Guides How to build all ships and navigate Valheim

Valheim, indie developed by the Iron Gate studio, is an open world survival full of surprises and rich in content that will lead us to explore a world of Viking inspiration.

Among the various mechanics present in the game, one of the most important is certainly the one related to navigation, which we will examine in detail in this guide.

• Building boats
• Raft
• Karve
• Long Ship
• Navigation

Building boats in Valheim

One of the focal points of the experience in Valheim is certainly the exploration, and being the game set in a world covered largely by seas, lakes and rivers it would be superfluous to say how useful it is to have a boat that accompanies the various trips.

There are three types of boats that you can have during the adventure: raft, karve and long ship. The first obtainable will obviously be the raft, the simplest to build, but later you can improve it until you have a long ship.

So let's see how to build a raft and how to upgrade it.

Raft

To build a shipyard Just place a workbench near a river and press the hammer icon, but you'll need some materials first.

The materials in question are:

• 20 pieces of wood: Easily found anywhere in the game world.
• 6 scraps of leather: easily obtained by hunting wild boars.
• 10 resins: obtainable by killing the Greydwarfs, creatures that will attack you at night.

Unfortunately, the raft will only function as a means of transport since it cannot be used to store objects.

Karve

After building a raft, you can upgrade it to get one karve, the first evolution that will allow you to contain 4 objects and have a better speed.

To build a karve you will need these materials:

• 20 resins: obtainable from Greydward.
• 80 bronze nails: buildable at the forge.
• 10 deer skins: obtainable by hunting deer.
• 30 pieces of fine wood: obtainable by cutting precious oak and birch trees or by rummaging in shipwrecks.

Long ship

After the karve it's up to the long ship, latest upgrade available and best boat in the game due to its fast speed and the ability to hold 18 items.

To build every Viking's quintessential ship you will need the following materials:

• 10 deer skins: obtainable by hunting deer.
• 40 pieces of fine wood: obtainable by cutting oak and birch trees.
• 100 iron nails: to make them you will need the proper recipe, easily obtained by melting scrap iron to create a bar.
• 40 pieces of ancient bark: obtainable by cutting down swamp trees.

Navigation

Once the boat has been built, it remains to learn to navigate, which is also very simple and intuitive since it will be enough to impart the direction with the rudder and pick up speed by opening the sails in case of favorable wind.

Despite the simplicity of the basics of navigation, however, there are some tips to keep in mind to avoid ending the trip with a shipwreck, let's see which ones:

• Always anchor the ship to a dock: essential to avoid losing your boat, just "park" your boat on a strip of land and check that the water takes it towards the land and not towards the sea.
• Sail as much as possible in the wind: obviously sailing pushed by the wind will guarantee you high speed and greater mobility.
• Surfing in a "zig zag" way in case of unfavorable wind: alternating left and right movements will be the best way to proceed even in case of unfavorable wind.
• Give the vessel a slight push in case of immobility: it may happen that the ship stops and does not pick up speed even in the event of a favorable wind, in these cases it will be enough to jump into the water and push the boat slightly to restart it.