Valheim - How to Tame & Breed Boars, Wolves & Loxes

Valheim is a game where besides building, crafting, and fighting there’s also a feature that will allow you to tame a few animals, 3 in total to be precise, but the process is very time consuming and tedious with the game providing very little knowledge on how to even begin taming them.

In this guide, we will show you how to tame each one of them so you won’t need to run around aimlessly having to waste so many hours just for one single animal.

Each creature in Valheim comes with three different levels and three slightly different appearances that are indicated by the stars below its health bar no star, one star, and two stars, each one has different stats with of course the two stars being the most powerful.

One last thing to note is that each animal that can be tamed has a few indicators above its head, two icons that indicate the level of alertness, and some words inside the parenthesis that tell you if it’s wild, its taming progress and its mood.

Here are a few images to get an idea. The indicators above the Boar’s head counts for all animals that can be tamed.

Status Indicators: Searching, Alerted, Info, Valheim.

How to Capture Boars

Boar, Valheim.

The Boar is the first and easiest animal to tame, they live in the Meadows biome and they usually travel in packs, what you need to tame a Boar is food from bushes and the ground, to be more specific they will only eat Raspberries, Blueberries, Red Mushrooms, Carrots, and Turnips.

The easiest food you will find first are the Raspberries, and while they are quite a lot in the fields of the Meadows, it is recommended not to overuse them as they are not available for farming and can be only picked up from bushes, although we really hope a future update will give us the ability to plant and farm them along with Blueberries and Red Mushrooms.

What you could use to feed Boars instead are Carrots and Turnips since if you find just a few seeds you can plant them and have practically an infinite amount.

There is a mod that can help you with planting Raspberries and Blueberries on the Nexus Mods website if you are interested.

Boar Taming

Here’s step by step what you need to do in order to successfully tame a Boar.

1. Find a handful of Raspberries 20 or more should suffice.
2. Make sure you have enough wood to build a small enclosure with Roundpole Fences and one or two Wood Gates, be sure to keep the gate open, alternatively you can have one open hole in the fence and close it with a Roundpole Fence once the Boar has been baited inside.
3. Find a Boar and aggro it, then make sure it will chase you until you are inside the enclosure, after that close the gate as fast as you can trapping the boar inside.
4. Drop the Raspberries on the ground inside the enclosure and move far away from the Boar in order to lose the aggro.
5. Go into Sneak Mode and wait beside it until it is tamed, the time it takes for the boar to be tamed is approximately 30 minutes.

Boar Enclosure, Valheim.

This is how an enclosure for taming a Boar looks like, notice the yellow hearts above the boars, that means the taming process is working.

One last thing, if you want to bring more Boars in the enclosure and want to make sure your already tamed one won’t escape, you can make a small fence around it while inside the enclosure and keep it temporarily in there.

Boar Breeding

When you have successfully tamed two Boars you will be able to breed them, in order to do that them they need to have the Hungry status so they can eat, change their status to Happy and then reproduce.

Love is in the air, Valheim.

After that, one of the pigs will squeal and a Piggy will appear, breeding Boars with two different rarities will have a 50-50 chance to produce a Piggy with either parent’s rarity.

Aww look at this cute family, Valheim.

Breeding Boars has many advantages for early game players in Valheim as they provide them with Raw Meat and Leather Scraps, one downside they have though is that they can not be ordered to follow you and this might become frustrating if you have your base somewhere far away.

There are two ways of how you can move Boars from one place to another.

1. Make a long road of fences leading back to your base and an enclosure that can safely keep them inside.
2. Use an Abyssal Harpoon and pull them into your base.

The Abyssal Harpoon allows you to leash almost every creature in the game and relocate them somewhere else.

The best way would be to do both of those as the Abyssal Harpoon uses a lot of stamina once the boar is going in the opposite direction, and even though it’s tamed it will become frightened when it gets hit.

Boar Runestone, Valheim.

How to Capture Wolves

Wolves are aggressive animals and often travel in packs, it’s very rare to find only one by itself, they live in the Mountain biome, can aggro you from a fair distance and move to attack very quickly so when you are going to tame one you should at least have 60 Armor and the following items: Medium Healing Mead, Medium Stamina Mead, and food that increases your Stamina and a Pickaxe.

Wolves eat Raw Meat, Neck Tails, Raw Fish and Lox Meat.

Also, keep in mind that you will need some Frost Resistance Mead which lasts for 10 minutes and it stops you from being damaged by the cold or a Wolf Armor Chest, Wolf fur Cape, or a Lox Cape.

Tamed Wolves can follow you and fight with you, making them one of the most useful tamed animals to have by your side.

And one thing to remember, Wolves with star ratings appear only at night and de-spawn at dawn, more info on that will be found below in the breeding section.

Wolf Taming

In order to tame a Wolf, you must first prepare yourself with what we mentioned above, after that you can follow this step by step procedure to successfully make one yours.

1. The first thing you must do before you enter the Mountain biome is to make a small cabin outside that is large enough to house two Wolves and then you should eat food that gives you a lot of Stamina, the best and easiest ones to make are Carrot Soup, Turnip Stew and Sausages.
2. Find a few open areas around the Mountain and dig some deep holes so the Wolves can fall inside. (Don’t forget to mark them on your Map.)
3. Find a Wolf, let it chase you and jump into the hole you dug, then just wait for it to fall inside and then jump out, the Wolf will now be trapped and ready to be tamed, it is preferred to find one with no stars as starred Wolves only spawn at night.
4. You should drop a full stack of Raw Meat inside the hole and move away from the Wolf while sneaking to lose its aggro, then go back to it still in sneak mode and wait beside it until it is tamed.
5. After the Wolf has been tamed interact with it and make it follow you into the cabin, don’t forget to flatten the ground so it can come out of the hole.

