Valheim seed map
Type any seed above and the map generates that world live: terrain and biomes first, boss altars and traders within a couple of seconds, then all 11,000 or so locations as placement finishes. It is a full world generator and viewer in the browser, running the same code path the game uses, so what you see here is what you get when you create the world in Valheim.
Enter a seed in the sidebar and hit generate, or roll a random one. The sidebar filters every location type: boss altars, Haldor and Hildir, dungeons, camps, runestones and shipwrecks. Hover a marker for the location's photo, creatures and loot, and click a boss altar to jump to its creature page. To share a world, copy the page URL with ?seed= and the seed name on the end. Looking for a strong world to start on? We scan thousands of seeds on the current build for the best Valheim seeds.
The seed you type is hashed into a 32-bit number that drives every layer of the generator. From that one number the game derives the continents and oceans, carves rivers and streams, assigns biomes by distance and noise (Ashlands always burns in the far south, the Deep North freezes at the top), then walks a fixed list of location types and rolls thousands of placement attempts for each: boss altars first, then villages, dungeons, camps and ruins. Two worlds with the same seed on the same version are identical down to the last stone.
The playable world is a circle about 10 kilometers across with the Sacrificial Stones near the center. Every distance on this map matches sailing distance in game, so you can plan portals, boss runs and trade routes before setting foot in the world.
How do I find the seed of my world?
Open the world list in the main menu. The seed is printed right next to each world's name. On a server you do not run, press F2 in game and read it off the overlay. There is also a guide with a .fwl file reader for pulling it out of a save.
How long can a seed be?
Ten characters. That is the limit of the game's own seed field, and the seeds it generates for you are ten characters too. The map cuts anything longer to ten, because a longer string is a world the game can never create.
Is the map exact?
Yes, and we checked it against the game itself rather than against our own reading of the code. We generated three seeds on a real dedicated server, read the location lists out of the saved worlds, and compared them with what this map places: every instance of every location type landed on the same spot in all three, 36,856 locations in total, and the lakes, rivers and streams came out identical to the last bit. Boss altars, traders, dungeons, camps, runestones and the rest are where you will find them in game.
Why does the map show several altars for the same boss?
Because the game places several. Every world generates multiple altar instances per boss, spread across the map, and any of them works: the vegvisir you find in game simply points to the nearest one. The map shows all of them, so pick whichever is closest.
Do seeds change with game updates?
A seed always generates the same world on the same game version, and 1.0 did change generation. We ran the 1.0 and pre-1.0 generators side by side on the same seeds: they agree pixel for pixel everywhere except the Deep North, which was rebuilt and accounts for all of the roughly 3 percent that differs. So on a server still running a pre-1.0 build, everything on this map south of the frozen north matches your world exactly, and the Deep North does not. 1.0 also added 39 new location types, almost all of them in the north, which a pre-1.0 world will not contain. This map always follows the current build.
Where is the copper, and can I see ore on the map?
Yes, turn on the ore layer in the sidebar. Ore is placed by a different pass to the boss altars and dungeons, one that seeds itself separately for every zone and every deposit type, so it's worked out on demand rather than coming with the rest of the map. Copper and tin sit in the Black Forest, tin only right at the water's edge, silver only in mountains above 120 metres, obsidian above 100, and mudpiles in the swamp. The same layer marks the ocean Leviathans, the only source of chitin, which the game places on deep water in about one ocean zone in a hundred. The layer marks every deposit in the world, not just the ones near you.
Is there a Maypole in my seed?
Turn on structures and look for the Maypole pin: the map places every natural Maypole exactly where your world does. A Maypole stands in the yard of some Abandoned Farms and Villages in the Meadows. Those are not single prefabs: when the zone first loads, the game assembles the farm or village from room pieces (houses, fences, fields, a yard) using a roll seeded by the zone, and the farm-yard piece carries a Maypole on a further 10 percent roll seeded by where that yard landed. We ported that whole room roll, the ground raycast and collision tests included, and checked it against a real dedicated server on three seeds: every one of 826 rooms and 25,451 spawn rolls came out the same. In a sample of 100 corpus seeds, 37 had at least one natural Maypole and 6 had two or more, and a Maypole from world generation stays up all year. Outside villages the Maypole is a build piece that only appears in your hammer between 1 June and 6 July, read from your computer's clock; the Yule tree (1 December to 6 January) and the jack-o-turnip (1 October to 6 November) work the same way.
What are the biome variations?
1.0 gives some patches of a biome a variation: Birch Meadows, Peaceful Meadows, Dark Meadows, Kalhygge (a clear-cut Black Forest), a Root forest, a Hut swamp and about twenty-five more. Each one changes what grows and spawns there, and a few add or remove whole locations: Dark Meadows brings Draugr villages, Ruin Black Forest sinks tower ruins, Hut Swamp adds huts, Goblin Plains adds Fuling huts. The game deals them per patch from the seed, so the same seed carries the same variations for everyone. Turn on the layer and hover a patch to see which one it got; the finder can search for seeds with a given variation close to spawn.
Why does the map show ten traders, or ten Forges of Potential?
Because world generation reserves ten sites for each of them, and then throws nine away. Haldor, Hildir, the Bog Witch and the Forge of Potential are all flagged unique, which means the moment a player actually loads the first of those sites, the game deletes every other reservation in the world. The map draws what the generator produced, so all ten are shown; your world will only ever build the one you reach first. Distances in the seed finder are measured to the closest site, which is the one you are realistically going to claim.
Does the seed control loot too?
No. The seed decides terrain, biomes and where every location sits. What you find inside chests and what enemies drop is rolled while you play.
Can I preview seeds without owning the game?
Yes. Everything runs in your browser, nothing to install.