How to Farm – Valheim

While a Viking’s primary occupation is pillaging, it’s very hard to lead an exclusively hunter-gatherer lifestyle in Valheim. At some point you’ll want to develop agriculture to tackle all the challenges the game throws at you. This guide will teach you all about farming in Valheim, allowing you to create a steady supply of powerful consumables and even some armor.

Farming Basics

• Craft a Cultivator and cultivate some soil
• Find some seeds or crops fit for planting and plant them in cultivated soil using your Cultivator
• Wait 2-3 in-game days
• Gather your crops, but don’t forget to replant some to keep the farm going

To start farming in Valheim, you’ll need a Cultivator. You’ll be able to abandon your primitive ways and start developing a Viking civilization in Valheim soon after reaching the Black Forest biome. There, you’ll find the resources to build a Cultivator and your first Carrot seeds. Using a Cultivator and those Carrot Seeds, you’ll be able to start your first Valheim farm. As you keep progressing through the game, you’ll discover more crops. And while they all have their own special requirements, the basics of farming will stay more or less the same throughout.

Equip the Cultivator by either assigning it to your hotbar or right-clicking on it in your inventory. When holding a Cultivator, hit the right mouse button to open its crafting menu. The first two options there are Cultivate and Grass. While Grass is just an aesthetic feature, all off the game’s farmable crops need to be planted in cultivated soil.

Select the Cultivate option, then start left-clicking on the ground where you want your farm to be. After you’ve cultivated the soil, you can start planting. Open the Cultivator menu again and select the crop you want to plant. Using the cursor, plant it in the cultivated soil.

Crops take a variable time to grow, so depending on your luck, you will then need to wait 2-3 in-game days. As time passes, you’ll see your crops visibly grow. At some point, they will look ready for harvesting, but you won’t be able to do so. In reality, a crop is only ready to be harvested when you see the “pick up” prompt when hovering your cursor over it. When you see that prompt, use the crop and you’ll pull it out. If you have auto-pickup enabled, it will go straight into your inventory. And that’s pretty much it for farming basics.

Advanced Farming Tips

If you’ve seen some Valheim farms online, you may have noticed their elaborate setups of neat rows separated by assorted building pieces. Some of those are purely decorative and unnecessary, while others serve an actual purpose. In this section we’ll explain what makes farming work and how you should build your farms so they remain fruitful.

Choose the Right Biome

All crops have biome preferences, and as such, they need to be planted in the appropriate biome. If you plant a crop in the wrong biome, it will turn brown and the game will tell you that it “can’t grow in this environment” when you look at it. As a general rule, you can grow most crops in the starting Meadows biome, so you’ll probably want your main farm there. Then, you’ll need to farm Barley and Flax in the Plains, and Jotun Puffs and Magecaps in the Mistlands. And here’s a quick overview of the crop biome preferences:

• Carrot: Meadows, Black Forest, Plains, Ashlands (with Shield Generator)
• Turnip: Meadows, Black Forest, Swamp, Plains, Mistlands, Ashlands (with Shield Generator)
• Onion: Meadows, Black Forest, Plains, Ashlands (with Shield Generator)
• Barley: Plains
• Flax: Plains
• Jotun Puffs: Mistlands
• Magecap: Mistlands
• Vineberry Cluster: Meadows, Black Forest, Swamp, Plains, Mistlands, Ashlands

Have Enough Room

Crops need space to grow. While the required distance is 1 meter of free space, because of how the game measures it and the fact that we don’t have an in-game ruler, that’s not very helpful. Instead, simply aim at the soil, plant your crop, without moving the cursor make sure your character takes a full step forward and plant the next. You’ll get the rhythm of it in no time. If you mess up, the crop will turn brown and you’ll get the “needs more room to grow” message. Because you need to have some space not only between the crops themselves, but also walls, rocks or other obstacles, having those neat individual farming rows can actually be detrimental to the success of your farm. A wide-open plot of soil is much better.

Provide Access to Sunlight

While you don’t need to water your crops in Valheim, they do need some sunlight to grow. Because of this, even though farming in the rain may be annoying, you should resist the urge to put a roof over your farm. Natural obstacles also count for that, so just make sure your crops have an unobstructed view of the sky and you should be good. Messing this step up will wilt your crops and give you the “needs an open sky message.”

Keep in mind that once you fix the issue that’s messing up your crops, like removing the roof that prevents the sun rays from hitting the crops, the previously wilted crops will go back to being healthy.

Protect Your Crops

And if farming in the rain really bothers you, after beating the Mistlands biome, you’ll be able to build a Shield Generator (Iron x5, Copper x5, Shield Core). The generator will protect your farm from the elements and enemy attacks. It’s also required to actually do any farming at all in the Ashlands biome.

Long before you unlock Shield Generators, your crops will still be vulnerable to enemy attacks. And enemies, be they Greydwarf, Fulings, or just plain Boars, are actually hard-wired to destroy your crops. As such, you will want to protect your farm. Make sure to surround it with a wall or at least a fence. Placing some torches around it is also a good idea.

Speed Up Your Farming

Crops take a variable time to grow in Valheim. But whether you get the low or the high roll, you will still have to wait several in-game days. If you want to speed up your harvest, you can employ a little trick. A standard day in Valheim takes 21 minutes, with the night lasting 9 for a total of 30 miutes. However, if you have a bed, you can actually go to sleep halfway through the day, skipping the rest of it and then the night, thus greatly speeding up your crop timings.

Save Crops for Replanting

For a farm to be successful, it needs to be self-sufficient. This means once you get your first harvest, you shouldn’t rush to use it in new recipes. Instead, you should make sure to save some of those crops and replant them. For Carrots, Turnips, and Onions, this means planting them as seed-versions of the crop. One Seed-carrot, for example, grows into 3 Carrot seeds that you can then plant to grow three Carrots. Barley, Flax, Jotun Puffs, and Magecaps don’t have seeds. Instead, you plant the crops themselves. Each planted piece of Barley and Flax grows into 2 Barley or Flax respectively. Jotun Puffs and Magecaps are multiplied by 3 after they’re planted.

Use Farming Tools

One way or another, you’ll be using the Cultivator when farming. But it’s not the only farming tool available. There’s also the Scythe you can craft after beating the Mountain biome. The Scythe lets you harvest entire fields in just a few quick swings. If your farms are large-enough, it can be a great timesaver.

Wear Farming Clothes

The Farming skill governs farming stamina use, Scythe swing radius, and how much durability your farming tools lose when you use them. It also gives you a chance to get a bonus yield whenever you harvest a crop, which makes it very useful. The skill is increased by all farming activities, but it can take a while to level it up.

If you complete Hildir’s quests, however, you’ll be able to buy a set of farming clothes that lower your base stamina usage and increase your Farming skill by 25. This Harvester set consists of the Straw Hat and either a Harvest Dress or Harvest Tunic. If you’re serious about farming, you really want that set.

We hope this guide helped you become a better Valheim farmer. In case you have any additional questions or would like to share some of your own farming tips, be sure to let us know in the comments.