Now that you have done the weapons and armor needed to go on your adventure, you’d probably think you’re all set for the great conquest to kill whoever stands in front of your Viking friend? Well, slow down for a bit, you need to get your fix of Norse nutrition first, in the form of (almost) everybody’s favorite discussion, food.
Food is essential in Valheim (and real-life), as it gives you the energy (and health) needed to go about your playthrough of the game. A quick side note is that you can eat 3 distinct food items at the same time so this is more of an overview of each food source and what they offer, individually. While there are many delicious choices in the game, not all meals are created equal, and what better way to do that than to give you a huge platter of information through this list.
As with the other Valheim guides, this was written on its current patch (version 0.155.7) and is based on my experience in completing the game with a few friends. The list is also based on how attainable the food is and the ease of getting it, so some food items on this list may not be the best stat-wise, but better on their own merits. Other food items that are not on the list may be omitted or referenced.
Hope you got that golden ticket to the serving queue because this list is coming in hot.
10. Berries: Best Picked Immediately
To establish how each food helps your chances of survival, your character has 25 health and 75 stamina, and food adds to that value.
In terms of the berries, you have 3 kinds of berries in-game: raspberry, blueberry, and cloudberry, with each found in their respective biomes. We’ll ignore cloudberry for now, as it’s part of the dangerous Plains biome, which, when you start the game, is really the place you shouldn’t go, but will include the value down below.
Key stats gained are as follows:
Raspberries:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 10 / 35
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 20 / 95
- Duration - 600 sec (10 mins.)
Blueberries:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 15 / 40
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 20 / 95
- Duration - 600 sec (10 mins.)
Cloudberries:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 15 / 40
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 25 / 100
- Duration - 600 sec (10 mins.)
The key thing about berries is that it’s everywhere on the biome, with some parts better than others (spawn wise and in regards to your own generated seed), so your mileage may vary. Berries are also an essential part of making potions later on, so while they may not be useful now, but they will be in the long term. That’s for another discussion however as food is the main discussion and food-wise, it’s the most basic source you can find.
As a side note, the biomes for each berry are as follows:
- Meadows – Raspberry
- Black Forest – Blueberry
- Plains – Cloudberry
As for what it offers, it gives a small boost of 10-15 health and 20 stamina, which in context should be able to help you run more and negate at least one more attack from the boar you’re getting for raw meat (which we’ll get to in a bit). You can get 50 of these per slot in the inventory, which is a lot, but can quickly deplete once you make more mid-game items, like jam.
It ain’t much, but the charm of berries is its ease of obtainment. You simply need to walk to a bush (seen on the image above) and pick it up by pressing E. Keep in mind that you can’t plant berries as of now and that if you damage the bush, you’re not going to have it respawn again, so you should leave it alone once you collect it and wait another while to re-enjoy another sweet treat.
- Raspberry specifically is immediately obtainable
- A cheap health and stamina boost
- Can store 50 per stack
9. Honey: Sweet Stamina, Sweeter HP Tick
If you love the sweetness of the berries, then honey is your next sweet delight. With a very high HP regen, per tick (the highest, as per wiki at 5 HP/tick) it’s suitable for those needing that regen boost early on when you tank too much damage. On the base value of honey, it gives a 20/20 health and stamina boost, so substantial vs the berries we touched on earlier while keeping the same number on its stack (50). The list will be down below.
Key stats gained are as follows:
Honey:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 20 / 45
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 20 / 95
- Duration - 300 sec (5 mins.)
The process of getting honey is as tedious as its real-life counterpart, as you’ll rely on luck and a sizeable amount on your honey farm.
You’ll first need to find a queen bee, which is found on the abandoned houses scattered throughout the world and is either shot down with a bow and arrow, or have the walls holding it collapsed on, and even with that, there may be a slight chance it may not drop the queen (that’s not sweet at all). Once you get one bee, all you need to do is add 10 wood and you should make the new (better looking) beehive for your queen to have the bees make honey for you. Unlike real life, they don’t sting you as you collect it, unless you hit their house, which is questionable to bee-lieve (sorry for that stingy joke).
- Highest HP regen per tick
- Higher value compared to berries
- Can store 50 per stack
8. Grilled Neck Tail / Cooked Meat: Best Early HP Food Source
While these food items have their separate stat boosts, I’ve bunched both as they are attained by the same means, killing innocent creatures. The real reason why they share the same spot is that, depending on your seed, you can switch between the two when you don’t have access to one or the other. However, if you do get both, they provide a measurable HP and stamina boost that can help you survive better compared to the previous two entries on this list. Raw and cooked food are treated separately in this game, so your stack of 20 is going to be saturated if you got many carcasses and stored lunches alongside your inventory of weapons and items, so do take note of that. To see what it gives, here’s the list for both.
