Follow us along as we enter the world of the Vikings! Explore lands, find resources, fight big-bads, and … build furniture? Valheim is a big game that I had to “absorb” over a month to crystalize my feelings. I have lots of thoughts … as do my friends! Did I like it solo? Did me and my friends like it cooperatively? Follow us on our journey!
Valheim is a cooperative boss-battling and furniture-building game (yes, you heard me right) that was on Gamefound back in October 2024. It delivered in October 2025.
This is an exploration game where players play as Vikings exploring the world and looking for resources to build furniture and weapons! Although some of my friends might see the furniture-building as the main goal of the game, the furniture-building is a secondary goal; the furniture is for upgrades so players can fight the big-bad at the end of the game!
Let’s a take a look!
Unboxing
The first day I got Valheim, I spent 2 hours unboxing, punching out tokens, sleeving cards, and generally organizing the game.
The unboxing was a full two hours of work!
Valheim is a big mama-jama of a game! See above! I backed the full all-in package for this: SPOILER ALERT!! You don’t really need most the stuff from the deluxe kickstarter version. The Dice Tower? Nah. The Dice Tray? Nah. The Playmat? Nah (the board is better). The card sleeves … there are issues (see later). The Wooden Furniture is by far the best thing to get. See below.
If I had to do this over again, I probably would have gotten the non-deluxe version. But I still would have somehow tried to get the wooden furniture….it’s awesome and thematic.
The deluxe box is huge: see the Coke can next to it.
This is just a big game.
It’s pretty fancy looking.
Like I said, it took a while to unbox/organize this; about 2 hours.
Gameplay
Each player takes control of one of the four characters. These characters boards are really nice dual-layered boards: see above. But the characters have no name or even designation (the archer? Maybe?)
Each character is just an empty template until you choose the skills; each player gets three skills! See above as the archer? (no name) gets Healthy, Carpenter, and extra move (lower right).
As you play, you can fill in the consumables area with all sorts of cool meads, potions, and things like honeycomb! (You can actually build a beehive in the game! That’s a type of furniture!)
As the game progresses, players can make or find weapons and armor to help in their quest. See above as the yellow swordsman (seriously, no names for anyone?) gets a Hammer, Leather Tunic and Fire Wood Bow!
The cost of each items is in the lower left; you have to build your items too!
Players explore a world of hexes as defined by the scenario chosen! See above! Players are looking for resources from which they build their furniture and their weapons!
Resources generally are at particular Locations: see above, where blue archer can go exploring at the “rocky place” to get rock.
As the game unfolds, the players collectively collect more and more resources! See above.
The resources in the environment are in a nice container (see above).
Another resource tray holds potions, consumables (like honeycomb) and other tokens.
The resource trays sit at the bottom of the board, right next to the house.
The house is where you build furniture and keep resources.
Of course, this is a hostile work environment, and there are little monsters to fight along the way! See the Greyling one space away.
The monsters are pretty well-defined on their cards. The Greyling has 2 hits, rolls 1 black die during combat, and gives some resin as a treasure if you kill it.
But of course, the final thing is (usually) killing the big-bad! See above!
In fact, fighting the final big-bad is a very different combat! You “summon” the big bad, then fight them in a special arena! See above!
If you can drop the big bad (Ekithyr above) to zero hit points, you win! If you all die in the final arena, you lose! (You can also lose if you fail to summon the big bad before the event deck runs out)
Explore hexes, gather resources, build furniture, fight monsters, roll dice, and summon the big bad! That’s Valheim in a nutshell!
Rulebook
The rulebook is ok, but it has three major major flaws.
First: The binding for the rulebook is NOT stapled pages … so it has trouble laying flat and open!! It uses a glue binding (usually that’s what most graphic novels use): see above! We saw this binding in many games over the years, and we are were just as appalled now as we were then (most recently in War Story: see review here, but also Freedom Five: see review here).
