Valheim – Building Tips

Tips to Building

Build a house

Depends on how much durability you want, both for support and more importantly if your building gets attacked. Without extra bracing the wrong wall panel knocked out or simply removed during remodeling can cause a cascade and for half your building to collapse. Building a frame first makes it far harder to collapse the building or do serious structural damage.

Building (snap to grid)

Take a good look at the pieces and you can spot the best snap points. For walls there are the supporting beams. Floors have them too. If you build one above you you can see it. Roofs either snap best to a wall below them or also on the support beam that runs in the middle of them. Pretty easy once you understand where to aim.

Point the cursor exactly where you want it to snap. It does take a little getting used to. If you point at an edge, it should snap to that edge.

Water and rain

Wooden beams/logs take constant HP damage if placed in water. They will only lose up to 50% of their HP in the water and from rain.
You eventually get stone that doesn’t have rotting issues from water. But you can safely use it as nothing but enemies and building unsupported structures will destroy things.

Rain damages any structure that is not a campfire(and it’s variations), torch, or palisade down to 50% and never more.
Place thatch roof structures over things to prevent them from taking the damage.

How to dismantle boat

Hit it a dozen times with an axe, when it breaks you get all the materials back.

How to mount trophies on the wall

Bronze nails and fine wood for the item stands. One for walls, one for flat surfaces. They’re under furniture in the hammer interface.

How to repair house

When your hammer is out you can right click to pull up a menu of different build options. There should be a hammer in the upper left of that menu. Select it and then left click what ever you went to repair.

The rules of tear down existing structures

Using any tool other than the hammer (with workbench out) seems to give fewer resources and take an age. Destroying abandoned buildings is a good way to quickly get resources or you could ‘rebuild’ any missing part for a quick shelter. When destroying, take out the lowest parts first to leave other parts hanging then thay will collapse a few moments later – easy work if you can get it.