Valheim is a survival crafting game based in the eponymous Viking paradise. With well over 5 million total sales, Valheim is one of the fastest-growing and most popular survival games ever. With so many people playing, there are bound to be many bases built over time.
While it may seem that bases are both versatile and safe, neither of those assertions are true, and bases require constant maintenance and activity to make them worth it. The best places to build bases combine a variety of favorable traits, and most of the time require some searching to find the right one for new players.
Updated September 29, 2021 by Collin Westbrook: The new Hearth and Home update is out and adds a significant amount of changes to the base building mechanics of Valheim, as well as many new options for furniture and building. This article has been changed to reflect these additions, as well as to add some pointers for the best places to build outposts and safe bases. Although these may be situational, considering the wide number of biomes in this survival exploration game, descriptions like this are necessary to maximize enjoyment. New content has made the map more accessible and interesting, so most of all this list has been changed to reflect that.
15 Next To The Sea
Traveling by sea might not seem to be the best way to progress, but Valheim does away with these survival game conventions. Think of the sea as the highway of your world, making normally inaccessible places ideal areas for acquiring resources. With portals, many things open up, but ore and ingots still require a boat to ferry them to productive areas.
Ambitious players may want to avoid harvesting resources on their home continent, with the intention of acquiring important wood and stone on other islands and continents. Therefore, placing a base near the ocean is extremely important for stowing away your valuable ships, not to mention fishing.
14 Next To A River
Rivers are a vital source of always necessary flint, stone, and most importantly, food. Necks are the perfect food source for aspiring hunters as they provide a secondary health increase in the early stages of the game, with the primary one being cooked meat from boars and deer meat. Neck tails are plentiful and highly nourishing.
In addition to this, if aspiring boat captains miss out on the ocean, they can always use the river as a highway in a similar fashion. Just make sure it is fairly wide, enough at least to navigate with a ship, even a simple one. The best base locations carry with them a variety of water sources that make basic survival a relatively easy task.
13 Next To Spawn
If players stuck in a death loop wish to not spawn at their faraway base, they can choose to make their primary and best house near the natural spawn and simply destroy their bed. This provides a perfect means of fast traveling after death, making the game’s natural spawn point a vital ally in the quest to further the survival experience.
In addition to this, Valheim is best experienced with friends, so placing the biggest base near spawn points will impress allies and foes alike.
12 Next To The Eikthyr Rune Stone
Eikthyr is an extremely important boss to fight early, as it allows players to access antler pickaxes and start acquiring copper and tin ore. While this may not seem to be the most important, if large groups require a lot of antler pickaxes, making the base far away from one of these stones will make transport a pain.
Therefore, for ease of access, it is best to locate one of these helpful stones as soon as possible to make your experience as smooth as possible.
11 In The Meadows
While an experienced explorer might deem it prudent to construct their base in the black forest or swamp, these areas are far more dangerous and have considerably more enemies. Meadows are scattered around the world of Valheim, and so locating one isn’t particularly difficult for anyone with a ship and some patience.
In addition to this, the spawn point is almost guaranteed to start in this biome, so players should not be afraid to use this as a primary, and safe base for gathering berries, leather scraps, and other important materials. As always, the best place to build a base is somewhere surrounded by the fundamentals. Not only that, it also gives players a place to ride their new Lox mounts around safely, and a lack of trees can make sprawling cities with new building materials look exceptional.
10 An Easily Defensible Area
While the inclusion of pickaxes allows players to terraform to their heart’s content, the standard base is spread out and on flat ground, so finding a suitable area to construct defenses can be a challenge. Instead, go uphill and find a plateau to start building. The terrain will favor the player when the Greydwarfs begin to attack.
The players have a choice between making defenses themselves and using the natural terrain to their advantage. While it may seem tempting to do the first, players should save time and consider the second.
9 Surrounded By A Pit
Moats may fit the medieval aesthetic more than the Viking one, but in Valheim many enemies will stop at a large enough depression in the ground. This means that any strategic enough moat can stop the worst enemies from attacking at all, and the small ones won’t chip at the durability of a main base.
It may be cumbersome to construct and live around, but in a proper invasion, the moat can mean the difference between the headache of a death loop and a small inconvenience.
