Feel like building a period-accurate home for your character in Valheim? As luck would have it, the game provides everything you need in order to make a Viking longhouse. The recipe is remarkably simple: You basically want a house that is longer than it is wide. However, for true authenticity, you’ll want to choose the right decorations and brace the entire structure with wooden trusses and beams. Here’s what you need to know to get started.
How to build a Viking longhouse in Valheim
Given that Valheim is all about the Viking lifestyle, it makes sense to build a Viking longhouse for your character. As you may expect, longhouses are long, narrow buildings with enough interior space to accommodate kitchen, sleeping quarters, and a central hearth.
There isn’t any single, proper design plan when it comes to real-world Viking longhouses. Floor plans and layouts changed quite a bit throughout the Viking Age. However, they all shared one attribute in common: They were longer than they were wide. In fact, many were built to resemble the hull of a Viking longship turned upside down.
To make a Viking longhouse in Valheim, simply build a structure that is longer than it is wide. No matter your design, you need to make sure it has a solid foundation and sturdy roof supports. This is especially true if it will be more than 10 meters (five tiles) wide. Otherwise, the longhouse will effectively be one long room.
If you want to be completely period-accurate, you may consider adding curved walls. These help the longhouse look more like a ship turned upside-down, but will require more complex roof work. A fenced-in area at one end (away from the fire) could also serve as an animal pen for players who tame boars and wolves. However, no matter how Viking Age-accurate it may be, you don’t want to have a central hearth without building a chimney overhead. Like with real-world Vikings, smoke inhalation will sharply reduce your Valheim character’s life expectancy.
Once the long hall has been completed, all that’s left is to decorate. Viking longhouses were typically adorned with shields, banners, fur rugs, and weapon stands — many of the same furniture pieces you’ll find in Valheim. Shelves, tables, and benches usually lined the walls, providing a place to rest or to sleep. Finally, the entire structure was braced by a special type of support called a timber roof truss, which you can build out of both wood and core wood beams.
