Valheim is a survival game. A major part of this is having the food to survive encounters with unfriendly beasts, as well as to give you the energy to perform at higher levels. Food will provide you with healing properties as well, so without food you will gradually get weaker and die.
Food Mechanics
The food mechanics in Valheim are quite interesting. In most games you can eat as much as you want, but in Valheim you can only eat a maximum of three foods at any one time, and these need to be varied. Each type of food will give you beneficial effects for a period of time before you digest it and can eat something else. The aim during any combat or exploratory activities would be to maintain the full three foods, with a variety which is appropriate to the activity you are doing.
Food provides the following benefits:
- Increases your maximum health points
- Increases your maximum stamina points
- Improves your health healing rate (HP per 10 sec)
Your basic maximum health points are 25. If you don’t eat at all, then this will remain your maximum forever. Your actual health may go down below this, but it will never go above it. If you eat a raspberry (max HP +7) then your max HP will go up to 32.
Your basic healing rate is zero. That means that without any food you will never recover any health that you lose. Therefore food is necessary for healing. If you ate that raspberry from earlier, your healing rate increases by 1 HP for every 10 seconds. If you also eat a grilled neck tail, then your max HP will go up further, to 57 (25 +7 +25), and your healing rate will go up to 3 HP / 10 sec. A third food will increase these further.
Your maximum stamina rate works the same way as the maximum health. A raspberry will increase your max by +20. You have a basic stamina of 75, so that would go up to 95. If you also ate the grilled neck tail, it would go up a further +8 to 103.
The way your stamina recovers is not linked to food. Instead it is linked to the conditions, such as being cold or wet, or being well-rested and warm.
Your stamina and health benefits will slowly reduce over the course of the food’s duration. So you only get the maximum benefit at the point of eating, with a gradual reduction until the food is completely used up.
Types of Valheim Food
There are four basic groups of food which you can eat in Valheim.
- Raw Berries / Vegetables (find or farm)
- Cooked Meat / Vegetables (cook raw meat on the cooking station)
- Baked Foods (bread or pie baked in the oven)
- Prepared Meals (prepare a combination of foods in the cauldron)
The first type you will come across are basically foraged berries (raspberries / blueberries / cloudberries if you’re in the plains). These can be found in most biomes and are fairly common. The berries will respawn after a while, so you shouldn’t run out of these, however they don’t give large bonuses to your health and stamina, so you should be looking to improve on these as soon as you can.
Vegetables can be farmed from carrot, turnip or onion seeds (found in the Black Forest). These can be eaten raw for a small bonus, or cooked for a better meal.
The next food group you will find are literally running around the meadows. Neck, deer, and boar are the easiest to find. Fish is a close second, and there are a few more difficult meats to find as well. Each of these will give you a certain amount of raw meat, and you can farm boar and a couple of others for a more sustainable supply. You can cook the raw meat on a cooking station over an open fire for a much better food option. You will see increased health and stamina, with a much longer duration than berries.
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An interesting group is the baked goods. Currently only Bread and Lox Meat Pie fall into this category. You need to prepare the ingredients in the Cauldron, and then bake the resulting raw product in the Stone Oven.
Finally come the best types of food. These include sausages (made from raw meat, entrails and thistle), stews (using a variety of meats / vegetables), and fish wraps (from cooked fish and barley grain). These meals grant the eater the largest boosts in health or stamina, and last the longest between meals. If you are looking at taking down the biggest bosses then you need to be looking at these foods.
Food in Valheim
The table below provides details of all currently available food in Valheim, together with the source of the food, how to prepare it, and the bonuses it provides. The bonuses are cumulative, and are added to your basic stats.
| Food | Obtained from | Preparation Method | +HP Max | +Stam Max | +HP/10 sec Healing | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fish wraps | 4x Barley Flour 2x Cooked Fish | Cauldron | +70 | +23 | 4 | 1500 |
| Serpent stew | 2x Honey 1x Cooked Serpent Meat 1x Mushroom | Cauldron | +80 | +26 | 4 | 1800 |
| Lox meat pie | 4x Barley Flour 2x Cooked Lox Meat 2x Cloudberries | Cauldron (to mix) Oven (to bake) | +75 | +24 | 4 | 1800 |
| Bread (x2) | 10x Barley Flour | Cauldron (to mix) Oven (to bake) | +25 | +75 | 1 | 1800 |
| Carrot soup | 3x Carrots 1x Mushroom | Cauldron | +15 | +45 | 2 | 1500 |
| Blood pudding | 4x Barley Flour 2x Bloodbags 2x Thistles | Cauldron | +23 | +70 | 1 | 1500 |
| Turnip stew | 3x Turnips 1x Raw Boar Meat | Cauldron | +18 | +55 | 2 | 1500 |
