Valheim black metal guide

Valheim’s fourth and final tier of metal for armor and weapons, black metal, comes from the plains biome. You’ve worked your way through bronze, iron, and silver so far, but to face Yagluth, the plains biome boss, you’ll need black metal.

In this Valheim guide, we’ll show you where to seek out black metal scrap, teach you about raiding fuling villages, show you how how to build a blast furnace to process it into black metal, and list the items you’ll make with it.

How to find black metal scrap in Valheim

The plains biome’s goblin-like fulings are your source for the biome’s metal — black metal scrap. Dead fulings always drop at least one black metal scrap.

A small fuling village.

Image: Iron Gate Studio/Coffee Stain Publishing via Polygon

Head into the plains biome, and start looking for structures. Fuling villages are built of wood and leather. They’re easy enough to spot, and fulings attack when you get close — that’s a pretty big clue that you’re near a village.

Here are some tips for raiding fuling villages and fighting fulings:

• These tend to be tough fights with multiple enemies, so make sure you eat something hearty beforehand.
• Before you engage with the fulings, clear out any deathsquitos in the surrounding area.
• Try not to fight near any lox — you really don’t need them joining the fight.
• Kite one or two of the regular furlings away from the camp at a time. When they gang up on you, it’s hard to get the advantage back.
• Ooze bombs (5 leather scraps, 10 ooze, 3 resin) poison all enemies in a small radius, so they’re good for dealing a little group damage.
• Whenever you spot a fuling shaman, take them out first — they have a shield spell for all of their allies, and they have a devastating fireball attack.
• Save the fuling berserkers for last.
• If you die, go collect your things, but don’t rush back in. Start the next raid from scratch — the fulings will reset, so start by luring out only a couple at a time.

After you’ve cleared out a village full of fulings, it’s time to steal their resources. Peppered around their villages, you’ll fine a number of chests. These might contain even more black metal scrap as well as arrows, food, coins, or any number of other goodies.

Remember to mark villages on your map as you find them, and to cross them off as you clear them out.

Build a blast furnace

You can’t process black metal scrap in a normal smelter, so build a blast furnace (20 stone, 5 surtling cores, 10 iron, 20 fine wood). You must build this close to your artisan table and on solid ground (or a stone base).

Blast furnaces work like smelters, requiring coal and time to turn black metal scrap into black metal. You load both the coal and black metal scrap on the left side (the side opposite the steampunk gears and bellows), and the finished metal drops out of the spout.

Frustratingly, you can’t process, tin, copper, bronze, and iron in a blast furnace — you’ll still need a regular smelter for those.

Black metal armor, weapons, and tools

With processed black metal, you’ll unlock the final tier of weapons now. Like the iron weapons in the swamp biome, don’t waste the time and resources to build them all. They’ve got similar stats, so pick one you like and are comfortable with:

• Black metal shield (10 fine wood, 8 black metal, 5 chain) — remember that chain comes from chests inside sunken crypts in the swamp biome
• Black metal tower shield (15 fine wood, 10 black metal, 7 chain)
• Blackmetal atgeir (10 fine wood, 30 black metal, 5 linen thread)
• Blackmetal axe (6 fine wood, 20 black metal, 5 linen thread)
• Blackmetal knife (4 fine wood, 10 black metal, 5 linen thread)
• Blackmetal sword (2 fine wood, 20 black metal, 5 linen thread)