How to Complete Hildir’s Quests – Valheim

When you find Hildir in Valheim, the NPC trader will have a limited stock to offer you. If you want to get access to her premium goods, you will need to complete some quests for the enterprising Dvergr. This guide will help you get Hildir’s quests, complete them, and make that whole process as smooth and safe as possible.

Getting Hildir’s Quests

Since Valheim is a very open free-roam game, you don’t get a quest log with detailed steps for what you need to do. This is why we’re here. When you first find Hildir, right in front of her, you’ll see Hildir’s Map Table (1). Interact with the table and your map will populate with several special dungeons. These include:

• Smouldering Tomb holds Brass Chest
• Howling Cavern holds Silver Chest
• Sealed Tower holds Bronze Chest

There will be multiples of each dungeon on your map, but you only need to complete one of each to finish Hildir’s quest chain (2). You’ll find Smouldering Tombs in the Black Forest biome, Howling Caverns in the Mountains biome, and for Sealed Towers you’ll have to venture into the Plains biome.

These dungeons can’t spawn too close to your starting location. Getting to them is a challenge in itself. Once you do get there, you’ll have to explore the dungeon and defeat a mini-boss. When you do, the boss will drop one of Hildir’s chests. You will then need to transport this chest back to Hildir without the use of portals (except the Stone Portal you unlock after getting pretty far in the Ashlands biome). Because of this, and since the world of Valheim is quite inhospitable, you will want to prepare well for the journey.

Preparing for Hildir’s Quests

Unless you’re doing Hildir’s quests in the very late game and are confident in your ability to not fall prey to the denizens of the dungeons or anything you can face on your way to them, you should make sure you have an easy way of accessing the dungeon areas.

Since Hildir tends to not spawn too close to your base, chances are you won’t stumble onto her quest dungeons too early. Still, to have a smooth experience with her quests, you should at least have Plains-tier gear on you. This means Black Metal weapons and Padded armor. While you can clear out some of these dungeons earlier, you don’t want to rush. Bringing Hildir’s chest back to her unlocks a new event where your base gets raided by the dungeon mini-boss who dropped that chest in the first place. If you’re under-geared this can get quite annoying.

Useful Consumables

When you leave your base, you should have three different types of food with you. You can eat all three at the same time to raise your health and stamina, and improve your regeneration rate. For this journey, you want to make sure to have good food. Mostly the stuff you can craft from the resources found in the Plains. Here are some good examples:

Notice how some of these foods give great Health bonuses while others greatly raise your Stamina. Mix and match them to have enough of both of these stats. Something like Blood Pudding, Fish Wraps, and Lox Meat Pie is a good combo that will increase your base Health by 170 and your Stamina by 122.

You will also want to have some potions. Since we’re Vikings, potions come in the form of mead and wine. For the challenges ahead, you won’t need anything too fancy. But at the very least you’ll want at least a stack of healing and stamina potions. You might also want to boost your fire resistance. Here’s what these potions are and what you’ll need to make them:

Setting Up

With how far away from your spawning point Hildir’s dungeons tend to generate, you can be in a lot of trouble if you die when attempting to clear one of them out. You will also need a ship to transport the chests.

Provided you don’t have access to Ashlands-tier Stone Portals, to make your questing smoother, you will need the resources to build 3 Karve ships and 3 regular wooden Portals. To place your Portals you will also need a Workbench nearby. But you can easily get the wood needed for the Workbenches by chopping trees at your destination. Just make sure you have an axe with you. Or grab a stack of regular wood.

To build 3 Portals you will need:

• Fine Wood x60
• Greydwarf Eye x30
• Surtling Core x6

You get Fine Wood by chopping Birch and Oak trees. Grewdwarfs of all kinds drop Greydwarf Eyes, and Surtling Cores are dropped by Surtlings and found inside the Black Forest dungeons and in the bonfires inside Fulling Villages in the Plains.

And for the 3 Karve ships you’ll need:

• Bronze Nails x240
• Deer Hide x30
• Fine Wood x90
• Resin x60

You make Bronze Nails from Bronze ingots at a Forge. To make Bronze you’ll need to combine 2 Copper and 1 Tin ingot at the Forge. A Bronze ingot produces 20 Bronze Nails, so you’ll only need 12 of them to get all the nails you’ll need here. Deer Hides are dropped by Deer. Fine Wood is found inside Birch and Oak trees. Resin is dropped by Greydwarfs and has a chance to appear when you chop down a tree.

