Valheim Eikthyr Guide: How to Summon & Beat Him (1.0)

🎯 The core idea

Eikthyr is Valheim's first boss and the gate to the Bronze Age: beat him and you get Hard antler for the Antler pickaxe, which mines copper and tin. In Valheim 1.0 he has 500 health, no elemental weakness and three telegraphed attacks. Rest up, eat two stamina foods and one health food, bring 20 to 40 fire arrows, and kite him around the altar stones. Rolling beats blocking.

• free costs nothing
• cheap small cost
• setup needs preparation
• grind pays off slowly
• skip the thing to stop doing

Prepare before you summon: Rested, food and arrows

setup The video's creator does three things before every boss attempt, and all three matter for this fight.

First, get the Rested buff by sitting near a fire under a roof, or by sleeping. Per the Valheim wiki, Rested gives +50% health regeneration, +100% stamina regeneration and +50% skill experience. It lasts 7 minutes plus 1 minute per comfort level, so a comfortable base gives you a longer window. The stamina regeneration is the part that wins this fight, because kiting and rolling eat stamina.

Second, eat three foods, weighted toward stamina. The hotbar in the video shows Raspberries and Honey as the two stamina foods plus Cooked meat for health. The plan is to stay at range and avoid getting hit, so stamina for running, drawing the bow and rolling is worth more than a bigger health bar. The wiki's boss-strategy page just says to bring your best food. It doesn't name specific foods for Eikthyr, so treat this split as the creator's tested choice, not a rule.

Third, bring a bow and fire arrows. The next sections cover why.

Eikthyr location: finding the altar with the Vegvisir

free You don't need to search the whole Meadows for the Eikthyr location. The Valheim wiki confirms there is a Vegvisir at the Sacrificial Stones, where you first spawn in the middle of the map. Interact with it and the nearest Eikthyr altar is marked on your map. That's the "signal" the video mentions at the start of the fight.

Each world has three possible altars, all within roughly 1,000 metres of the world centre, so the walk is short. The altar is a ring of stones called the Mystical altar, with a runestone that reads "HUNT HIS KIN". A second Vegvisir stands next to the altar itself.

How to summon Eikthyr: two deer trophies on the Valheim Eikthyr altar

cheap To summon Eikthyr, place two Deer trophies on the altar with the interact key. The wiki confirms the count: two trophies, nothing else. Eikthyr appears a few seconds later. In the video he spawns behind the player, so turn around and get your bow out right after the offering.

Deer are easy to kill (10 health) but hard to reach. They bolt when they hear or see you, so crouch and approach from behind them. They spawn in Meadows and Black Forest woodland. On the base drop rate, about half of all deer drop a trophy. Patch 1.0.20 also made trophy drops more likely from starred (higher-level) creatures, and rare-drop luck no longer resets between sessions. If you kill four or five deer, you'll almost certainly have the deer trophy Valheim needs for the summon.

Eikthyr's three attacks and how to dodge each one

free Eikthyr has exactly three attacks, all listed on the Valheim wiki, and each one is easy to read:

The charged beam is the attack that catches people out. In the video, the creator warns it can pass through the rock you're hiding behind, and blocking it still cost a lot of health. A sideways roll is the reliable answer. The stomp has the longest cooldown, so once you've seen it, you have a 40-second window to fight up close if you want to.

While he's alive, Eikthyr's aura darkens the area and stops any rain. That's why the fight looks so dark in every frame of the video.

Use the altar stones as cover

free The big standing stones around the altar are the real trick in this fight. The video's creator circles a stone so it's always between them and Eikthyr, waits for him to commit to an attack, then steps out for a shot. The wiki's boss-strategy page recommends the same: fight with a bow from range and use the altar's big rocks for cover.

The video says the stones can't be broken. The wiki doesn't confirm that for Eikthyr's altar, and it lists his Antler attack with very high chop and pickaxe damage, so it wrecks trees and anything you build nearby. Use the existing stones. Don't spend wood building a shelter before the fight and expect it to survive.

Fire arrows: the easiest way to beat Eikthyr

cheap Fire arrows are the easiest way to beat Eikthyr, and the video's creator calls them the simplest option for new players. The crafting cost is small. Per the wiki, one batch is 8 Wood + 8 Resin + 2 Feathers for 20 arrows, made at a level 2 Workbench. Each arrow deals 11 pierce plus 22 fire damage, and the fire burns over time after the hit.

How many do you need? The creator brought 20 fire arrows, and near the end of the fight the hotbar shows only 2 left. They also have a fairly high bow skill. They suggest about 40 if your bow skill is low, because you'll miss more and hit softer. That's a sensible margin. The wiki gives Eikthyr 500 health, and a fire arrow does roughly 33 damage before bow and skill bonuses, so about 15 clean hits is the floor, not the target.

Small Meadows creatures can wander into the fight. A Greyling shows up mid-fight in the video. Kill it fast or lead Eikthyr away from it, so it doesn't body-block your kiting.

