# Valheim Lox Taming: Pit Trap, Saddle and Breeding (1.0)
> How to tame a Lox in Valheim 1.0 with a cheap pit and diving board, which foods Lox eat, how Brew of animal whispers cuts the timer, the Lox saddle recipe and riding controls, and the four-Lox breeding cap.
- **Game:** Valheim
- **Category:** Food, Farming & Taming
- **Author:** ItzMaze (https://guides-factory.com/authors/itzmaze)
- **Difficulty:** Intermediate
- **Reading time:** 15 min
- **Published:** 2026-11-06
- **Updated:** 2026-11-06
- **Tags:** Farming, lox, plains, taming
- **Adapted from:** [How to Tame a Lox in 1.0 Valheim (Cut Time in Half!)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEsU6mXuVeA)
- **Canonical URL:** https://guides-factory.com/guides/valheim-lox-taming-guide
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## 🎯 The core idea
> To tame a Lox in Valheim, dig a pit in the Plains, drop cloudberries, barley or flax inside, lure a Lox onto a plank over the hole and let it fall in. Stay out of sight and it is tame in 30 real minutes from three meals, or close to half that with Brew of animal whispers. A Lox saddle (10 leather scraps, 20 linen thread, 15 black metal) turns it into the game's sturdiest mount.
- free costs nothing
- cheap small cost
- setup needs preparation
- grind pays off slowly
- skip the thing to stop doing
## Why a tamed Lox is worth the trouble in 1.0
grind The Lox is the big shaggy lizard-ox of the Plains and the only Plains creature you can tame. A tame one gives you three things: a mount that ignores your carry weight, a breedable source of Lox meat and Lox pelt, and a 1000-health bodyguard that wild Deathsquitos and Fulings will often target instead of you. This guide follows MrCoreRPG's short 1.0 video "How to Tame a Lox in 1.0 Valheim (Cut Time in Half!)", uploaded 30 September 2026, three weeks after the 9 September 1.0 / Deep North launch, and checks every number against the Valheim wiki on Fandom. Nothing about Lox taming changed in the 1.0 patches up to the current 1.0.20, so this is the valheim lox 1.0 state of play.
The general rules are the same ones every Valheim tame follows. If you have already tamed boars, read this alongside the [Valheim boar farm guide](/guides/valheim-boar-farm-guide): the 30-minute timer, the 10-minute meals and the "stay out of sight" rule carry over unchanged. What changes for the Lox is the food, the pen size and how dangerous the animal is while it is still wild.
## Cutting the timer in half with Brew of animal whispers
setup The video's headline trick is the valheim lox fast tame: drink Brew of animal whispers while the Lox eats. You need pungent pebbles, which the Bog Witch in the Swamp sells at 125 coins for 5. Brew the mead base in a Mead ketill from **5 onions, 10 carrots and 1 pungent pebbles** (the recipe screen above shows exactly that), then ferment it into six brews; the wiki says fermenting takes two in-game days.
The brew doubles taming speed for every animal within 60 meters, and the wiki adds that it stacks: two players with the buff in range give x4, three give x8. The video says the brew turns 30 minutes into 15, and the wiki's Taming page says the same. One catch neither spells out: a single brew only lasts 10 minutes (the "Effect duration 600" on screen is in seconds, and the wiki agrees). By our own arithmetic, one brew drunk at the start gets you to roughly 20 minutes in total; to hit the full 15, drink a second one when the first runs out.
## Lox food: cloudberries, barley and flax
cheap The video uses cloudberries, which grow on low bushes all over the Plains (the "Added Cloudberries" pickup message is in the frame above). The wiki's full list of valheim lox food is **cloudberries, barley and flax**, so once you farm barley and flax at a Plains base you can tame and breed Lox without picking berries at all. Cloudberry bushes respawn their berries after 5 hours and are not destroyed when you clear ground with the hoe, so leave the ones near your pit alone.
