Often overlooked by the beginner at Valheim, particularly if you’ve played Minecraft before, is the hoe. This humble tool is the precursor to the pickaxe, and it allows you to shape the earth, at least partially, to suit your dwellings.
The Valheim hoe can do a few things. Firstly it can be used to level the ground. To do this find a patch of ground the right height, and then click somewhere else. That bit will rise or fall to match where you are standing. There are limits as to how much you can do with the hoe, though. Think of it as being able to dig the top soil away, but you can’t do anything with the rock underneath.
If you shift+click then the hoe will level the ground near the cursor to the level of the cursor instead of your player level. This can be very useful in creating more gentle slopes, and should be the mode of choice when creating paths.
Secondly you can raise the ground. Right-click to bring up options, and choose Raise Ground. This can be used on the earth to make a mound. You will need stone in your inventory and a workbench nearby to do this.
Thirdly, and in fact this happens with any of these options as a side-effect, you can choose Pathen. This tool removes the grass where you click, enabling you to lay down paths across the countryside. It doesn’t do any more than that – just removes the grass. It doesn’t remove any plants or stones, or level or taper the ground at all – just removes the grass. This can be a useful thing to do to lay out routes to useful destinations.
Take note that you can’t bring back the grass that is destroyed using any of these processes until you get access to the Cultivator which requires bronze. Using this is very simple and just replants the grass within a circle at your cursor.
If you’re looking at using the hoe on its own to create nice flat paths then you may want to look at the pickaxe as well – a combination of roughing out the terrain with the pickaxe and then left-clicking with the levelling hoe will do most good here.
When you get iron, and are able to build a Stonecutter, you will be able to lay paved paths. Be warned, this tool works just the same as the level ground tool, not the pathen tool. It will raise and lower the ground underneath your cursor in exactly the same way. The only difference is the texture of the ground on top – instead of putting a bare earth texture on, it will put a stone cobble texture one. This does not improve walking or carting speed – it is purely decorative. It will also cost one stone and will use your stamina to place. Unless there are changes planned by the devs in the future, we don’t recommend using this tool of the hoe.
The hoe can be upgraded to level two and three. These grant you more durability of the hoe, from 200 to 400 and then 600. This allows you to do more hoeing before it breaks, but doesn’t reduce the stamina drain from using it.