When you have the ingredients, you should choose one Smouldering Tomb, Howling Cavern, and Sealed Tower and plot your course there. Build a Karve ship by your base or the closest accessible spot on the map to one of the dungeons.

Once you reach the dungeon island, mark the spot on the map where you make your landing. Then run to the question mark on your map indicating the dungeon. Once there, build a Workbench and a Portal. Don’t forget to name the Portal to connect it to your base. And for good measure put a marker on your map with that name so you remember it.

Run back to your ship. Before sailing away build another Karve and leave it at your landing marker. Then repeat this process with the other two dungeons. You’ll know you’ve reached the right one when Hugin appears before the entrance, warning you that this dungeon may be harder than usual (3).

With each quest dungeon having a Portal and a ship nearby, you’re ready to start exploring the dungeons themselves. If you fall at any point, you’ll have an easy way back to your body that doesn’t involve 20-30 minutes of sailing and running around dangerous biomes without any of your gear.

Exploring the Dungeons

Despite Hugin’s warnings, if you have decent gear and consumables, the dungeons shouldn’t pose too much of a challenge. After you defeat a dungeon’s boss – Brenna for the Smouldering Tombs, Geirrhafa for the Howling Caverns, and the Zil and Thungr duo for the Sealed Towers – you’ll need to grab the chest. Each chest weighs 200 units, so you won’t be getting much more loot than that in a single run.

Hildir’s chests can’t go through regular Portals. This is where the ships you’ve prepared come in. Get the chest, run to the ship, sail to Hildir’s location, and turn it in. Then repeat with the next dungeon. We’ll list them in the recommended order below.

Exploring the Smouldering Tomb

You will find Smouldering Tombs in the Black Forest biome (4). If you’re not stumbling onto them too early, this quest should be very easy. Smouldering Tombs resemble the regular Black Forest dungeons but with a faint fiery glow. This is a hint as to what to expect inside. If you don’t feel particularly confident, you might want to down a Fire Resistance Barley Wine or activate Yagluth’s Forsaken power. Both of those make you resistant to fire and will come in handy when exploring the Sealed Tower, so you might as well prepare some now.

The insides of Smouldering Tombs are dark and filled mostly with 1-star skeletons (5). The skeletons shouldn’t pose a challenge. Finding Brenna, the boss you need to defeat inside can be a bit trickier. Because dungeons are procedurally generated, we can’t lead you directly to Brenna, but the tombs aren’t too expansive. If you can’t find the boss, just look for the easy-to-miss doors inside. You’ll also be able to grab some mushrooms and assorted minor treasure there (6).

When you do find Brenna, you’ll immediately recognize her by the fact that she’s on fire and has a burning sword (7). Since this is a Black Forest-tier boss, she doesn’t do too much damage and mostly fights just like your regular skeleton but with a lot more health.

The one attack you need to watch out for, provided you want to play this skillfully and not just face-tank everything Brenna throws at you, is when she raises her sword (8). This indicates that she’s using her ring of fire AoE attack. Simply dodge away and you should be good.

When Brenna is down, she will drop Brenna Trophy and Hildir’s Brass Chest (9). Grab the chest and leave the dungeon (10). With your gear and the chest, you won’t have too much weight left in your inventory, so don’t go crazy looting all the gems you can find inside the tomb. Simply make your way out, get to your parked ship, and sail to Hildir.

Exploring the Howling Cavern

Howling Caverns usually spawn high up in the Mountains (11). This means to get there you’ll have to do a lot of jumping up steep cliffs (12). So make sure you have enough stamina to get there, and preferably a decent bow to deal with the drakes you might encounter along the way.

Whenever we got near a Howling Cavern, we also usually encountered a Stone Golem there (13). Since the cavern appears on a narrow ledge, when fighting the golem, make sure you’re facing away from the cliff. The golem’s attacks can push you off, sending you to your death.

Once inside, you will want to make your way down through the cavern. Whenever you encounter a dead end, chances are you’ll be able to break through by hitting the wall with your weapon (14). If you feel like you’ve explored everywhere and still can’t find the stairs down, just start hitting walls.

