Valheim Weapon Progression Guide: Best Weapons for Every Biome

Valheim doles out power one biome at a time. Each region hides a material that beats the last one, and the game fully expects you to walk into a new area still carrying gear from the old one. You take some lumps, you dig up the new metal, and you put together the weapon that flips the fight around.

Materials stay tight the whole way through, though. Dump your bronze into three half-finished weapons and you end up worse off than the player who maxed a single one. Damage type quietly matters more than people expect too, since a 55 damage mace can out-hit a 75 damage sword when it lands on the right monster. Every number below is the quality 1 base damage from the wiki, with crafting costs listed so you can see what each pick runs you to take to max.

Flint and Antler Tools in the Meadows

You start with a club. Six wood, twelve blunt damage, done. It handles boars and necks, and that's the whole job description.

Flint changes things, and it's just lying on the beach. The flint spear is your first real weapon at 20 pierce, built from 5 wood, 10 flint, and 2 leather scraps. Its secondary attack throws it for 1.5x damage (30), and spears float in water, so you can swim after a bad throw. That sounds small. It isn't, the first time you wing one into the ocean.

The crude bow is the other early staple. It only hits for 22, from 10 wood and 8 leather scraps, but the bow is what keeps you alive against anything bigger than you. Early archery is less about the weapon and more about the arrows. Flint heads are cheap and fine. Fire arrows carry you much further than people give them credit for, since a whole stack of early enemies hate burning.

| Weapon | Base damage | Crafting cost | Worth knowing | |---|---|---|---| | Club | 12 blunt | 6 wood | Boar control, nothing more | | Flint spear | 20 pierce | 5 wood, 10 flint, 2 leather scraps | Throw it for 30 | | Crude bow | 22 | 10 wood, 8 leather scraps | Arrow type matters more | | Flint axe | 30 slash | Wood and flint | Doubles as your chopper | | Stagbreaker | 20 blunt, 5 pierce | 20 core wood, 5 deer trophies, 2 leather scraps | Hits everything in a 4 meter sphere |

The Eikthyr payoff

Beating Eikthyr, the first boss, hands you hard antlers. Those become the antler pickaxe (18 damage, but you're not swinging it at enemies, you're swinging it at ore). The pickaxe is the real gate to the entire Black Forest, since copper and tin both need it. Kill the stag, make the pickaxe, and the game opens up.

The other Eikthyr-era prize is the Stagbreaker. It's the first two-handed club, and it hits everything in a 4 meter radius with 20 blunt and 5 pierce plus a monstrous 150 stagger. The windup is slow enough that you could make a sandwich mid-swing, so it's rough against fast enemies. Against grouped up skeletons in a crypt hallway, it's hilarious. It costs 20 core wood (pine, from the Black Forest), 5 deer trophies, and 2 leather scraps. The five trophies are the annoying part, since deer don't drop one every kill. Hunt them early and often with the bow.

So what should you actually build here? The spear and the bow, both of them. Skip upgrading either one past quality 2 or so, because every scrap of flint and leather you spend in the Meadows is flint and leather you'll wish you had in about two hours.

Bronze Weapons for the Black Forest

Bronze is where weapon choice starts to hurt, because bronze is a grind. You smelt copper and tin into it at the forge, and both ores come out of the ground painfully slowly with an antler pickaxe. Every bar you spend is a bar you dug up by hand.

The two headliners are the bronze sword and the bronze mace. They look nearly identical on paper: 35 damage at quality 1, 53 at quality 4, same swing speed, 8 bronze to craft, 32 bronze total to max out. The difference is the damage type and the stagger. The sword deals slash with a stagger value of 40. The mace deals blunt with a stagger of 80, which means it flinches enemies roughly twice as hard.

The mace is the smarter pick for most players, and the reason is skeletons. The bone boys in burial chambers and crypts have 40 health, take extra damage from blunt, take extra damage from fire, and resist pierce. Swing the bronze sword at one and it's a slog. Bonk it with the mace and it folds. Since you'll be farming burial chambers for core wood and treasure anyway, blunt pays for itself fast.

| Weapon | Base damage | Q4 damage | Crafting cost | |---|---|---|---| | Bronze sword | 35 slash | 53 | 2 wood, 8 bronze, 2 leather scraps | | Bronze mace | 35 blunt | 53 | 4 wood, 8 bronze, 3 leather scraps | | Bronze atgeir | 45 pierce | 53 | Wood, bronze, leather scraps | | Finewood bow | 32 | 42 | 10 fine wood, 10 core wood, 2 deer hide |

The bronze atgeir deserves a mention. It's the first polearm, it hits for 45 pierce with real reach, and its spinning secondary attack staggers everything around you. It's a blast. It also eats stamina like it owes money, and you're usually better served by a one-hander plus a shield in a biome full of trolls. Fun second weapon, questionable first one.