Wolf Pit, Valheim.

This is how a Wolf Pit should look like, be sure to make it deep enough because Wolves are good climbers. Notice the yellow hearts, that means the taming process is working.

Wolf Breeding

It is recommended for the second Wolf to be a two starred one because they are twice as powerful as normal Wolves.

Keep in mind that breeding animals with two different rarities will produce an offspring that will have either one of them with a 50-50 chance.

Wolf Breeding Cabin right between the Black Forest and the Mountain biome, Valheim

With that being said the two-star Wolf requires a little more effort, so before we get into breeding here is how you need to do it.

You can follow the same exact process as taming a normal Wolf but, you must have a full stack of Raw Meat and be next to it until it will be tamed.

Do not leave its side even if tamed, and do not let it get outside the hole in the daytime.

Taming a two starred Wolf is a very time consuming procedure so be sure to have plenty of free time beforehand.

Starred Wolves despawn at dawn, so even if you successfully tame them they will run away from you and disappear that’s why you need to build a cabin that fits two Wolves inside.

When you have tamed your two starred Wolf you should then move it to the cabin only at night as quickly as possible, and stay there with the other Wolf that you have tamed until they have at least one two starred Wolf Cub.

If you can you should also place a Portal for easier access.

Two starred Wolf Cubs do not despawn at day those are the ones that you are going to use to breed more two starred Wolves.

After that, the original two starred Wolf that you tamed is not needed anymore so you can let it despawn without worrying.

A two starred Wolf Cub and its parents, how cute !, Valheim.

The process of mating again is similar to the Boars, both animals need to be fed and be happy.

The time it takes for a Wolf Cub to fully mature is two in game days.

After you have bred at least two Wolves and you want to take them to your base, if the base is nearby you can simply interact with them to follow you, but if it is on another island, then you have to use a boat and for that we recommend the Longship since it’s big enough to fit two of them inside.

In order to make the Wolves get onto the ship though you have to make a platform that will end above the ship, what you need to do then is make them follow you until the end of the platform and then interact with them to stay so you can push them onto the ship.

How to Capture Loxes

A Lox herd, Valheim.

The Lox are reptile like creatures that live in the Plains biome, the Lox unlike the Wolf and the Boar, have terrible hearing and eyesight and will only aggro you if you get right into their face or start attacking them.

Look how close I am to this monster and it is still searching for me, Valheim.

The Lox can be usually found in a herd of 2 and up to 5, they are very strong creatures and can easily destroy wooden structures, so in order to tame them you have to make a Stone Wall enclosure by placing a Workbench and then a Stonecutter.

The Stonecutter requires 2 pieces of Iron for it to be built, and because you can’t take the Iron with you through the Portal you have to either go to the Plains by foot and boat, or by the logout/login method.

The logout/login method can be done as follows.

1. Take the Iron in your inventory and enough wood to build a Workbench and a Chest.
2. Logout from the world and start a game in another world.
3. Build a Workbench and a Chest in the new world that you have created.
4. Login to the world you are normally playing and teleport to the area using a Portal at the location where you want to tame the Lox.
5. Logout again and go to the new world one more time, pick up the Iron from the chest, then logout from this world and login to the world you are normally playing.

Congratulations you have successfully transferred an item that can’t be teleported.

Lox Taming

Taming a Lox requires a lot of Stone and a big enough area for at least one of them to fit in.

The Stone is required to build an enclosure using Stone Walls but this time there’s not going to a Wood Gate, the Lox will be completely surrounded with Stone Walls.

The Lox eats Barley, Flax and Cloudberries.

Before you venture out in the Plains, keep in mind that this area is extremely hard and you will find numerous enemies that will deal a lot of damage, one in particular that you should always keep an eye out for is the Deathsquito.

Here’s a step by step procedure on how to tame a Lox.

1. Build an enclosure with Stone Walls near a herd of Lox but leave one side of it open.
2. Make sure you have 20 or more Cloudberries in your inventory since they are the easiest ones to find around the area.
3. Find and make a Lox chase you, stay close enough to them so they won’t lose the aggro.
4. Make it follow you until the end of the enclosure and quickly run to the open side with your hammer out to close it off.
5. Drop the Cloudberries on the ground, run a few meters away so it can lose the aggro, and once it has calmed down and eats them the taming process will begin, don’t forget to stay nearby until it is tamed.

Lox enclosure, Valheim.

This is how a Lox enclosure looks like.

Keep in mind that as of 147.3 Lox have no usefulness in the game besides being tamed and petted.

They can not breed so even if you feed them and keep them happy they will not mate and will not produce offsprings.

We hope that in future updates there’s going to be a way to utilize them like making them into pack mules and be able to carry a big amount of items or be able to be mounted.

I bet the Lox is thinking that this cloudberry looks very delicious, Valheim.

An this is the end of the taming guide, right now these are the 3 animals that can be tamed, with Wolves being the most useful ones since they can follow and fight by your side, but also provide you with meat and hide.