Valheim Creatures: Tameable Animals, Mounts & Hostile Mobs

Valheim creatures define every moment of the survival loop, from the first greyling that swings a stick at your wooden walls to the lox you eventually ride across the Plains. Whether you are hunting meat for stamina, taming a boar for breeding, or learning which greydwarf packs spawn at night, knowing the full creature roster turns a confusing early game into a clear progression path. This guide breaks down the tameable valheim animals, the unlockable valheim mounts, and the hostile mobs you will fight across all eight biomes, with mechanics and drop tables drawn from Valheim on Steam and community data on the Valheim Wiki.

Valheim Creatures Overview: The Full Bestiary at a Glance

Valheim ships with a roster of roughly 60+ unique creatures, split between passive valheim animals you can hunt or tame and aggressive mobs tied to specific biomes. According to the official store page, creature drops drive the leather, meat, trophy and bone economy that fuels every armor set and food recipe, so understanding what each mob provides is foundational. The table below organizes the roster by category, making it easy to scan which creatures you have already met and which ones await in the Mistlands or the new Deep North.

This high-level map sets the stage for the deep dives below. Each tier of the game introduces a new wave of valheim creatures, and the resource they drop dictates your next gear upgrade more often than the ore you mine.

Tameable Valheim Animals: Boars, Wolves, Lox and Askvin

Taming converts wild valheim animals into permanent residents of your base or traveling companions, and it scales from simple berry-feeding to boss-gated mechanics. The breeding system, once unlocked, lets you selectively produce higher-generation offspring with better stats, which is why players build enclosed pens rather than letting boars roam free.

Boars: The Starter Tame

Boars are the first tameable creature most players meet. You approach a wild boar, drop raspberries, blueberries or mushroom on the ground, and back away until the hunger bar fills. After roughly thirty in-game minutes the boar becomes tame and can be led with a boar snout into a fenced enclosure. Boars breed on their own inside pens, and high-generation offspring (4-star and above) produce significantly more raw meat per harvest.

• Preferred food: raspberries, blueberries, mushrooms, carrots, turnips

• Tame time: ~30 minutes in-game

• Breeding trigger: 2+ tamed boars in a small pen with food nearby

• Best use: passive meat and leather scrap farm

Wolves: Mountain Predators

Wolves spawn in the Mountain biome and require raw meat to tame, which means you need a steady food supply before attempting the process. They deal heavy slash damage and follow you into combat, making them effective early-Mountain bodyguards. The valheim wolf taming guide walks through the exact taming loop and the 2-star breeding check that unlocks the strongest generation.

• Preferred food: raw meat, neck tails, fish

• Tame time: ~30 minutes, can fail if interrupted by a drake or stone golem

• Breeding trigger: 2+ tamed wolves within 5 meters

• Best use: Mountain exploration and base guard

Lox: Plains Giants and Ultimate Mount

The lox is a tanky tamed creature that doubles as one of two rideable valheim mounts once you craft the lox saddle at a level 7 workbench. Taming requires cloudberries, which only grow in the Plains, so the creature is biome-locked. Lox can be bred, ridden at moderate speed, and used as a mobile tank during Fuling village raids. Players who master lox herding often skip building a cart for long Plains hauls.

• Preferred food: cloudberries only

• Tame time: ~30 minutes, multiple lox stack bonuses

• Saddle cost: 15 leather scraps, 20 fine wood, 10 iron

• Best use: Plains travel, Fuling raids, tank in Mistlands

Askvin: Mistlands Pack Mule

Added in a later content update and refined through the Mistlands era, the askvin is a smaller rideable creature that excels at traversing rough terrain. Unlike the lox, the askvin does not tank hits but offers superior mobility and a saddlebag-style inventory interaction. Taming follows a similar feed-and-wait loop using mushroom or jotun puffs harvested in the Mistlands.

• Preferred food: mushrooms, jotun puffs

• Tame time: ~20 minutes

• Saddle cost: 10 scale hide, 15 refined eitr, 5 black marble

• Best use: Mistlands exploration and quick resource runs

Valheim Mounts: Riding, Saddles and Travel

Two creatures qualify as true valheim mounts: the lox and the askvin. Both require a crafted saddle, both consume stamina while sprinting, and both are immune to fall damage, which makes them excellent for crossing the Mistlands cliffs. The following table compares the two mounts so you can decide which one fits your current progression stage.

If you are still in bronze or iron age, the lox is the realistic first mount. If you have already cleared the Mistlands queen and want speed for farming eitr, the askvin becomes the daily driver. The valheim enemies list provides a complementary view of the hostile mobs you will fight while mounted.

Hostile Valheim Creatures: Greylings, Greydwarves, Trolls and Beyond

The hostile side of the valheim creatures roster is what makes the game feel dangerous, and each biome escalates both the mob stats and the loot tier. Knowing the spawn rules helps you avoid ambushes and pick the right weapon for each encounter.

Greylings and Greydwarves: The Black Forest Threat

The greyling is the smallest member of the Greydwarf family and the first creature most players kill for a trophy. Greylings throw stones and call nearby packs when damaged, so ignoring one can snowball into five. Greydwarfs are their larger cousins, and Greydwarf Brutes and Greydwarf Shamans spawn alongside the base mob. Shamans heal allies and can quickly turn a losing fight, so prioritize them first.

Trolls are the headline threat of the Black Forest, and players who learn the valheim troll armor set bonus build their entire mid-game identity around farming them. A solo troll is winnable at bronze-tier gear if you kite around trees; in groups, they become a credible end-game threat until you swap to iron weapons.

