Valheim Food Buff Guide 2026: Best Food per Biome and Feasts

You can't starve in Valheim, so what does food actually do, how long does a food buff last, and which dish should you cook in your biome? Every food you eat adds its own mix of maximum health, stamina and eitr plus some healing, and when it wears off you drop back to your base stats. You can't double up on one dish and most foods lean hard towards one stat, so the mix you pick decides your role: stack health for bosses, stamina for building and exploring, or eitr if you fight with staves (Food on the Valheim Wiki).

Quick answer: A Valheim food buff is the bonus a food adds to your maximum health, stamina and eitr, plus 1 to 7 health back every 10 seconds. You have three food slots, each needs a different food, and a buff lasts 10 to 50 minutes depending on the food: raw berries 10, most cooked dishes 20 to 30, feasts 50. The bonus fades slowly at first and fast at the end, and you can eat the same food again once its icon starts flashing. Eat one health food, one stamina food and a third for the job: more health for bosses, stamina for building, eitr for staves.

Valheim 1.0 came out on 9 September 2026 and added more than 20 food items, a sixth cauldron extension and three new crops (1.0 patch notes on Steam). Patch 1.0.21 on 28 October moved three Deep North dishes from the cauldron to the Food preparation table (1.0.21 patch notes). This guide uses the current 1.0 numbers: how the food buff works, the best food for each biome, the feasts worth cooking, eitr food for mages and the highest health you can reach.

Valheim Food Buffs Explained

Every food has five numbers: health, stamina, eitr, healing per tick and duration. While a food sits in one of your three slots, its health, stamina and eitr are added on top of your base values, and its healing is added to your regeneration. The three foods stack with each other, so your bars are your base plus all three. The numbers in this section come from the Food page on the Valheim Wiki.

What the Health, Stamina and Eitr Buffs Do

• Health. You start with 25 health (Health on the Valheim Wiki), and food raises the maximum. Every food also heals you every 10 seconds by its hp per tick: from 1 for raw Raspberries, Honey or Mushrooms up to 7 for Meat In Bread, Seal Meat Soup, Smoked Moose Meat and the Northern Morning Fare feast. The healing of your three foods adds up, and the Rested buff adds 50% to health regeneration.
• Stamina. You start with 50 stamina (Stamina on the Valheim Wiki). Attacking, blocking, dodging and jumping cost stamina, running takes 8 per second and swimming 6, so stamina food matters for melee fights, building, mining and long trips. It starts coming back 1 second after you stop using it, and twice as fast while Rested.
• Eitr. You have no eitr until you eat food that gives it (Eitr on the Valheim Wiki). Eitr powers staves and other magic weapons, so it only matters once you start using magic in the Mistlands. Like stamina, it starts coming back 1 second after you last used it.

How Long a Food Buff Lasts

The duration is fixed per food. Raw food is short, cooked dishes last longer, and feasts last longest:

Raspberries, Blueberries and Yellow mushrooms last only 10 minutes. With most cooked dishes at 20 to 30 minutes you eat two or three times an hour, and a feast cuts that down for long sessions.

How the Buff Fades

The bonus does not stay flat until the timer ends. The Valheim Wiki gives the curve as: current bonus = full bonus × (time left ÷ full duration)^0.3. For a 45/15 food such as Deer stew, that works out to:

So a food at half time still gives about four fifths of its bonus, and the real drop comes in the last quarter. Top up when the icon flashes instead of waiting for it to run out, and always before a boss.

Eating, Refreshing and Removing Food

• You have three slots and each one needs a different food. You can't eat a dish you already have until it is partly digested, which the game shows with a flashing icon. Eating it then resets both its strength and its duration.
• The fork on a food icon tells you its type: red leans to health, yellow to stamina, blue to eitr, and white is balanced.
• Meads don't take a food slot. They run on their own cooldowns (Mead on Fandom), so drink resistance and healing meads on top of your three foods.
• With all three slots empty you play on your base 25 health and 50 stamina. Nothing worse happens, because starvation is not in the game.
• Ate the wrong thing? Bukeperries, dropped by Greydwarf and Fuling shamans, make you sick for 15 seconds and throw up one food every 2 seconds. Rotten meat does the same later in the game (Bukeperries on Fandom).