Key stats gained are as follows:
Grilled Neck Tail:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 35 / 60
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 20 / 95
- Duration - 1000 sec (~17 mins.)
Cooked Meat:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 40 / 65
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 30 / 105
- Duration - 1200 sec (20 mins.)
The primary difference between the two is that the cooked meat is more attainable in that your sources are the deer, boar, and even wolf (though the latter is not the best choice in the early game), while the grilled neck tail is only obtained from that green (or purple for higher tier) lizard, the neck. Cooked meat is also better as it gives 5 health (35 vs 40) and 10 (20 vs 30) stamina more than its grilled counterpart and more generous on the duration by about 3 ½ minutes, meaning you’re less likely to burn through it over longer periods. Combined, however, you’ll get 75 health and 50 stamina (in addition to the base stats you have) and that will make your early game survivability a lot more meaningful.
To make these roasted pieces of meat, kill the food sources to obtain it (again, raw meat from boars, deers and wolves and neck tail from necks respectively). Next, use the Hammer to make a fire source (campfire most likely), and then, select the cooking station on the misc. tab and set it on top of the fire source. Note that it won’t cook if the cooking station is far, or even beside the fire, as the game will not even let you put the meat on if it fails that requirement. You can only put 2 items per cooking station and with a bit of moving around, can cook 4 items on a single campfire, so if you want to make a lot of meat, you need a lot of fire.
Watch out though as when you see the color of your raw food sources change, you need to get them asap, otherwise you’ll turn your food into coal, no seriously, it does change to the material ‘Coal’ when you leave them burning for too long. Besides, you’ll hear a sound effect telling you if it’s done anyway, so when you do get it, just enjoy the sizzling goodness of freshly charred meat.
- Good HP and stamina values for early game
- Easily attainable in the world
- When combined, it makes a sizeable difference to your survivability
7. Carrot Soup / Turnip Stew: A Great Mid-Game Boost
A lot can be said about the simplest of things, and soup is a nice food source that can give you that little bit extra, and in Valheim, it does make your health and stamina warm up to great levels of near the meat combos above. While not in itself particularly special, the turnip stew is a great pick-me-up in itself for mid-game explorations (Swamps and below) as the 50/50 (HP/Stamina) stat buff covers you for a decent amount while providing some longevity in its use, while the carrot soup, despite not being much of a health buffer, is an energy shot of high stamina, that can make your Viking do more swings and dodges. Below is the chart showing its stats.
Key stats gained are as follows:
Carrot Soup:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 20 / 45
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 60 / 135
- Duration - 1500 sec (25 mins.)
Turnip Stew:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 50 / 75
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 50 / 125
- Duration - 1600 sec (~26 mins.)
Going back to longevity, it lasts a fair bit longer than the rest of the food listed so far at about 25-27 minutes on the duration, but that is also limited by both having only 10 pcs. maximum, per inventory slot. This is why it is usually paired up with other more advanced food sources to give max value. Just remember to have a cultivator (made with bronze and core wood) and a cauldron (10 tin) ready and you should be fine. For how to prepare and make the soups, here's what you should do.
For Carrot Soup:
- Gather Carrot Seeds from the Black Forest biome
- Make the cultivator and plant the seeds to grow carrots
- Create the soup by combining it with mushrooms on the cauldron
For Turnip Stew:
- Gather Turnip Seeds from the Swamp biome
- Make the cultivator and plant the seeds to grow turnips
- Create the soup by combining it with raw meat on the cauldron
- Great amounts of HP boosts for the resources needed
- Strong boosts of health and stamina
- Can make multiple batches when crop numbers are done right
6. Sausages: Best Mid-Game Meat Source for Health
I talked about how the carrot soup and turnip stew complements higher grade food sources, well these savory meat sticks are absolutely the best along with them. They give so much health and stamina that adds up with the soups we just touched on earlier. That alone gives so much health that going to higher areas like the Swamp makes it such a luxury to have at the mid-game. So what does this offer that makes it so good, well take a look at the stats below.
Key stats gained are as follows:
Sausages:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 60 / 85
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 40 / 115
- Duration - 1600 sec (~27 mins.)
For a boost of 60 health and 40 stamina, you can expect some good stats right off the bat, and partner that with the 70 health and 110 stamina from the combined soup and stew from the last entry, and you can have a Swamp ready health bar to take on the creatures ahead.
