Valheim Portals Guide: Crafting, Linking & Moving Ore (1.0)

🎯 The core idea

A Valheim portal costs 10 Greydwarf eyes, 20 Finewood and 2 Surtling cores, and it unlocks the moment you have picked up one of each. Finewood needs a Bronze axe, so plan on portals right after you start making bronze. Portals link by matching tags, carry almost everything except ore and metal, and the Ashlands Stone Portal is the answer for moving ore and bars.

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

Portal recipe and materials at a glance

cheap The wooden Portal is built with the Hammer, needs a Workbench in range when you place it, and costs the same in Valheim 1.0 as it did before launch. The build menu tooltip in the video shows the exact numbers, and the wiki agrees:

The portal recipe is the whole shopping list: there is no upgrade and no fuel. A built portal has 400 durability, takes reduced damage from blunt, pierce and pickaxe hits, and is weak to chop damage, so keep axes (and careless friends) away from it. The tooltip line "connects to another portal with equal or no tag" is the entire linking rule, covered further down.

How to unlock the portal in Valheim

free You unlock the portal by picking up one Finewood, one Surtling core and one Greydwarf eye for the first time. In the video, chopping a Birch is what makes the portal appear, and the "New material: Finewood" pop-up is the moment it happens, but that only works because the creator already had a core and an eye in storage. The wiki is clear that all three materials count, so if you chop a Birch and the portal still isn't in the Hammer menu, you are missing a core or an eye, not doing something wrong.

Most players get the eyes in the first evening, a core on their first crypt run, and Finewood last, which is why the Bronze axe is the real gate on how to make a portal in Valheim.

Bronze axe first, then Finewood

setup Birch and Oak can't be damaged by a Flint or Stone axe. The video crafts the Bronze axe at the Forge for 8 Bronze, 2 Leather scraps and 4 Wood, and the wiki confirms that recipe. That chain runs through the first boss: beat Eikthyr, make the Antler pickaxe, mine Copper and Tin in the Black Forest, smelt, and alloy Bronze at the Forge. Our Eikthyr boss guide and the Valheim progression guide cover that route in order.

The Bronze axe is a one-handed weapon too, but its job here is to open up Finewood, and with it portals, Karves and a lot of Black Forest building pieces.

Where to find Birch and Oak for Finewood

free Finewood comes from Birch and Oak trees. Birch is the white tree with black spots, growing in the Meadows and in the Plains; Oak is the huge broad tree scattered through the Meadows. The video simply walks into the Meadows near its base and fells a Birch, which is the safest way to do it.

According to the wiki, a Birch always drops 20 pieces of wood in total (plus 2 Wood from the stump), split randomly between regular Wood and Finewood. That means one Birch rarely covers a full portal; budget two or three Birch trees per portal, or one Oak. Keep the Birch seeds and Acorns you pick up, so you can plant your own Finewood grove next to the base.

Getting Finewood faster, or before bronze

grind The fallen trunk breaks into logs, and the logs break into the Finewood drops shown here. If you want a portal before you have bronze, the wiki lists slower workarounds:

• Fell a Beech tree onto a Birch or Oak; enough falling-tree damage knocks it down, and the trunk can then be rolled into obstacles until it shatters.
• Lure a Troll into the trees and let its swings do the chopping.
• Dismantle Finewood furniture in derelict Ruined Towers, or break down Shipwrecks on Black Forest coasts with any axe.

None of these are efficient, but they can get a single early portal pair up before the Bronze Age. For everything after that, the Bronze axe is simply quicker.

Surtling cores: Burial Chambers and the Swamp

setup Valheim Surtling cores are the hardest of the three portal materials early on. The video points you to caves in the Black Forest and warns that every seed's map is different; the wiki calls these dungeons Burial Chambers. They are crypt entrances in the Black Forest, full of Skeletons, Ghosts and Rancid remains, and the cores are found inside them.

Other sources, per the wiki:

• Surtlings in the Swamp drop cores when killed.
• Bonfires in captured Fuling villages give cores back when you deconstruct them.
• Naturally spawned Dvergr lanterns have a chance to give one when destroyed.

Bring a torch and a Rested buff into the crypt, and check every room before leaving; two cores per portal adds up fast once you also want a Smelter and a Charcoal kiln. Cores are teleportable, so after your first portal they can go straight home.

Valheim Greydwarf eye farming

free Ten Greydwarf eyes per portal sounds like a lot, but they drop from Greydwarfs, Greydwarf brutes and Greydwarf shamans, and those spawn constantly around the Black Forest and wander into the Meadows. A night spent near a Black Forest edge usually fills the stack. Eyes are light (0.2 each per the wiki) and stack to 50, so never throw them away; the Stone Portal and the Ward use them as well.

The video's own advice is just "kill the mobs", which is accurate: you don't need to destroy Greydwarf nests for eyes, though nests drop Ancient seeds you will want for the Elder.

Placing your first portal

setup To place a portal you need a Workbench within its build radius. Once placed, the portal works with no Workbench nearby, so you can dismantle the bench at a remote camp afterwards. The portal has a front and a back; both sides work, but from the back you need to stand closer before the swirl and sound show it is connected. When placing it, the pointed tip on the base marks the front.

