Damage Types
Every fight in Valheim runs on damage types, and each creature responds to each type differently. The physical types come from the weapon in your hands: slash, blunt, pierce, chop and pickaxe. The elemental types are fire, frost, lightning, poison and spirit, and they are usually the half of a weapon that decides a fight.
Chop and pickaxe are the odd pair. Chop fells trees and pickaxe breaks rock, and almost nothing living cares about either. That is why an axe is a poor weapon against armour but a fine one against a Greydwarf.
Physical Damage
Physical damage is what the weapon in your hands deals, and it is the half a creature is most likely to resist. Here is how it plays out across the creatures with a known resistance table:
| Type | Weak | Resists | Immune | What That Means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slash | 0 | 15 | 0 | Swords, axes and knives. Nothing in the game takes extra from slash and a third of the bestiary shrugs part of it off, which makes it the type that is never wrong and never the answer. |
| Blunt | 9 | 12 | 0 | Maces, clubs and the sledge. The specialist: skeletons, blobs and anything armoured in bone fold to it. |
| Pierce | 2 | 29 | 0 | Spears, arrows and bolts. The most resisted type there is, carried for what a thrown spear or a drawn bow multiplies it by rather than for the type itself. |
| Chop | 1 | 0 | 2 | What fells a tree. Only a handful of creatures answer to it at all, but it is what takes a building apart, which is why an abomination flattens a base so quickly. |
| Pickaxe | 1 | 1 | 3 | What breaks rock. Almost nothing living cares, with one loud exception: a stone golem is weak to it and resistant to nearly everything else. |
Chop and pickaxe come from tools as much as from weapons. They are the two types that matter against the world rather than against creatures: chop cuts wood and buildings, and pickaxe breaks stone.
Elemental Damage
Elemental damage is the half that decides a fight. Gem and ore weapons, arrows, bombs and staves all carry it, and when a creature resists the physical half of a weapon, the element is the damage that actually lands.
| Type | Weak | Resists | Immune | What That Means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fire | 21 | 18 | 9 | The widest swing in the game: 21 things take extra and 9 ignore it. It also burns on after the hit, which is why a fire arrow is worth more than its damage line says. |
| Frost | 9 | 10 | 7 | Damage and a slow. The slow is worth far more against something small and fast than against something large. |
| Lightning | 5 | 1 | 0 | The least resisted damage in the game. One creature resists it and nothing is immune, which is what makes the staves and the iolite weapons reliable everywhere. |
| Poison | 2 | 11 | 28 | Almost worthless offensively: 28 creatures ignore it outright. It is a stat worth having on armour rather than on a weapon. |
| Spirit | 10 | 0 | 40 | All or nothing. Nothing resists it, 40 creatures ignore it, and the 10 that do not are the undead and the Ashlands dead. |
A weapon that deals a physical type and an element is really two weapons in one. Everything in the Mistlands resists the physical half, and that is where an elemental weapon stops being a luxury.
How a Resistance Works
Each creature sits on one of five rungs for each type, and the multiplier is the whole reason to carry a second weapon:
- Very weak: takes double damage.
- Weak: takes half again as much.
- Neutral: takes full damage.
- Resistant: takes half.
- Very resistant: takes a quarter, and immune takes none at all.
The ladder applies to each type separately, so read the numbers on a weapon one at a time. A Frostner against a Skeleton lands its blunt half at one and a half times and its frost half in full. The same weapon against a Blob lands the blunt and wastes the frost.
Armour and the Other Direction
Resistances run both ways. What a set of armour resists decides which biome it is for, and the meads cover the rest: poison resistance opens the Swamp, frost resistance the Mountain, and fire resistance the Ashlands. A resistance on your side halves the damage coming in exactly as it halves the damage going out.
Notes
- Weapon stats are always quoted at quality 1. Upgrading a weapon rarely raises both halves of its damage.
- Backstab and sneak multipliers apply on top of the type, so a knife's pierce is worth far more from behind than against a shield wall.
- Chop damage breaks structures as easily as it fells trees, which is why an Abomination takes a base apart so quickly.
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