Weapons

Weapons in Valheim are split into classes, and choosing between them is not about damage. It is about damage type, because every biome resists one and folds to another, and about stamina, because a swing you cannot afford does nothing. Below you will find the weapon builds and what settles them, the weapon classes side by side, the damage types and what resists each, and the weapon skill and upgrade quality that beat any weapon on this page.

Builds

In Valheim a build is simply what you carry, not a class picked from a menu, and these builds work:

• One-handed and shield. This is the default, and the only build that parries. A shield replaces the weapon's own block power, parry force and parry bonus outright, which leaves the weapon slot free to be pure damage. Bucklers parry best and block worst, while tower shields block hardest, cannot parry at all and cost 10% of your movement in hand against a round shield's 5%.
• Two-handed. With no shield, you block on the weapon's own numbers and give up the parry entirely. What you get in return is reach and crowd control: a battleaxe swings through walls, and an atgeir has an area spin that a Fuling village exists to be used on.
• Stealth. Knives hit an enemy that has not seen you for 6 times damage, where everything else manages 3. Sneaking decides whether you get that opener. It works off the light where you stand, cutting enemy view range to half at skill 0 in full dark and to a fifth at skill 100. The build wants darkness, and it does not want a weapon that glows.
• Ranged. Bows draw in 2.5 seconds at skill 0 and 0.5 at 100, capped at one shot every 0.8 seconds from skill 85. A crossbow fires one bolt every 6 seconds and costs 4 stamina to load and nothing to fire, but a sprint or a jump throws the reload away. Either way, the ammunition is added to the weapon's damage before every other multiplier, so the arrow is part of the build rather than a consumable.
• Magic. It starts in the Mistlands and runs on Eitr instead of stamina, so without eitr food you have no spells at all. Elemental magic spends pure Eitr on damage, while blood magic spends Eitr and a share of your current health on summons and shields, which is why it can never kill you. Eitr regenerates fastest when the bar is empty, stops dead while you swim, and doubles while Rested.

All Weapon Categories

The Classes

Damage

Every fight runs on physical and elemental damage types, and a creature reacts to each of them separately. A weapon that deals a physical type and an element is really two weapons. When the physical half is resisted, as it is by everything in the Mistlands, the element is the damage that lands.

Damage Types has the full table: what is weak, what resists, what is immune, and what each rung multiplies by.

Damage System

These multipliers matter more than which weapon in a class you hold:

• Skill, up to +141%. Each class is a skill capped at 100, and at 100 you deal +141% damage and knockback for 33% less stamina per swing. No weapon upgrade comes close. You earn it only by swinging, and a death takes a slice of it back.
• Quality, 4 levels. Everything crafted starts at quality 1 and can be upgraded 3 more times at the station that made it. Every figure quoted on these pages is quality 1, so treat them as floors, not ceilings.

An upgrade rarely raises every type a weapon deals. Each weapon's own page shows which half its upgrades actually improve, and that decides whether upgrading it is worth the metal.