Valheim guide — How to create healing potions and resistance mead

Mead is an all-important drink for the Norse peoples. In Valheim, it’s integral due to the potent benefits that you get. Some are used as healing potions like the food you cook, while others provide you with buffs such as poison resistance, frost resistance, and more. Here’s our 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: Fermenting and brewing healing potions and elemental resistance mead

The primary ingredient used in creating a mead base is honey. You’ll get a steady supply once you’ve constructed beehives (10x wood and 1x queen bee) in your camp.

Of course, RNG being RNG, it might take you a while until you find a queen bee that’s needed for the beehive.

You’ll also need two fixtures:

• Cauldron (10x tin) – This creates the mead base in Valheim. Many tend to have different ingredients, though honey is the most common.
• Fermenter (30x fine wood, 10x resin, and 5x bronze) – Once you have a mead base, you need to put it inside a Fermenter (more on this later).

Anyway, here are some examples of mead base recipes and other food items you can create with the Cauldron:

• Minor healing potion (10x honey, 10x raspberries, 5x blueberries, and 1x dandelion) – This stacks with the three food items that you can eat.
• Poison resistance (10x honey, 10x coal, 5x thistle, and 1x neck tail) – This is truly invaluable once you reach the Swamp biome and when you’re ready to battle Bonemass.
• Frost resistance (10x honey, 5x thistle, 2x bloodbag, and 1x greydwarf eye) – Bloodbags are dropped by leeches in the Swamp biome. The frost resistance mead is an absolute necessity if you wish to explore the Mountains biome and when you’re out to fight Moder.
• Medium healing potion (10x honey, 10x raspberries, 4x bloodbag, and 1x dandelion) – “Blood for the blood bag,” said Khorne’s followers.
• Queen’s Jam (8x raspberries and 8x blueberries) – You might as well find some use for all the berries you’ve picked up, assuming you didn’t toss all of them so you can tame boars.
• Sausages (2x entrails, 1x raw meat, and 4x thistle) – Entrails come from draugr mobs in the Swamp biome. Sausages aren’t only food for your character but also treats that can be used to tame wolves.

Regarding the Fermenter, it takes two days (48 hours in-game) for it to finish processing the mead base. Once that’s done, you’ll get 6x of any mead base product that you put in. Thankfully, there’s an exploit that lets you skip time easily in Valheim.

Note: You may drink various mead items (i.e., healing and poison resistance) even after you’ve eaten three different kinds of food.

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