Barley

Barley is a Plains-tier farmable crop. Its primary use is being milled into Barley Flour, but it can also be used on its own in some foods, meads, and even as a base decoration.

Acquisition

• You will find Barley growing inside Fuling villages in the Plains
• Occasionally you’ll find some Barley inside chests in the Plains
• Barley can be planted in cultivated Plains soil
• Barley takes 2-3 in-game days to grow and produces 2 Barley for each one planted

The Plains biome is inhabited by the goblin-looking Fuling creatures. Fulings live in their primitive tribal villages where they have their huts and, occasionally, cultivated plots of land. After raiding a Fuling village, you can harvest their Barley to kickstart your own Barley farm. When opening chests found inside Fuling villages, you can sometimes find a small quantity of Barley inside as well.

How to Farm

Barley can grow in the following biomes:

• Plains

Barley is an important crop, as it’s used in a wide array of recipes, most notably Barley Flour that can then be cookied into a number of great foods. Unlike the crops from earlier biomes, Barley doesn’t have seeds. Instead, get whatever Barley you find in Fuling villages, take it to your farm, and plant it in cultivated soil with a Cultivator. A single planted Barley produces 2 Barley after it’s grown. Just keep in mind that you can only grow it within the Plains biome.

Uses

• Ingredient in food, mead and crafting recipes
• Plant to produce more Barley
• Lox and Chicken Taming

Cooking & Crafting

Raw Barley doesn’t have that many uses. That’s because you will mainly want to use a Windmill (Stone x20, Wood x30, Iron Nails x30) to first turn your Barley into Barley Flour, that’s used in a great deal of advanced foods. But even without that, Barley is an ingredient in some food and mead recipes.

Farming

You’ll be using a lot of Barley when exploring the Plains biome and beyond. This means that whatever Barley you can get by raiding Fuling villages likely won’t be enough. So, you’ll want to use the Cultivator and plant that starting Barley to get more of it.

Taming

Barley can be used to tame the mighty Lox beast and the more elusive Hens and Chickens.

Taming Lox

Taming a Lox can be a bit tricky. The large beasts will easily break through most walls and can pose quite a challenge. While there are some ways to still trap a Lox herd, they’re hard to pull off right and require a lot of preparation.

Instead, you should simply grab some Barley, sneak up on a Lox herd, and scatter the berries around. Once they notice you (a yellow dot appears over them), they’ll eat the food and the taming process will start. You’ll need to feed the Lox once every 10 minutes, resulting in a total of 3 Barley needed for the task. If you get too close during this and they become aggressive (a red exclamation mark appears), you should run away and let them calm down.

Once a Lox is being tamed, you need to remain within 64 meters from the beast without drawing its aggro for 30 minutes. If you drink a Brew of Animal Whispers, this time will become 15 minutes. As this is taking place, you’ll probably get attacked by the other denizens of the Plains. Drinking an Anti-Sting Concoction will protect you from the Deathsquitos.

When a Lox is tamed, you’ll be able to ride them into safety using a Lox Saddle (Leather Scraps x10, Linen Thread x20, Black Metal x15), and then start breeding them for their resources.

Farming Chickens

Once you’ve defeated Yagluth in the Plains, you should go to Haldor, the NPC trader from the Black Forest. He’ll be selling Eggs for 1500 Coins each. Get at least two and go back to your base.

You will want to hatch your Eggs first. To do so, place them near a fire source. The whole process can be a bit fiddly. First of all, you want your Eggs to not be in a stack. If you need to split a stack of Eggs, you can shift-click on it. Then, drop your Eggs on the ground. The have the tendency to not go exactly where you want them too, so you may have to repeat the process a few times. You’ll know the Egg is in an appropriate spot when you hover your cursor over it and it says Warm. If it instead says Too Cold, you’ll need to pick the Egg up and place it closer to the fire.

After 30 minutes of warmth, an Egg will hatch and you’ll have your first Chickens. Chickens can drop Feathers and Chicken Meat but with a low chance, so instead of harvesting them, you’ll want to feed them some seeds, Dandelions, or Barley. And after 50 minutes, they will grow into Hens. When fed in a similar way to Chickens, Hens can lay Eggs whenever two of them are close together, enabling your Chicken farm.

When butchered, Hens are guaranteed to drop Chicken Meat. But you’ll need a Butcher Knife (Wood x2, Tin x4) for that. If this seems like too much work, you can also automate the process by creating an AFK Egg farm.

Recipes

Here’s how you can use your raw Barley in Valheim:

Recipe	Ingredients	Purpose
Barley Flour	Barley Windmill	Used to cook a wide variety of foods
Yggdrasil Porridge	Sap x4 Barley x3 Royal Jelly x2	Max Health +27 Max Stamina +13 Max Eitr +80 Regeneration +3hp for 25 minutes
Fire Resistance Barley Wine x6	Barley x10 Cloudberries x10	Resistant VS Fire for 10 minutes
Straw	Barley Flax	Base decoration

Helpful Tips

• Since you can only farm Barley in the inhospitable Plains biome, make sure to protect your farm from the monsters well
• You only get 2 Barley per each Barley you plant, so make sure to save up at least half of your harvests for replanting