How to Tame Wolves Easily in Valheim (2023)

Trickier than the boar, that's for sure!
Image via Iron Gate Press KIT

Wolves are just one of currently a few (but hopefully many very soon) wild animals that you can tame in Valheim. They can serve as combat pets to you and can prove themselves very useful in base defenses, boss raids, or just general hunting around the world. Prima Games will tell you how to tame wolves easily in Valheim so that you can form your own wolf pack and lead it.

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How to Tame a Wolf in Valheim Easily (2023)

Taming a Wolf in Valheim is not that easy, but we’ll try to make it as easy as possible. You will need a few things in order to commence the process of Taming Wolves in Valheim:

  • Workbench, because you will be building a pen of some sort.
  • A lot of raw meat, because wolves get hungry a lot.
  • Frost Resistance gear or mead, because Wolves live in the Mountain Biome.

Related: All Valheim Bosses in Order

How to Build a Wolf Pen in Valheim

You can build the wolf pen (kennel, cage) either in the Mountain or on the border of a lesser-difficulty biome, right outside the Mountain, to make things a bit easier for yourself. The pen can be built in two ways:

Hole Pen

With a Hole Pen, you need to dig deep and create a big hole (like Ed from Ed, Edd, and Eddy), out of which you will have one exit in the form of stairs which wolves cannot use. Alternatively, you will make a “fake” floor above that hole which you will raze when wolves are standing on it with you so that they can fall down in the pit. Why is this being done?

Because Wolves tend to get very scared and then, very aggressive when you attempt to tame them, they have the tendency of biting through man-made walls, which is simply not possible when they are in the pit, so some players just cut out that inconvenience with a pit.

Ground-Level Fence-Based Wolf Pen

This is the method I have used. It is indeed more difficult to build, but it’s easier to manipulate, re-use, and of course, lead the tamed wolves out. You pick a plot of land and encircle it with a wooden wall. You will also need the doors so that you can easily get in with the wolves and then lock them up. Having a backup door is also a great idea. Within the pen, you need to make stairs which you will use to escape the pen and close it from the outside. Also, you can make stairs from the outside of the pen so that you can easily climb the wall and toss in some fresh meat to the wolves later, and check their status. Here’s a show of mspaint.exe skills below.

The black outline is the inner wall, and the purple outline is the backup wall just a few feet away from the inner wall, as a backup, in case the wolves bite through the inner layer. You don’t want them escaping, do you? Do not be a cheapskate when it comes to the enclosure size. Think big, it will be needed later.

Paint.exe skills by Prima Games

Where to Find Wolves in Valheim

Wolves are found in the Mountain Biome and come with no stars, one star, or two stars, indicating their power level and rarity. Whatever you find, you need to agro (just walking close to them should be good enough to draw their attention) and then run back to your wolf pen with a wolf (or wolves) on your tail (pun intended).

Related: Valheim Food Tier List: Best Foods in Valheim, Ranked

How to Breed Wolves in Valheim

Once you capture your wolves, the most difficult period is up… the adaptation period. Your newly-adopted puppies will be frightened and might try to gnaw and claw their way to freedom, but your role is to toss them enough raw meat on the floor so that they start feeling safer and more comfortable in their new home. This process takes a while, and when you inspect the wolves you’ll see their status. If you capture a two-star Wolf (usually during nighttime) stick around, because it might despawn before being tamed.

Once you have at least two wolves tamed, you may commence the breeding process. This is fairly simple. Have two adult wolves and enough raw meat on the ground, within a big enough pen. If the pen is too small, breeding will not happen.

If you match up two wolves with the same level, their cub will have their level. If the two adult wolves have different levels, there is a 50/50 chance that the cub will inherit their level. So essentially, similar to how things work with Boars, you just need one two-star Wolf in your Wolf Pack, in order to (eventually) have a 100% two-star Wolf Pack, through selective breeding.
Sadly, lower-ranked wolves need to be sacrificed in combat in this case. We’ve heard of a player defeating all bosses without damaging the bosses himself, but by letting the wolves tear them apart one by one, so if you have some spare time you can try that as well.

We hope this guide was useful to you, and we invite you to check the rest of our Valheim coverage on the game tag below. Until next time!


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Author
Nikola L
Nikola has been a Staff Writer at Prima Games since May 2022. He has been gaming since being able to hold an Amiga 500 joystick on his own, back in the early 90s (when gaming was really good!). Nikola has helped organize dozens of gaming events and tournaments and has been professionally attached to gaming since 2009.