Valheim Taming and Breeding Guide

Why tame at all

Taming turns wild creatures into a renewable stock. Instead of hunting each trip, you harvest meat and hides from animals that stay put.

Wolves add a second benefit: they defend the base. A pack outside your wall hits invaders while you work inside.

Taming a boar

Build a small pen with a door you can close. Drop mushrooms, berries, or carrots inside, then lure a boar in and seal it.

Leave food in the pen and step back. The boar eats, its tame meter fills, and it stops running from you.

Once tame, it follows your hand and drops when you harvest it. Two tame boar with food will breed.

Taming a wolf

Wolves live in the Mountains and fight back, so taming them is riskier than boar. Use a bigger pen and a safer approach.

Drop raw meat inside the pen and keep your distance. A tamed wolf joins your defence and scales with your pack size.

Taming a lox

Lox roam the Plains and hit hard, so only attempt this in solid armour. A wide pen and patience are the whole method.

Feed them barley or flax and wait them out. A tame lox is a walking source of lox meat and hides for top-tier food.

Breeding for a steady supply

Two tame animals of one kind with food nearby will spawn young. This gives you endless meat without re-taming from the wild.

Keep the pen stocked and the bloodline grows on its own. The creatures guide lists what each tame animal yields.

Riding a Lox: the saddle is a tool, not a mount slot

Lox are the Plains creature that makes taming worth the effort, because they are the only tamable animal you can ride.

To ride one:

1. Craft a Lox saddle.
2. Assign the saddle to a hotbar key.
3. Stand close to a tamed Lox and use the saddle to equip it.

What changes once you are on it:

• Directional keys do not turn the Lox — you steer it differently from walking, and the first ride is where most players learn that the hard way.
• When you are not making it move, the Lox attacks nearby enemies on its own, using the same bite and stomp it uses when unsaddled. A parked Lox is a turret.

What a Lox hits for, so you know what you are riding:

That is a mount that out-damages most early weapons while you are doing nothing but sitting on it.

Breeding requirements, if you want more than one: the Lox must be happy and well fed — Cloudberries, Flax or Barley — and there must be another Lox within 8 meters. Taming and breeding both need the area to stay active, so a fenced pen with food inside is the setup, not an open field.

Related guides

• Valheim hub — all guides for this game.
• Advanced Valheim tactics.
• Valheim base building guide.