Valheim – Indepth Boar Breeding & Taming Guide

A guide on how to breed and tame Boar with some additional indepth information about the Boar AI and pushing breeding to its limits.

Taming

Note: Credit goes to One Punch

In order to tame a Boar, you will need at least 4 pieces of food for each Boar. These can be a mix of Raspberries, Blueberries, Mushrooms, Turnips or Carrots. You can find Berries & Mushrooms anywhere in the Black Forest or Meadows. It is also recommended that you bring enough Wood to build a small taming enclosure. Around 30 pieces of Wood for a single enclosure should be more than enough but it’s never a bad idea to bring more.

When building the enclosure, you can simply crudely place your walls or fences to form an enclosed space. The walls or fences do not need to snap into place to keep the Boar from escaping. Include a door or gate so when the Boar is lured in, you can simply close the door and jump over the fence or wall. Since Boars cannot jump, you can also use short walls to form a fenced area, however if using short walls, make sure that the ground is flat enough.

(Example of an enclosure with a crudely placed fence and a door)

(Example of an enclosure built with floor tiles and short walls)

The taming process is quite simple; find a Boar you would like to tame, approach it to provoke it into attacking you then lure it into the taming enclosure. Once the Boar is safely secured inside the enclosure, drop 4 pieces of food inside it and step away from the Boar to keep it calm and prevent it from destroying the enclosure.

You must be present during the taming process or the Boar will disappear. If the Boar is frightened while taming, the taming process will be temporarily suspended until nearby enemies have been dealt with. Boars are also easily frightened by fire so make sure there are no Campfires or Torches nearby. If you need to use those, just make sure that there is at least enough space between the fence and the fire to put down 5 floor tiles.

The Boar will take approximately 15-30min to become fully tamed. For breeding purposes, I recommend you try to tame 2 Boars side by side each in its own enclosure to save you the time of taming them individually.

Breeding

To breed Boars you will first need to have tamed 2 adult Boars and place them within the same enclosure or fenced area.

Once they are together in the same enclosure, throw in enough food to feed both of them. After they both eat, their status should change to “Happy”. Breeding will randomly occur any time the Boars are “Happy”. If your Boars are “Frightened” instead, ensure that there are no nearby enemies or fire sources such as Torches, Campfires and even Charcoal kilns, Smelters & Forges. Make sure to keep at least 5 floor tiles of space between them and your Boar enclosure to keep them from being “Frightened”.

Boars will only breed when they are “Happy”, have enough room to make more Piggies and at least 1 player must be present. This is because the Boars need to “load” on a players computer for them to eat and breed.

The amount of Boars you can breed depends on the amount of Boars that are in close proximity. If you have a larger enclosure, the Boars will have more space to roam in and will therefor produce more Piggies. The maximum amount of Boars allowed within close proximity is 6. When that number is reached or exceeded, the Boars in that area will no longer breed until they spread out enough to give more space for new Piggies.

(I will go more indepth about breeding and its limitations in the “Boar AI & Fast Breeding” section but if you don’t care about technicalities, you can skip that section.)

Breeding 1-Star, 2-Star Tier Boars

Every now and then you will find some creatures that have a Star rating. The Star rating represents how difficult a creature is to kill and how much loot it drops. A 1-Star creature drops twice as much loot as a standard creature and a 2-Star creature drops 4x as much loot.

Currently as of the time of me writing this guide, the highest Star tier in the game is a 2-Star.

In order to breed a 1-Star or a 2-Star tier Boar, you first need to tame one in the wild. Once it’s tamed, you can breed it with any other Boar. Both Boars have a 50% chance of producing an offspring of the same Star tier as the parents. If a 2-Star and a regular Boar breed, there is a 50% chance that either a 2-Star or a regular Piggy will be born. Breed a 2-Star with a 1-Star and it’s a 50% chance of either a 1-Star or a 2-Star Piggy.

