VALHALLA

What Valhalla is

Valhalla is a Norse survival game played in the browser, on one island shared by everyone on it. You come ashore as one of the chosen: you gather wood and stone, build a home, forge better gear, hunt, and push out from the gentle meadows of Greenmark into harder lands, calling up five great bosses on the way. Hang all five of their heads at the stone circle and the saga is yours.

It runs on any modern computer browser and on phones (with touch controls). There is nothing to install. Your characters are kept on the server, so you can pick up where you left off on any device by signing in with the same wallet.

Valhalla is tied to the Solana coin Valor (VALOR). VALOR is how you get on the island, and the gold you win on the island can be turned into VALOR at the Hoard Stone. The rest of this part explains exactly how.

The VALOR coin

Always check the contract address above before buying. Anything else using the name is not this coin.

Getting on the island

You sign in with a Solana wallet (Phantom, Solflare, Backpack or any Wallet Standard wallet; on a phone, open the site in your wallet's own browser). Signing in only signs a message to prove the wallet is yours. A sign-in lasts 14 days.

Free time

A wallet that holds 250,000 VALOR gets 30 minutes of play, free. The holding is checked at the door and every 10 minutes. Time is counted per wallet and only while you are on the island.

The week pass

After that, a week pass costs 250,000 VALOR, sent to the treasury, and gives 7 days on the island. Buying again adds another 7 days to the end of the current pass ("Add 7 Days"). With a pass you do not need to hold anything. A network fee of $0.07 in SOL is paid in the same transaction, also to the treasury.

Characters

Each wallet keeps 2 characters. Each is its own person with its own pack, gold and buildings; things bought in the shop belong to the wallet, so both characters get them.

The Hoard Stone: gold into VALOR

Gold is the island's money. You win it from beasts, bosses and chests and by selling to Brokk the trader. At the Hoard Stone in the stone circle you can offer gold to the Allfather, and each day's offerings share that day's pool of VALOR.

1. Stand by the Hoard Stone with a signed-in wallet that has bought a paid week pass at least once.
2. Offer any amount of gold. Offered gold is gone from your purse.
3. At midnight UTC the day closes. Your share of the pool is your gold offered / all gold offered that day.
4. Claim your VALOR at the stone (at least 100 VALOR). Claims are queued and sent from the treasury to your wallet, usually within a day.

The daily pool

The size of the pool steps up with the VALOR the treasury holds:

Making a claim asks your wallet to approve a $0.07 fee in SOL. If your wallet has never held VALOR, Solana also asks a one-time deposit of about 0.002 SOL to open its VALOR account.

The pool is a share of what the treasury holds, not a promise of any price. VALOR can go up or down in value. Nothing in this guide is financial advice.

The shop

The shop (the gold Shop button by the compass, or the menu) sells extras for SOL at the live rate. All shop SOL goes to the treasury. The price shown already includes a $0.07 fee.

The +100 carry, +8 pack slots and +1 chest add-ons can each be bought up to 3 times. Everything bought belongs to the wallet and works on both of its characters.

Referrals

Share your link (/?ref=YOURCODE, or claim up to 3 custom codes of 3 to 20 letters). You earn 1 point when a wallet you brought in buys its first week pass. A wallet cannot refer itself and is only ever referred once. Spend points on:

Where the money goes

• Week passes: 250,000 VALOR each, to the treasury.
• Shop and fees: all SOL (prices and the $0.07 fees) to the treasury.
• Hoard Stone claims: paid out of the treasury's VALOR.

The treasury address is public (above), so anyone can follow what comes in and goes out on a Solana explorer.

Fair play

• Your pack, worn gear, gold, trophies and buildings are kept and decided on the server: crafting, trading, chests and building all go through it, and item duplication has been tested against.
• Movement speed, hit strength (no more than your weapon can deal) and how fast you can act are all capped by the server.
• Every change to anyone's gold is written to a log with its reason, so the Hoard Stone's offerings can be checked.
• After 3 hours of busy play without a 10-minute break, Muninn the raven asks you to read a number from a picture (3 tries) before you play on.
• Chat is island-wide (140 letters a line). Swearing is starred out and lines with slurs are not sent. The island's own account, Server, speaks in gold.

Your first day

1. Make your chosen. On the title press Customize Chosen: body, hair (13 cuts for men, 12 for women, and a colour slider from black through red to blond), beard, skin, and sliders for height, shoulders, arms, waist, legs, head, jaw, chin, nose and hair length. Then Create Chosen.
2. Pick up sticks and stones (E) and pick berries and mushrooms.
3. Make a club, a stone axe and a hammer from the pack (Tab). A torch is 2 wood.
4. Build a workbench (hammer in hand, F for the piece list), then a campfire, walls and a roof. A bed under a roof is where you wake if you fall.
5. Eat three good things before a hard day. Hunt deer and boar, cook the meat on your fire.
6. Read the rune stones: each one tells you something and marks a nearby place on your map.