The problem with this kind of binding is that it may/may not stay open! Notice above that I have my two fingers on it to hold it open! You can always “break the spine”, or “bend it back” to hold it open, but that severely limits the life of the the rulebook! The worst part is simply that the rulebook does NOT lay flat so you can see it on the chair next to you! This rulebook FAILS the Chair Test!
The thing is, this rulebook is like 52 pages long! I think they only used the glue binding because it’s so long … but then I remind myself that Gloomhaven’s original rulebook was 52 pages: and it used a stay-flat stapled rulebook!!! Why on earth did they use this binding?
Second: Another problem with this rulebook is that it has two halves; the first 32 or so pages are the rules, but the last pages are all summaries and explanations of cards! See above! I think they should have SEPARATED the rulebook and summary book into TWO books! That way, you could have had a separate stapled lay-flat rulebook and a separate stay-flat book describing all the cards and systems in the game.
(We’ll get to the third problem in a second). Let me say that this game has a great Table of Contents (yay: see above) but no Index (boo!). I do think that this is a game that needed an Index!! Not all games need an Index: we just recently saw that Ham Helsing has an Index, but it really wasn’t necessary. But I think Valheim does need one … but, this isn’t a deal-breaker.
The components pages are great.
The set-up was pretty good for the generic game: see above with lots of pictures.
The font is big and easy to read. There are also a hefty amount of pictures; maybe even too many flavor pictures? See above.
The book also ends with a summary of tokens which I appreciated (unfortunately, it didn’t cover Kickstarter extras; that had to come in a separate sheet).
The final problem with the rulebook is that I feel like it missed a lot of edge cases that seemed to come up again and again. For example; in raids, does the ! summon the raiding party if you are close by it? Not clear? In the final arena combat, what happens if you die when the big-bad does? Do you lose? Win? Tie? It all depends on if the actions of the big-bad are “atomic” in one transaction, or not. Can you run away from combat? Can your skills be used immediately again and again and again and again if you can power them? (I think that last one is you can). When you get the honeycomb, do you get to see what it is when you put it in your character?
It feels like these edge cases came up as we played. We were able to get through them, and most of the rules were well-defined, but there was just enough edge case ambiguity to be frustrating.
But, this is a beautiful rulebook with a readable font, a good set-up, components, table of contents, and fairly detailed rules. I just hated the binding, I wish it had been separated into two books, and I wish it handled more edge cases.
I learned the game, and the rulebook was good enough for that. But that was in spite of the rulebook … see below.
First Play: Solo Game Tutorial
So, my first game was a solo game using the tutorial: see above.
The tutorial takes you through the game; setting you up, and taking you through the game in about an hour: see set-up above.
There is a deck of 50+ cards that holds your hand and takes you step-by-step through most of the systems of the game! See the deck above.
The only problem with this tutorial is that you MUST have all 4 characters in play! For the solo player, this is a LOT of work as he has to operate all 4 characters at once! GULP!
It was daunting, but you know what? It worked! See some of the tutorial above! This was a good tutorial. There were a few places where it was a little unclear (and they actually made at least one mistake), but this method of walking the four characters through the game worked!
I would ALMOST say this is a great tutorial, but it just had a few problems.
At some point, you build some furniture … but it gets the cost wrong. The cost to build the Fire Table is TWO resin and TWO wood, but the tutorial card shows ONE resin and TWO wood! We assume that the summary (on the right) is correct?
The combat is pretty well-described, but one card describing the combat with multiple participants was … poorly worded.
After all was said and done, this tutorial worked well, Not great, but well. I still had some questions, but I felt like I understood most of the systems of the game.
I was also exhausted, because operating four characters during the tutorial was a lot of work. I was just a little disheartened by the few mistakes and a few poor wordings.
First Cooperative Play
A week later I was able to get a cooperative first play in! It lasted about 1.5 hours from start to finish!
For our first cooperative play, we simply played through the Tutorial again. We each played one character (there were three of us), and kind of “shared” control of the fourth character.