The enemies you’ll be facing inside include bats (15) that are annoying but not too dangerous and Ulvs (16). Ulvs are basically werewolves, but they look much scarier than they are. Eventually, you will find a large Wood Gate (17). Behind it, the cave will turn into a stone dungeon filled with more Ulvs and stairs leading further down (18).

At the very bottom of the dungeon, you’ll find Geirrhafa – a particularly strong werewolf (19). Unlike Brenna, Geirrhafa is not a complete pushover. Geirrhafa will attack you with her claws, so make sure you either block those attacks or move out of the way.

As you do, watch Geirrhafa. When she lowers her arms to the ground, she’ll perform an AoE attack similar to Brenna, but dealing cold damage (20). Also, Geirrhafa’s version of this attack sends out multiple pulses of frost, so don’t rush back in immediately after dodging the first pulse. And when Geirrhafa raises her arms at you, she’ll perform a channeled cone of cold attack (21). This is a great time to deal some damage to her. Sidestep the frost beam and start smacking the werewolf.

Once you’ve dealt with Geirrhafa, grab her trophy and Hildir’s Silver Chest (22, 23). Then make your way back to Hildir’s camp.

Exploring the Sealed Tower

When you approach the Sealed Tower you’ll quickly realize that it’s, well, sealed (24). There’s no door (25). The way inside is suggested by the tower itself – a collection of wooden platforms placed all over its otherwise stone structure. But those platforms are not enough to get you up.

What you’ll need to do here is place down a Workbench and start adding your own platforms to the tower (26). Whenever you get high enough, you’ll also need to place some additional workbenches on your new platforms (27). You’ll need plenty of wood to create the stairs for you. And even so, there’s a high probability of you falling at some point. This makes it very important that you have a convenient Portal nearby.

The good news is, you don’t need to go all the way up. You can get inside through one of the balconies the tower should have in abundance (28). If you do get to the very top, you’ll just find a chest with some minor treasure (29).

The Sealed Tower is overrun by Fulings and Fuling Shamans (30). These goblins are nasty and pack quite a punch, so make sure you’re well-prepared to explore the tower. Apart from them, you’ll have to watch your step for the bear traps scattered on the floor. Also, keep in mind that the tower contains numerous Iron Gates. Despite their name, they’re quite flimsy. When you see one, just smack it a couple of times with your weapon and you’ll destroy it.

Make your way through the tower down into the basement. Unlike the dungeons, the tower is fairly straightforward and you won’t get lost there. However, the boss you’ll find there more than makes up for it. The boss is a combo battle against Zil and Thungr (31). Zil is a goblin shaman riding on Thungr the ogre. Thungr will pummel you with his huge club (32), while Zil will cast protective bubbles and fireballs at you (33). Both of them hit like trucks, so make sure you have some source of fire resistance ready, like Yagluth’s power, to at least help you with Zil’s spells.

This is an actually tough fight for characters using Plains-tier gear. We recommend you tackle it in a group. Or be very careful and very well-prepared.

You can either block or dodge Thungr’s regular club attacks. But watch him closely. When he raises his club, he’s about to unleash a flurry of hits. Simply run away from him when he does. When instead he lowers his club to the ground, Zil will throw a fireball at you. Dodge out of the way, or just tank it if your fire resistance is good enough.

After a while, Thungr will go down. But Zil will remain with a full health bar (34). Alone, the shaman will throw a lot more fireballs at you, while also frequently shielding himself. Still, without Thungr and with Yagluth’s power active, he shouldn’t be too hard to defeat.

When both enemies are down, Zil will drop Hildir’s Bronze Chest as well as Zil Trophy and Thungr trophy (35). Grab it all and leave the tower for what will hopefully be your final boat trip to Hildir (36).

Turning the Chests In

Once you have the chests in your possession, make your way to Hildir’s camp and approach her. You’ll see a prompt to give her an item by pressing one of the numbers [1-8] on your hotbar. If you try giving her some random item, she won’t accept it. But if you put a chest in your hotbar and press the corresponding number while looking at Hildir, you’ll deliver the chest (37). Hildir will give a line of encouraging dialogue and unlock some new wares (38).

The chests themselves will appear in the area behind her (39). And if you manage to find more chests from additional Hildir dungeons, she won’t need them so feel free to use them to decorate your treasure room.