Tame a boar in Valheim using these 4 simple steps

There’s a lot to do in the world of Valheim. There are weapons to craft, merchants to track down, and world seeds to try out. Other tasks are much more basic. It’s a survival game, after all, so you’ll need to do basic tasks like create shelter and eat food.

Meat is an especially important resource in the game. You can cook it up to temporarily manage your Viking’s hunger. If you want to get a reliable source of meat, you’ll want to learn how to hunt and tame boar. Luckily, that’s a simple process as long as you’re patient and have the right materials.

In this guide, we’ll go over four easy steps for catching boar. Here’s a quick rundown of what you’ll need to do, followed by an in-depth explanation for each step.

1. Build a pen
2. Get a boar’s attention
3. Lure a boar into the pen
4. Leave food in the pen

1. Build a pen

First, you’ll need to build a simple pen with a gate. You’re basically going to shepherd a boar into this and shut the door behind it to trap it. Grab a whole bunch of wood and take it over to your workbench. Craft enough panels to make an enclosure and a gate. Put it all together and you’ll have the perfect space for your future boar to roam.

2. Get a boar’s attention

Naturally, you’ll need to find a boar next. That shouldn’t be too hard; They’re a rather common animal in Valheim’s world. Once you find one, you’ll need to get its attention. You want it to start chasing you, so really get up in its face. Boars won’t do a lot of damage if they hit you, so you can really antagonize the poor pigs and get them to rush at you.

3. Lure a boar into a pen

You’ve built your pen. You’ve pissed off your boar. Now you just need to get the boar into the pen. While it’s chasing you, just run into the pen so it’ll follow you. Quickly shut the door behind it and it’ll be trapped!

4. Leave food in the pen

Here’s the most important piece of the whole piggy operation. This boar’s not going to be happy about its new situation, so you’ll need to calm it down. You can do that by dropping food in its pen. Toss some mushrooms, carrots, or berries in the pen and simply wait for it to start chowing down.

This might take a bit. The boar won’t necessarily start eating right away, so you’ll have to wait for it to get hungry. It could take a few days for it to eat enough to calm down. Thankfully, you can check on your progress pretty easily. Hover over the boar to see its status. You’ll see a “tame” stat with a percentage attached. Hit 100 percent and you’ll have successfully domesticated a boar.

From there you can start breeding boar so you can farm them for meat. It all might sound a little cruel, but that’s the Viking life for you.

Valheim is now available via early access on PC.