One of the great things about cooperative play is the sharing of the load. As a group, we set-up the game, as a group we ran the game, as a group we read the tutorial cards. Remember how I was saying how exhausted I felt after my first solo play through this tutorial? A lot of that went away when we played solo. And I think this game really benefits from that sharing of the load, because there are a lot of systems to run.
As we played through the tutorial, it was good to get a refresher from the runthrough. And it seemed to go well.
By the end of the night, the game Valheim had introduced itself to me and my friends. We did encounter the “poorly worded” multiple combat card and mistake of the fire table again, but we just moved through it.
My friends wanted to play again, after running through the runthrough. I could call that a successful runthrough.
True Solo
Strangely, I couldn’t find any reference in the rulebook to solo rules? I even downloaded the PDF I could find and searched for the word solo. No mention. The only acknowledgement that you can play solo is the player count on the box! See above.
My reading of the rules is that “each players selects a character”. If you are playing solo, you only select one character, I guess? Implicitly, this is a true solo game! I just wish they had acknowledged that with a single sentence somewhere: “The solo player takes control of a single character and plays the game as-is”. (And you almost always need to say “effects on another player in the solo game affect the solo player instead”; that wasn’t in here. It should be). Recall, last week we saw Fate: Defenders of Grimheim did exactly he right thing and made it clear how to play solo! I wish Valheim had done this too. Oh well. Moving on, assuming true solo play …
My first solo game was the first scenario from the Scenario book (as recommended by the rulebook). We have to deal with Ekythir again. Sigh.
The solo game is harder. You get used to having a weapon in the Runthrough, but in the “real game”, you don’t start with any equipment! You literally have to build EVERYTHING from resources!
And you find out right away that you CAN fight without weapons; you just get the yellow die WITHOUT any doubles! Gulp! So, you start the game feeling VEEERY weak!
I start with nothing but the skills on my back!
This game is all about exploring the world so you can get resources! You need resources for weapons and furniture!
As the game goes on, you had better be collecting resources so you can build some cool furniture back at home! See above as I build the rug, the fire table, the barrel, and the beehive!
Why do I build all this stuff?? Is the furniture even useful?? Absolutely! The rug heals your stamina by 1, the beehive gives you consumables (see above), the barrel gives you mead, and the fire table allows you to have fire arrows! See above for all the cool stuff I got!
And I need ALL of this as I go into my final combat!
Depending on how I played it, we either both lost, we both won, or I just lost? In the final round, we both killed each other … maybe? It’s not clear how much is simultaneous! To be fair, with a very small retro motion, I was able to use my skills (powered by stamina) to kill him before the last round. BUT I wish this would have been clearer.
Generally, I had fun exploring the lands and gathering resources and building furniture!
Cooperative Play (Scenario 2)
A week after we played through the tutorial as a group, my friends were excited to build beehives together!
After learning the basics of the game through the good tutorial, we settled in for a real game Scenario 2.
In Scenario 2, we get to fight …
The ELDER!
Some good cooperation came out as we played. Each of our skills requires all of us to “do something” to activate them (for example, I had to build 3 pieces of armor). This game each player focus, and we all tried to activate all of our skills.
This meant working together to allow us to do stuff! “Oh! You need to craft some armor three times? Okay! You need copper and I need to go kill monsters!” Generally, this worked pretty well, as we all pursued our goals, and there was just enough serendipity that our goals helped each other.
Over the course of the night, we built tons of furniture to build our characters up. In the end, we summoned the Elder and beat him up!
Good times. I think my friends really enjoyed building the furniture building and world exploring … maybe even more than the combat (which can be a little random). The combat almost seemed a necessary evil so that we HAD to build furniture. I am telling you, I think my friends enjoyed the furniture making more than anything else in this game! Just ask Sara how much Teresa talked about the beehive ALL WEEKEND LONG.
Issues
This game feels like an A game inside a B body. There were so many places where a little extra thought/effort could have made things just a little better.
