Race overview
Ten races, plus the option to stay Human. They are not balanced against each other — each one bends a different rule of the game, and how strong that feels depends entirely on what you were finding annoying about vanilla.
At a glance
| Race | Fantasy | Signature mechanic | Transforms into |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skeleton | Undead warrior | No stamina bar at all; cannot eat mortal food | — |
| Skadi | Child of the mountain | Frost immunity and real, aimed flight | Drake · Moder · Skeleton Dragon |
| Fenrir | Cursed wolf-blood | Beast melee forms; wolves ignore you | Wolf · Ulv · Fenring · Cultist |
| Aswid | Vampire | Blood magic with no eitr cost; day/night duality | Bat · Mist |
| Furling | Goblin opportunist | 2× combat XP forever; doubled drops and yields | — |
| Trol | Mountain brute | Enormous size, carry weight, thrown boulders | True Form (tree-wielding) |
| Draugh | Swamp undead | Eats only raw flesh; a fatal blow leaves you a ghost, not a corpse | — |
| Dvergar | Deep-folk smith | Mining, smithing and trading perks, paid for in max health | — |
| Sverm | Armoured insect | Carapace and claws that never come off; grows a colony past The Elder | Seeker Brute (Ravager Strain) |
| Trenta | Tree-born wanderer | Roots in daylight to heal; the forest never attacks you | The Elder (half size) |
How they eat
Food is the rule Races of Valheim breaks most often, and it is usually the first thing you notice.
| Race | Diet |
|---|---|
| Skeleton | Cannot eat at all. Max health comes from boss kills instead |
| Aswid | Consumes fallen enemies directly; 4th stomach slot for prey |
| Draugh | Raw meat, eyes, entrails and blood only — cooked food is rejected; lasts 50% longer |
| Trol | Normal food, but unlocks a 4th and 5th stomach slot |
| Furling | Normal food, but eitr foods last twice as long at the Queen tier |
| Fenrir | Normal food |
| Skadi | Normal food |
| Dvergar | Normal food, but a permanent max health malus on top of it |
| Sverm | Normal food; honey and royal jelly are worth double and alchemical blood is refused |
| Trenta | Only what grows — and every meal lasts twice as long. Seeds and cones become real dishes after Eikthyr |
Stamina and eitr
| Race | Stamina | Eitr |
|---|---|---|
| Skeleton | None — no bar, no cost | Normal |
| Aswid | Infinite | Blood magic items cost no eitr (health only) |
| Skadi | Spells and dragon breath are paid in stamina | +50% regen at Yagluth |
| Dvergar | Favoured weapons refund 20% of attack stamina; pickaxes 40% | Both actives cost eitr |
| Sverm | Cheaper running and jumping from Eikthyr (Metabolic Surge) | Normal |
| Trenta | Swimming is free from Bonemass | Normal |
| Others | Normal | Normal |
Who leaves you alone
Seven races change monster aggression. All of them work the same way — the creature simply never initiates. Strike one first and it fights back exactly as it always would.
- Draugh — skeletons, draugr, ghosts and wraiths never treat you as an enemy, at any tier. Swamp crypts stop being fights.
- Fenrir — wolves, ulvs, fenrings and cultists never treat you as an enemy, at any tier.
- Furling — goblins, goblin brutes, goblin shamans, lox, deathsquitos and trolls ignore you at any tier. Yagluth himself is deliberately excluded.
- Skeleton — skeletons, draugr, ghosts and wraiths ignore you, at any tier.
- Sverm — every invertebrate ignores you from tier 1: leeches, ticks, deathsquitos, seekers and bees. Bonemass is not an insect and is not included.
- Trenta — greylings, greydwarves, fulings, trolls, leeches and deathsquitos ignore you from the very first tier, with no progression gate.
- Aswid — the only progressive one. Creatures stop attacking you as you advance: boars at Eikthyr, bears at The Elder, leeches/ghosts/wraiths at Bonemass, wolves at Moder, lox/deathsquitos at Yagluth, hares/gjalls at The Queen, and asksvin/voltures/valkyries at Fader.
Skadi's dragon forms change what you look like, not what the world thinks you are. Drakes and everything else aggro a transformed Skadi exactly as they would a human — there is no hostility rule for the race anywhere in the mod. The race is still covered by the Mountain faction truce, which is a separate system.
Since v1.4.19 a truce is no longer absolute in both directions: strike a creature that was
leaving you alone and it fights you for 60 seconds (Faction grudge, configurable, 0 for
the old behaviour), per creature and per attacker. Before that fix a truced mob could not
retaliate at all — it stood there being hit, or ran away. The Aswid's drain and the Skadi's
frost aura now skip their own kin, so an always-on aura cannot start that fight for you.
These are each race's own rules, and predate Factions — a v1.4.0 system that adds peace (and trading) for every race, including Trol, Skadi and Dvergar, none of which had any hostility rule until then. The two stack rather than conflict; Furling and Skeleton already had rules of their own before Factions existed and keep them unchanged.
Difficulty of play
Rough guidance, not a ranking:
- Simplest — Furling and Draugh. Passive bonuses, no keys to learn.
- Middle — Skeleton, Trol, Trenta and Dvergar. One or two abilities, but a rewritten survival loop or economy to play around.
- Most involved — Skadi, Fenrir, Aswid and Sverm. Multiple transformation keys or a base to build, forms with their own attack sets, and timings that depend on day/night or cooldowns.
The Dvergar is the odd one out: mechanically simple to operate, but the only race that asks you to change what you do outside combat rather than inside it.
Picking up the details
Every race page follows the same layout: the fantasy, the base kit you get at tier 1, a tier-by-tier unlock table, the controls, and the mechanics that are easy to miss.
For the keys themselves across all races at once, see Key bindings.