Valheim crafting guide — Creating the Workbench and crafting basics

The basics of crafting

As mentioned in our Valheim beginner’s guide, you should have collected some wood and stone. Also, bear in mind that only a select few crafting recipes are available by default. The rest are unlocked by collecting various resources or as you progress further with the game’s crafting mechanics.

Also, take note of your keybinds:

• When using a weapon (i.e., stone axe), left-click lets you attack and right-click lets you block.
• However, when you’re using a tool (i.e., hammer), left-clicking on a damaged structure lets you repair it. Meanwhile, right-clicking opens the build menu.
• In general, the “tab” key opens your inventory and crafting menu. This particular crafting menu will only show basic items that don’t require a Workbench.

To make the user experience smoother, I suggest opening your inventory and assigning the hammer and a weapon to any of the numbered slots. This lets you swap between the hammer and weapon more efficiently.

Likewise, take note of item or structure durability. Most weapons, tools, and armor pieces will lose durability the more they’re used (or, in the case of armors and shields, the more you get hit). Similarly, the structures you build later will suffer from damage and wear and tear. The hammer can be used to repair these easily and the action is completely free, too.

Of course, we’ll need to have a Workbench just to be able to do this. Let’s talk about the Workbench in the next section of our Valheim crafting guide.