Best Food for Each Biome

Numbers are health/stamina (and eitr where a dish has it) at full strength, from Fandom's Food page. Eat one health dish and one stamina dish, then fill the third slot for the job at hand.

A few things the table can't show:

• Serpent stew (80/26, 30 minutes) is worth going out of your way for. Once you have killed a Serpent and cooked its meat on an Iron cooking station, it beats every other dish on health until Misthare supreme in the Mistlands (Serpent stew on Fandom).
• Best Plains food: Lox meat pie for health, Blood pudding for stamina and Bread as an easy third. All three need barley flour from the Windmill, which you can build once Moder's Dragon Tears get you the Artisan table (Lox meat pie and Windmill on Fandom).
• Fish 'n' bread is the strongest Mistlands stamina dish, but it needs an Anglerfish and those take a while to catch; our Valheim fishing guide covers the Misty bait it takes. Mushroom omelette is the easy option.
• 1.0 added Pulled Bear to the Black Forest (37/16). Against Cooked bear meat (40/13) it swaps 3 health for 3 stamina but lasts 30 minutes instead of 20 (Pulled Bear on Fandom).

Feasts: Which to Make and How Many Portions

A feast is one big dish the whole group eats from. You make it at the Food preparation table (5 iron, 20 finewood, 15 leather scraps) with a spice from the Bog Witch, then place it with her Serving Tray (140 coins) before anyone can eat. A placed feast has 10 servings. Each serving gives a balanced buff for 50 minutes, where most cooked dishes last 20 to 30 (Feast, Food preparation table and Serving Tray on Fandom).

The Bog Witch lives in a hut in a Swamp, somewhere between 3,000 and 8,000 metres from the world centre. She sells each spice in packs of five and every feast needs one, so one purchase covers five feasts (The Bog Witch on Fandom).

Fandom doesn't list the 1.0 feast yet, so its numbers and recipe come from the Valheim Wiki. Its spice, Seasoning of the Gourd, costs 220 coins for five and only goes on sale once the last boss is dead (Valheim Wiki), so it's a post-game treat. Our bosses in order guide covers how to summon Kall Fimbulbringer.

Which one to make:

• From the Mountains on, each spice only goes on sale after that biome's boss, so those feasts trail your gear by about one biome. That's fine, because feasts are for long sessions, not boss fights.
• Your first feast: the Black Forest buffet platter or the Swamp dweller's delight, once The Elder is dead and you have iron for the prep table. Both heal 3 per tick, the Meadow boar only 2.
• Sailor's bounty is the earliest way to 45/45. Its spice only needs a dead Serpent, which can come well before Moder.
• After that, make the newest feast you can. For boss fights, stick to your best single dishes: an Ashlands gourmet bowl gives 75 health where a Piquant pie gives 105.

How many portions:

• Ten servings means a group of five eats twice from one feast and a full group of ten eats once. Plan one serving per player for every 50 minutes of play, a bit more if people top up early.
• Feasts go through portals and the tray places them on any floor or table, so you can set one down at a forward camp.
• A feast that has been partly eaten gives you nothing back if you pick it up or break it, so put it where it will be finished.

Eitr Food for Mages

Staves run on eitr, and your eitr pool comes entirely from food. Magecaps are the first source (25/25/25 raw), and every tier after that adds a stronger eitr dish (Eitr and Magecap on Fandom):

• Mistlands: Seeker aspic (28/14/85, 30 minutes, and one cook makes two), then Yggdrasil porridge (27/13/80) and Stuffed mushroom (25/12/75).
• Ashlands: Marinated greens (32/16/95, 30 minutes), Sparkling shroomshake (30/15/90) and Sizzling berry broth (28/14/85).
• Deep North: Oven Pancake (37/18/105, 30 minutes), Meatballs and Poteitr (35/18/105), Fish Soup (37/18/105, from the Valheim Wiki), Baked Poteitr (34/17/100) and Smoked Fish (30/16/95).

