Valheim has reached astronomical numbers on Steam and has thousands of new players every day. Despite being a hardcore survival game, Valheim is still forgiving and surprisingly welcoming to newcomers as the game tells players what to do without holding their hand. Even still, most information comes from feeling things out, while mixing in some good-natured trial and error. However, flattening the ground could make all the difference in a player's foundation, so a little research in this matter most certainly couldn't hurt.
The starting biome in Valheim, The Meadows, gets its name from the rolling green hills that spread out across the land. The hills in this area can make for a rather difficult time building a home for the first time, so the first step in this and any construction should be laying down a solid foundation. To do this, players should already have gathered the required materials for a base workbench and from within it, they can make a hoe. The hoe will let players manipulate the terrain in a few different ways, but the most important is flattening. Whether it's for a home or for the entire town of Skyrim's Whiterun, a flat surface is crucial.
While the default flattening option is selected in the hoe's menu, Valheim players might notice as they run around left-clicking their mouse that the ground certainly flattens, but to seemingly random levels. This is because the hoe flattens to whatever land height that the player is currently standing on. Luckily, the YouTube channel Quick Tips has a great tip for how to deal with this problem, and the tip is given pretty quickly too. As Quick Tips states in the video below, standing still in one spot and flattening the ground all around you can make for a nice and easy flat surface to start your building project on.
Knowing how any object or tool works in Valheim is the first step in mastering the game and hopefully ascending to Valhalla. As mentioned, the hoe brings land masses either up or down to the player's current elevation, but cannot actually dig into the ground. The tool can however raise land which is great for building off hillsides or even mountains. Digging into the ground can be achieved with the antler pickaxe that's acquired from defeating the giant deer, Eikthyr. It is worth noting that the pickaxe cannot tunnel into hills or the ground below. This tool seems to destroy everything vertically leaving a giant wall in front of you, regardless of how far you dig down. It's unclear as to whether this is a bug or the pickaxe's intended purpose.
Valheim is in Early Access for PC on Steam.