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Valheim food is an essential part of surviving in the game. However, it is less critical than in other building survival games. For example, in Ark: Survival Evolved, you’ll die if you don’t eat or drink water. But in Valheim, not only do you not have to drink water, but you won’t die if you never eat.
This is likely because, in Valheim, you are in a purgatory of sorts. You defeat enemies to prove yourself worthy of Valhalla. So by the time you spawn, you’re already dead. Dead people don’t need to eat. But, as we’ll see in our Valheim Food guide, in Valheim, it certainly proves beneficial.
What Is Food In Valheim?
| Progression | Food Combos | Required Cooking Stations | Required Ingredients |
| Meadows | Cooked Deer Meat, Cooked Boar Meat/Boar Jerky, Mushroom/Honey | Cooking Station, Campfire | Honey, Mushroom, Boar Meat, Deer Meat |
| Black Forest | Queen’s Jam, Carrot Soup, Deer Stew | Campfire, Cauldron | Mushroom, Carrots, Blueberries, Raspberries, Cooked Deer Meat |
| Swamp | Serpent Stew, Sausages, Turnip Stew/Carrot Soup | Campfire, Cauldron | Mushroom, Cooked Serpent Meat, Honey, Entrails, Thistle, Turnip, Boar Meat |
| Mountain | Eyescream, Wolf Skewer, Onion Soup | Cauldron, Cooking Station | Greydwarf Eye, Freeze Gland, Mushroom, Onion, Wolf Meat |
| Plains | Blood Pudding, Lox Meat Pie, Bread/Fish Wraps | Iron Cooking Station, Cauldron, Stone Oven | Bread Dough, Thistle, Blood Bag, Barley Flour, Cloudberries, Lox Meat |
Food in Valheim increases your health and stamina. Each food gives you a temporary boost to these two stats. There are a few things to consider when choosing food combos to help you make the most of your time and your ingredients.
Stats – Health and Stamina
Each food gives you a set amount of health and stamina. The lowest stamina is 8, and the highest stamina is 75. The lowest health is seven, and the highest health is 80. As you can see, the range is insane. But the single stats aren’t the only things to consider.
Duration
The duration of the food matters a lot. Some foods only last ten minutes while others last thirty. Ten minutes is not a long time in Valheim. Your food could run out before you reach your destination.
Once the food gets 30% through its duration, it begins to fade, becoming 10% less effective. This happens every 10% to 15% of the duration until it stops working completely.
Availability
While making the best food all of the time can be great for your stats, it can run through rare resources reasonably quickly. If you adventure a lot and gather every berry you see, then something like Queen’s Jam might be a good bet throughout the entire game. But if you tend to kill every deer and boar, then keeping a stack of cooked meat on you at all times can prove helpful in a pinch.
HP Per Tick
Now, I find this the least important. Some lower-level foods give 1 HP per tick, while others give up to 4. Unless you are eating in an emergency, then this doesn’t matter. But if you are eating in an emergency, then eating the foods that give you more HP at a time can be extremely helpful. Hopefully, you never have to eat in a pinch and are well-prepared, but things happen.
Adventure Plan
The single best food in the game is Serpent Stew. But you don’t want to eat it if all you are doing is going through the Black Forest to gather thistle and berries. Instead, decide what you are going to do and plan for that.
Also, if the trip to the boss will take you twenty minutes, then don’t eat your good food until you are almost there. It would be best if you had a minute for your health to regen after eating, but don’t eat too early, or the effectiveness will fade during battle.
Related read: Comprehensive Valheim Bosses Guide
How To Make Food In Valheim
There are multiple ways to make food in Valheim. Each method requires different crafting stations to be nearby, and each method can be used to cook a variety of foods. Some foods can be eaten even without a station.
These foods include produce such as mushrooms, berries, and carrots. However, I recommend saving these fruits and veggies for recipes. Only eat them very early game, whenever you don’t have a cauldron yet.
Cooking Station
Recipes:
- Grilled Neck Tail
- Cooked Boar Meat
- Cooked Fish
- Cooked Deer Meat
- Cooked Wolf Meat
The cooking station is the first cooking method that you can use in Valheim. Neck Tail and Boar meat is easy to find and will serve you well for a reasonable amount of time. But once you can make Wolf Meat and Fish, you can eat well for quite some time.
It would be best if you had a campfire to put the Cooking Station on, or it won’t work. Fuel the campfire with wood and do not step on it. If you step on it too many times, it will break.
Here’s everything you need to know about finding wood in Valheim.
Cauldron
Recipes:
- Carrot Soup
- Boar Jerky
- Deer Stew
- Queen’s Jam
- Turnip Stew
- Serpent Stew
- Minced Meat Pie
- Sausages
- Black Soup
- Onion Soup
- Muckshake
- Wolf Jerky
- Wolf Skewer
- Eyescream
- Fish Wraps
- Blood Pudding
Can Be Upgraded With:
- Spice Rack
- Butcher’s Table
- Pots and Pans
The Cauldron will serve as your primary cooking device for the majority of the game. When you upgrade your Cauldron with other upgrade structures, it unlocks some of the best recipes for late game.
Stone Oven
Recipes:
- Bread
- Lox Meat Pie
Since the recipes in the Stone Oven require players to visit the Plains, there aren’t many recipes yet. But, you do have to go through a few steps to use the Stone Oven. First of all, you need to have an Artisan Table. After you have it, you can build the Stone Oven.
