Valheim: Structure Stability Explained

This article is part of a directory: Valheim Complete Guide for Tips, Tricks, and General Help

Table of contents

If Valheim players are looking to start their own in-game building sprees after seeing some of the amazing designs by others, they may be wondering how these buildings could be stable. When someone sees pictures of the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, or the complete Stormwind Harbor rebuilt in Valheim, they may be wondering how they were built and how structures like that can hold their weight.

The game's building physics are fairly simple on paper, but can get a hectic when actually building a house in Valheim. The best way of determining the stability of the structure while building is to run the curser over the structure while the Hammer is selected. Rolling over the individual pieces of a structure with the Hammer, without hitting any buttons, will make the piece glow a certain color. The color will indicate how stable a piece is. The scale is as follows:

Blue - The most stable it can be
Green
Yellow Green
Yellow
Orange
Red - the most unstable something can be without instantly crumbing

After Valheim players unlock stone buildings, it becomes even more complicated; this scale is mostly for wooden pieces, as the scale becomes unstable faster with stone pieces, being heavier than wood.

Visual Help For Structures

User duploq on Reddit shared a helpful graph to better describe the colors of the stability spectrum in Valheim.

However, the instability of yellow, orange, and red pieces of the structure can be mitigated by adding supports.

Supports for Structures

While learning to better level the ground in Valheim with a hoe can help with structure stability, nothing adds more support to structures than wooden beams, log supports, and more. By adding one of the many support types players can build, players can turn red structure piece into a yellow one.

There are several different support types that players can build for their homes. They are listed below ordered from least supportive to most supportive:

Wooden poles
Pole Logs
Wood Iron pole
Stone pillars

Adding supports to either side of a wall or roof tile can help to increase the stability of each piece significantly. Here's a demonstration of each support:

Other Tips and Tricks for Building

Trees count the same as the ground for stability, and can be used to support taller structures. Even player-planted trees can work for this purpose.
Adding roof tiles to structures prevent decay from weathering to wooden structures.
Enemies will attempt to break any structures made by players that they come across.
All wooden structures will lose 50 percent integrity when built in water.
Players can repair wood or stone buildings of any kind with the correct Workbench and a hammer tool by selecting "Repair" from the building menu and then left clicking on the item to be fixed.
While structural integrity can be added to buildings and Valheim home defenses on uneven land, leveling land is still one of the best ways to ensure that a building has a secure base to place all other pieces on.