Controls

Staying alive

Health, stamina and food

You have 25 health and 50 stamina before food. You have 4 food slots; each food adds health and stamina for a while (see the food table). You cannot eat the same food again until it is under half gone, and a food's boost fades as it runs out. Running, jumping, swimming, swinging and blocking all cost stamina; it comes back when you stop.

Rest, comfort and sleep

Sit by a lit fire for a few seconds, or sleep through the night, to become Rested: health comes back half as fast again, stamina twice as fast, and skills grow faster. Each different comfort near you (fire, bed, bench, table, banner, deer rug, a roof) makes it last longer. Sleep needs a bed under a roof, at night, while dry and with no beast hunting nearby; the night passes when everyone awake is asleep.

Cold, wet and the frost

Rain without a roof, or swimming, makes you wet. Night away from a fire makes you cold, which slows healing and stamina. In Frostfell you freeze and lose health unless you are by a fire or frost-proof: a frost-ward mead, a wolf-fur hauberk, a wolf pelt cape, a shroud cloak, or the Wind-rider boon.

Day and night

A day on the island is 25 minutes: about 14 of daylight and 11 of night. Some beasts only come out at night. The weather turns between clear, rain, fog and storm.

Falling

You keep everything when you fall: pack, gold and skills. You lose your food and wake after a few seconds at your bed (or the stone circle), weakened for a minute. Long falls hurt; water without stamina drowns.

Wear and mending

Tools, weapons, shields and armour wear as you use them; a broken one does nothing until mended. Mending is free at the station that makes the item (most things at the workbench), even while worn.

A torch can be carried in your other hand beside any one-handed weapon or tool (not a bow): take up the torch and the weapon and you hold both, and the shield is put away. Taking up a shield puts the torch away.

Carrying

You can carry 300 weight (more with the Megingjord belt or the carry add-ons) in a pack of 32 slots (up to 56 with add-ons). Over the limit you walk slowly and cannot jump.

Skills

14 skills grow as you use them, up to level 100: Running, Leaping, Swimming, Stalking, Woodcutting, Mining, Fists, Clubs, Swords, Knives, Spears, Axes, Bows, Shieldwork. Each level makes that thing hit harder (up to 1.5 times) and cost less stamina; running gets faster, bows draw faster and shields block more.

Fighting

• Damage types: slash, pierce, blunt, fire, frost, poison and spirit. Beasts are weak or strong against some (see the creature table: "x1.6" means it takes 1.6 times that damage). Frost slows; poison hurts over time.
• Combos: the third blow in a row hits 1.6 times as hard. A blow on a beast that has not seen you hits 3 times as hard (6 times with a flint knife). Sneak (C) to get close.
• Armour takes a share off every blow; the more armour against a small blow, the more it stops.
• Blocking (right mouse) stops damage up to your shield's block power, costing stamina. Block just as the blow lands to parry: your shield's parry multiplies the block and the attacker reels. Run out of stamina and your guard breaks.
• Sidestep: Space while blocking dodges, and you take no damage for a moment.
• Bows: hold to draw; a full draw hits hardest. Arrows are made 20 at a time.
• Starred beasts (one or two stars) are rarer, much tougher and drop more gold and loot. They are common in the Outer Reaches.
• Loot: a beast's drops belong to whoever struck it first.
• Other players: fighting players is off unless both of you turn it on (P); names shown red have it on. Once in a fight you cannot turn it off until 30 seconds pass with no blows.
• Parties: up to 4. Press E on a player to invite. Party members see each other on the map.

Building

Hold a hammer to build. Choose a piece (F or right mouse), place it with the left mouse, turn it with the wheel or Q/R. Pieces snap to each other. Most pieces need a workbench within 20 m; stone pieces need a stonecutter. Taking a piece down gives back everything it cost, and only its builder can take it down.

• Support: a piece on the ground is fully supported. Wood loses support quickly going sideways and a little going up; stone holds more going up but less sideways. Build too far from the ground and pieces fall.
• Locks: what you build (and your boats) is yours alone. L lets you open doors and chests to everyone or to a list of up to 20 players.
• Chests: 5 each (more with the chest add-on), 48 slots, and no one else can take from them or break them.
• Places you cannot build: by the stone circle, the altars, Brokk's camp, barrow doors, danger zones and the empty hamlets.
• Each chosen can have up to 2,500 pieces.

