Valheim cooking and food guide — Meals to help with healing and survival

As mentioned in our beginner’s guide, the healing system in Valheim is directly tied to food. Here’s our cooking and healing tips guide to help you out.

Note: Valheim is currently an Early Access title. As such, mechanics and content may change in due course. For more information, check out our Valheim guides and features hub.

Valheim: Tips for cooking food and healing

Make sure you have a hammer (3x wood and 2x stone). In the build menu’s miscellaneous tab, you can drop a campfire (2x wood and 5x stone).

The campfire has to be placed on soil or natural rocks, and it doesn’t require a nearby Workbench. However, you do need to place a thatched roof above it if you want to prevent it from going out when it rains.

Note: Staying within range of the campfire keeps you warm and prevents you from getting cold at night. If you build a bed, you’ll also need a campfire nearby. Lastly, you may toss more wood to keep the flames burning.

As for cooking, you need a cooking station (2x wood) and it has to have a campfire underneath it. Multiple cooking stations can be placed over the same campfire, which is helpful if you want to cook lots of food quickly.

To cook food, all you need to do is press the “E” key. You may also drag a raw item to a numbered slot in your inventory, then press that keybind. The food is cooked once you hear that crisp sizzle.

Note 1: If you keep food items cooking for too long, they’ll eventually turn into coal. It’s a resource used for the Forge.

Note 2: Try to have a chimney or ventilation system in your constructed home. The smoke can become unbearable, leading to your character’s asphyxiation and death.

The health you gain depends on which kinds of food you eat. For instance, berries will only give you a small amount of HP. But, cooked meat could give you a lot more. As for where you’ll find some food in Valheim‘s early-game experience:

• Berries and mushrooms – Berries can be picked from shrubs (press “E” while hovering your cursor over the fruits), and mushrooms are on the ground or near tree roots.
• Neck Tail – These are dropped by lizards called Necks.

• Raw Fish – Once you’ve purchased a fishing rod and fishing bait from Haldor, you can start catching fish in the nearby rivers and seas.
• Raw meat – You can pick these up by hunting boars and deer. You may also tame and breed boars to have a healthy supply of meat and leather.

You’re limited to eating only three different kinds of food at any given point in time. Much later in your Valheim adventure, though, you can ferment mead drinks with buffs that are independent of food health regen.

Valheim is available on Steam as part of the Early Access program. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.