8 Anywhere A Bed Is Needed
Bases don’t have to be singular objects, they can spread out and multiply over several biomes to give players safe havens in multiple areas. The swamp and plains are deadly to early players, so a base near to those is ideal to stop death loops and unneeded frustration. The best base designs in Valheim centralize the location of the bed, minimizing anger at the difficulty of this Viking survival game.
Players should never be afraid to expand over the entire map, the world is theirs after all. Workbenches and beds are a standard addition to any base, but fire and a forge are also very nice to have around. Portals make beds even more important, allowing easy access to storage and spawn points across the entire world, and the new cartography table adds on an additional way to share information on new bases to other players.
7 Flat Ground
While this may seem obvious, a flat area is ideal to avoid unneeded work in construction. While a mountain or cliff base might seem cool, these are prone to failure and their pillars are obvious weak points. Players should never be afraid to make these bases for the novelty value, but the first and largest base should have a sturdy foundation for the remainder of the game.
Builders beware, buildings can decay or be damaged by attacks. Players should never rely on their terraforming to create their defenses for them, after all. Valheim bases are as fragile as they are necessary, any survival game player knows this, and knows to do it right the first time.
6 Borders Between Biomes
While it may seem odd to place a permanent base on the line between regions, an outpost between the main base and a valuable biome can make a huge difference for carting goods to different areas. Even quick stops with a fire, bed, chests, and a workbench can stop many headaches during exploration.
While outposts may take time, veterans of Valheim know that these can make the difference in terms of enjoyment of this Viking survival experience.
5 Underneath A Sturdy Roof
Roofs are an incredibly important part of building in Valheim. While creating a large expansive complex of forges and fireplaces may seem nice, any building created without protection from the elements will degrade over time. This is noticeable immediately upon placing walls around any base, as a lack of roofs makes them lose durability extremely quickly
Walls and floors are important, but any truly defensible, useful, and efficient base has a large roof to stop any unnecessary decay from occurring. Locations like overhangs make this tricky to do, so any wise Viking will make an active attempt to allow for the construction of roofs above their head, even when it seems useless. New furniture items and building choices do diversify the application of roofs, but without a stable base, any building will soon fall into disrepair.
4 An Area With Room To Expand
Cramming in all of the hard-won spoils of adventuring into a tiny shack is both inefficient and hard to manage as staches increase in size. A wise player will always leave room to expand, and avoid building in areas that are closed-in. This can include trees and terrain, but also other buildings as well.
The area around a base should be flat, open, and easily defended. All of these are obvious, but most players fail to realize that even a small hill becomes a big problem when more storage becomes necessary. Adding on the many new furniture items and building choices from the new Hearth and Home patch, small bases become very crowded very quickly.
3 The Plains
Following the latest Heart and Home update to Valheim, there are a multitude of new materials for building and exploring that can only be found in this difficult biome. So, while newcomers should refrain from settling here, it can make an appealing outpost to veterans.
Just as an example, players may want to set up a ranch for Loxes that are now tamable and ridable, or an area for harvesting new black tar for use in building. Either way, this region is an excellent place to set up shop.
2 On Top Of A Terrain Pillar
Enemies in Valheim lack a very complicated AI to dictate their movements, and will often get confused or stuck on seemingly minor bits of terrain. Combine that with the fact that Valheim enemies cannot ever destroy sufficiently large pieces of terrain, and it becomes obvious that the best way to not get attacked is to make some modifications to the ground
Many Valheim veterans consider a base unsafe if it doesn’t sit upon a wild array of pillars made out of wood and dirt. Not only does this avoid damage from random enemy spawns, but it also provides a clear size indication for the growth of a base.
1 On An Island
While creating fortifications is definitely one of the most conventionally fun parts of playing a survival game like Valheim, creating a base where enemies can’t spawn is also a change of pace that will make any playthrough just a bit more peaceful. The ocean biome fits that description, and small islands in this biome can create an ideal starting point for a large multi-floor base.
Sea serpents may harass your ships, and you may be isolated, but the island fortress is an exceptional addition to any world in Valheim and a nice change of pace from normal architecture.
