Meadows Biome Walkthrough - Valheim
When you first start the game you'll begin in the Meadows biome, as you can probably guess this is the easiest biome in the game. Your first goal is going to be find Raspberry bushes and Mushrooms to eat; once you get some food in your belly you'll want to make a Hammer and a Club.
The Hammer is the crafting tool which you'll use for most of the crafting. Collect a bunch of Wood and place a Workbench inside of a structure. You can use a pre existing one in the Meadows that you found or make your own. Workbenches placed under a roof (and with protection) can be used to repair your items or craft new ones.
Our next goal is to start hunting some boars for Leather Scraps. You'll want to use those scraps to make a Crude Bow which you can use to hunt Deer. Next, you'll use Deer Hide to make Leather Armor at a Workbench and to upgrade the station. We'll also use Deer Trophy to summon Eikthyr, the first boss of the game.
Keep an eye out for Wild Beehives as they'll give you a Queen Bee which you can use to make your own Beehive. A Beehive will provide you with Honey which is a great early game food. Before you challenge Eikythr getting some Honey and two cooked meats is recommended. You can cook meat over a fire using a cooking station.
Other Meadows Tips & Tricks
- Search near the Sacrifical Stones for Raspberries and Mushrooms, there are normally always spawns of them here.
- You will occasionally find a circle of stones in the shape of a boat, somewhere in the ground you can dig to find a chest with some gems inside and (if you're lucky) a Silver Necklace. Sometimes you will find Bone Fragments instead or along with a chest. When you get the Stagbreaker or Iron Sledge you can hit the ground with these weapons and damage the chests below the ground. This will let you open them without having to dig.
- New players should avoid the Black Forest boundaries since it will have dangerous enemies in that area. Veteran players sometimes will pull a Troll out of the forest and into Meadows so that they can use it to destroy Birch or Oak trees for Fine Wood early in the game.
- If you take out your Hoe and level the ground when you find Mushrooms you can more easily find them later.
Protect Your Berry Bushes!
When you're clearing forests in the Meadows take a moment to circle your berry bushes in fences. This will protect them from falling and rolling trees, because there's nothing worse than losing multiple bushes from a run away log! Early in the game it's easy to mistake the value of these bushes, the food they make isn't great and once you get to the Swamp everything you can make is better... The true value of these bushes is that they berries are also boar food!
You have two real options when feeding boars, Carrots or Raspberries. Mushrooms are used for Carrot Stew which is why I normally don't feed them to the boars. Carrots are also used for Carrot Stew (go figure, right?) and a couple of other good recipes. This makes the berries my preferred food, if you can keep a few bushes alive around your base (and especially in your boar pen) it will make your life easier.
Taming A Boar
If you're lucky enough to find a one star or two star boar around your base I strongly recommend you tame it. You can learn more about taming animals in my How To Tame Animals Guide, but I will give you a succicnt version here. For boars, you'll want to build a Roundpole Fence around them when you find the pack you want to tame. Throw Raspberries, Mushrooms or Carrots into the boar pen and leave them alone until they're tamed.
Once your boar is tamed you'll need to funnel it using fences to the location you want it to be permanently. This part is really annoying and it helps to breed your boars a few times before you do it incase one or two acts dumb. My advice is to combine your boar pen with your Carrot/Turnip Farm, this will give you all the space you need for both. If you can have a few Raspberry bushes within the walls of your farm that would be nice too, you can pick them and throw them on the ground for the boars.
Knocking Down Multiple Trees At Once
This is a trick that's useful in every biome, when you're planning on harvesting a lot of Wood the best thing you can do is knock down multiple trees at once so they destroy each other as they fall down. If the forest you're clearing is on a hill, this works even better because the trees will roll down the hill naturally and hit everything as they do.
Something a lot of players like to do with this knowledge is create a tree farm. You can eventually plant the seeds from trees with a Cultivator, this will let you position them exactly how you want them. Do this on a giant hill (like a steep hill leading up into a Mountain biome by the ocean) and you can knock down 10x more trees.
Meadows Boss - Eikthyr
Summon Items: 2 Deer Trophy
The boss of the Meadows is Eikthyr, he's basically a giant lightning deer. You can find his location by inspecting the Vegvisir Stone next to the Sacrifical Stones (where you begin the game). Alternatively, just interact with his shrine when you find one to mark the location on your map.
I strongly recommend you get Leather Armor and a fully upgraded Crude Bow before attempting this fight. You'll also want to spend some time chopping down trees in the boss arena (assuming he is near or in a forest). Leave the logs on the ground and use them to obstruct Eikthyr's path to you, this will make the fight much easier since you can kite him around the logs.