Stations

The workbench, campfire, forge, cauldron, stonecutter, charcoal kiln, smelter, bloomery and skyforge each unlock their own recipes. The kiln turns wood to charcoal; the smelter turns copper and tin ore into metal; the bloomery and skyforge work the harder metals. Feed them with E (Shift+E adds charcoal).

Every piece

Crafting

Building

Roofing

Hearth and home

The lands

The island is round. Greenmark, the soft meadow at the middle, is where you begin; the lands grow harder as you go out. High ground anywhere is Frostfell. Past the old shore lie the Outer Reaches, a ring of islands joined by three land bridges, harder again. Cross the water in a faering (30 wood, 10 deer hide, 10 resin; row with W/S, steer with A/D, the wind behind you helps).

Places to find

• The stone circle at the middle: the Hoard Stone, the five trophy stones and a rune stone.
• Brokk the trader, in the Ironwood, always on your map.
• Huts in Greenmark, barrows in the Ironwood (with crypts below: E at the barrow door), cairns in Mirefen, eyries on Frostfell with drake eggs, and svartalf camps in Gullmark. Their guards come back an hour after they are cleared.
• Barrow crypts: stone rooms of skeletons and draugr under each barrow, a starred wight brute in the deepest room, and chests.
• Danger zones (red circles on the map: Old ruins, Old mineshaft, Empty town): a pack of beasts rises when you arrive, and chests are set down inside every 20 minutes. Opening one takes 6 seconds standing beside it unhurt.
• Wandering chests appear all over the island and vanish once opened; the farther from the middle, the richer. Out in the Outer Reaches, now and then, a glowing epic or mythic chest.
• Empty hamlets: little abandoned villages far out, some roofless or with a wall fallen.
• Rune stones (four in each land): read one to learn a line of lore and mark the nearest unknown place on your map.

The map

M opens the map. Places near you are pinned as you pass. Add up to 40 marks of your own, in five colours. Only party members show on your map.

Regrowth

Sticks, stones and flint come back within a couple of minutes, berries in about 12, trees in 15 and rock and ore in 80. Hunted game comes back faster than it was taken. Dropped things lie for a minute.

The five bosses

Each land has a boss. Find one of its three altars, stand close and offer what it asks. Only one boss walks the island at a time; it fights only whoever called it and whoever strikes it, and goes away (the offering lost) if no one hits it for 5 minutes. It heals if everyone runs off.

Trophies and boons

Hang a boss's head on its stone in the circle to take its boon: press G to call it for 5 minutes, then wait 15 minutes to call it again. E on another hung stone switches boons. Hang all five and the horn sounds: the saga is won, and it pays 5,000 gold.

Creatures

Gold shown is what the beast drops (starred beasts drop more). Drops with a percentage are a chance.

Weapons, tools and armour

Better trees and ores need better tools: copper and tin need the tusk pickaxe (from an undying tusk of Saehrimnir), iron the bronze pick, silver the iron pick; oak, birch, golden ash and ancient trees need a bronze axe.

Weapons

Tools

Arrows

Shields

Armour

Food and meads

Food

Meads

Every recipe

By hand (no station)

Workbench

Forge

Cauldron

Gold, Brokk and chests

Brokk the trader

Brokk keeps a camp in the Ironwood. He sells:

He buys anything you are not wearing: food for 2 gold, arrows at 1 gold for each 20, gems and boss trophies for more, everything else for 1. Each chosen can sell up to 3,000 gold worth a day (UTC).

Chests

A chest holds at most 3 kinds of thing besides its gold: what it always holds, then a few of the rest at random. Danger-zone chests pay more than the land's own chests, and more the harder the zone.

Epic and mythic chests turn up only in the Outer Reaches, seldom, and glow softly when you are close (purple for epic, gold for mythic). There are never more than 2 epic and 1 mythic chest on the island at once.

Materials

The rune stones

The twelve sayings carved on the island's rune stones:

• Here Thorgest raised a hall and the forest took it back in one winter.
• The boar that feeds the hall is slain each night and stands whole each dawn. Bring it tusks and it will come.
• Gold given to the stone is not lost. The Allfather counts what he is given.
• In the Ironwood sits the old one, and she rears the wolves that will swallow the sun.
• Do not sleep in the fen. Glam walked after his death and he walks still.
• On the high fell an eagle sits at the end of the sky. When he beats his wings, the wind is born.
• Surt comes from the south with fire in his hand. Those golden fields are his to burn.
• A wall of stakes turns a boar. Nothing but courage turns a troll.
• Eat three good things before a hard day. A hungry arm is a slow arm.
• Copper lies in the great green stones of the Ironwood. Tin lies by the water.
• The barrow guards hate a club and laugh at a spear.
• Five heads on five stones, and the horn will sound for you.