If you want to consistently breed Boars of the same tier, say 2-Star only, you will need to tame a 2-Star Boar, breed it with any other Boar and wait for a 2-Star Piggy to be born. Cull all the Boars and Piggies except the 2-Star Boar and the 2-Star Piggy. Once the Piggy grows into an adult Boar it can begin breeding with the other 2-Star Boar.

Moving Your Boar to a New Location

I recommend moving your Boars during the day when there are less enemies present. I would also breed a couple of extra Boars just in case the transfer fails and the Boar dies. If at some point a Boar gets too hurt, you can feed it to help it regain health. Do note however that they only feed when they’re hungry.

There are 5 ways or methods to move a Boar.

Short to Semi-Long distance – Pre-tamed method

You can lure an untamed Boar to its future home before you tame it. Bring enough food to sustain yourself and heal from any damage the Boar may inflict. When you approach it to grab its attention, start running and luring it to the desired location. Make sure to keep a relatively short distance between you and the Boar to keep it from returning to its original position.

Long distance – Torch method

Boars are scared of fires. Pull out a Torch and watch it run directly away from it. Chase it down to keep it running away from you.

Very Long distance – Abyssal Harpoon method

This is by far the best and the easiest method. Harpoon the Boar and simply drag it along. Watch the line so it doesn’t stretch out too far and snap. This can happen if the Boar gets stuck on terrain. Running out of stamina will also cause the line to snap. You can regenerate stamina by standing next to the Boar while it is still harpooned and attached to the line.

This is also the best method of transporting Boar across water, especially longer distances as they otherwise take collision damage if placed on top of the boat. The collision can occur at any time regardless of the boats speed and when it does, it will instantly kill the Boar. When your stamina only has 2 bars remaining, stop the boat and slowly bring it closer to the Boar. Try to get as close to the Boar as possible until your stamina begins to regenerate. Once it’s fully regenerated, simply continue sailing your boat.

Very Short distance – Food method

Wait for the Boar to become hungry, then place food on the floor. The Boar will begin to slowly walk towards the food in an attempt to feed but just before it does so, grab the food and place it on the ground again away from the Boar and closer to where you’re luring it.

Very Short distance – Push method

Sprint at the tamed Boar to push it. They have a persistent AI and will keep trying to walk to the same spot that they were in. Requires a lot of patience. It also helps to build a narrow fenced pathway to more easily push them in a straight line.

Boar AI & Fast Breeding

To breed Boars effectively we must first understand how the Boar AI works.

Each Boar has an invisible sphere surrounding it with a radius of approximately 5 floor tiles or according to the ingame metric system; 10 meters. But we’ll use floor tiles for ease of understanding. Boars use this sphere to detect things around them. Think of it as a radar.

(The checkered pattern represents floor tiles)

When multiple Boars are in close proximity or within each others sphere, they detect and count each other. When this count reaches 6, in other words when the Boars detect 5 other Boars nearby, they can no longer breed.

Why does this matter? This allows us to predict and manipulate the precise number of Boars we can breed. Since the enclosure size doesn’t matter and only the distance between each Boar determines how many Boars can be bred, we can instead create multiple smaller enclosures to prevent the Boars from wandering around and disturbing the breeding process of other Boars. For example if a Boar detects 4 other Boars and begins breeding but another Boar suddenly enters it’s proximity, the breeding process will end early. We don’t want that to happen and in order to do that, we need to limit the space that they can wander around in.

To keep the Boars from wandering around and continue breeding in each enclosure, the enclosures must be spaced apart by 4 floor tiles or 8meters.

Another benefit of smaller enclosures is that we are forcefully keeping the Boars within touching distance. This reduces the time needed for the Boars to find a mate to breed with, essentially forcing them to breed instantly.

The recommended size for a single enclosure is 2×2 tiles or 4 square meters. If feeling a bit too cramped, a 3×3 tile size enclosure or a 3×2 should work as well but a 2×2 tile enclosure will allow the quickest breeding.