Speaking of Swamps, the thing you’ll need to make these are ‘Entrails’ and you can obtain them in the Swamp biome through chests and crypts, but the most common way is to take on the Draugrs that roam the swamps and crypts. They can deal a lot of damage too, so prep your best gear and food forward, but once you are done, you should be hauling intestines needed for that alongside raw meat and ‘Thistle’, which are the glowy stems you find in the Black Forest, so early on, make it a priority to gather Thistle as you move around that part of the map. Once you get all 3 and chuck it in the cauldron, you’ll be dining like you were in an Italian deli (or a New York hotdog cart, your preference really).
- Great amounts of HP as a standalone item
- Partners well with similar lasting food sources
- Can get you into the high 130’s in health and offers lots of stamina to fight or kite, when combined with carrot soup and turnip stew
5. Fish Wraps: Best High-Grade Stamina Source
For such a delicious-sounding meal, there aren’t too many pictures that show how delectable it is, apart from the real-life picture the devs posted. It sounds as good as it is useful, being the food source with the highest stamina gain so far. Giving a generous 60 health and a whopping 90 stamina by itself, this tortilla lifeline is truly an all-in-one energy boost, though you are only limited to 10 of these. In case you want to know the stats, swim over to the chart below.
Key stats gained are as follows:
Fish Wraps:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 60 / 85
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 90 / 165
- Duration - 2400 sec (40 mins.)
Being one of the highest-grade food sources, getting one is somewhat tedious. For one, fish needs to be caught using a fishing rod that you buy off Haldor (the trader) and for odd reasons, spears and bows can’t get you these fishes (unless they randomly swim towards land on a tide). Once you got the raw fish, you cook it the same way as raw meat or neck tail. While it is a food source on its own, it just gets more value after being turned into the wraps you see above. If you still need to know what cooked fish offers, look at the chart below as a point of reference.
Moving back to making Fish Wraps, another reason why this is high-grade food is the need for barley flour, which is only attainable after killing the second last boss, Moder. The process are as follows:
- After killing Moder, you pick up ‘Dragon Tear’ which makes the Artisan Table
- Once you set the artisan table on your base (or area of choice), you can make the windmill in the nearby perimeter
- When built, place the barley in the windmill and wait until it gets processed (I suggest doing something else in between). You pick up barley in the Plains biome, usually nearby Fuling camps.
- Combine the flour and cooked fish to make the food.
- Best single food for stamina
- Partners well with other high-grade food sources
- Has decent health that complements other food sources
4. Serpent Stew: Best Luxury Food Item
If you think the Fish Wraps is great, wait until you dive into the Serpent Stew. With it being better than the previous bowls of goodness listed, the Serpent Stew is arguably one of the best single food sources in the game, but as I said in the beginning, raw stats do not make it the best overall food this game has to offer. So why is it that it’s both the best while being not the best you may ask? Doesn’t the chart below justify its status as the go-to food of choice?
Key stats gained are as follows:
Honey:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 80 / 105
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 80 / 155
- Duration - 2400 sec (40 mins.)
Well, true, the stats don’t lie, but what puts this down the list is that it’s an absolute pain in the seashells to get. First off, the serpent is a rarity on its own, and making an inventory of it, is just a time anchor weighing you down. Second, given that it is time-consuming, you’re more likely to have the other higher-up food sources more often than this and for almost 90% of your late game, it’s sufficient enough. Third and crucially, the flour needed to make this is also split up when you make Lox Meat Pie at the same time (we’ll get to that later), which is a pretty sunken deal if you ask me.
Given that seeds between players are different, you can have a better chance of getting more of these, given you have plenty of time and a whole Viking party. If you do get it, you want the stats needed for the boss you’re planning to conquer with this mighty meal of the sea. Down the hatchets!
- Best food for balanced stats
- Partners well with other high-grade food sources
- One of the best food sources for boss fights
3. Cooked Lox Meat: Best Ready-to-Make Food Source
Now we turn to the opposite of food difficulty ratings, the Cooked Lox Meat. It’s amazing how simple this meal is to get, and frankly, no long explanations are needed. You find a Lox (as shown above), and stab (or whatever your choice of slaughter is) it, take the meat, and then grill it. It may be a hard one to take down, but when you find the groove and block off its attacks, the reward is (quite) big. Just imagine the Cooked Meat or Grilled Neck Tail, but better, and boy, is it better. Take a look below.
Key stats gained are as follows:
Cooked Lox Meat:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 70 / 95
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 40 / 115
- Duration - 2000 sec (~33 mins.)
