Valheim Taming Wolves Guide

by KodyackGaming

Hello everyone! So me and a friend of mine spent some time (a lot of time, took 3 full attempts) getting ourselves a wolf army, and I figured I should share some lessons to help those who want a pet dog that can murder your foes for you. Without having to go through the process that it is. I will assume everyone knows how to capture the wolves, but just in case: build a stakewall box with one open side, and a platform inside. aggro a wolf, run inside so it follows, jump on the platform and place the wall while it’s inside (parrying the wolf to stun it helps), then jump out of the box, throw meat in, and put a roof on so it can’t see you as easily (stay crouched to help keep it from attacking the walls)

First, the taming: Here is the hardest thing about this, and the thing that has a few bugs to watch out for.

Lesson 1: Split the meat into stacks of 1 each before throwing it into the enclosure. A bug that occurred to us during our first attempt was that the wolf we caught ate the entire stack of 10 raw meat we through in there at first. We luckily had some spare, so our first wolf- a 1-star wolf at that! was eventually tamed.

Lesson 2: Tame more than one wolf before you try to bring them back home. Why, you may ask? Well on the way, they’ll produce cubs. You can build a small hut for these cubs if you want, but this will make sure that- in the event something horrible happens- you will have spare wolves and not have to spend nearly as much time finding, caging, and taming them. Our poor, unfortunate, first wolf died to a skeleton surprise just as we got back home. A real sad event, but one we avenged.

Lesson 3: Wolves spawned at night only eat at night, and despawn during the day. Don’t tame them (at first). Our second attempt had us cage not one, not two, not even 3 or 4, but 5 different wolves! 4 regular ones, and a 2 starred one. While it was a chaotic ordeal, we managed to do so, and while they only ate at night we figured this was fine. Unfortunately, however, after taming them, EVEN if the 2-stared wolf was set to “follow” it ran away and tried to despawn. In following it, the other 4 regular wolves vanished, and eventually our 2-starred friend did as well, when we could no longer track it. For this reason, tame day-wolves first. They don’t despawn.

Lesson 4: starred wolves only spawn at night, and you want starred pets right? Well have day wolves first. Once you have a regular wolf, you can catch and tame a 2-star (since they only eat at night it will take a long time, longer than the day-wolves, but works all the same. Just at night. Don’t leave draw distance or they will despawn, if you’re close by they can’t.) If you breed them, it’s a 50/50 if the cub has 2 stars or none. Once you have 2-starred cubs, they won’t despawn during the day! Make sure you have a few just in case they get attacked, of course, but once you have 2-star cubs, you’re set. Note: night wolves only breed at night. It’ll take some time, make sure you bring a wolf with you to breed before you try to find a 2-star., they shouldn’t attack each other so you can safely leave it in the cage, I believe. I haven’t fully tested this, though, so do be careful.

Lesson 5: When taming starred wolves at night, don’t let them out of the cage even once tame! They will try to flee to despawn, even if on follow as previously mentioned. Just breed them in the cage and despawn them once you’re done. You may be able to transport them at night, but it’s risky and not worth the effort in our opinion.

Lesson 6: 1 piece of meat is 33% tameness if you are never spotted by the wolf. This is a “33.33, repeating of course” situation in that 3 pieces of meat, perfectly used, can tame a wolf, but you want 5 for safety, 4 at the minimum.

This leads me to section 2: Taking care of your new pets.

Lesson 1: Wolves breed FAST. Once we had a couple day wolves, just on the walk home, we ended up with 2 cubs.

Lesson 2: Cubs won’t listen to you (Until they grow up). They go where they want when they want. Best to cage them so they don’t wander away once you get them home.

Lesson 3: Keep your wolves in separate cages if you don’t want MORE cubs. You can’t control their breeding habits, what did you expect? We recommend having a pen already set up, but you can always just keep them on stay relatively separate.

Lesson 4: Good news, once tame they eat 1 from a stack properly. don’t throw all your meat to the wolves when they aren’t hungry in hopes of making a stockpile, however, as eventually item drop culling will delete them! Having 5 pieces on the ground should be enough for 3 days or so of them being happy, but do be sure to check back in.

Lesson 5: Wolves also eat neck tails. This one is pretty straightforward. They don’t eat serpent meat though. Other meats are still in testing. Haven’t used neck tails to tame, that might work as well, though.

Lesson 6: starred wolves don’t have extra health. WE THINK THIS IS A BUG! But, as discovered from our newly dubbed “Gate Guardian” during an attack, 2-star cubs grow up with regular wolf amounts of health. They still do 2-star damage, however.

Lesson 7: Our final lesson, wolves can survive a few days without food. This is cruel (you monster) but if you don’t want to spare the meat, you could lead a few wolves out to defend your base or hunt, and leave them outside until they starve, and replace them when they do (or die). The cub spawnrate should easily outdo the starvation rate as long as you keep feeding your parent wolves back home.

And that’s all I have for you today! new lessons may be added in the future, and maybe even new sections, but for now, this is what we’ve managed to figure out.

Things of note: We think the starred wolf health and the tame wolves despawning during the day IS a bug. We could be wrong, but we hope both of these things will be changed in time (perhaps with cult of the wolf?). We lost a total of 6 wolves during our taming attempts, and a 7th ( a 2-star wolf, which we knew we’d lose after taming and breeding it) in our journey to get an army of 2 star wolves, which we now have.