Eikthyr weakness: what damage actually works

skip Stop looking for an elemental Eikthyr weakness. The wiki's damage table lists him as neutral to every physical and elemental type, fire included. The video says the same about melee: he is "not resistant to anything, but not weak against anything either." Fire arrows work well because they hit from range and keep burning, not because Eikthyr is weak to fire.

The other thing to know is in the video's on-screen note: you can be staggered, but Eikthyr can't, even with a parry. The wiki confirms he is immune to stagger. You can block and parry his attacks with a wooden shield, but you'll never get the stagger opening you get against normal enemies. For a melee fight, take a club or any early weapon, hit him between attacks, and roll more than you block. In the video, the player took heavy damage even while blocking.

Finishing the fight solo

setup The whole run in the video is an Eikthyr solo fight. The creator gets him to half health with arrows from cover, tries melee for a stretch, then switches back to the bow because it's simpler. Watch your stamina bar: when it runs low, retreat behind a stone and let the Rested regeneration bonus refill it before you start your next volley.

If you bring friends, the wiki notes that creatures get +30% effective health and +4% damage for each extra player within 100 metres. Eikthyr becomes a slightly longer fight for a group, but splitting his attention still makes it easier overall.

He also doesn't reset. Per the wiki, Eikthyr doesn't despawn if you walk away, use a portal, log out or die. If an attempt goes wrong, recover your gear and finish him off.

Loot: Valheim Hard antler and the Antler pickaxe

free Eikthyr always drops three Hard antler and one Eikthyr trophy, per the wiki. The video's pickup message shows a stack of two, so pick up everything around the body before you leave.

Hard antler is what you came for. One Valheim Antler pickaxe costs 10 Wood + 1 Hard antler at a level 1 Workbench. It deals 18 pierce and 18 pickaxe damage, has 100 durability, and mines stone, copper, tin, the muddy scrap piles in Swamp crypts and abyssal barnacles. It can also dig and reshape terrain, which is the "shaping the ground" for builds the video mentions. It can't be upgraded, but it's strong enough to mine iron later. The two spare antlers let you craft replacement pickaxes when the first one wears down.

Eikthyr power: hang the trophy at the Sacrificial Stones

free To unlock the Eikthyr power, take the trophy back to the Sacrificial Stones where you first spawned (the map icon marks them) and place it on the smallest stone. Once unlocked, activate it with the Forsaken power key (F by default on keyboard).

The video's numbers match the wiki: 60% less stamina used for running, jumping and swimming, for 300 seconds. The video only says the wait afterwards is "long". The wiki puts the cooldown at 20 minutes, shared by every Forsaken power, and sleeping or logging out doesn't reset it. The power also affects other players within 10 metres. Use it for long hauls, like carrying ore home or running to a far biome, not for short trips.

How this guide was fact-checked

The source is Chaos Bear Gaming's Valheim 1.0 Eikthyr video, uploaded on 9 September 2026, the day 1.0 launched. That makes it current for the fight itself. The live patch at the time of writing is 1.0.20, and the wiki's version history shows no change to Eikthyr, his power, the Antler pickaxe or fire arrows between 1.0.00 and 1.0.20.

From the community Valheim wiki (Fandom), which wins wherever it and the video disagree:

• Health (500)
• The full attack table and stagger immunity
• The neutral damage table
• The summoning cost (two Deer trophies)
• The Vegvisir and altar locations
• The drop table
• The fire arrow and Antler pickaxe recipes and stats
• The Rested buff numbers
• The Forsaken power's effect, duration, cooldown and 10-metre range
• The multiplayer scaling
• The 1.0.20 trophy-drop change

The wiki.gg mirror refused automated access during research, so every wiki fact here comes from the Fandom wiki pages edited after 1.0's release.

From the video's own on-screen footage:

• The food choice (Raspberries, Honey, Cooked meat)
• Using the altar stones as cover
• Rolling over blocking
• The 20-arrow run with a high bow skill and the 40-arrow suggestion for low skill
• The note that the boss can't be staggered

Corrections to the video:

• Hard antler: the video's pickup message shows two Hard antler, but the wiki guarantees three per kill.
• Altar stones: the video says the stones can't break. The wiki doesn't confirm this, and it lists Eikthyr's Antler attack as destructive to trees and structures. Treat the stones as cover, not as a guarantee.
• Power cooldown: the video calls it a "long" wait. The wiki says it's exactly 20 minutes, shared across all powers.

What this guide doesn't answer

• Which Eikthyr altar is closest in your seed: it depends on world generation. Use the Vegvisir rather than a map from someone else's world.
• Bow skill levelling: the video's run used a high bow skill. How fast to level it is a separate skills topic.
• Building a base near the altar: Eikthyr's Antler attack destroys structures, and base layout is its own guide.
• The Elder and the next boss: Eikthyr only unlocks copper and tin. The Black Forest boss fight that follows needs different preparation.
• Mods and world modifiers: everything here assumes default 1.0 difficulty with no combat modifiers changed.