How do wards work in Valheim?

You have the choice to play by yourself in Valheim, join into a server with your friends, or jump into a game with a bunch of random people and attempt to survive. When you decide to play with random players on a server, you expect the competition to be fierce regarding resources and protecting your land. When you want to prevent other players from building next to you, you can craft a ward. These wards are also used to prevent players from opening any doors you’ve created.

The wards require three resources to make it. You do not need to be near a workbench or a forge to make it.

• 5 Fine Wood
• 5 Greydwarf eyes
• 1 Surtling core

Of the resources required to make this item, the Surtling core is the most difficult. You can typically find these inside the burial chamber dungeons in the Black Forest or from the Surtlings that are wandering around in the swamp. When you have enough of them, you can place the ward inside your structure or beyond it and use it to protect your area from other players who might try to sneak in and steal your resources or build a camp near yours. The item also notifies you if a building or structure you’ve made has been damaged.

The radius of these wards is fairly large. However, despite their size, we recommend creating multiple of them to ensure you can defend several points of your homestead. If another player destroys the ward, the item’s effects go away, allowing players to open any door you’ve made or build closer to you. Whenever you make one of these, ensure they’re safely locked away behind another structure or hidden behind several doors that another player cannot access.

You can activate and deactivate the ward by interacting with it. You can tell a ward is on based on the glowing runes.