Raid Rules: these seem poorly specified. They aren’t covered in the intro, so I had to go find the rules for Raids in the rulebook. What happened to me: I was two away from the raiding party, so could I attract the raiders if I rolled a ! on the explore dice? Thematically, it seems like they are trying to coalesce to attack, so they wouldn’t attack! Pedantically, the rules say the raiders would move to me. Which is it?
Sleeves for weapons/armor: The sleeves fit on the cards just fine, but the sleeved cards DO NOT fit great into the dual-layered player boards. They “sorta” work, see above. But it feels nobody really tried the sleeves with the boards! They boards should have slightly bigger or the sleeves slightly smaller … a small adjustment here would have made a huge difference!
Sleeves for normal cards: The sleeved cards BARELY fit into the plastic insert. You have to SQUASH THEM HARD to fit. Even after you put on the cover, the cards slide around a little. See above. Sigh. The spaces for cards only had to be a touch taller and this wouldn’t have been an issue. Well, at least the sleeved cards actually fit in the insert … barely, but not great. See, they work, but it feels like a B work … not A work.
The house: This may just be a deluxe version, but the house doesn’t work. Sorry, to be clear, the house stands up and can hold things, but it ends up obscuring the resources and furniture! Although the cardboard house has a cool toy factor (see above), it is NOT useful for playing!
In the end, we just took down the cardboard house so we could ALL see the insides of the house!! See above. Again, cool thing, but interferes with gameplay. Coolness gives it A, but then interference with gameplay drops it to a B.
Hex Spaces Feel Crowded: The spaces on the board feel very crowded if there’s more than one thing on there. See above!! What resources do the minis cover? It almost feels like the hexes should be one size bigger? The game is still usable, but this kind of made the game clumsier.
Better notation: If there are multiple enemies, there’s no “clear” way to notate which guys have taken damage.
This immediately drew a comparison to Tales From Red Dragon Inn (see above), where each mini is CLEARLY marked with which has which hit points! Sure, we can work around this, but it seemed … annoying they didn’t think of a better system for this.
Can’t Run? If you get stuck in a combat you’d rather not, there’s no rules for escaping. There are rules for others to come help you, but it seems strange there is no way to get out of combat once you are in! If you character dies, it’s not the end of the world (you spawn back in the house), but … I think I wanted to run away from a Troll once and I couldn’t???
Odin Skills: The Odin Skills don’t fit great back into the insert. You kinda clumsily plop them in.
Just Everywhere! When you go to set-up the game, it’s a mess! I had to put boxes and box tops everywhere because this game is so big!
Table Space Constraints: I feel like game REQUIRES you to turn your game longways. The way the resource trays and home are set-up, there’s no way this would fit on my table any other way than the longways: see above. So, I ended up sitting at the end of the table! This just wouldn’t fit if I used the prescribed layout! I mean it looks cool (see above) but only one way.
What I Liked
Gorgeous: This is a gorgeous game with great (modulo some issues) components.
Furniture: Something about the furniture puts a smile on me andmy friends faces … We are building furniture! Cool theme.
Gameplay: Was generally straight-forward, once you got the hang of it.
Tutorial: The tutorial was well done. Not perfect, but good enough to get you into the systems of the game.
Conclusion
For Teresa, Valheim may be her game of the year! She loved the theme so much, she was able to overlook all the issues we encountered along the way and just embrace Valheim! I struggled a little more with the issues; I feel this could have been a great game, but the issues brought it down to a good game. Maybe you’ll be like Teresa and absolutely love this game! Maybe you’ll be like me and just like it. That’s still a pretty good recommendation either way. Hopefully our exploration of this game will help you decide what you might think.
Both Sara and I do worry a little about replayability; once you build all the furniture, what else is there to do? Because of that and all the other issues I had, this is probably a 7/10 for me and Sara … just barely a recommendation, but we still liked it. But Teresa will give this an 8.5/10 and point out that you can build a beehive! That’s all that matters!
coopgestalt 