Valheim patch adds more surtling cores for all you Viking smelters

Valheim patch notes
(Image credit: Iron Gate Studios)

If you've been playing co-op Viking survival game Valheim, you're probably keen to graduate from crafting weapons and clothing out of basic wood and leather. Metal is where it's at, and to start melting down tin, copper, and iron ore for crafting, you're going to need a smelter and a kiln to create coal to power it.

But to craft the smelter and kiln, you're going to need to find an item called a surtling core, a glowing red orb you can only find in burial chambers located in the Black Forest and guarded by mobs of skeletons. You'll need a total of 10 surtling cores, 5 to build the smelter and 5 more for the kiln.

But surtling cores have been difficult to find for some players. Clearing out a burial chamber isn't easy due to the angry skellies, narrow corridors, and nearly pitch-black environment. And many players, myself included, have fought our way through numerous burial chambers only to find a single core—or none at all. It's a bit frustrating.

The new Valheim 0.142.5 patch thankfully addresses that issue, adding more surtling cores to burial chambers, meaning you hopefully won't battle your way through the inky, skelly-filled tombs and come away with nothing but a handful of bones.

Here are the full changes the patch introduces: 

  • Fixed freeze at Valheim logo screen
  • Fixed Block-sfx
  • Fixed Spaming dodge consumed extra stamina
  • Serverlist tweaks (multi-line names, server count)
  • Continous music enabled by default
  • Drowning effects added
  • Compendium icon updated
  • Made Hugin dialog guis slightly larger
  • More surtling cores in burial chambers
  • Serverlist fixes
  • Lowered enemy per-player damage scaling
  • Localization fixes
  • Server filter fix

If you're just getting started in Valheim, we've been putting together a few handy guides, like 10 tips for Valheim beginners, how to build a campfire indoors (and avoid dying from the smoke filling your house), and how to find flint, which you'll need for crafting new weapons, tools, and workbench improvements.

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

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