The finewood bow is the quiet best-in-slot here. It jumps to 32 damage from the crude bow's 22, and it costs 10 fine wood, 10 core wood, and 2 deer hide. Fine wood comes from birch and oak, and you can't chop those until you have a bronze axe, so there's a little ordering puzzle to it. Get the axe early, get the bow right after.

Trolls and how to rob them

Trolls are the Black Forest's exam, and melee is the wrong answer to it. A troll has 600 health, resists blunt, and is weak to pierce. So you shoot it. The finewood bow with bronze or fire arrows brings one down safely, and every troll drops 5 troll hide. That hide builds troll armor (cheap and good) and it's also a material for the ancient bark spear later in the Swamp, so a naked troll bow hunt is an investment plan. Kite them through dense trees, since their bulk catches on everything.

One bronze weapon, the bow, and a shield. That's the whole shopping list. Craft the sword and the mace both and you'll be mining copper for a week.

Iron Maces and Swords Against Draugr

The Swamp keys everything off iron, which you dig out of muddy scrap piles inside sunken crypts. You need the Swamp Key from the Elder to open those crypts, so the boss order is fixed whether you like it or not. Scrap piles spit out a handful of iron each, and a full crypt clear is usually somewhere around 60 to 100 scrap if you're thorough. That sounds like a lot. It evaporates.

Here's the mace versus sword argument again, and this time it's even more lopsided. The iron mace and iron sword both deal 55 base and 73 at quality 4. Both cost 20 iron and 3 leather scraps to craft, and 80 iron total to max. Same numbers, different damage type.

The mace wins the Swamp for a simple reason: almost nothing in the Swamp likes blunt, and plenty of it hates blunt.

• Draugr themselves have 100 health and sit somewhere near neutral on physical types, but they're immune to poison and resist fire. Mace, sword, whatever, they die either way.
• Skeletons in the crypts take bonus blunt, same as always.
• Blobs and oozers, the green puddles that ambush you at night, are weak to blunt as a family.
• Bonemass, the Swamp boss, is a giant blob. Same family, same weakness. The iron mace is the Bonemass weapon, full stop.

| Weapon | Base damage | Q4 damage | Crafting cost | |---|---|---|---| | Iron mace | 55 blunt | 73 | 4 wood, 20 iron, 3 leather scraps | | Iron sword | 55 slash | 73 | 2 wood, 20 iron, 3 leather scraps | | Iron atgeir | 65 pierce | 83 | 10 wood, 30 iron, 2 leather scraps | | Ancient bark spear | 55 pierce | 73 | 4 troll hide, 10 iron, 10 ancient bark |

Two side grades are worth a look. The ancient bark spear costs 4 troll hide, 10 iron, and 10 ancient bark instead of 20 iron up front, so it's the budget-friendly iron tier weapon if your scrap piles came up short. The iron atgeir is a monster at 65 pierce base, the hardest hitting thing you own at this stage, and its spin attack carries a 6x stagger multiplier that flattens whole groups of draugr at once. Two-handed, no shield, stamina hungry. If you loved the bronze one, you'll love this one more.

Poison resistance mead is the other half of the Swamp kit, honestly. Weapons get you through draugr. The mead gets you through everything else in that biome.

So: one 80-iron weapon maxed, and make it the mace. The sword is prettier. The mace kills Bonemass.

Silver and Frost Weapons in the Mountains

Silver doesn't sit in veins you can see. You get it with the Wishbone, which Bonemass drops, and the Wishbone pings faster as you walk toward buried silver. Beat the blob, craft the bone, wander the Mountains, and dig where it chatters. It's a nice change from scraping mud.

The silver sword is 75 slash plus 30 spirit, rising to 93 slash and 45 spirit at quality 4. That spirit number needs explaining, because it's misleading on paper. Spirit damage only affects undead and demon type enemies, and it ticks over time like fire rather than landing all at once. So against draugr, skeletons, and later Mistlands undead, the silver sword punches way above its slash line. Against wolves, drakes, and anything living, you're getting 75 and no more. It costs 2 wood, 40 silver, 3 leather scraps, and 5 iron to craft, and a painful 160 silver total to max.

Frostner is the more interesting build, and a lot of players never take it off. It's the only weapon in the game with three damage types at once: 35 blunt, 40 frost, and 20 spirit. The frost slows whatever it touches, the spirit shreds undead, and the knockback is strong enough to yeet smaller enemies off cliffs and into water. Materials are 10 ancient bark, 30 silver, 5 Ymir flesh, and 5 freeze glands. The glands come from drakes, so your first Mountain trip is a chicken-and-egg routine: climb up, shoot some drakes, come back down, forge the hammer.

