Valheim Fermenter Guide - Ready Games Survive

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Emily is a gaming aficionado who has written for The Gamer, Gamerant, GamerBolt, and Valnet, but she has found a home here at Ready Game Survive. She adores writing about Ark: Survival Evolved among other great survival titles, and outside of traditional survival, she loves Legend of Zelda, League of Legends and Fable.

What is a Fermenter in Valheim?

Requires Station – Forge
Required Materials – Fine Wood, Bronze, Resin
Requires Biome – Black Forest

A Fermentor is a station in Valheim that looks like a wooden barrel keg. The Fermenter is used to make the game’s version of potions. Before making the potions (or meads), you have to make the base in a Cauldron first. After you do, then all you need is a Forge. To create a Forge, all you need is stone, coal, wood, and copper. The only one of these that is difficult to get is copper.

If you can get copper, everything else will be a cinch, and you will likely passively gather it as you explore the lands of Valheim. Before you get too far ahead of yourself, though, you have to defeat the first boss in Valheim.

How to Make a Fermenter

30x Fine Wood – Birch trees or Oak trees in the Meadows
10x bronze – crafted with smelted tin and copper in Forge
5x Resin – drops from Greydwarfs in Black Forest

A Fermenter is made with a hammer, but you need a Forge nearby to craft the Fermenter. The Forge requires copper to make. Later on, getting copper is easy, but that first time can be a hassle.

Copper spawns in large deposits in the Black Forest. To mine it, you will need a pickaxe. Thankfully, you can use any pickaxe, including the Antler Pickaxe. However, that still takes a couple of steps.

Defeat Eikthyr and Craft Pickaxe

The first step involves defeating Eikthyr to unlock the ability to craft the pickaxe. This is the first and easiest boss in the game, with a summoning altar near the starting area in the Meadows. To summon him, offer two deer trophies to his altar.

When you defeat this deer boss, he will drop Hard Antlers, which can be paired with wood to create an Antler Pickaxe. This is the first pickaxe in the game, and it can be used to mine copper.

Find and Mine Copper

After you make the Antler Pickaxe in the Workbench, head to the Black Forest and find copper deposits. These deposits should be large and easy t spot. They look like green and copper nodes sticking out of the ground.

You will see “copper deposit,” letting you know you’ve found one when you look at it. Start mining until you have what you want or your axe breaks. Each deposit will have around 90 copper ore.

Build a Kiln

There are two stations you should build to get your copper. The first is the Kiln, which turns wood into coal. The Charcoal Kiln requires 20 stone and 5 Surtling Cores.

The easiest way to get Surtling Cores is to visit the Burial Chambers in the Black Forest.

They look like catacombs and will have enemies inside, so be prepared. After you collect the cores you need from inside the Burial Chambers, go make the Charcoal Kiln to get coal.

Alternatively, you can get coal from Surtlings or from random chests in the Swamp. Surtlings spawn near noticeable fire geysers in some Swamps. When you kill them, you can collect coal, Surtling Cores, and trophies from their bodies. If you find a geyser, dig a trench around it but don’t hit the geyser.

Dig down to water because whenever the Surtlings spawn, they will fall in the trench, and the second they hit water, they will die. This is known as a coal farm or a Surtling farm and is highly efficient if you have easy access to one.

Build a Smelter

The Smelter also requires stone and Surtling Cores, so you should have at least ten cores, as each station requires five. After you build the Smelter, you need to put coal in the right side and copper ore in the left side.

Then it will drop smelted copper in front of it. You know it’s working whenever you hear the sound of the copper being smelted and can see a glowing fire inside.

Build a Forge

Now that you have copper, you can build a Forge, which requires stone, coal, wood, and six copper. The Forge needs to be upgraded to craft many things, but thankfully, a Fermenter is not one of those things.

Gather Tin

Before you actually make the Fermenter, you need to gather tin, which is melded with copper in the Forge to create bronze. You need bronze to create a Fermenter. The tin is always found in small nodes near water in the Black Forest.

You need to smelt it in the Smelter in order to use it to make bronze. After you make bronze, you will be able to make a Fermenter with little to no effort.

Creating Cover for a Fermenter

The Fermenter will not work if it is out in the open. You must put a roof over the station and 70% cover. While cover can be confusing to delve into – as there are 17 “cover rays” to take into account – the process of finding out what the station or piece of furniture needs is simple.

Start off by placing a roof and a wall near the structure. Then, add another wall, even a half wall. From there, you can slowly add building pieces until the Fermenter starts working.

What Can the Fermenter Make?

The Fermenter will take two in-game days to brew the meads and create potions. Each mead that you make in the Cauldron can be turned into six potions with the Fermenter. You do not need to upgrade the Cauldron to create any of the bases in the Cauldron.

Barley Wine Base: Fire Resistance – Fire Resistance Barley Wine

10x Barley
10x Cloudberries

In the Cauldron, you can make the Barley Wine Base: Fire Resistance. When placed in the Fermenter, it turns into six Fire Resistance Barley Wines. The wine halves any fire damage you would take for ten minutes.