To make Bread, you also have to have a Level 4 Cauldron to make Bread Dough. To get Bread Dough or Unbaked Lox Pie, you have to have a Windmill to make Barley Flour. So this is a rather late-game method of cooking. Bread and Lox Meat Pie can burn, which would be painful considering it takes so much time and effort to make. So watch the food in the Stone Oven closely.
Iron Cooking Station
Recipes:
- Grilled Neck Tail
- Cooked Boar Beat
- Cooked Deer Meat
- Cooked Wolf Meat
- Cook Fish
- Cooked Serpent Meat
- Cooked Lox Meat
The Iron Cooking Station is a separate station from the Cooking Station. You can make it if you have the ingredients, a Hearth, and two campfires under it.
If you’ve used a Cooking Station, you can use the Iron Cooking Station the same way. Be careful not to let valuable Lox and Serpent meat burn.
Fermenter
- Fire-Resistance Barley Wine
- Frost Resistance Mead
- Minor Healing Mead
- Medium Healing Mead
- Mino Stamina Mead
- Medium Stamina Mead
- Poison Resistance Mead
- Tasty Mead
The Fermenter doesn’t make food, but it does make beverages that don’t go on your food bar. These beverages act as potions that give you temporary boosts. You usually need a Cauldron to make the base and then use the Fermenter to turn the base into a potion. I don’t drink potions for every event, but I use them situationally.
When I visit the mountains, I drink Frost Resistance Mead, and when I fight Bonemass, I drink Poison Resistance Mead. Keeping a few health potions on your hotbar at all times is also an excellent idea.
Making Ingredients In Valheim
A few stations don’t cook but do make ingredients that you need to cook. Make these as soon as possible as they work over time rather than on the spot.
Beehive
You can make a beehive as soon as you find one in the wild. Destroy the beehive, usually found in old structures in the Meadows, and take the Queen Bee.
This will give you access to the beehive, which can make honey over time. Honey is used in some of the best recipes in the game.
Garden
I always make two gardens – one in the Meadows and one in the Plains. The one in the Meadows can have Carrots and Turnips. But if you want to make Bread and Lox Meat Pie, you will need to create a garden in the Plains.
Then you can plant Barley for food and Flax for the Spinning Wheel. I always build a fence around my Meadows garden and a deep moat around my Plains garden.
Windmill
Not only does a Windmill make your farm seem homey, but it also turns Barley into Barley Flour. The flour can be used to make Blood Pudding, Bread Dough, Fish Wraps, and Unbaked Lox Pie.
These turn into four of the best foods in the entire game. If you want to get a Windmill, you need to craft an Artisan Table from the item that the boss Moder drops.
What Is The Best Food In Valheim?
The best foods in Valheim cannot be cooked until mid-to-late game as you have to visit every biome to make them. However, some foods that you can make mid-game are better than some of the foods available near the end of the game.
Best Food Overall
- Serpent Stew – 106 total stats
- Blood Pudding – 100 total stats
- Lox Meat Pie – 99 total stats
The three best foods are Serpent Stew, Blood Pudding, and Lox Meat Pie. All three last for thirty minutes and give 99 or more stats of stamina and health combined. If you eat these three foods, you would have an extra 180 health and an extra 125 stamina.
Related read: Comprehensive Valheim Lox Guide.
Best Food For Health
- Serpent Stew – 80 health
- Cooked Serpent Meat/Fish Wraps – 70 health
- Lox Meat Pie – 99 total stats – 75 health
If you want to focus on health alone, then these three foods will give you an extra 215 health. They will also give you 73 extra stamina, so they don’t lack in that area, but they favor health.
Cooked Serpent Meat and Fish Wraps have the same stats, with Fish Wraps giving one more HP per tick. However, Cooked Serpent Meat has a stack of 50 instead of 10.
Best Food For Stamina
- Blood Pudding – 75 stamina
- Bread – 70 stamina
- Eyescream – 65 stamina
This build gives 210 stamina. It also provides 69 extra health. This isn’t bad, but it’s better to add at least one meat-based food if you want to tank much.
Otherwise, you could die and waste the food that you worked so hard to make. That said, a full stamina build can be perfect for traveling, mining, and avoiding confrontation.
FAQs
Question: Do I Have To Eat In Valheim?
Answer: No. Unlike in other survival games, you do not have to eat to survive in Valheim. You can eat to increase your stats temporarily. But you will not die if you do not eat, and you never need to drink water.
Question: Can I Eat Raw Food In Valheim?
Answer: No. While raw food in other games will make you sick, you can’t eat raw food in Valheim. You can eat Bukeberries, which reset your food effects, allowing you to choose different foods.
Question: What Do Animals Eat In Valheim?
Answer: You can tame animals in Valheim by feeding them food. The tameable animals are Boar, Wolf, and Lox. They each eat different food. Boars eat produce, Wolves eat raw meat, and Loxes eat Cloudberries, Flax, or Barley.
Question: Does Food In Valheim Spoil?
Answer: No. Food does not spoil and you don’t need any fridge or preserving bin to keep it fresh. This is a relief because you can keep food in boxes or your inventory and will always know how much you have.
Eating Right
While eating better food can be the difference in surviving or not, you don’t even have to eat to play Valheim. I find that the increased stamina does me more good than the health, but you don’t technically need either. So, I wouldn’t get too caught up in having the perfect food available at all times.
If cooking in Valheim is something you enjoy, then plant gardens in Meadows and Plains, and create bases with all cooking stations. If it’s not, make some basic food and keep the stacks fueled.
This is a small part of the game for some people. That’s what’s so great about Valheim. You don’t have to let everything be part of your game. You can enjoy your favorite features and choose how much you want to focus on the others.