Trolls: Mid-Game Mini-Bosses

The valheim troll is a 600 HP giant that swings a log for massive damage and occasionally throws boulders. Trolls spawn in the Black Forest, often near troll caves that drop ancient bark and core wood. Learning the roll-dodge timing against the overhead smash is the single most important combat skill in early-mid game.

• HP: 600 (solo, 1,800 in troll cave event)

• Damage: 80 melee, 100 boulder

• Weakness: pierce damage (atgeir is ideal) and tree kiting

• Drop: 5 troll hide, 20 troll hair, 1 troll trophy

Late-Game Hostiles: Seekers, Gjalls and Ulv

Once you enter the Mistlands, the valheim creatures list shifts toward insectoid horrors. Seekers are fast melee units that swarm the player, while Gjalls are flying jellyfish-like enemies that spit seekers at you. Ulv are a stealth unit that can ambush you from the mist, and the Dvergr are neutral dwarves that either help or shoot you with a bolt depending on whether you steal their loot. The Mistlands is also where the Fuling villages of the Plains stop feeling dangerous and start feeling easy by comparison.

The Deep North, added in the 1.0 release, introduces frost-aligned predators tuned for endgame parties. According to community testing on the r/Valheim subreddit, these new mobs are designed for groups of three to five players in full Mistlands or padded armor.

Biome-by-Biome Creature Spawn Guide

Spawns are biome-locked and event-driven, so your encounter with each valheim creature depends on where you stand and what time it is in-game. The summary below distills the most relevant spawn rules, drawn from the official patch notes and confirmed by community data on the Valheim Wiki.

Night spawns in the Meadows and Black Forest are the most underestimated danger. A single valheim greydwarf is harmless; ten of them, plus two shamans, can flatten a fresh Meadows base in minutes. The community consensus, reported on Reddit threads and the official wiki, is to always light the perimeter of a base with torches and stakewalls, which both block spawns and grant the "rested" buff.

Creature Drops, Trophies and Progression

Every valheim creature you kill drops materials, and several drop trophies that are mandatory boss-summoning ingredients. The table below lists the most important drops for progression, ordered by the tier at which you first meet each mob.

Trophies also drive your armor progression. The valheim best armor tier list sorts the available sets by biome and stats, and almost every entry on that list requires hides or trophies from a specific creature. In other words, killing the right valheim creatures is just as important as mining the right ore.

Taming and Breeding Mechanics Explained

Taming and breeding are two separate but linked systems. Taming converts a wild creature into a tamed one; breeding multiplies your tamed population and produces higher-stat generations. The community-tested rules below apply to all four tameable valheim animals.

• Feed before you aggro: dropping the preferred food on the ground near a wild mob is safer than trying to shove it into their inventory.

• Stay close, stay calm: leaving the radius pauses the taming bar, and combat instantly resets it.

• Build a pen first: 2x2 or 3x3 wood enclosures with a gate are the standard, because they let you isolate one creature during the taming window.

• Breeding distance: two tamed creatures of the opposite sex (only boars and wolves use sex; lox and askvin breed asexually) must be within 5 meters with food available.

• Generation stars: each successful birth increases the offspring's stat multiplier by 10% per star, up to a 4-star cap that doubles base output.

A common early-game mistake, reported by players on Reddit and the Steam community, is releasing a freshly tamed boar into the wild. The moment a wild mob spawns near a tamed animal, the tame state is preserved only if the tamed animal is inside your pen. If you free-range them in the Meadows, a passing troll will one-shot your entire breeding line.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the easiest valheim creature to tame first?

The boar is the easiest tame because raspberries spawn in nearly every Meadows biome and the taming window is forgiving. Drop 5-10 raspberries on the ground near a wild boar, stay within 10 meters without attacking, and the tame completes in about 30 in-game minutes. The boar can then be led into a small pen using a boar snout or by walking through a tight gate.

Can I ride both valheim mounts in the Mistlands?

Yes, both the lox and the askvin can be ridden in the Mistlands and into the new Deep North biome, though the lox is slower on the rocky terrain. The askvin is generally preferred for Mistlands traversal because of its stamina efficiency and ability to dodge seeker ganks. Both mounts are immune to fall damage, which is critical when crossing the floating islands of the Mistlands.

Why do valheim greydwarfs keep spawning near my base at night?

Greydwarfs and greylings spawn in the Black Forest biome and a 50-meter radius around your base if it is closer than that to the forest edge. The fix is to extend the torch perimeter to at least 50 meters, build a stakewall ring, or relocate further into the Meadows. According to community data on the Valheim Wiki, the spawn rate is also tied to the in-game day counter, so day 50+ bases see noticeably more aggro.

Are valheim trolls worth fighting for the armor set?

Yes, the troll set bonus is one of the strongest mid-game perks, granting 15% bonus sneak attack damage which compounds with atgeir or bow loadouts. Each troll gives 5 troll hide and 20 troll hair, enough for one armor piece in roughly 3 kills, so a full set requires about 12 troll kills plus the trophy. The troll cave event spawns two trolls simultaneously and is the fastest farm if you can survive the arena.

Do I need to feed my tamed valheim animals every day?

No, tamed creatures do not require daily feeding to stay alive. However, they only breed when food is available within their pen, so the practical rule is to keep a stack of berries, mushrooms or cloudberries in a nearby chest. The moment food is in range and two eligible mates are within 5 meters, breeding triggers automatically.