It also halves the duration of the damage during that time. So, in the end, you will take 75% reduced damage from fire. This is perfect for the fight against Yagluth, the Plains boss who does insane fire damage with his meteor storm.

Mead Base: Frost Resistance – Frost Resistance Mead

10x Honey
5x Thistle
2x Bloodbag
1x Greydwarf eye

If you don’t have a Lox Cape or a Wolf Cape, you should stock up on Frost Resistance Mead, or else you will only survive a minute or two in the Mountains. The Frost Resistance Mead should be called the Frost Immunity mead because you are incapable of freezing while you are under the effect of the mead.

The mead lasts ten minutes and will prevent the cold from harming you. Although, there is one exception. If you are under the Wet Effect, you can still take damage from the Mountains even after drinking the mead. If you get in a pinch, just build a fire, which will accelerate the drying time.

Mead Base: Minor Healing – Minor Healing Mead

Healing

10x Honey
5x Blueberries
10x Raspberries
1x Dandelion

I have a weakness that involves forgetting that any type of healing potion exists when in the moment. This happens in most games that I play. Valheim is no exception. Hopefully, you don’t make the same mistake because these healing potions can save a life.

The Minor Healing Mead restores 50 HP over 10 seconds. This is double your starting health, so it will do you well for quite some time. However, you can only drink one healing mean every 2 minutes, so use them wisely. The same goes for stamina potions.

Mead Base: Medium Healing – Medium Healing Mead

10x Honey
4x Bloodbag
10x Raspberries
1x Dandelion

There isn’t currently a “greater healing mead,” so this is the best you’ll find. The Medium Healing Mead will restore 75 HP over 10 seconds. Late game, whenever you are exploring with over 200 health, this won’t be extremely useful, but it can still serve you well in the moment.

Mead Base: Minor Stamina – Minor Stamina Mead

Stamina

10x Honey
10x Raspberries
10x Yellow Mushroom

Stamina is my best friend in Valheim. Whenever you have good stamina, you can outrun anything and thus, survive even the strongest encounters. The Minor Stamina Mead restores 80 stamina over two seconds rather than over a long period.

This seems strange, but it makes sense considering stamina regenerates much faster than health naturally. Whenever you’re running, you need that stamina in two seconds as well, so keep it on the hot bar to speed things up.

Mead Base: Medium Stamina – Medium Stamina Mead

10x Honey
10x Cloudberries
10x Yellow Mushroom

While you can make Minor Stamina Meads after visiting the Black Forest, you won’t be able to make Medium Stamina Meads until you visit the Plains and find Cloudberries.

The Medium Stamina Mead will restore 160 stamina in that same two seconds. This is only 50 less than the max stamina you can gain with food.

Mead Base: Poison Resistance – Poison Resistance mead

10x Honey
5x Thistle
1x Neck Tail
10x coal

It’s imperative that you make these meads before you fight Bonemass. If you do have poison resistance when you fight the Swamp boss, you shouldn’t have too much trouble.

Poison Resistance Mead halves poison damage and halves poison duration for 10 minutes. You will have to drink the potion before you get poisoned as it won’t work to heal poison if it is applied before you drink the mead.

Mead Base: Tasty – Tasty Mead

10x Honey
10x Raspberries
5x Blueberries

This is a situational mead that lowers health regeneration by 50% but raises stamina regeneration by 100%. You may never find a use for Tasty Mead, but it can come in handy when traveling if you plan on getting somewhere as fast as possible without getting into any skirmishes.

FAQs

Question: Does the Fermenter Need to Be Inside?

Answer: Partially. It needs 70% cover, but It doesn’t need a foundation. More often than not, I have found that a roof and two walls will work for almost anything, including the Fermenter.

Question: How Many Meads Does a Mead Base Make?

Answer: Six. Each mead base makes six meads. This makes it a lot less overwhelming to make potions because you only have to gather enough materials for one base, and you have an hour of potions to work with.

Question: What’s the Best Potion in Valheim?

Answer: This is a tricky question. I use the Poison Resistance potions the most, but the Medium Healing potion may be the best and most traditional. Then again, the Medium Stamina potion is the only one you need to visit the Plains for.

Question: How Long is One Day in Valheim?

Answer: One day in Valheim is 21 minutes, and one night is 9 minutes. So it will take an hour for a mead base to ferment in the Fermenter, which is two days in Valheim time.

Question: How do You Drink Mead in Valheim?

Answer: You can drink mead directly from your inventory just like you eat food. However, if you do have a Tankard, you can use it for a fun visual effect of drinking mead. Just Recently, a special Tankard called Horn of Celebration was released, and it’s an extra fun way to drink mead.

The Fermenter Isn’t Necessary, But It Helps

The last thing I’d like to add is that a Fermenter isn’t necessary. Half the time, I end up leaving it out of my base until it’s too late for it to be of much use to me aside from the occasional Poison Resistance Mead.

However, if you make it as soon as you can, you may find yourself dying less and keeping those valuable stats that you worked so hard to raise.

I do recommend making every crafting station and its upgrades as soon as possible. But the most important thing to do in Valheim is half fun and progress at your own pace.