Valheim boats: how to make a boat and sail it

Learn how to make a boat and sail the seas in Valheim

How do you build a boat in Valheim? Valheim gives players an infinite number of gigantic worlds filled with islands both great and small to explore, but to get to most of those islands you'll need to build a boat and sail there.

There are multiple types of boat to craft in Valheim, and some are better than others. Our Valheim boats and sailing guide will walk you through how to craft each type of boat and why they're so useful. We'll also offer up some tips for sailing the oceans and repairing your boats in Valheim.

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If you want to make a boat in Valheim and start sailing the seas, there are a few things you should know. First: there are three different types of boat in Valheim. They are the Raft, the Karve, and the Longship.

The Raft is your earliest, weakest, and slowest option, but it's fairly easy to build. Later on you'll find that the Karve is stronger, faster, and more able to cross ocean biomes. And the Longship is stronger and quicker still.

You'll have to find certain items and resources before you can build each one, so consult the sections below where we discuss each boat in more detail.

The Raft is the first boat you can craft in Valheim. It is created with the following recipe:

So all you need to do is chop down a few trees and murder a few boar (getting an early start with boar taming will help with this), and you'll be able to build a Raft.

The downside is that the Raft is pretty small and weak, and really rather slow - particularly if the wind is not on your side. But it's a good way to learn the basics of sailing.

The Karve is where you can truly start to sail the oceans of the Valheim map. It's far faster, stronger, and more manoeuvrable than the Raft. To build a Karve, you need:

The tougher materials here are the Fine Wood (which you can get from chopping down Birch or Oak trees with a Bronze Axe, or getting a club-wielding Troll to chop them up for you); and Bronze Nails, which you can only get after making Bronze. So the Karve is very much a Bronze Age vessel.

It's a sleek and useful vehicle though, able to carry multiple players at once across oceans with ease - and it even comes with a small 4-slot storage area you can use to ferry items.

The Longship is the greatest and fastest boat you can make in Valheim, but before you can craft one you need to get your hands on Iron from Muddy Scrap Piles. Here's the recipe for crafting a Longship:

The good news is that both the new materials here - Iron and Ancient Bark - can be found in the Swamp biome. If you've historically had some trouble finding Swamp biomes I recommend you peruse our list of the best Valheim seeds.

The Longship is superior to the Karve in basically every way. It's faster, able to sail against the wind more easily, and - perhaps loveliest of all - it has a cargo hold with a whopping 18 slots for transporting goods across the map.

Here are some quick tips and useful pieces of information on how to sail in Valheim:

That wraps up this guide to sailing and making boats in Valheim. If you're after more general tips on creating a new home, be sure to check out our Valheim building guide. Elsewhere there's our list of the best Valheim weapons.