Progression: the road through the biomes

Build a base with a fire, bed and workbench, eat three food slots at all times, and work flint into weapons. Kill deer for hides, raise the club and bow skills on greylings, and put two deer trophies on Eikthyr's altar once you have a flint spear, a crude bow and a wood shield. His antler becomes your first pickaxe.

Boss unlock: Hard antler, the pickaxe that opens the Black Forest. Biome details: Meadows.

Mine copper and tin, smelt bronze, and clear burial chambers for surtling cores to feed your smelter and portals. Bronze gear plus a Finewood Bow is the target, with carrot farming started at home. Find Haldor while you explore. The Elder falls to fire arrows and pillar cover; his key opens every Swamp crypt.

Boss unlock: Swamp key, which opens sunken crypts. Biome details: Black Forest.

Crypts hold scrap iron behind muddy piles. Iron everything: mace, banded shield, armor. Brew poison resistance mead before you fight anything seriously, and sausages plus turnip stew fix your food. Bonemass wants blunt damage, poison resistance and patience. His wishbone beeps at buried treasure and silver.

Boss unlock: Wishbone, which detects buried silver in the Mountains. Biome details: Swamp.

Frost resistance mead (or a wolf cape) lets you climb. Follow the wishbone to silver, craft wolf armor and a silver sword or Frostner, and tame wolves if you want an army. Draugr Fang is the bow upgrade. Moder alternates flight and ground phases; her tears build the artisan table every later station hangs off.

Boss unlock: Dragon tears for the artisan table, gateway to the Plains. Biome details: Mountain.

Fulings hit like trucks but their villages hold barley and flax: the windmill turns one into bread, the spinning wheel turns the other into linen thread for black metal gear and padded armor. Tame lox for the fun of it. Yagluth is a fire boss, so barley wine fire resistance is mandatory. His remains summon wisps to your side.

Boss unlock: Torn spirit, which the Mistlands' wisp fountain needs. Biome details: Plains.

The wisplight cuts the mist. Mine black cores in infested mines, harvest sap from ancient roots, and choose a path: carapace melee or the new eitr magic line with staves and eitr-weave robes. Collect nine Sealbreaker fragments to enter the Infested Citadel. The Queen's drop presses ceramic plates for the voyage south.

Boss unlock: Majestic carapace, unlocking the artisan press and Ashlands prep. Biome details: Mistlands.

Sail the boiling sea in a Drakkar, take a beachhead, and mine flametal from lava islands. Charred fortresses hold the bell fragments that wake Fader in his coliseum. Grausten building pieces, asksvin mounts and the best gear short of the Deep North live here. Fader's relic lights the Eternal Pyre, and the road carries on north from there.

Boss unlock: Fader relic, which lights the Eternal Pyre. Biome details: Ashlands.

Petrified tissue smelts to bloodgold in the blast furnace, but bloodgold on its own builds nothing. The moulds come out of Deep North halls and granaries, the cast goes into a Frost Foundry, and the foundry burns liquid frost that a Frigid Kiln boils out of ice. That gets you the Nord line; a Frostfire or Thunderblood essence upgrades any piece from there. Armor runs Lox Fur at 16, Caller robes at 22, Vanguard at 34 and Protector at 44, and Kall Fimbulbringer wants three Malicious Blood on his altar and 52,800 health across three phases, the middle one fought as seven aspects of the bosses before him.

Boss unlock: Crown jewel, which forges the Crown of Valheim. Biome details: Deep North. Also: the step-by-step chain.