Quick answer
Title: How to Build the Perfect Dock Valheim 1.0 So, you've built a ship and started exploring the world beyond your starter island, but now you're convinced you need a dock. But, as soon as you get the carved boat, the other two will also be within relatively easy reach, and give you a real advantage going forward. But a lot of times you'll need to craft a boat to leave your starting island and explore to find a swamp. The controls for steering are kind of clunky, and I love them for that very reason.
And I suggest that you actually build a boat to find the swamp biome if you've not found it yet, because it's just so much more efficient than using a raft. Progressing to the Black Forest unlocks the capability to craft a boat and take to the sea. While all of this doesn't completely excuse how clunky the experience can be, it's also great that they included both mouse mode support, which works brilliantly with almost no input latency, alongside gyro controls. Further, you can excavate the earth below the towers and let gravity tear it down for a boatload of stone.
In Valheim when you need to cross a large body of water, just use a boat! Stop leaving your ships unprotected on the shore Nearby creatures will not hesitate to attack your boat if coming across it on the coast. Another mistake I often make is leaving my boat exposed on the coast following a sail. But hey, maybe you want to try an alternative method of travel than portals or boats?
Boat basics
You can teleport up there and make a boat to sail across to the deep north. Okay, Zany, you need to get on the boat right now. However, the best part of this one is that it captures each of your portal, boat, and cart locations on your map automatically for you. We could leave a portal there and come back when we have a boat.
It's worth noting you don't need a special boat to sail to the deep north like you did in the Ashlands. Sticking with the ocean, one of the rarest creatures to find unless you're low on food, tired, and have a boatload of iron, are the kings of the sea and the serpent. Maybe you've even tried to build one for yourself already and quickly realize just how difficult it can be. There's still a lot of area to cover before you're likely to hit one of these 10 possible spawn points and the fastest way to travel in Valheim is by boat.
Once you find a swamp, do not get close to shore in your boat because there are creatures in the water that swim up and destroy your boat. The Ashlands represent a dramatic escalation that really sells the thrill of entering the end game with a jump in difficulty and foreboating volcanic landscapes. You will need bronze nails to make a boat though, which I have another guide on linked below. The controls with every option under the sun all working well.
How to build it
If you happen to capsize, the reduction of stamina usage could be the difference between life and death should your boat be destroyed at sea. Take the boat materials and place them in the safety of a chest nearby rather than leave your ship exposed. If your boat breaks the materials used to craft it, especially the nails, can sink and if the water is deep be completely unretrievable. Perhaps a better example are with boats and carts which can be destroyed and transported.
Now it doesn't matter what boat you make. Get on the boat right now. No more losing your boat location or forgetting a portal name. All right, boat in the water.
Well, don't worry, because I've designed an organized boat dock that you can use that gives you everything you'll need to make your expeditions a little more convenient. My top tip, if you're struggling to find either of these traders, is to sail your boat or ship close around the coast in areas that align with that specific trader's spawn parameters. Only get close if you are ready to make landfall and try to park your boat in a shallow area so collecting its materials is easy. But, I do think a lot of my initial friction came from the controls.
Controls and sailing
When ready to sail, reclaim the materials, craft the boat and be on your way Stop breeding creatures without stars. Of course you can prevent all these shenanigans by destroying your boat after docking. And that’s not where it ends for carts as they can be used to carry WAY more material than typically possible with the standard boat. So make any boat that you want.
Yeah, do not park the boat here. All right, we've got some iron and stuff um on the boat. In this video, I'll show you exactly how to build it step by step, whilst sharing a stupid number of building tips that I've picked up after over a thousand hours in the game. So, I suggest building a stone bunker for your tamed creatures or creating like a lifeboat population of animals somewhere safe away from your base in case your main population gets wiped out.
When ready to sail again, grab the material, rebuild your boat and be on your way. Typically building a ramp up onto the boat is your best bet for boarding the ship and for undocking, simply destroying the ship might be the path of least resistance. However, a more sturdy boat is going to be useful. We never had we've never had a boat full of Vikings.
Upgrade options
But right now, that should be enough to almost fill the boat with iron uh from what I've found so far. And by the end of it, you'll have a boat dock just like this. We'll just crash our boat into this, I guess. This might this single crypt might fill up our boat even if we have more to grab.
With all that said, let's get into it. Talking of shipwrecks though, do be careful not to wreck your boat. So I have 13, I think, left in the chest and 120 on the boat. As with all structures, the first thing you'll need to do is clear out some space so you can actually build the thing.
And uh this is why I said a sturdier ship is going to be useful because if you happen to wreck your boat, then the water here is very deep, even right at the edge. Maxing out the boat storage completely. It's around 24 meters from the front to the dock edge and then around 18 m from side to side. And as always, do make sure that you mark your boat on the map so you can find it again nice and easily.
Tips
And if we get to the edge of this island, we will leave the portal there, come back and grab our boat, and continue to bone mass. Obviously, there will be some additional space on top of that required, but that's all going to be suspended over the water. Uh but once that's down, of course, uh we can mark that on our map as well, so we know how to get back to it if it is far away from our boat. For right now though, I don't think that anything at all could have prepared me for what would happen when we got our boat across the water and the new stuff that we'd see.
So, you shouldn't have to clear out any land for that section. So some boat trips to and from the deep north will be in order unless of course you have changed your world modifier settings. With that, let's get our boat placed down. From here, you want to grab your stone floor 2 by two and come down to where you want the edge of your structure to be.
Otherwise, it could be a long boat journey. And I also needed to get all of the already mined silver down the mountain to the boat before I moved the boat around to the second mountain to start harvesting over there as well. So, you can see here I've just lined up the stone floor so that it's in line with the ground. As long as this goes okay, we'll have this stuff on the boat.