How to Find the Black Forest (Valheim)

Once you’ve defeated Valheim’s first boss, you’ll need to head to the Black Forest to find the Elder, your next target. Since every world seed has different geographical layouts, the location of the Black Forest in your game won’t quite be the same as in anyone else’s. In this guide, we’ll show you a quick and easy way to locate the Black Forest biome in your world, as well as teach you how to track its location on your map.

Finding the Black Forest

Every time you start a new world in Valheim, Hugin the Crow flies you to the Sacrificial Stones. Once you land, you can take a look at your map and see the path Hugin took. Your crow friend always begins his path in the Black Forest, so if you follow his path from your location to where he began, that’ll be where the Black Forest is.

First, open your map with M. You’ll notice if you hover your cursor over revealed sections of the map, it will tell you which biome you’re currently hovering in the upper right of the map. The Sacrificial Stones are in the Meadows biome, and if you move your cursor back along the path Hugin flew, you’ll eventually see the biome indicator read Black Forest. There it is!

Sometimes, Hugin will fly over water. If this happens, you’ll either need to craft a raft, or find another path around to reach the Black Forest. Swimming long distances usually leads to drowning in Valheim.

Tracking the Black Forest on Your Map

It’s easy to see which way the Black Forest is when Hugin first drops you off, but once you’ve explored a bit and revealed more of the map, you might not be able to tell which way Hugin flew in. To mitigate this, we’ll need to drop a marker on our map before we do too much exploring.

First, open your map and select one of the markers in the bottom right. For the example, we’ll choose the simple circle. Then locate where Hugin spawned (you’ll know it’s the right spot if the upper right of the map reads “Black Forest”), and double click that spot to drop a marker. Doing so will open up a dialogue box at the bottom of the map — label the marker “Black Forest” and hit enter. If you click again without typing a name, you’ll drop an unlabeled marker instead.

If you accidentally set a marker in the wrong place, don’t worry. You can remove markers with the right mouse button (or simply put an X over them by left clicking once).

You should now be able to find the Black Forest with ease! Let us know if you have any questions, or requests for other guides, in the comments section below.