Valheim has multiple levels of gearing up, with each related to defeating one of the Fallen. You start off with basically rag, wood, and stone, and end up with magical gear of all sorts. But what’s the best gear to use at the various “ages”? Having put over 700 hours into the game (yes, I know; I need help) here is my perspective. (Note: this ignores food – that could be its own series of posts – and minor items. This is just all about armor and weapons.)

At the start you get… a rock. Some wood. Some rags. That’s it. That’s what you've got. You can craft leather armor and stone weapons as well as a bow. The stone axe is your best multitool at this point, and starting to train with it now will give you an edge later. (Hammer of course is always useful and is basically ignored for this post – you always need it.) Ignore the club for now. It’s basically useless. The flint spear can give you an edge, but takes a bit to master. You can make a shield, but don’t do a tower shield: it’ll slow you down too much and you don’t have enough armor right now to take a hit when you get winded. Get good with the bow because it will feed you, keep you at range in combat, and you’re going to need it for the first boss: Eikthyr. The best way to fight him is to do it at range with a ton of fire arrows. You can do it other ways, but why?

Best Gear:

• Armor: Leather

• Melee Weapon: Stone Axe

• Ranged Weapon: Crude Bow

• Best Overall: Stone Axe

• Consumable: Minor Healing

After Eikthyr’s defeat, you get some horns you can use to make antler pickaxes… which is awesome because it lets you get your first big power-up: copper ore. By Odin’s Beard, I have spent hours mining copper ore in the Black Forest. So. Much. Mining. It got so bad on my second play-through that I was screaming “Hi Ho” at the top of my lungs while mining or kiting trolls so I could mine more ore so I could make weapons so I could kite trolls so I could mine ore… ok. That one got away from me. After you got a crap ton of copper ore you need to grab some Surtling cores (Stagbreaker is good for this) and start to smelting. Now is the time to figure out what you want to specialize on, weapon-wise. Get good with the axe as it’s going to be your secondary weapon pretty much period. Are you going to sword and board? Be a polearm user? Use clubs? The latter two are good options later on. Swords and shields are probably my favorite combination because good defense and offense, but the polearm from Mistlands is hands down one of the deadliest things in the game right now. Starting from an early stage with the atgeir could seriously set you up later on.

• Armor: Bronze

• Melee Weapon: Bronze Sword (with Banded Shield)

• Ranged Weapon: Finewood Bow

• Best Overall: Bronze Axe

• Consumable: Minor Healing

Swamps, how I hate you. Swamps. The only place where you can get iron. Swamps. So many dead things that should not be moving. Gawd, I hate you. Can’t we just skip swamps and go straight to the mountains? I’d rather be torn apart by wolves than be getting killed by a damn leech again. After you take out the Elder, you get to chop wood fast and that’s great and all, but now you need to go to the swamp to get the good stuff. Great. The Draugr are going to eat your face. The leeches will probably just kill you too. But if you can get enough iron, you can really get into the game. Iron swords and huntsman bows all around. One thing you’ll need to make sure you have plenty of: Poison Resistance potions. The swamp is full of things venomous and poisonous and you don’t want none of that.

• Armor: Iron Armor

• Melee Weapon: Iron Sword (with Banded Shield – still. The Iron Buckler isn’t that great)

• Ranged Weapon: Huntsman Bow

• Best Overall: Iron Axe

• Consumable: Poison Resistance

The original end-game before Mistlands came out, the “black metal age,” had some challenging enemies (deathsquitos, I’m looking at you, you flying potato-shaped bastards). Yes, fulings suck and hit like a freight train, and they are how you get your next upgrade: black metal. But gawd, the deathsquito is a Dungeons and Dragons stirge on crack. Hey, devs: maybe, you know, less of those on the spawn rate?

Getting padded armor will save you and black metal quickly becomes a matter of where to put it all. Soon as you get some, killing the fulings becomes much easier, and even fully kitted out, you’re going to end up with chests of the stuff with no purpose but to sit there.

Curiously, the medium stamina potion becomes better than a healing potion, thanks to how deadly the fulings are. “Don’t get hit. Hit first” becomes the motto to live by.

• Armor: Padded Armor with Lox Cape

• Melee Weapon: Black Metal Sword (with Black Metal Shield)

• Ranged Weapon: Draugr Fang

• Best Overall: Black Metal Axe

• Consumable: Medium Stamina

Adding the Mistlands was something folks were really waiting for – including myself. I had an utter blast when it came out, and I got to play with a half dozen of my friends, to boot. The thing I loved about it the most was the freaking feather cloak. I cannot tell you how many times I have died simply by falling off a mountain, and I’m a filthy casual, so my skills were not good enough to do a jump on some of the more challenging peaks. It almost always ended up with me just falling and leaving a pretty headstone. That cloak changed things. Hell, the magic changes things. Suddenly the end-game was radically different (see below for more thoughts on this). We now had access to magical weapons and items of all kinds – if we could survive long enough to get the stuff to build them.

I think the Mistwalker was one of my favorite items instantly. I just liked the look and I’m fond of swords in general (which should be obvious by now). Also, a bit of a change for me was swapping from bow to crossbow, with the Arbalest doing massive damage at the expense of speed. With carapace armor, I was willing to take the hit to speed, given how protected I ended up. Himmin afl was so brutally amazing that I spent hours upping my polearm skill so I could use it. It was used almost as much as my sword.

• Armor: Carapace Armor with Feather Cloak

• Melee Weapon: Mistwalker (with Carapace Shield), though Himmin afl is a VERY close second

• Ranged Weapon: Arbalest

• Best Overall: Jotun Bane

• Consumable: Major Healing

There is more to Valheim equipment than just weapons and armor, but they are probably some of the most important items in the game. I added potions in this post and really they should have their own article. Same with food, and the various miscellaneous items that you can get, like Megingjord. Those things are important and often act as force multipliers to your other gear, but again – they deserve their own post.

Readers will notice I am a simple man: I prefer swords, bows, axes, and shields. Why? Swords are probably the best bang for your buck when it comes to stamina cost, reliability, and lethality. Axes are tools and weapons. Bows generally work best as far as the ranged stuff goes, though I admit the crossbow from Mistlands is pretty awesome and I favor that currently. I’m terrible with blocking when it comes to the shield, but I still try anyway.

One thing you’ll notice is that I did not cover going the magic route with staves and such. That’s intentional. I haven’t gotten to mess with that side much, and it feels like it (along with the other stuff I mentioned) really belongs in its own post. There is a lot of ground to cover there, and I’d rather poke it a bit more on Valheim than do a bad job of it.

I find I favor getting up close and personal whenever possible and that colors the way I approach problems. This is for any game really, but especially survival and action roleplaying games.

What are your favorite weapon and armor combos? Did I miss something important here? Definitely let us know!