The video says about three items per Lox. The wiki confirms it: taming needs 600 successful ticks (30 minutes), an animal stays fed for 10 minutes after each meal, so an uninterrupted tame uses exactly three. Throw in a small stack rather than single items; animals only eat one item from a stack at a time. A Lox eats from 4 meters away, which is much farther than a boar's 1 meter.
## Digging a Lox pit instead of building a pen
cheap The video's valheim lox pen is not a pen at all: it is a long, steep-sided hole dug with a pickaxe, with the berries thrown in first. That matches the wiki's advice. Luring animals into a walled pen tends to make them hostile, and a hostile Lox smashes structures; the wiki warns it can quickly destroy even stone buildings, and its stomp reaches 2.5 meters around it with 120 blunt and 100 chop damage, so it can hit things on the far side of a narrow ditch without crossing it. A deep hole has no walls to break and keeps you out of the Lox's line of sight while it eats.
Make the hole big. The wiki notes that Lox use pathfinding sized for Trolls and will not eat with a roof too close to them; indoors you want 8 to 10 meters of clearance. An open pit avoids the roof problem completely, but give it enough floor that the Lox can walk to the food.
## The diving board and the escape ladder
setup Without an Abyssal harpoon you need a way to get a 1000-health animal into the hole. The video's answer is a "diving board": a wood floor piece placed so it sticks out over the pit, plus a wood ladder on the pit wall so you can climb out after you drop in. The video first places a 2x2 floor, notes it is too wide, and narrows it so the Lox slides off rather than standing on it. Both pieces are wood only, so this valheim lox tip costs next to nothing; you just need a workbench in range to build them.
If you do have an Abyssal harpoon (8 fine wood, 30 chitin, 3 leather scraps), the wiki lists it as the alternative: harpoon the Lox and drag it in, no board needed.
## Luring a wild Lox onto the board
free Walk toward a Lox until it notices you. The wiki says approaching a wild Lox always frightens it and makes it aggressive, so you don't need to provoke it; just let it chase you. Run along the board, drop into the pit, and the Lox follows and slides down after you. Climb out with the ladder, then move away so it calms down and starts eating.
Respect what is chasing you. The wiki gives the Lox a 130 slash bite that reaches 5.5 meters every 4 seconds and the 120 blunt stomp every 12 seconds. Those hits are built for Plains-tier players, so lure from the pit side with full health and stamina; the wiki recommends never dropping below 50 stamina near a herd. Kite one Lox at a time, and keep an eye out for Deathsquitos and Fulings, which ignore your plans. The [Valheim armor guide](/guides/valheim-armor-guide) covers what to wear before you start valheim plains taming.
## Taming hearts, the 30-minute timer and the tamed message
grind Once the Lox stops being alerted and eats, yellow hearts over its head mean taming is progressing. Progress only counts while the animal is fed, not alerted and in an active area, which the wiki defines as any player within about 64 meters, so wait nearby instead of going home. Hover text shows the percentage, but you have to get close to read it, which often alerts the Lox again.
The video's timer, 30 minutes plain and 15 with the brew, matches the wiki. When it finishes you get the "Lox has been tamed" message shown above. Don't sleep through the wait: the wiki says sleeping doesn't speed up taming and makes the food run out faster. The wiki also describes a pen-free alternative for patient players: Lox herds return to the same spots, so you can sneak or sprint past and scatter cloudberries where they gather, then guard the area until they tame. It saves building but the risk of dying while scattering is high.
## Crafting the Lox saddle
setup The valheim lox saddle is made at the Workbench from **10 leather scraps, 20 linen thread and 15 black metal**, exactly as the video and the wiki both say and as the recipe screen above shows. Leather scraps are the easy part; a [boar farm](/guides/valheim-boar-farm-guide) supplies them. Linen thread comes from flax at a spinning wheel and black metal from scrap you loot from Fulings, so the saddle is really a mid-Plains item.
The video says you can craft the saddle after killing the Mountain boss. The wiki lists no boss requirement for the saddle itself; the real gate is the Plains materials. In normal progression you only reach the Plains after Moder, which is probably what the video means; see the [Moder boss guide](/guides/valheim-moder-boss-guide) if you are not there yet.