| Cooked Lox Meat | Raw Lox Meat | Iron Cooking Station (60 seconds) | +50 | +16 | 4 | 1200 |
| Cooked Serpent Meat | Raw Serpent Meat | Iron Cooking Station (60 seconds) | +70 | +23 | 3 | 1500 |
| Sausages | 1x Thistle 4x Entrails 1x Raw Boar Meat | Cauldron | +55 | +18 | 3 | 1500 |
| Queens Jam (x4) | 8x Blueberries 8x Raspberries | Cauldron | +14 | +40 | 2 | 1200 |
| Cooked Boar Meat | Raw Boar Meat | Cooking Station (25 seconds) | +30 | +10 | 2 | 1200 |
| Cooked Fish | Raw Fish | Cooking Station (25 seconds) | +45 | +15 | 2 | 1200 |
| Cloudberries | Cloudberry Bushes (Plains) | None | +15 | +40 | 1 | 900 |
| Grilled Neck Tail | Raw Neck Tail | Cooking Station (20 seconds) | +25 | +8 | 2 | 1200 |
| Honey | Beehives | None | +8 | +35 | 1 | 900 |
| Yellow Mushroom | Burial Chambers (Black Forest) Troll Caves (Black Forest) Sunken Crypts (Swamp) | None | +10 | +30 | 1 | 600 |
| Blueberries | Blueberry Bushes (Black Forest) | None | +8 | +25 | 1 | 600 |
| Mushroom | Meadows Black Forest | None | +15 | +15 | 1 | 900 |
| Raspberries | Raspberry Bushes (Meadows) | None | +7 | +20 | 1 | 600 |
| Carrot | Farmed by player from Carrot Seeds (found in Black Forest) | None | +10 | +32 | 1 | 900 |
| Boar Jerky (x2) | 1x Raw Boar Meat 1x Honey | Cauldron | +20 | +20 | 1 | 1800 |
| Deer Stew | 1x Cooked Deer Meat 1x Blueberry 1x Carrot | Cauldron | +40 | +13 | 2 | 1200 |
| Muckshake | 1x Ooze 2x Raspberries 2x Blueberries | Cauldron | +16 | +50 | 1 | 1200 |
| Onion | Farmed by player from Onion Seeds | None | +8 | +40 | 1 | 900 |
| Minced Meat Sauce | 1x Boar Meat 1x Neck Tail 1x Carrot | Cauldron | +45 | +15 | 3 | 1500 |
| Wolf Jerky (x2) | 1x Raw Wolf Meat 1x Honey | Cauldron | +30 | +30 | 1 | 1800 |
| Onion Soup | 3x Onion | Cauldron | +12 | +60 | 1 | 1200 |
| Wolf Skewer | 1x Raw Wolf Meat 2x Mushrooms 1x Onion | Cauldron | +65 | +13 | 3 | 1500 |
| Black Soup | 1x Bloodbag 1x Honey 1x Turnip | Cauldron | +50 | +17 | 3 | 1200 |
| Cooked Wolf Meat | Raw Wolf Meat (Mountains) | Cooking Station | +45 | +15 | 3 | 1200 |
| Eyescream | 3x Greydwarf Eye 1x Freeze Gland | Cauldron | +21 | +65 | 1 | 1500 |
| Cooked Deer Meat | Raw Deer Meat | Cooking Station | +35 | +12 | 2 | 1200 |
| Bukeperries | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 |
Food Strategies
The basic strategy with food is to have as many different high-grade foods as possible. There are variations on this depending on what you are doing. Since the Hearth and Home update all of the foods have been rebalanced to give more benefits for either HP or Stamina depending on the food, so depending on your playstyle you will find that you prefer different foods again.
The best three foods for max HP are Serpent Stew (+80), Lox Meat Pie (+75) and Fish Wraps (+70), giving a total of 225 max HP. Most bosses are easier with higher max HP, particularly ones which use poison or area of effect attacks. These are also three of the best foods for healing (+4 HP / 10 sec each), with only Cooked Lox Meat equalling at +4 HP / 10 sec. They only grant a total of 73 max Stamina, though, around one third of what can be achieved.
The best three types of Valheim food for max Stamina are Bread (+75), Blood Pudding (+70) and Eyescream (+65), giving a total of 210 max Stamina. These would be good in situations where you need to run / jump / swim, or with a lot of enemies attacking you which you need to make multiple hits. They are also useful for more intensive farming, tree-felling, or mining. You would only have 69 max HP with these three foods, so take care not to leave yourself open to attack!
For a more balanced build the greatest total points are given by Serpent Stew, Bread and Lox Meat Pie. This combo gives 180 max HP, 9 HP/sec healing, and 125 max Stamina.
Switching the Lox Meat Pie out for Blood Pudding changes this to 128 max HP, 6 HP/sec healing, and 171 max Stamina.
These foods are fairly advanced combinations, requiring or ready access to the Plains, Mountains or Swamps, or plenty of dangerous ocean-voyaging to hunt serpents. If you don’t have this sort of access then you would be looking at these foods instead:
For early/mid-game Max HP, use Minced Meat Sauce (+45), Cooked Fish (+45) and Deer Stew (+40). These will provide 130 total max HP, with 7 HP / 10 sec recovery, as well as 43 Max Stamina.
For early/mid-game Max Stamina, use Onion Soup (+60), Turnip Stew (+55) and Carrot Soup (+45) for a total of 160 Max Stamina, and 45 Max HP.
For early/mid-game balanced builds you would use a combination of the above foods. Minced Meat Sauce, Onion Soup and Turnip Stew gives 75 max HP, 6 HP/sec healing, and 130 max Stamina, or Minced Meat Sauce, Cooked Fish and Turnip Stew gives 108 max HP, 7 HP/sec healing, and 85 max Stamina.
Finally, there is the Bukeperry (not a typo!). An oddity, this food provides no apparent benefit to the player in HP, Stamina or anything else. However, it does promote vomiting, and empties your stomach of whatever food is in it. The advantage to this is to allow the player to switch from one food type to another without having to wait for the timer to run down. It wastes the excess food timer, but you may need to quickly change from a high Stamina food to a high HP food instead.
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