Three ways to set up a mage in the Deep North. Totals include your base 25 health and 50 stamina:

Oatmeal is the odd one out: 115 stamina and 85 eitr in one slot, which is why the middle setup gives up so little eitr. Eitr also comes back faster with Eitr-weave or Embla armour, The Queen's Forsaken power (+100%), Lingering eitr mead (+25%) and the Rested buff (+100%).

Since patch 1.0.14, picked Magecaps and Jotun puffs no longer respawn in the wild (patch notes). Plant your own with the Cultivator. They only grow in the Mistlands (Magecap on Fandom).

Valheim 1.0: Deep North Food and Farming

The 1.0 patch notes list every new dish by name, plus the Northern Morning Fare feast, Kale, Oats and Poteitr as plantables and the Smoker as a cauldron extension. Fandom's Food page lists the main Deep North dishes. Where it has no numbers yet, they come from the item pages on the Valheim Wiki, which match Fandom on every dish both of them list.

Sources: Fandom's Food page, plus the Valheim Wiki pages for Moose Meat, Seal Blubber, Oat Milk, Kale Chips and Fish Soup. Stations and cauldron levels come from the Valheim Wiki's Cauldron page and item pages. Since patch 1.0.21 the raw versions of Baked Poteitr, Kale Chips and Oven Pancake are made at the Food preparation table instead of the cauldron, then baked in the stone oven for 50 seconds. Leave them in for 100 seconds and they burn to Coal (Baked Poteitr, Kale Chips and Oven Pancake on the Valheim Wiki). Fandom's table also lists Unbaked Poteitr and Oven Pancake Batter, but the Valheim Wiki has both as oven ingredients rather than food, so they're left out. Meat In Bread, Seal Meat Soup and Smoked Moose Meat heal 7 per tick and the rest 5. Cooked Moose Meat heals 7 on its own Valheim Wiki page but 5 on the Food page.

Raw, you can eat Kale, Lingonberries and Poteitr (35/35 for 15 minutes, and Poteitr adds 35 eitr), Oats (33/33 for 30 minutes) and Luminous Larva picked from the walls of the Winding Tunnels (30/30 for 10 minutes).

Up to patch 1.0.21 (28 October), the only food change in the patch notes Iron Gate posted on Steam is that move of Baked Poteitr, Kale Chips and Oven Pancake to the Food preparation table, with no stat changes listed (1.0.21 patch notes). Iron Gate said on 30 September that its next patches cover both bugs and balancing tweaks (Word from the Devs), so these numbers can still move.

Where the Ingredients Come From

• Moose Meat from Moose, and Seal Blubber from Seals on the Deep North shorelines.
• Lingonberries from bushes in Deep North forests (they grow back after about five hours) and from Captive Fulings in Mörkhalla.
• Ice from ice sheets along the shore, ice ponds, and Deep North greydwarfs and skeletons.
• Kale Seeds lie on the ground in the Deep North. Kale Seeds, Oat Seeds and Seed Poteitr also sit in barrels in the Granary of Abandoned Villages.

Farming Kale, Oats and Poteitr

1. Plant them with the Cultivator on cultivated soil. All three grow only in the Meadows, Black Forest, Plains and Ashlands, not in the Deep North itself, and take 4,000 to 5,000 seconds (67 to 83 minutes) to ripen.
2. Oats go through the Windmill twice: Oat Seeds grind into Oats, and Oats grind into Oat Flour. Planting Oat Seeds gives you more Oat Seeds (Windmill and Oat Seeds on the Valheim Wiki).
3. Oat Milk comes from the Mead ketill (5 Oats, 5 Ice). The ketill has no upgrades, so any ketill will do.
4. A Poteitr plant gives three Poteitr plus one or two Seed Poteitr to replant.

The Smoker

The Smoker is the new sixth extension for the cauldron. Build it with the Hammer near a Workbench from 5 Bloodgold and 6 Timberwood, within 5 metres of the cauldron (Smoker on the Valheim Wiki). With all six extensions in range the cauldron reaches level 7, which Meat In Bread, Seal Meat Soup, Smoked Moose Meat, Smoked Fish, Fish Soup and Meatballs and Poteitr all need. The other five are the Spice rack, Butcher's table, Pots and pans, Mortar and pestle, and Rolling pins and cutting boards (Cauldron on Fandom).

