What Order to Craft Bronze Age Gear in Valheim (Don’t Waste Your Copper)
So you just beat Eikthyr. Great. The next thing you’ll hear everyone say is “go mine copper.” Easier said than done. Your first trip into the Black Forest will probably end with you dead in a ditch, wondering why anyone thought this was fun.
I’ve done the bronze grind more times than I’d like to admit. On my first playthrough I smelted all my copper into swords before I realized I needed bronze, not copper. Lost a whole afternoon. Let me save you that headache.
First things first: you need the right stations
Before you touch any ore, build these three in this exact order:
- Charcoal Kiln first. You need coal to smelt copper, and if you just burn wood in a pile it takes forever. The kiln spits out coal on its own while you’re off doing other stuff.
- Then the Smelter. Put copper ore and coal in, wait, get copper bars. Same thing for tin.
- Then the Forge. This is where the actual crafting happens. You can’t make bronze at the workbench.
A quick note on where to find stuff. Copper ore is those big boulders with the orange-green veins in the Black Forest. Tin is along the water’s edge — look for little shiny rocks by the river. Tin doesn’t look like much, but you’ll need just as much of it as copper.
Crafting order that actually works
1. Bronze Pickaxe first. Always.
This is the one I see people mess up the most. They make a bronze axe or a bronze sword and then realize they can’t mine iron yet.
The bronze pickaxe lets you mine iron ore in the Swamp. Iron is the tier you actually care about. If you skip this, you’re stuck mining copper forever.
Cost: 3 copper + 1 tin (which is 5 bronze, basically). Cheap. Do it early.
2. Bronze Axe
You’ll need this to chop down the bigger trees — the ones that give you Ashwood. Ashwood is used for a bunch of bronze recipes, and you can’t get it with a flint axe.
The bronze axe also does way more damage than you’d expect for a tool. I’ve killed several greydwarfs by just swinging the axe at them. Don’t tell anyone.
3. Pick your weapon based on your playstyle
Here’s where people overthink it.
- Bronze Sword — straight-line slash, good for groups of enemies lined up. Uses 6 bronze.
- Bronze Mace — blunt damage, does extra to skeletons and blobs. Slower swing though.
- Bronze Atgeir — the polearm. Huge reach, but I never liked it personally.
I usually go with the mace. The Swamp is full of blobs and skeletons, and blunt damage wrecks them. But if you’re more of a swords guy, go for it. The sword’s slash arc is genuinely satisfying.
4. Bronze armor second-to-last
Armor takes a ton of bronze. Like, a lot. Enough that you’ll be mining for days.
Don’t rush it. Get your weapon and tools first, then slowly work on the armor pieces. The order I go is: chest first, then legs, then helmet. The chest gives the biggest defense jump.
5. Buckler at the end
The bronze shield isn’t as exciting as the gear, but blocking is how you survive the Swamp. A parry with the buckler staggers enemies and lets you get a free crit.
The numbers, roughly
Here’s what you’re looking at material-wise for a full bronze setup:
| Item | Copper | Tin | Other |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Bronze Pickaxe |
3 |
1 |
— |
|
Bronze Axe |
4 |
2 |
— |
|
Bronze Weapon |
6 |
3-4 |
— |
|
Bronze Chest |
5 |
3 |
Deer hide x2 |
|
Bronze Legs |
5 |
3 |
Deer hide x2 |
|
Bronze Helmet |
5 |
3 |
— |
Copper and tin bars are made at a 2:1 ratio. So for every 2 copper, you need 1 tin to make bronze. Don’t be like me on my first run — I mined 200 copper and 10 tin. Had to go back and mine tin for two hours.
What I wish someone told me
- Bring a portal home from the Black Forest. Don’t try to carry all your ore back on foot.
- Smelt while you explore. The smelter keeps working while you’re off killing things. Come back to finished bars.
- You don’t need a full bronze set to go to the Swamp. Just the pickaxe, a weapon, and half-decent armor is enough.
- The bonemass fight later requires iron, which the bronze pickaxe unlocks. So really, the whole point of bronze is to get to iron faster.
Good luck out there. The Swamp is meaner than it looks.
Author bio:
Clay writes game guides over at Gaming Tip Hub where he spends way too much time testing whether crop profit math actually works.