How do Valheim portals work?

How do Valheim portals work?

Written by 

Sascha Heinisch

Published 

2nd Mar 2021 15:30

Travelling in Valheim can be a hassle. Not only is there a massive world to explore with key locations far away from you, and hordes of Graydwarfs and other gnarly enemies separating you and your treasure, but the stamina and weight system also add to the annoyance. Fortunately, there are ways to cut your travel time down, and more fortunately yet, they are available relatively early in the game. Let’s think on Valheim portals, shall we?

How do Valheim portals work?

Once you’ve built your Valheim portal, you will need to select the building just like the workbench with the “E”-key. It will bring up a window that will ask you to set a tag and give the portal a name. This isn’t an arbitrary name, so make sure you remember it when you go on to venture with portal material in hand, expecting to teleport back to your home base.

The name which you give the portal will be tied to a portal with the same name on the other side. Especially in the beginning, while resources like Surtling Cores are rare, you can just rename your home base portal to the names you’ve given the portals all over the map and save on the materials though it will require you to keep close track of your spelling. Fortunately, the names aren’t case sensitive, so they aren’t quite inflicting the anxiety of having forgotten a proper password, but forgetting what the outside bases are called can be a hassle.

Valheim portals - The basics

Valheim portals are in many ways, like portals you will encounter in other fictional universes. You walk through them and you get out on the other side, travelling vast distances in the blink of an eye. However, in Valheim, portals have some limitations to them. For one, you need to build them yourself (which we will teach you in a moment), meaning you will need to travel to the destination first. Moreover, you won’t be able to carry all resources with you through the portal, which has presumably been a game design decision as to not make mining too easy.

Which items you can’t carry through Valheim portals

Ever since you started the game, you might have wondered what the little symbol in the top right corner of your gathered ores might be about. The crossed-out blue sphere does indeed indicate whether or not you can take a jump through a portal with them in your inventory. The list of items you can’t bring along is the following:

  • Copper ore
  • Copper
  • Tin ore
  • Tin
  • Bronze
  • Scrap Iron
  • Iron
  • Black metal scrap
  • Black Metal
  • Silver ore
  • Silver
  • Dragon egg

Which resources do you need for Valheim portals?

In order to build a portal, you will need to gather the following resources:

  • 10 Graydrawf Eyes
  • 20 Fine Wood
  • 2 Surtling Cores

These resources will only get you one side of the portal, so in order to start your interdimensional travels, you will need the aforementioned resources times two.


This concludes our Valheim portals guide. Stay tuned for more Valheim guides and gaming news and follow our socials: Twitter | Facebook | Discord

Image via Iron Gate Studio

Sascha "Yiska" Heinisch is a Senior Esports Journalist at GGRecon. He's been creating content in esports for over 10 years, starting with Warcraft 3.

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