Valheim: Taming & Breeding Guide
From the humblest Boar to the massive Lox, taming animals in Valheim provides a reliable source of food, materials, and even heavy transport. With the Ashlands update, taming has become vital for surviving the volcanic wasteland, where rideable Asksvin creatures can navigate lava flows that would kill even the most well-equipped Viking.
Why Tame?
Taming provides renewable food sources, crafting materials, base defense, and unique transportation options like the Asksvin mount.
Star System
Tame 1-star or 2-star animals when you can. Their young are born at the same star level, providing more meat, leather, and better defense.
Patience Pays
Taming takes time and attention. Starving animals will stop taming, so maintain a steady food supply and stay nearby.
Can sleeping speed up taming?
No. There is no sleep input to taming anywhere in the game's code. This page used to say there was, in its own title, which is why it is answered here first.
Checked against the shipped Valheim dedicated server, the rules are short. Every 3 seconds the game takes 3 seconds off the animal's remaining taming time, but only while all of these hold:
- The animal is fed. It counts as fed for a while after its last meal. A hungry animal makes no progress at all.
- The animal is not alerted. Hitting or spooking it stops the countdown, which is why the familiar advice says to keep it calm.
- Someone is nearby. Valheim only runs creatures in areas a player has loaded, so an animal with nobody around is frozen, its progress included. That is the real mechanic behind "stay nearby".
The remaining time is stored on the animal and only ever counted down by those 3-second steps. It is not worked out from the world clock, which is the part that matters for this question: skipping the night does not move the countdown. Sleeping does fast-forward the clock that hunger runs on, though. The skipped hours count against the time the animal stays fed, so it can wake up hungry and stop taming until you feed it again.
What does change the speed
One multiplier exists, and almost nobody talks about it. Every player within 60 metres who carries a status effect with the TamingBoost attribute doubles each step, and the boosts stack: with two such players, every 3-second step takes 12 seconds off the timer.
That effect comes from the Brew of Animal Whispers, which lasts 10 minutes (recipe below). The accelerator in the game is a drink on a player standing nearby, not a night's sleep.
Rechecked on 14 October 2026 against the shipped Valheim dedicated server on our stable branch (build 25730807) and its game data. The default taming time is 1,800 seconds; individual creatures can set their own.
Why the sleep idea is so persistent
Two real behaviours feed it. Taming genuinely does take several minutes of sitting around, so anything you do to pass the time looks like it helped. And sleeping in a bed beside the pen keeps you close enough for the animal to keep running, so the countdown never goes backwards. Neither of those is a bonus, and the skipped night can leave the animal hungry, so feed it when you wake up. If you want the animal tamed sooner, keep it calm, stay close, and keep the food topped up.
Does sleeping speed up crops or animal growth?
Yes, both, unlike taming. Sleeping fast-forwards the server's clock to the next morning over about 12 seconds, and crops and young animals measure their age on that clock: a plant compares the time since it was planted with its grow time, and a piglet, cub or calf the time since it was born. So a night in bed brings both forward. Taming is the exception because its countdown only moves in 3-second steps while the animal is loaded.
Every tameable animal in Valheim 1.0.17
Every one of them takes 1,800 seconds (30 minutes) of fed, calm, nearby time to tame, and one meal keeps it fed for 600 seconds (10 minutes). What differs is what it eats and how it breeds. Read from the 1.0.17 game files:
| Animal | Where | Tames and breeds on | Stops breeding at | Young grow up in | Saddle |
| Boar | Meadows | Carrots, turnips, onions, mushrooms, raspberries, blueberries | 5 boars and piglets within 10 m | 50 minutes | No |
| Wolf | Mountains | Raw meat only: boar, deer, lox, neck tail, chicken, raw fish, sausages | 4 within 10 m | 50 minutes | No |
| Lox | Plains | Cloudberries, barley, flax | 4 within 20 m | 100 minutes | Lox Saddle |
| Hen | From eggs: Haldor sells them for 1,500 coins once Yagluth is beaten | Dandelions, barley, and beech, birch, carrot, onion and turnip seeds | 10 within 10 m | Egg 30 minutes, then chick 50 minutes | No |
| Asksvin | Ashlands | Vineberry clusters, fiddleheads, smoke puffs | 10 within 10 m | Egg 30 minutes, then hatchling 50 minutes | Asksvin Saddle |
| Moose | Deep North | Lingonberries | 5 within 10 m | 50 minutes | Moose Saddle |
A chicken egg only hatches next to a fire and under a roof that covers most of the sky above it; an Asksvin egg needs the fire but not the roof. Each egg has to lie on its own: a stack of two or more never hatches, and if the fire goes out the egg starts its 30 minutes over. Grow-up times run on the world clock, so they include skipped nights.
Taming, step by step
- Pen it first. A boar or wolf you are feeding will still wander off or turn on you; a wall around it keeps it in loading range and keeps other creatures off it.
- Drop its food on the ground within its reach. Only the foods in the table count; anything else is ignored.
- Keep it calm and stay close. An alerted animal makes no progress, and an animal in an area nobody has loaded is frozen.
- Watch the hover text. Pointing at the animal shows its tameness as a percentage.
- Drink a Brew of Animal Whispers to go faster. It is the item behind the TamingBoost effect described above: each player within 60 m who has drunk it doubles every taming step, for 10 minutes per brew. Make the Mead Base at the Mead Ketill from 5 onions, 10 carrots and 1 Pungent Pebbles, then ferment it for 40 minutes into 6 brews.
How breeding works
- Only tame adults breed, and only while they are fed and calm.
- Every 30 seconds each one makes a check, and goes on with it about two times in three. It then needs fewer of its kind than the limit in the table, adults and young counted together, and another adult within a few metres (3 m for boars, wolves and moose, 4 m for hens and Asksvin, 8 m for Lox). If both hold it gains a love point, and you see the hearts.
- Three love points (four for a Lox) make it pregnant, and the young arrive 60 seconds later (120 for a Lox). Hens and Asksvin lay an egg instead.
- The young are born tame, at the star level of the parent that gave birth. That is why it pays to tame the best-starred animals you can find.
- There is no kinship or genetics in the game. Grown young breed with their parents like any other pair, and nothing degrades over generations.
- The limit is what stops a pen. Because adults and young count together inside the range, a pen only keeps breeding while you move animals out of it; dropping the young out of range is the whole trick behind breeder towers.
Wolves, mounts and saddles
- Wolves are the only animals that take commands: interact with a tame wolf to have it follow you or stay put.
- Lox Saddle: Workbench, 10 leather scraps, 20 linen thread, 15 black metal.
- Asksvin Saddle: level 2 Black Forge, 6 flametal, 20 linen thread, 4 Morgen sinew. The Asksvin takes no heat from lava and only half damage from fire, which is why it is the Ashlands mount.
- Moose Saddle: level 2 Black Forge, 4 Bloodgold, 5 seal pelts, 5 Timberwood, 15 linen thread. The moose is the Deep North mount, new in 1.0.
Farms and server performance
Creatures are run by the game of the player who owns that area, not by the server, so a crowded farm mostly costs the frame rate of whoever is standing near it. Keep each pen at or under its breeding limit, which you need to do anyway for it to breed, and move or cull the surplus.
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