## Putting on the saddle and riding controls
free To ride a Lox, put the saddle on your hotbar and press its number while looking at your tamed Lox (the video uses slot 4). You get the "Lox is ready for a ride" message, then press E on the Lox to climb on. LShift + E takes the saddle back off, per the wiki. The saddle weighs 10 and can go through portals.
Steering is the part that surprises people. The direction keys don't turn a ridden Lox: it always walks or sprints straight toward where your camera points, and it cannot reverse. You can't swing weapons from the saddle either; pressing attack makes you dismount instantly. Stand still and the Lox attacks nearby enemies on its own, and at a sprint it tramples most creatures it runs into.
## Lox stamina, speed and the Riding skill
grind A valheim lox mount has 240 stamina that drains about as fast as yours when sprinting, but it regenerates far slower: the wiki says about one point every 4 seconds when the Lox is fed and one every 10 seconds when it is hungry. Feed it before a long ride, and walk when you don't need speed. The Riding skill raises the mount's sprint speed and cuts its stamina drain as it levels.
What makes the Lox worth riding is that a sprinting Lox outruns even a high-level runner, ignores armor slowdown and keeps moving while you are over-encumbered. That makes it a real hauling tool for ore and barley runs across the Plains.
## Valheim lox breeding and the four-Lox cap
grind A tamed Lox shows "(Tame, Happy)" when fed; in the frame above the video's player still has the brew buff running at 3:45. Turning one Lox into a valheim lox farm follows the same pattern as boars, with bigger numbers. Per the wiki's Lox and Taming pages:
| Breeding rule | Lox | Boar, for comparison |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Food | Cloudberries, barley, flax | Berries, carrots, onions, turnips, red mushrooms |
| Partner range | 8 m | 3 m |
| Population cap | 4 within 20 m | 5 within 10 m |
| Love points needed | 4 | 4 in the Taming table, 3 on the Boar page |
| Pregnancy | 2 minutes | 1 minute |
| Birth offset | 2 m | 1 m |
| Calf grows up in | 100 minutes | 50 minutes |
| Baby drops | 1 Lox meat | nothing |
Every 30 seconds a fed, calm Lox with a partner in range rolls 33% for a love point (pink hearts). The cap counts every Lox and calf within 20 meters, so two pens must be more than 20 meters apart to breed separately. The Fandom spawn table marks wild Lox as spawning without stars, so unlike boars there is no star-breeding plan here; a Lox farm is about headcount. To harvest without wild ones attacking, use a Butcher knife, the only weapon that can hurt your tames without friendly fire.
## Lox meat, Lox pelt and what they unlock
cheap A wild Lox drops 4 to 5 Lox meat, 2 Lox pelt and has a 10% trophy chance. That is the whole reason to keep a herd:
| Item | Recipe or source | Use |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Cooked Lox meat | 1 Lox meat on an Iron cooking station | 50 health, 16 stamina, 20 min |
| Lox meat pie | 2 cloudberries, 2 Lox meat, 4 barley flour at the Food preparation table, then 50 s in a Stone oven | 75 health, 24 stamina, 30 min |
| Lox pelt | 2 per Lox | Lox cape, Lox fur jacket, trousers and hood, Bracelets of the Brave, Lox rug, Ashwood bed, Ask armor in the Ashlands |
| Lox meat (taming) | raw | One of the meats wolves eat |
Pull the oven pie at 50 seconds; at 100 it burns to coal. The wiki ranks the pie's 75 health second in the Plains tier, behind Serpent stew's 80, and points out the advantage: Lox can be tamed and bred, while serpents have to be hunted at sea. Lox pelts feed the 1.0 Lox Fur set (+30 Sneak, +15 Bows) and the Ashlands Ask set, both covered in the [Valheim armor guide](/guides/valheim-armor-guide), and well-fed health foods like the pie make the [Yagluth boss fight](/guides/valheim-yagluth-boss-guide) much more forgiving. For how these rank against other foods, see the [Valheim food guide](/guides/valheim-food-guide).
