Onions are plants you will have to grow yourself from the seeds found in the Mountains biome.
Acquisition
Onions are grown from Onion Seeds found inside abandoned buildings in the Mountain biome.
It takes several in-game days for Onions to fully grow.
Onion is surprisingly one of the hardest foods to obtain in Valheim. Mostly because it doesn’t naturally grow anywhere in the game. In order to start growing Onions, you will need to go into the Mountains biome. There, look for abandoned buildings like broken down huts, towers, and stone circles. These structures often have chests inside. Open those chests and occasionally they will contain Onion Seeds. This is far from a guaranteed drop and you will need to get lucky to find some seeds.
When you have some Onion Seeds, you’ll be able to plant them in the Meadows, Black Forest, and Plains biomes using the Cultivator tool. You will then be able to turn the Onions you grow into Seed-onions using the same tool in order to multiply the seeds you have for a steady Onion farm.
A hut with Onion SeedsA fully grown Onion
When you have some Onion Seeds, you will want to create an Onion farm. Since Onions can grow in the Meadows, Black Forest, and Plains biomes, you can farm them in your main Meadows base. All farming is done with the Cultivator tool (Corewood x5, Bronze x5) that you can craft once you’ve explored the Black Forest.
To create a farm, find a flat plot of land or flatten it out yourself. Then equip the Cultivator and right click with it selected on your hotbar. In the menu that appears, select Cultivate and then start left-clicking on the ground to create soil fit for planting. Once you have enough soil, right click again and select Onions. Plant them in the cultivated soil, then wait for several in-game days. Then go back to your farm and you’ll be able to harvest your Onions.
Onions need plenty of room to grow, so don’t plant them close to walls or each other. If you plant an Onion wrong, it will turn brown and if you hover over it, you’ll get a message saying that the Onionneeds more room to grow. If you do it right, you’ll get a message that your Onion is healthy.
Once you have your first Onions, don’t rush to eat them all. Instead, take your first harvest and again using the Cultivator, turn them into Seed-onions. That way each Onion can be turned into 3 Onion Seeds, allowing you to farm Onions indefinitely.
Cultivator menuCultivating grass into soilNot enough room for crops to growHealthy crops growing
Uses
Raw Food
Ingredient in food or Mead
Plant to grow Onion Seeds
Boar Taming
Food
While they’re better saved for advanced recipes, if you eat a raw Onion, it will increase your health by 13, stamina by 40, and health regeneration by 1 hp/tick for 15 minutes. To eat an Onion, you can right-click its icon in your inventory. It can be eaten together with up to two other food types for a total of three food buffs, but you can’t eat more than one Onion at once.
When you eat an Onion, it will provide its full benefits as a buff. This buff will weaken with time. When its duration is down to 50% or in other words 7.5 minutes, the buff icon will begin to flash and you’ll be able to eat another Onion and refresh the buff.
Cooking & Brewing
Onion is an ingredient in some pretty potent foods and a Mead that you will definitely want to have if you want to tame some animals. The Recipes section has the full list.
Farming
With how difficult it is to find your first Onion Seeds, you never want to run out. To avoid it, you can plant some of your Onions as Seed-onions with the Cultivator tool. One Onion produces 3 Onion Seeds this way, creating a steady supply of seeds.
Taming
While there are definitely more abundant foods you can use for it, Onions can also help you tame boars, giving you easy access to Boar Meat and Leather Scraps.
In order to tame a boar, start by creating a pen, preferably surrounded by a Roundpole Fence, in a safe location. Find some boars nearby and when they spot you, lead them to the pen. Trap them inside by either closing the pen’s gate or placing the final piece of the fence, then move away so that the boars lose aggro (the red exclamation mark above them disappears).
The next part is a bit tricky. You need to approach the boars so that they notice you (a yellow dot appears above them), but don’t yet become aggressive. When they’re in this state, throw an Onion inside the pen. The boars will eat the Onion and you’ll see yellow hearts above them. This means they’re in the process of being tamed. In this state, boars can still attack you, so move away from them, but not too far. For the taming process to work, you need to be in the vicinity of the pen and the boars must not be attacking you. It takes 30 minutes to tame a boar. If done right, you’ll need a total of 3 Onions to tame a boar. You can also use the Brew of Animal Whispers to double the taming speed.
Once tamed, you can start breeding and farming your boars, provided you have at least two of them.
A boar has spotted youDropping a boar’s aggroA boar is being tamedA boar in a pen with food
Recipes
Here’s what you can do with all your Onions.
Recipe
Ingredients
Purpose
Onion Soup
Onion x3
Max Health +20 Max Stamina +60 Regeneration +1hp for 20 minutes
Wolf Skewer
Wolf Meat Mushroom x2 Onion
Max Health +65 Max Stamina +21 Regeneration +3hp for 25 minutes
Salad x3
Jotun Puffs x3 Onion x3 Cloudberries x3
Max Health +26 Max Stamina +80 Regeneration +3hp for 25 minutes
The buildings where Onion Seeds can spawn in the Mountains include abandoned huts, crumbling towers, and stone circles.
When farming Onions, having a fence around them will prevent random monsters from wandering in and destroying your crops.
If you don’t want to run out of Onions, make sure to plant every third one as a Seed-onion.
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Val Hull
Resident role-playing RPG game expert. Knows where trolls and paladins come from. You must fight for your right to gather your party before venturing forth.
