Shields are a major boon in Valheim, providing a means of defense against tougher mobs. They’re separated into two types – Round and Tower. Wood Shields can be crafted at the workbench but you’ll need a forge for everything else. Regardless of the kind you’re looking to make, resources like Wood, Black Metal, Fine Wood, Bronze, Iron, Silver and so on are essential to crafting them.
So what does customizing a shield do? It essentially provides a unique design, further adding to the Viking fantasy (though some, like the Serpent Scale Shield and Standard Bronze Shield can’t be customized). Look for an icon below the shield while crafting and click on the “Style” pop-up. This will allow for choosing different shield designs. A design can only be placed on a shield during the crafting process so if you miss out on doing so, you’ll need to craft a new shield.
How to Tame Wolves
Want to create a venerable squad of wolves that will rip apart anything that looks at you funny? Of course you do. In Valheim, taming wolves requires luring them into closed areas and providing raw meat. Though wolves spawn mostly spawn at night in the Mountains biome, keep in mind that they’ll only eat at night. Feeding them also requires leaving the raw meat next to them and not being too close (though don’t get too far or they’ll despawn).
Once you’ve tamed two wolves, they can be bred. Feed them until they receive the “Happy” status and they have a chance to breed. 2-Star wolves breeding means that the wolf cub also has a chance to be 2-Stars, which is good. They also won’t despawn so you can essentially breed wolf cubs and raise them to be your personal bodyguards.
Up to four wolves can follow you and they can be let loose to hunt other animals and breed. While the recent patch made it so that wolves don’t breed as often – so you won’t necessarily have your island turned into a howling paradise – creating your own wolf pack is still very much possible.