Plains Biome Walkthrough - Valheim
Defeating Moder will get you the Dragon Tears item which is required to craft the Artisan Table. For right now there are no recipes at this table, however, it will enable you to craft unique stations in the surrounding area. With the Artisan Table you'll get access to the Blast Furnace, Windmill, Spinning Wheel and Stone oven crafting stations.
The Blast Furnace lets you turn Black Metal Scraps from the Fulings into metal which you can use for new weapons, crafting stations and other things. You'll be needing a lot of this Black Metal for progression along with the Linen Thread that's produced by the Spinning Wheel. Padded Armor is the new tier of armor for Plains and it requires Iron and Linen Thread to craft--not Black Metal like you'd assume. At first you'll need a lot of Linen Thread, but once you've made the armor and items you need there won't be much use for it anymore until Mistlands and Ashlands armor.
As for the Windmill and Stone Oven, both of these crafting stations will be used in food production. The Windmill will turn Barley into flour which you can use in many recipes and the Stone Oven will let you cook different types of food. Most of the powerful health food will come from this oven.
Most of the items we need for progression in Plains will come from Fuling Villages, the goblins will drop the Black Metal and you can find Flax and Barley growing at the villages. Flax will make Linen Thread and Barley will make food. In the Plains you can also find Tar Pits which will give Tar, this item is used to make new roof tiles along with a new chest and mostly cosmetic goodies. To grow the Flax and Barley you'll need to plant it in the Plains which means you'll need a safe location in the Plains that you can farm.
Other Plains Tips & Tricks
- The tar ooze enemies and goblins are on different factions and will fight each other if you bring them close enough together. Lox will also fight the tar enemies, use this knowledge to your advantage if you ever find these groups close together. A good way to lure enemies is with some noise, smack a bush or knock down a tree then sneak away and they will come there to find each other.
- Mosquitos are the most annoying enemy in this biome but if you spent a bit to learn their attack pattern you can make them much easier. They will always circle you a few times before charging directly at you to sting you. Wait for this charge to attack them back, I recommend using a Bow to hit them in mid air.
- If you are struggling with Fuling Villages try bringing a Hoe and raising the ground a little bit where you're standing then using a Bow. Check out this youtube video for a detailed explanation. Ooze Bombs work too, you can throw them into a pack of Goblins then wait 10~ sec before throwing another. It will only take about 5 Ooze Bombs per goblin which sounds like a lot but it isn't too bad when you're hitting multiple at once.
- Growths will respawn even after you clear out their tar pits, this is the only way in the game to get a constant and repeatable supply of Tar. My advice is to find a few large tar pits and place portals nearby, it takes Tars 2 ingame days to respawn (about 1 IRL hour). You can connect the portals so that you go from one to the next to the next to the next and then back to your base when you're done. If you build a base/farm within the radius of a tar pit you can collect loot from it every so often too as the Growths spawn and attack nearby enemies.
Flax & Barley Plains Farm
Once you reach Plains you're going to need to start farming Flax and Barley to make some tradeskill recipes. The only issue with this is you must be in the Plains in order to grow either of these things, this means we need another base. You could do something basic like wood fencing and a few Workbenches to stop enemy spawns with a Portal somewhere in there... Or you can do an actual Plains base (which I would recommend).
What I like to do is sail around until I find a small island of Plains and then raise ground, place Workbenches and make a farm base at that location. This makes base raids a non-issue so you don't need to worry about emergency AFKs and it also prevents mosquitos from ever bothering you. Check out my How To Keep Your Base Safe Guide for more information about how to make a good island base.
A plains farm that is an actual base
Taming Lox
Lox are the new animals that you can tame in the Plains. They are giant creatures which will require a larger pen than the previous animals that we tamed. What I recommend you do for Lox is to raise the ground around them like in the picture above, this is a very basic pen which will allow you to keep the Lox inside and (most) enemies outside. Once you successfully tame the Lox you can ride them to a better pen location or fix their pen to make it pretty.
For more information when it comes to taming Lox check out my How To Tame Animals Guide.
Sealed Tower & Eggs
When you visit Hildir and inspect her table you'll have multiple locations added to your map, some of them will be Sealed Towers. These towers are the only way that you can get Eggs before beating Yagluth. Once you beat Yagluth you can purchase Eggs at the Trader for 1500g each.
Another benefit of the Sealed Tower is you can get tons of Iron from destroying all the gates and grates throughout. If you are looking to build a base in the Plains, you may want to consider doing it near a Sealed Tower since it will give you the supplies you need for multiple Stonecutter's benches and some reinforced iron.
Plains Boss - Yagluth
Yagluth is a pretty dramatic jump in difficulty compared to the previous bosses in this game. For most players this will be the first boss that requires some real strategy and preparation. We're going to need Fire Resistance Barley Wine along with top tier health food. You should also go into options and turn off Camera Shake, it will make this fight extremely annoying when it's on.
Depending on what strategy you use, you'll probably need more than just Fire Resist Wine. The most common strategy against Yagluth is to use the Frostner, Medium healing meads and Medium Stamina Meads for your primary damage. When you are low on health and need to heal you'll fall back and use the Draugr Fang bow with some Frost Arrows. Normally what players do is they run in and whack Yagluth until he raises his left hand, this means he's about to summon meteors. This is your queue to run out and hide because the meteors hit too hard and they knock you around.
When you run into Yagluth and start swinging your Frostner sometimes you'll want to chug a Medium Stamina Mead before running out. If you have a long enough window to DPS that you can chug a Stamina mead and keep going... then do it. When Yagluth raises his right fist it's his ground pound attack, this is the one attack you can eat without much concern.
Everything we have talked about above is the main strategy people use for Yagluth, but you may still struggle to beat him despite all of this. If that's the case my advice is to tame some Lox nearby and also start raising the ground in some areas. 20 - 25 Lox is all you'll need to beat Yagluth almost entirely with just Lox. Even if you have 5 - 10 Lox you'll make the fight significantly easier because he will focus on them instead of you.
If you'd like to learn more details about the Lox or raised ground strategies check out my How To Make Bosses Easier Guide. The video links below can also be found on that page.
Yagluth vs Me & 20 Lox: The Lox crush Yagluth with sheer numbers, he doesn't really stand much of a chance. My advice for breeding them is to make a nearby Lox pen and have at least two Lox protected from everything away from combat, I normally name them Adam & Eve. This is incase you fail and you need to continue breeding them. Normally I make a giant Lox pen (as shown in my How To Tame Lox Guide) which can hold about 10 Lox. The Lox will spill out as Goblins/mosquitos get near them which is good, we actually want that. Aside from at the Lox pen, I also bring a few Lox to Yagluth's spawner and breed them there. Lox will only breed if there aren't more than 4 in 20m which means you need to breed them in multiple locations if you want enough (or spread them out after breeding).
Yagluth vs Me & 5 Lox: In this video I demonstrate how even just a few Lox can make a massive difference. Yagluth will target even far away Lox with meteors, as you'll see a few times in this video. He quite literally pulls Lox to him from far away which gives me ample time to beat on him.
Yagluth vs Me: Last but not least, Yagluth vs just me and no Lox helping. This is the normal strategy to beating Yagluth, without using any Lox to assist. In total it was a 10min fight for me, with just 5 Lox helping it was a 6min fight and with 20 Lox it was a 2min fight. The more Lox you have helping you, the less time and skill it will take to beat Yagluth.