world of Valheim.
10 Unequip Items
Firstly, the only thing that is currently measurable as a speedrun in Valheim is killing bosses. Speedruns have been done for killing all five bosses or just individual bosses, but both will require you to move, gather resources, build, and fight quickly.
A basic tip to do all of these things is to remember to unequip items when you’re not actively using them. Each item will slow the player’s movement down, and effect stacks the more items you have equipped.
9 Look Around Your Spawn
The area around your first spawn zone will always have a good number of useful items to help your Viking get a leg up in their coming challenges.
Behind the Sacrificial Stones is a good place to find raspberries and mushrooms, and wood and stone can be found inside the stone circle itself.
8 Torch The Small Trees
Going at a tree with your bare hands is never advisable, even if it’s worked out well enough for in Minecraft. This remains true in Valheim, but there is another option.
Your starting torch will do more damage to smaller trees than bare Viking hands. Swapping over to the torch will help you gather wood far faster than just abusing the trees with your fists.
7 Positioning Is Key
Attacking multiple targets may not immediately seem like a possibility in a game like Valheim, but it’s actually something a player can easily do. The arc of your character’s attack can easily swipe at more than one enemy or even tree at once.
The only caveat to this is that you will have to actively fight against the drift that comes with constantly attacking. Your character will want to move forward, and you’ll have to readjust to maintain the ideal position.
6 Swords Are The Best
This may be obvious for the experienced Valheim player, but swords are the best kind of weapon you can use. Swords tie for axes with the most damage output and have a faster attack speed. It may seem more fun to have a Viking wielding a hammer, axe, or mace, but the sword is the most versatile, dangerous, and swift tool at your disposal.
It is worth noting that certain kinds of foes are weak to certain kinds of damage, so swap between weapon types as needed. However, swords are your best bet when going into combat blind.
5 Repair As Needed
While trying to speedrun a game, it may seem counterintuitive to take time to stop and repair a weapon at a workbench. This takes time that could be better-used gathering resources or hunting down the boss monsters.
However, repairing as it currently exists in the early access version of Valheim doesn’t require any resources. If a weapon is starting to look weak, it is far more cost-effective to repair it than to acquire a new weapon.
4 Always Keep An Eye Out For Boss Signs
Since killing bosses is the only recognizable way to speedrun Valheim at this time, it is imperative to keep an eye out for boss runestones or summoning altars as you explore the world of Valheim.
Even if you’re not equipped to fight the boss of your current biome at the moment, your Viking can still mark the location of the altar on their map. There’s no downside to figuring out where the boss altar is located.
3 Tree Rolling
The next three entries truly owe their placement on this list to that aforementioned speedrun.com guide, so credit to its author for these tips. Trees will do damage as they fall in Valheim, which is an obvious observation. However, a Valheim player can use this to their advantage. Rolling logs will damage enemies, other trees, and fallen trees.
In terms of resource gathering, it is far more effective to use logs to break other logs, as this method takes a while to fell an upright tree. Rolling logs don’t aid in mining or gathering stone though.
2 Bonfires As A Weapon
Bonfires are needed to cook food and keep your Viking warm in Valheim, but they can also be used as a weapon. Notably, they scare Greydwarves, even on their home turf. However, bonfires have another powerful usage.
Building bonfires on the fly can do massive damage to an enemy, especially if they’re unaware of the bonfire. Literally lighting a fire under their butt is a powerful strategy, especially against boss enemies. Building walls on the fly to keep enemies trapped with the fire is a viable strategy as well, but this is less useful against bosses as they will destroy structures with relative ease.
1 Abuse Death
Recovering your corpse is already useful in Valheim to recover your lost items and resources, but the Corpse Run effect makes this doubly useful, as it grants a stamina and resistance bonus.
This could potentially be exploited, as the gravestones that mark your body do not disappear unless used. That said, you need to have at least one item on your body to spawn this gravestone. The Corpse Run effect does not stack, but hitting a new gravestone will renew the Corpse Run effect. This means you can tactically die and use the Corpse Run effect to achieve your goals far more quickly and with a lesser risk of getting killed.
NEXT: Valheim: 10 Things That Should Be Added In The Next Update