Bloodgold comes from Petrified Tissue smelted in the Blast Furnace, and it can't go through portals (Bloodgold on the Valheim Wiki), so bring the five bars home the long way. Our progression guide walks through that chain.

Max Health Builds

Your health is 25 plus whatever your three foods give, so max health is a food question. Since 1.0 the highest-health dishes are Meat In Bread and Seal Meat Soup at 110, then Smoked Moose Meat and Piquant pie at 105 (Food on Fandom).

So the most health food can give you in Valheim 1.0 is 350, with 159 stamina and 21 healing per tick. You rarely want pure health all the time, though. Two sets that make more sense in the Deep North:

• Boss tank who can still dodge: Meat In Bread, Seal Meat Soup and Oatmeal for 284 health, 239 stamina and 85 eitr.
• Building, mining or sailing: Oatmeal, Pancakes and Lingonberry Juice for 385 stamina but only 138 health, so swap one out before you go looking for trouble.

Food sets the size of your health bar. Armour and resistance meads decide how fast it empties, and our armour sets guide covers that side.

Hosting It With Us

Food is where a shared world pays off. One player keeps the farm and the cauldrons going, the others bring home moose meat and seal blubber, and a feast stays on the table for whoever logs in next. Our Valheim server hosting keeps that world running when the host's PC is off, with plans from 2 to 4 players up to a full group of 10.

One thing to know before you order: our Valheim servers accept Windows (Steam) players only. Crossplay with Xbox, Game Pass, PS5 and Switch 2 does not work on them, so console friends can't join. Our crossplay explainer explains why.

FAQ

What does a food buff do in Valheim? It raises your maximum health, stamina and eitr by the food's listed amounts and heals you every 10 seconds while it lasts. You can have three different foods at once, and their bonuses add up on top of your base 25 health and 50 stamina. Eating a dish you already have only refreshes it, which the game allows once its icon starts flashing.

How long do food buffs last in Valheim? 10 to 50 minutes. Raw berries last 10, most cooked dishes 20 to 30, and every feast 50. The bonus shrinks as the timer runs down: you still have about 81% at half time and about half with a tenth left.

What is the best food in Valheim after 1.0? For health, Meat In Bread and Seal Meat Soup (110 each). For stamina, Oatmeal and Pancakes (115 each, and Oatmeal adds 85 eitr). For eitr, Oven Pancake, Meatballs and Poteitr and Fish Soup (105 each). All of them are Deep North dishes from 1.0.

What is the max health in Valheim? 350 with food: your base 25 plus Meat In Bread, Seal Meat Soup and either Smoked Moose Meat or Piquant pie. Before the Deep North the most you can reach is 325, with Piquant pie, Mashed meat and Fiery svinstew.

How many servings does a Valheim feast have? Ten, and each serving lasts 50 minutes. You need the Bog Witch's Serving Tray to place the feast before anyone can eat from it.

How do I remove a food buff early? Eat Bukeperries, or Rotten meat later in the game. You feel sick for 15 seconds and lose one food every 2 seconds, so do it somewhere safe.

Related guides: Valheim progression guide, Valheim bosses in order, Valheim armour sets, Valheim 1.0 and the Deep North for servers, Valheim comfort guide

Sources

Opened on 3 November 2026:

• Valheim Wiki: Food (durations, healing per tick, the fade formula and its table), Health, Stamina, Eitr, Food Preparation Table, Baked Poteitr, Kale Chips, Oven Pancake
• Iron Gate on Steam: Patch 1.0.21 (28 October 2026), Patch 1.0.14, Word from the Devs (30 September 2026)

Checked for the 18 October 2026 update: the Valheim 1.0 patch notes, the Fandom wiki pages linked in the text (Food, Feast, Cauldron, Mead and the item pages) and the other Valheim Wiki item pages linked above.