How to tame animals in Valheim
Here's our guide for taming animals in Valheim and turn boars, wolves, lox, and chickens into pets!
Valheim is full of wildlife, many of which you can tame and domesticate. If you can manage to learn how to tame animals, these creatures can offer all sorts of assistance in your quest to conquer the realm!
Taming most animals requires luring them back to a suitable pen, trapping the animal inside, and then gaining their favor by feeding the animal its favorite foods.
The environment that you keep the still-wild animal contained in must be hospitable, meaning that it's not fleeing for its life or actively hunting prey, as indicated by a red exclamation point over it. The taming process won't progress unless the animal is calm and well-fed.
Yellow hearts over the animal indicate that the taming process is going smoothly. You can also hover over the animal with your cursor to see how tame it is but getting too close risks alerting the animal and stalling the taming operation.
From start to finish, it takes about 30 minutes and three pieces of food to tame an animal uninterrupted.
You will encounter boars relatively early in your journey, in the Meadows biome. A simple roundpole fence will suffice as a pen for boars. As for food, boars enjoy blueberries, carrots, onions, raspberries, red mushrooms, and turnips.
Wild boars are deathly afraid of fire, so make sure there isn't anything burning nearby when trying to tame a boar.
Wolves are aggressive creatures that live out in the chilly Mountain biome. To house a wolf, you will want to build a pen out of Dvergr stakewall. Roundpole fences won't be enough to contain a wild wolf that wants to escape.
Wolves have an appetite for boar meat, deer meat, lox meat, neck tail, raw fish, and sausages. Keep these carnivores happy with a steady supply of fresh meat, and soon enough, they'll view you as their master!
Lox roam the Plains biome. The only way to contain these mighty creatures is to build a pen out of stone. And even that isn't always enough to prevent a crazed lox from breaking free and seeking vengeance on you for trapping it.
To get on a lox's good side and tame it, you will need to satisfy its hunger by feeding it barley, cloudberries or flax. Give the lox time to get acclimated, and the scary beast won't be so frightening anymore!
Hens are the easiest animals to tame because they are naturally domesticated. As soon as they hatch, chickens are automatically tamed.
To get chickens and hens, you must purchase an egg from Haldor, the dwarven trader in the Black Forest. Haldor sells eggs for 1,500 coins. Note that Haldor only stocks eggs after you defeat Yagluth.
Once you have an egg or two, you can place the eggs in an enclosure with a nearby fire to incubate the eggs. Give it some time, and the eggs will hatch into tamed chickens. And soon after that, the chickens will turn into adult hens.
Taming animals in Valheim offers plenty of benefits, some of which are quite practical!
- You can visit a tamed animal and pet it to show it affection. You'll even get a pop-up exclaiming that the animal loves you! You can name tamed animals too, further domesticating them and differentiating them from a typical wild beast.
- If you're starting to feel lonely in the vast world of Valheim, you can command tamed wolves to follow you. Wolves instructed to follow you will serve as faithful companions and fight by your side.
- A tamed Lox will make traveling across Valheim effortless. With a lox saddle, you can turn a lox into a mount and ride it anywhere you'd like!
- You can breed select animals to expand on your collection of tamed creatures. Put two boars, wolves, or hens together, and they will produce pre-tamed offspring after gaining enough love points.
- If you see your tamed animals purely as livestock, you can use a butcher knife to humanely slaughter tamed animals and collect their resources.
Taming animals is a unique aspect of Valheim. Each animal has different needs and offers different benefits to its master. Tame all the animals in Valheim and run your very own Viking zoo!
You will need to unravel the Valheim HUNT HIS KIN riddle if you hope to summon and defeat the first boss.
About The Author
Coleman Hamstead
Coleman is a freelance journalist at GGRecon. While gaming has always been his passion, it wasn’t until he worked as a Sports Journalist at the Community College of Baltimore County that he found his enthusiasm for writing. In the time since Coleman has had his work featured in publications such as The Washington Post/Launcher and ESTNN. Coleman is a graduate of Towson University with a degree in Sport Management and Business Administration.
