How to tame a boar in Valheim

Wondering how to tame a boar in Valheim? They may not be the friendliest creatures you'll come across during your time in the Viking afterlife, but these angry little pigs are useful to have around. They can usually be found in the Meadows biome and they're likely to be one of your first sources of meat—and the leather scraps they drop are useful, too.

While boars aren't particularly rare, you might have to travel further afield if you've exhausted your local supply—at least until they start respawning. But if you manage to tame and breed them, this is something you won't have to worry about ever again. So if you want to tame your very own Valheim boar, as well as learn how to breed them, read on to find out everything you need to know.

Valheim boars: How to tame one

Head to the Meadows, and before long, you'll run into a boar. Before attempting to tame one there are a few things you should do to prepare.

Firstly, collect some wood and head over to your Valheim workbench to craft some fence panels. You'll also need a stash of berries, carrots, and mushrooms to feed to the boar and calm them down. When you first encounter a boar, they'll likely be angry, and they will attack you. They're relatively weak—they can't kill you in one hit, even at the beginning—but it's worth equipping leather armour, just in case.

Here's how to tame a boar in Valheim:

• Build a pen with a gate.
• Startle a boar and make sure it's following you.
• Lure it into the pen and close the gate to trap the boar.
• Drop food in the pen: You can leave piles of mushrooms, raspberries, blueberries, or carrots on the ground. Just open your inventory with Tab and left-click on the piggy snack and left-click again where you want it to drop. The boar will snuffle these down when it's hungry. 

If you're struggling, take a look at our video guide above (at 2:20) for some pointers. It's important to walk away after dropping food for the boar as they appear to be reluctant to eat if you stand too close. You'll see small yellow hearts appear after they've had their meal.

Taming them requires patience as the boar will wander around in the pen until it's ready for a tasty snack. It takes a few days for them to feel comfortable, but you can hover your cursor over the animal to see how close you are to taming it (displayed as a percentage). Once you've successfully tamed a boar, you can pet it.

Valheim boar: How to breed them

Once you have a pen filled with happy boars, you can encourage them to breed. It's a good idea to expand your pen as you introduce more of these wild pigs to it, and kill two or three boars every few days to make room for more.

YouTuber FireSpark81 has been running some tests, and thinks that carrots and mushrooms are the best foods to encourage breeding. Once they've eaten, two boars will stand close together and you'll see a flurry of pink hearts around them. They'll make a squealing noise, and then a piggy will spawn next to them. You cannot interact with piggies until they grow into boars, but they'll automatically be tame as adults.

How to get and mount a Valheim boar trophy 

Occasionally, killing animals or enemies in Valheim will award you a trophy. These items are rare drops that can be picked up and hung on walls in your base. Some of these trophies have other uses. For example, to summon the first Valheim boss Eikthyr, you need to place two deer trophies on Eikthyr's altar, and you can put deer trophies towards an early, but powerful, weapon, Valheim's Stagbreaker war hammer. 

As far as I can tell, boar trophies are mostly used for decoration. To get a Valheim boar trophy, all you need to do is kill some boars. While you may not score one straight away, keep at it and you'll have a stack of them in no time. 

Chances are that you'll be waiting a while before you can actually mount your boar trophy, as you'll need a few later-game resources first: fine wood x4 and bronze nail x1. You can get fine wood from chopping birch and oak trees (which require the bronze axe) or from looting shipwrecks. Bronze nails are created by smelting bronze ingot in a smelter (Surtling core x5, stone x20). 

With those ingredients you'll be able to craft an item stand. Craft it with a workbench nearby and attach it with the hook facing away from the wall. Select the trophy you want to hang on the stand by adding it to your hotbar. Then interact with the item stand and you can proudly show off your porky conquest.