Valheim guide: Flax and barley farming

In Valheim’s final biome, the plains, you’ll find two more crops for your burgeoning farmstead. In this Valheim farming guide, we’ll tell you where to find flax and barley, the tools you’ll need to process them, and what you’ll be able to make from linen thread and barley flour.

Where to find flax and barley

You won’t find flax or barley growing wild in the plains biome. The only place to find these crops is in fuling villages. You’ll collect it from either their farms or from the chests dotted around their villages.

How to farm barley and flax

Barley and flax are great to have — and you’ll be using them both extensively in the plains biome.

Image: Iron Gate Studio/Coffee Stain Publishing via Polygon

For a steady supply, it’s best to farm your own instead of relying on raiding fuling villages. But barley and flax only grow in plains biomes, so your farm has to be located here. Carrots and turnips do grow in plains (and bees are happy here), so you can just move your entire agricultural operation over.

Like carrots and turnips, plant flax and barley with a cultivator (5 core wood, 5 bronze). You don’t get seeds from them, though. Instead, these crops drop two plants — 2 flax or 2 barley — when harvested. Replant one to keep your crop going.

Build a spinning wheel to process flax

With the artisan table and some flax, it’s time to build a spinning wheel (20 fine wood, 10 iron nails, 5 leather scraps).

Spinning wheels turn 1 flax into 1 linen thread. They work like a charcoal kiln — put in the flax, wait a bit, and then collect the linen thread from the floor. You don’t need any fuel, but it does have to be placed near your artisan table.

You’ll use a ton of linen thread making new weapons and armor, so keep growing your farm.

Craft armor from linen thread (and iron)

Image: Iron Gate Studio/Coffee Stain Publishing via Polygon

Linen thread is used to craft the padded armor set:

• Padded greaves (10 iron, 20 linen thread)
• Padded cuirass (10 iron, 20 linen thread)
• Padded helmet (10 iron, 15 linen thread)

Build a windmill to process barley

You can’t eat barley raw, so you’ll have to process it at a windmill (20 stone, 30 wood, 30 iron nails) to turn it into barley flour.

Image: Iron Gate Studio/Coffee Stain Publishing via Polygon

Like a blast furnace, a windmill must be close to an artisan table and built on the ground (or a stone base). When you build it, make sure you have access to the front and back — barley goes in the back and barley flour comes out the front. The orientation doesn’t matter since the windmill spins to catch the wind.

Windmills only work when there’s wind, and the strength of the wind determines the speed at which they work.

With barley flour, cloudberries, and lox meat, you can make the very best foods (currently) in Valheim.

The best new food for stamina is bread (10 barley flour).

The best food for health is blood pudding (2 thistle, 2 bloodbags, 4 barley flour) — remember that bloodbags drop from leeches in the swamp biome.

The best all-around food (with a big boost to both health and stamina) is lox meat pie (4 barley flour, 2 cloudberries, 2 cooked lox meat).

If you’ve found Haldor the merchant and purchased the fishing rod, you can make one more new recipe. The fish wraps (2 cooked fish, 4 barley flour) is even better for your stamina than bread.