How To Tame Animals - Valheim
In Valheim, some of the animals you come across in the world can be tamed and then farmed for resources, used in combat or even rode! To tame an animal you will need to feed it something that it likes to eat. Normally this is a food item from the biome the animal is found in but there are a few exceptions to this rule.
Before you start feeding an animal, you're going to want to capture it (and a friend) inside of a pen. You need two animals to breed them so there is no point in just capturing one. Depending on the type of animal you're going after you'll have to use a different strategy to capture it. Boars can be trapped in basic fences and fed, but Wolves will give you trouble even with stone walls so I recommend digging a hole for them.
Lox are gigantic, for both them and
Boars (Meadows): Raspberry, Carrot, Mushroom
Wolves (Mountains): Meat
Lox (Plains): Cloudberry, Flax and Barley
Asksvin (Ashlands):
General Taming Advice/Tips & Tricks
- Outside animal pens are vulnerable to aerial attacks from Bats and Wraiths. These two enemy types can make quick work of Boars and Chickens but they'll struggle to do serious damage to wolves and Lox. When it comes to Lox the biggest issue you'll face is them destroying the pen while trying to defeat the Bats. This is why I normally opt for raised ground walls for Lox.
- Taming Potion/Mead
- Always remember that the location you tame an animal isn't the location it has to stay. You won't be able to take it across the Ocean (until you unlock the Drakkar boat, every animal can fit on that boat), but you can transport it a medium distance. Boars are the hardest since they need to be pushed and coarsed. Wolves actually can be transported across the water, they just don't have a 100% success rate of making it so you need to take a bunch of them and hope a few make it so you can start breeding them again. Just have all the wolves follow you and start sailing.
- When it comes to sailing an animal across the Ocean, you'll want to bring a few just incase one glitches off your boat. This is common, especially in multiplayer games.
Boars - Meadows
Boars are very easy to tame which makes sense since they're the first animal in the game capable of being tamed. What I recommend you do for these guys is enclose them within a fence like you see pictured above. Toss some food in and build Workbenches in the surrounding area to prevent enemies from bothering them. If you're way later in the game and goblins are spawning in the Meadows during night, you'll have to baby them a bit more.
Once the boars are tamed, getting them to where you want them is the annoying part. I find Abyssal Harpoons to be terrible for doing this, but it can sometimes work. Normally what I do is build a path with fences on both sides and I chase the boars down the path with fire. Occasionally I will build a fence behind the boars to prevent them from going backwards.
Wolves - Mountains
Your first difficult animal to tame in Valheim is going to be wolves. To tame a wolf I recommend you first dig a pit in the Mountain biome, you'll want to make it deep and steep so that they're unable to get out. Once your pit is dug you'll want to put 2x2 floor tiles across the entire top of it along because our goal is to drop wolves into the pit as they run over top.
If you need help while kiting the wolves around you can do some half walls across the top of the pit too. Jump over these half walls then use the moment of safety they provide you to destroy a floor under the wolves. After capturing your wolves in the pit, all that's left is to feed them and stay within radius so they tame. You can worry about getting them out of the pit once it's safe. Check out my How To Trap & Tame Wolves Youtube Video to see how I did it using this strategy.
Something to keep in mind is that one and two star wolves only spawn at night time. To make matters worse, they will despawn during the day if they are not actively being tamed when daybreak happens. For this reason, if you're planning on capturing a one or two star wolf I strongly recommend you have a nearby structure that you can hide in to break agro from them. Just like with boars you need to be nearby but not so close that you alert them. If I am lucky enough to get a two star wolf, I personally won't leave the mountain until my wolf is tame because I have had one despawn on me before.
Lox - Plains
Those of you who thought taming wolves was a pain in the butt, let me introduce the Lox to you. Lox have their own complications when it comes to taming them, the first of which is the size of their pen. If you dig a hole as deep as you can, you can fit two Lox in it to tame them but you can't breed them without more space. Normally, for this reason I avoid doing a pit for Lox and I opt instead to raise the ground in a large circle around a pack of Lox.
I've had a lot of success with this method, the biggest issue I face normally is my Lox getting killed bothered by mosquito attacks once they get tamed. Mosquitos have such a giant roaming radius that it is very hard to keep them all away from your pen. A mosquito attack puts your Lox into combat which means no breeding.
You have one way of preventing this... building a lot of Workbenches inside protective blocks around the entire area. For more information about how to do this, check out my How To Make Biomes Safe Guide. This means putting a lot of work into your Lox pen and at that point, I normally opt for a base nearby too. Since Lox can be rode, you can always ride one away from where you tame it and to a nearby base. Or just build a base at the location you find the Lox.
Asksvins - Ashlands