How to get Valheim silver and smelt it

Valheim silver
(Image credit: Iron Gate)

Finding Valheim silver is pretty important when you're exploring the Mountain biome, as it's used to craft essential items to stop you from freezing to death in the harsh wintry climate. To get it, you just need to grab hold of a pickaxe, get a smelter up and running, then wrap yourself in a wolf cape to keep out the cold. Naturally, the actual process is a lot more complicated than that, and silver in Valheim is difficult to track down – more so if you haven't taken out a swampy boss yet. With that in mind, here’s the best way to find Valheim silver and how to use it for crafting.

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How to get silver in Valheim

Valheim silver

(Image credit: Coffee Stain Publishing/Valheim wiki)

If you haven't started exploring the Mountain biome after defeating the Valheim Bonemass boss yet, then don't worry about acquiring silver; chances are, you'll be slain before you can get much of it by the wolves and drakes that populate the region. Once you have taken down Bonemass though and you're fully kitted out in iron, you're ready to get some Valheim silver.

Silver ore can be found in veins throughout the Mountain biome, sometimes on surface-level, but often hidden below the ground. This means that you'll need to use the Wishbone obtained by defeating Bonemass to reliably find it, as it will alert you to where it can be found. It's worth knowing that smaller Mountain biomes won't always contain any silver, so you may need to find a larger one if you've not having any luck.

When you find some silver, you need to have an Iron Pickaxe to mine it and obtain Silver Ore. Take this back to a Smelter at your base to turn it into Silver Bars, which can then be used to craft the following:

  • Wolf Armor (Chest, Legs, and Cape)
  • Silver Sword, Shield, and Arrows
  • Frostner
  • Draugr Fang
  • Lox Cape
  • Drake Helmet
  • Fang Spear

Silver is the penultimate material before reaching Valheim Black Metal, which you can start working towards once you've taken down the boss of the Mountains, Moder. Good luck!

Ford James

Give me a game and I will write every "how to" I possibly can or die trying. When I'm not knee-deep in a game to write guides on, you'll find me hurtling round the track in F1, flinging balls on my phone in Pokemon Go, pretending to know what I'm doing in Football Manager, or clicking on heads in Valorant.

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