Give the portal a roof and walls if it is anywhere hostile. The portal itself isn't damaged by rain, but a raid or a Troll can still knock out the bench and the shelter around it. Our Valheim building tips guide has the shelter basics.

Portal tags: names and links in Valheim

free Interact with a portal to set its tag. Two portals with the same tag link to each other, no matter who built them or where. The wiki's rules for portal names:

• Tags are case-sensitive and up to 10 characters; letters, numbers and special characters are allowed.
• A portal with no tag links to another portal with no tag.
• Each portal links to exactly one partner. If four portals share a tag, they pair up in the order the tags were set: the first two together, the third and fourth together.
• Destroying one portal of a pair breaks the link.

To link portals reliably, give every pair its own short, unique tag (for example swamp1 and swamp1), and never leave two portals blank in the same world, since a third blank portal will not join them. Stepping into a linked portal starts an eight-second teleport, during which you are invulnerable; if the far side is blocked it can take up to 15 seconds before you are placed above it.

Building a portal hub at your base

grind Once you explore beyond the first island, a portal hub saves hours. Build a row of portals in one room at home, label a Sign next to each, and give each a tag that names its destination. Then carry a spare kit with you while exploring: the materials are all teleportable, so you can drop a portal at a new biome and step home. The wiki also notes that portals work while you are over-encumbered, which makes them the best way to move Wood, Stone and crops, mostly replacing the Cart.

The hub pays off most for biome trips: Swamp for the Bonemass fight, Mountains for Moder, and every later biome. The beginner guide covers when to start making the trip.

Why portals won't take ore: the metal rule

skip Stop trying to push ore through a wooden portal. The most common "Valheim portal not working" report is the "can't be teleported" message: any item whose icon shows a crossed-out blue portal blocks you until you drop it. The wiki's list of portal-blocked items:

On a wooden portal, ore travels by Karve, Longship or Cart; that is why many players build a smelting outpost at the mining site. Other reasons a portal fails: the tags don't match exactly (case matters), a third portal shares the tag, or the world has a portal modifier. World Modifiers can set portals to allow everything (still not tamed animals), to switch off near active bosses, or to be disabled entirely. Patch 1.0.14 (17 September 2026) also fixed a multiplayer bug where terrain edits caused portal problems, so update your server if links break after digging.

Stone Portal: teleport metal after Ashlands

setup The Stone Portal (the wiki's "Portal – Stone") is the Valheim teleport-metal answer. It arrived with the Ashlands update and is built from the Stonecutter. The video doesn't cover it, so everything here is from the wiki:

Molten cores come from Putrid Holes and the floors and Charred chests of Charred Fortresses in the Ashlands. Grausten comes from Ashlands ruins and rocks. Both are teleportable, so you can carry them home through a wooden portal.

The key rule for portal ore: the portal you step into must allow what you carry. A Stone Portal links to a wooden one with the same tag, and you can go from the Stone side to the wooden side carrying metal, but not back again, because the wooden portal won't accept it. For a full metal route, both ends should be Stone. It is about twice the size of the wooden portal and, since patch 0.218.21, it can be built on any stone floor, not only Grausten. A practical order from the wiki: build a Stone Portal at home first, carry Iron through it to the Ashlands, build a Stonecutter there, then put the second Stone Portal next to it. See our Ashlands guide for the biome itself.

How this guide was fact-checked

• From the video (Jonnny Five, "How to Unlock and Craft Portal in Valheim 1.0", uploaded 11 September 2026, two days after 1.0 launched): the Bronze axe recipe (8 Bronze, 2 Leather scraps, 4 Wood), the portal tooltip with 10 Greydwarf eyes, 20 Finewood and 2 Surtling cores, Birch felling, and the advice to find cores in Black Forest dungeons. All of these match the wiki.
• From the Valheim wiki on Fandom, checked 20 October 2026: the unlock condition, tag rules, teleport timings, encumbrance, the blocked-item list, all Stone Portal facts (recipe, durability, mixed-pair rule, stone floors), material sources for Finewood, Surtling cores, Greydwarf eyes, Molten cores and Grausten, and the World Modifier portal settings. The wooden Portal page was last edited in November 2025, before 1.0; the Stone Portal page was edited on 13 October 2026. The 1.0.14 terrain-portal fix comes from the wiki's Version history page. The live patch is 1.0.20, and nothing in the 1.0 notes changes either portal recipe.
• Correction: the video presents chopping a Birch as what unlocks the portal. The wiki says it unlocks after you have picked up one each of Finewood, Surtling core and Greydwarf eye; Finewood was just the creator's last missing piece.
• Not in the video: the Stone Portal, tags and linking, and the ore restrictions. The video never shows a portal being placed or tagged, so those sections rely on the wiki alone.

What this guide doesn't answer

• Mods that change portals (teleport-anything mods, portal-station mods): not part of the base game and they change between versions.
• Exact Burial Chamber locations: every seed is different, so there is no fixed coordinate to give.
• Ashlands combat for Molten cores: see the Ashlands guide; it needs its own gear and food plan.
• Deep North portal tactics: the 1.0 patch notes add no new portal type for the Deep North, and we haven't found a wiki source on special rules there.
• Console commands and server config files: World Modifiers are set at world creation; editing them later is a server-admin topic outside this guide.