## How this guide was fact-checked
The source is MrCoreRPG's "How to Tame a Lox in 1.0 Valheim (Cut Time in Half!)" (30 September 2026). The pit, the diving board, the ladder, the lure, the Mead ketill and Workbench recipe screens, the brew's 600-second effect duration, the "Lox has been tamed" and "Lox is ready for a ride" messages and the hotbar saddle equip come from what the video shows on screen. Every number was checked against the Valheim wiki on Fandom: the Lox page (last edited 13 September 2026), Taming (16 October 2026), Lox Saddle, Brew of Animal Whispers, Pungent Pebbles, Cloudberries, Lox Meat, Lox Pelt, Lox meat pie, Abyssal Harpoon and Riding pages.
Confirmed by the wiki: the brew recipe and Bog Witch source, cloudberries as Lox food, three food items per tame, 30 minutes plain and 15 with the brew, the saddle recipe and the hotbar equip. Corrections and additions:
- **Brew duration:** the video implies one brew covers the 15-minute tame. A brew lasts 10 minutes (wiki, and the on-screen 600 s); the "about 20 minutes with one brew, drink a second for 15" figure is our own calculation from the wiki's numbers.
- **Saddle gate:** the video ties the saddle to killing the Mountain boss; the wiki lists no boss requirement, only Plains materials.
- **Food:** the video only mentions cloudberries; the wiki adds barley and flax.
- **Added from the wiki:** Lox attack numbers, the roof-clearance rule, the harpoon option, riding stamina and controls, all breeding numbers, drops and food values.
The Lox page's spawn table lists no star levels for wild Lox; we could not confirm star Lox from Fandom, so this guide doesn't promise them.
## What this guide doesn't answer
- **Asksvin taming and riding.** The Ashlands mount has its own food, eggs and saddle; it needs its own guide.
- **Fighting Lox for meat without taming.** Covered only as far as surviving the lure; a combat build is out of scope.
- **Deep North creatures.** Neither the video nor the wiki pages used here say anything about taming in the new biome.
- **Automatic Lox breeders.** The wiki warns that animals standing on poles or small floors fail the pathfinding check, so self-feeding designs need their own tested build.
- **Server and mod settings** that change taming speed or spawn rates, since they vary by world.
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## FAQ
### How do you tame a Lox in Valheim?
Dig a deep pit in the Plains, throw cloudberries, barley or flax into it, and lure a Lox (it turns aggressive as soon as you approach) onto a wood floor plank over the hole so it falls in. Climb out with a ladder and stay out of sight. Each meal keeps it fed for 10 minutes, and taming takes 30 minutes of uninterrupted feeding, so three food items are enough.
### What food do Lox eat in Valheim?
Lox eat only cloudberries, barley and flax. Cloudberries grow on bushes all over the Plains, so they are the usual taming food, while barley and flax from a Plains farm let you feed and breed Lox without picking berries. A Lox can eat food from 4 meters away, but it must be able to path to it.
### How can I tame a Lox faster?
Drink Brew of animal whispers near the Lox. It doubles taming speed for animals within 60 meters, cutting the 30-minute timer to 15. One brew lasts 10 minutes, so drink a second when the first wears off to get the full saving. The mead base needs 5 onions, 10 carrots and 1 pungent pebbles, bought from the Bog Witch at 125 coins for 5.
### How do you make and use a Lox saddle?
Craft the Lox saddle at the Workbench from 10 leather scraps, 20 linen thread and 15 black metal. Put it on your hotbar, look at your tamed Lox and press the slot number to equip it, then press E to mount. LShift + E removes the saddle. The Lox steers by your camera direction, cannot reverse, and you dismount if you press attack.
### How many Lox can you breed in one pen?
Breeding stops once there are 4 Lox, calves included, within 20 meters. A fed, calm Lox needs a partner within 8 meters and 4 love points, rolled at 33% every 30 seconds. Pregnancy lasts about 2 minutes and a calf takes 100 minutes to grow up, so keep separate pens more than 20 meters apart to breed more.