For literally a few minutes, you’ll get 70 health and 40 stamina, which is an amazing combo to have around other food sources. A bonus too is that it lasts more than 30 mins and you can bring 20 of them in a slot. Again, no guides are needed, just find, kill and cook. Simple, easy, and convenient.
- Highest HP regen per tick
- Higher value compared to berries
- Can store 50 per stack
2. Lox Meat Pie: Best All-Round Food Item
As I said earlier, the Serpent Stew is a wonderful, high-grade food source, that is plagued by its difficulty to create while being also very time-consuming. Lox Meat Pie on the other hand? Only needs a portion of the hassle while offering similar stats. What sets them apart is that you more or less have 2 of the things needed by now, that being barley flour and cooked lox meat. The only thing you have to get is the other berry we didn’t touch on, cloudberry.
Cloudberries, like their Meadows and Black Forest counterparts, are easy to get as you only need to walk to the bush and pick them. The only danger here is the environment, being the Plains biome which is home to Deathsquitos and Fuling, and if you’re encountering them for the first time, they hurt a lot. Just be on your toes as you pick them up alongside the barley you may also be getting at the same time, and you’ll be creating a savory pastry with that irresistible meaty taste (I’m already hungry just thinking of it).
Anywho, stats are pretty similar to the Serpent Stew as shown below.
Key stats gained are as follows:
Lox Meat Pie:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 80 / 105
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 80 / 155
- Duration - 2400 sec (40 mins.)
It shares the same stat values as the Serpent Stew, even down to the stack limit (10), which shows that sometimes the most exclusive dishes, don’t offer the best bang for your buck. If you do happen to be a mad lad (or lass), and have also created the Serpent Stew, you technically have one of the best options as a duo with this, so you can get the best of both flavors, being land or sea.
- Uses already good pre-existing food items
- Offers the same stats as Serpent Stew
- Way more time-friendly as a whole
1. Blood Pudding: Best Health Buffer
While this may be up for debate, Blood Pudding is, for the intended use case, the best food source in Valheim as it outright gives the best health to survive the boss fights, Yagluth especially, as it’s the only food, so far, to give 90 health to a player. Stamina isn’t that great at 50 but given how the Serpent Stew and/or Lox Meat Pie can boost that stat along with their already great 80 health stat each, it can be given a pass, under those circumstances. What gives this bloody brute maker its winning edge on this list, is surprising, the ease of making it (depending on your seed still of course). See the list below to know what the plasma pudding can do for you.
Key stats gained are as follows:
Blood Pudding:
- Health Gain [ Base HP / HP Added With Base Health ] - 90 / 115
- Stamina Gain [ Base Stamina / Stamina Added With Base Stamina] - 50 / 125
- Duration - 2400 sec (40 mins.)
We already mentioned the Thistle, and we already milled and made the barley flour from the past 2 entries, now the only thing different is the need for Bloodbags and no it does not come from killing your fellow Vikings or any of the animals, but rather the Leeches surrounding the murky waters of the Swamp. As it’s a tier down on the difficulty compared to the Mountains and Plains, getting it shouldn’t do much harm (assuming you don’t get attacked and poisoned) and a simple bow can get you those without risking an agonizing health reduction.
Once you take all those and combine them into the cauldron you should be enjoying the power of maximum health that even a doctor can be proud of (assuming your doctor loves raw numbers).
- Best health-giving food in the game (so far)
- Easier in terms of biome sources to make it
- The best food to survive hits from bosses
While a tough one to make, Valheim’s flexible gameplay just gives so many options to survive and adapt to that finding your combinations can be great fun in itself, and while you may not know what the right combination is, you shouldn’t worry as it may still be different as we get more content for the game.
As of the current time, I’d suggest looking at the wiki for the best combos in each phase of the biome or try these combinations that have helped me and my friends through the game.
- Early Game: Cooked Meat, Grilled Neck Tail, Berries/Honey/Mushrooms
- Mid Game: Sausages, Carrot Soup, Turnip Stew
- End Game: Blood Pudding/Fish Wraps, Cooked Lox Meat, Lox Meat Pie
As stated, it takes three food sources to be at your absolute peak, so when you grab food, be sure to get the best that your current campaign allows you to get, and any of the above-rated items can be mixed and matched, according to your taste (and availability). With this list, you should have enough to take on anything the Viking world has to offer, and with the upcoming Hearth and Home update revamping the food you take in, we can’t wait to see what many more meals await us in the next update.
While this list is a mouthful, I hope this can help any starving Vikings get through the next days of adventure they make. Eat well and conquer better!
