Bonemass : How to Kill Valheim Boss No. 3

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Bonemass is the third Valheim boss to kill in order to advance in the game. After Eikthyr and The Elder, Bonemass may seem a little daunting. However, with a bit of preparation, this one isn’t so difficult.

What is Bonemass?

Bonemass is assumed to be a huge mass of rotting remains. The description given at the runestone is “Wanderer, look to your feet, that tread upon our tomb. One thousand bones without their meat, will drag you to your doom.” From this we expect that Bonemass is the skeletal remains of a large number of human corpses, but he appears to be more of an oozing mass than this. Either way, he needs to be destroyed!

This boss is found in the Swamp. This is a relatively difficult terrain to search, and to fight in. Fallen trees and lots of pools of leech-ridden water combine to make movement difficult and tiring. Poison is the weapon of choice of the Blobs, Oozers and Leeches, not to mention Bonemass himself. Draugrs spawn from piles of body parts. Skeletons skulk around the ruins. And all of these dangerous enemies have increased spawn rates at night. For these reasons it is best to be prepared before wandering the swamp at all, never mind for the big showdown itself.

To find Bonemass you need to mark his location within a Sunken Crypt. A Vegvisir will reveal his altar on your map in chosen crypts, and then you can make your way to it. As swamps appear further away from your spawn location than meadows and black forests it may be a little distance that you need to travel. The altar itself is in the shape of an upturned skull with a pool of green goo in front of it.

Bonemass Attacks

The third boss can attack in three different ways.

• Bonemass can attack using his arm to swipe at the player. This causes blunt, poison and terrain damage. You can block this attack.
• Bonemass can spread poison in a large cloud, poisoning everything inside it. You will take damage while inside this cloud, even if you have poison resistance mead.
• Bonemass will pull blobs or skeletons out of his body mass and throw them outwards. These will then attack you.

Preparation for Killing Bonemass in Valheim

1. Mead

With the type of attacks Bonemass can unleash, it is fairly obvious that some form of poison protection is needed. This comes in the form of Poison Resistant Mead. This protection lasts for 10 minutes, and then you are susceptible to his attacks again. You can still be hurt by poison, but not by as much as without the mead. You will need to take at least two or three of these per party member.

As you will need to be doing some serious running and jumping, particularly as this fight takes place in the swamp. Medium Stamina Mead will help you to need less recovery time.

Bonemass can deal large amounts of damage. In addition, although you may be protected by the poison resistant mead, you will still take some poison damage. This can often be enough to kill an unwary character who has been badly hurt by other attacks, hiding away just to find themselves killed by poison. Medium Healing Mead is useful to rapidly bring back your health. This also brings you back into the fight sooner.

2. Food

You will need to have high health foods. At this stage you will be looking at sausages, mushroom stew, and cooked fish for your high-end foods. You should ensure that you have a stack of each, and to keep on top of them during the battle. For these you will need to find a large supply of entrails (from Draugr in the swamp), mushrooms (from the meadows), raw meat (from your own tame boars), and raw fish (from fishing).

See our guide to food for more info.

3. Armour and Weapons

Armour is less important, as most of the damage is poison, but to protect against the hand-swipe you should aim to have at least a full set of bronze armour, and possibly iron armour.

One important point to note is that Bonemass is not particularly susceptible to swords, spears, arrows, or other sharp weapons. The best type of weapon to deal damage to him is a club. The iron or bronze mace is excellent for this. The iron sledge deals a lot of damage, but is very slow. I found that by the time you actually hit the ground with this one you have been pushed away from Bonemass and no damage is done. You will also use up a lot of stamina with this. The smaller maces deal less damage, but can hit him far more often. They are also excellent against skeletons, blobs, and oozers, and are OK against Draugr and leeches.

You will need to scour the Sunken Crypts for iron scraps if you want to go into this battle with top armour and weapons.

4. Skills

If you haven’t used a club or mace before, you may want to practice hitting a few trees with one before going straight after Bonemass. Likewise, if your running and jumping skills aren’t up to scratch, you could do with doing some training on these.

5. Battleground

The battleground is the swamp, which is far more Bonemass’s playground than yours. You should make sure that you clear out as many other enemies as you can, paying particular attention to body piles which can spawn Draugr behind you. It is useful to clear out the Sunken Crypts, if you haven’t done so already.

You can reduce stamina losses by taking out fallen trees and filling in ponds with your hoe prior to the battle.

You should find a nearby Sunken Crypt or similar in which to make a temporary safe place. In here you can put a campfire which can warm you, dry you, and make you feel more rested while you heal.

Finally you should place a portal nearby, just as insurance in case something goes terribly wrong, or as a means of escape back to a warm bed before it goes dark.

6. Withered Bones

You will need 10x Withered Bones, taken from Sunken Crypts, in order to summon Bonemass.

The Battle : Killing Bonemass in Valheim

Take your three pieces of food and wait for full health. Take the poison resistance mead.

When you have everything in place you can summon Bonemass by throwing 10 withered bones into the pool in front of his altar. He will appear and start attacking you.

Your strategy should be to work at least in pairs. He can only swipe at one side, so work opposite each other at hitting him with three-hit mace combos. Watch out for his attacks and don’t be hit by the swipes (parry these, or just step back when he signals the start). You should stay away when he is surrounded by a poison cloud – let him move to you to get out of it. You can mostly ignore the blobs and skeletons as you will destroy most of these by your mace hits on Bonemass.

Keep an eye on your stamina and health. Take the medium stamina mead when you have a lot of health and have run out of stamina – there is a 2 minute cooldown, so time it well. Take the medium health mead when you have health below 20%. Remember that this take a few seconds to take full effect. When your health runs down for a second time run back to your safe place until you can recover fully.

Take care not to be fighting in water, as your weapon will be out of your hands often, as well as the added attacks from leeches.

Eventually you will wear him down and the mass of bones will explode as you kill Bonemass in Valheim, releasing a Wishbone and a Bonemass Trophy. Take the trophy back to your spawn point to activate the Bonemass Forsaken Power. You can use the wishbone for searching for silver (mountains), buried treasure (meadows) or muddy scrap piles (swamp). The silver you can find propels you into the next part of the game.