The budget option and the bow

The fang spear is the cheapest silver weapon by a mile. It's 75 pierce, the highest single-number melee hit of the tier, and it only costs 10 ancient bark, 4 wolf fangs, 2 leather scraps, and 2 silver. Two silver! Compare that to the sword's 160 for a maxed one. If silver is scarce on your map, or you just hate the dowsing minigame, the spear gets you Mountains-tier damage for pocket change. The tradeoff is the spear moveset, which people tend to love or tolerate.

For archery, the Draugr Fang is the big upgrade at 47 damage, built from 10 silver, 10 ancient bark, 2 deer hide, and 10 guck. It's also the first bow that deals poison damage on its shots. Guck comes from those green blobs hanging off Ancient trees in the Swamp, so plan a detour with a blunt weapon.

Two things to know about this biome before you swing anything. The cold will kill you faster than the wolves without frost resistance mead or wolf armor. And the crystal battleaxe, at 90 damage, is a monster of a two-hander if you farm enough crystals off stone golems. The golems also resist a bunch of damage types, so most players just shoot them or cheese them with a pickaxe to the spine.

Black Metal and Mistlands Endgame Weapons

Black metal doesn't come out of the ground at all. It drops from fulings, the little goblins who live in Plains villages, and it shows up in village chests too. So your "mining trip" is actually a raid. Bring your silver gear, clear a village or three, and haul home a stack of black metal scrap. Flax and barley grow in those same village fields, and you need the flax for linen thread, which gates every black metal weapon.

The blackmetal sword is 95 slash, 113 at quality 4, from 2 fine wood, 20 black metal, and 5 linen thread. Fully upgrading runs 80 black metal and 35 linen total. It's the best pure physical weapon in the game up to this point, and against Plains enemies it's not close. Fulings, lox, and deathsquitos all just die to it.

| Weapon | Base damage | Crafting cost | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Blackmetal sword | 95 slash | 2 fine wood, 20 black metal, 5 linen | 113 at Q4, general purpose king | | Blackmetal atgeir | 105 pierce | 10 fine wood, 30 black metal, 5 linen | Spin stagger machine | | Blackmetal battleaxe | 110 slash | Black metal, fine wood, linen | Huge hits, slow swings | | Porcupine | 50 blunt + 45 pierce | 5 fine wood, 20 iron, 5 needles, 10 linen | Great stagger, no black metal needed |

A quick word on the Porcupine, since it's the odd one. It's a mace at 50 blunt plus 45 pierce, and having both types at once means it never gets fully resisted, even if it can't exploit a weakness either. The stagger value sits at 100, higher than any sword, so it stun-locks most mid-game mobs while you chew through them. Needles come from deathsquitos, and if you've been to the Plains you already have opinions about deathsquitos.

The Mistlands shift

Then the Mistlands flips the table on you. The seekers crawling around up there have 200 health, resist blunt, resist slash, resist pierce, and are flat immune to spirit. Your beautiful 113-damage blackmetal sword gets partially resisted by the main mob of the biome. That's the whole reason the tier exists the way it does.

So who actually wants this biome? Lightning and fire.

The Himminafl is the star. It's a polearm at 85 pierce plus 40 lightning, built at the black forge from 10 yggdrasil wood, 15 refined eitr, 5 silver, and 2 seeker mandibles. Its secondary spin carries a 6x stagger multiplier and triggers random lightning strikes. Almost nothing in the game resists lightning, and that includes every chitin-covered thing in the mist. Against seekers, Himminafl out-performs weapons with much bigger paper numbers purely because none of its damage gets eaten by resistance.

The Mistwalker is the other flagship. It's a one-handed sword at 75 slash plus 40 frost, from 3 fine wood, 15 iron, 10 refined eitr, and 3 wisps. Oddly, the slash value never rises with upgrades, staying at 75 across all four qualities while the frost climbs to 58. It also clears mist in a 5 meter bubble around you, which is shorter than a wisplight's range but works. One quirk worth knowing: the blade glows constantly, and that glow makes you roughly 20% more visible while sneaking. Tradeoffs.

Beyond those two:

• The carapace spear hits for 115 pierce, the biggest single melee number in the tier, from 10 carapace, 2 iron, and 4 refined eitr. No new metal needed, just bug parts.
• Krom, the two-handed sword, sits at 150. The Demolisher, a huge blunt club, is 145.
• On the magic side, the Staff of Embers throws fire at 120, and seekers do not resist fire. The Spinesnap bow covers archery at 72.

Your Plains gear still works okay in a support role. The blackmetal sword handles dvergr and stray mist trash fine. But for the actual seekers, ticks, and the Queen herself, elemental damage is the way in, and refined eitr is the material that unlocks all of it. Build an eitr refinery early, feed it sap from the ancient roots, and the whole tier opens up.

If you're planning the endgame crafting order: max the blackmetal sword first, since linen from Plains flax is the slow part and the sword carries you through every fuling raid you'll run farming the rest. Then take Himminafl, because lightning is the one damage type the mist bugs have no answer for.