Damage Types

0:00 Damage types in Valheim are the categories every attack belongs to: blunt, slash and pierce (physical); fire, frost, poison, spirit and lightning (elemental); chop and pickaxe (terrain); and pure damage that nothing reduces. Every creature takes more, less or none of each, which is why SnazzyGames opens his guide with a Troll that shrugs off a bronze mace but crumples under a bronze atgeir. The type also decides whether a hit can be blocked, whether armor reduces it and whether it lands at once or over time (Damage, Valheim Wiki).

Quick facts

Physical damage: blunt, slash and pierce

0:39 Among the Weapons and Shields, clubs, maces, sledges and fists deal blunt damage; axes, swords and knives slash, knives adding pierce; spears, atgeirs, bows, crossbows and pickaxes pierce. Physical damage can be blocked, is reduced by armor and fills the stagger bar of whatever it hits. SnazzyGames' troll shows the color code: the atgeir's pierce lands for half as much again in yellow, the mace's blunt for half in gray, and a sword's slash in plain white. Guides advise carrying one weapon of each physical type.

Elemental damage: fire, frost, poison, spirit and lightning

12:47 Fire and poison do not hit at once but tick over time. Fire applies Burning for five seconds, ticking every second; fresh fire adds to what remains and recalculates the ticks. Poison lasts longer the harder the hit, about 1 + √(5 × damage) seconds against players, and a new dose only replaces the old one if it carries more damage (Poison, Valheim Wiki). Both are blocked and reduced by armor and resistance when they land, but the ticks are pure, so a resistance mead must be drunk before the hit (Status Effects).

Frost hits instantly and applies a fading slow; lightning hits instantly and staggers like physical damage. Spirit is a three-second damage-over-time effect that harms only some creatures: ghosts, wraiths, bats and the Charred take extra, most others none, and players are immune. Being Wet makes a creature or a Viking take half again as much frost and lightning, and makes a Viking take half as much fire (Damage, Valheim Wiki).

Chop, pickaxe and pure damage

4:24 Chop damage fells trees and wooden structures and pickaxe damage breaks rock, ore and stone, each gated by tool tier. Players and nearly all creatures are immune to both. The exception SnazzyGames highlights is the Stone Golem, very weak to pickaxes, and 1.0's Gammeltroll also takes extra pickaxe damage. Large creatures and bosses deal chop and pickaxe damage themselves, which is how a golem or troll flattens a base (Building and Structural Integrity).

Pure damage ignores armor and every resistance: fall damage (6.25 per meter beyond 4, capped at 100), smoke (2 a second), drowning (5 percent of maximum health a second), and the ticks of burning and poison (Health).

Weaknesses and resistances of common enemies

10:28 A few creatures have weak points with their own values: a troll's head, a Seeker Soldier's abdomen and the egg sacs under a Gjall, which MalinaPlays lists alongside the golem's hatred of pickaxes. The table follows the wiki's resistance matrix, with Deep North entries from Physgun's reading of the 1.0 game files (Damage, Valheim Wiki; Physgun).

How armor and resistances reduce damage

11:35 Damage aimed at a Viking is resolved in two steps. Resistances and weaknesses apply first, type by type, and armor then reduces the combined total: armor is subtracted outright from a hit more than twice its size, and above that the loss becomes damage² ÷ (4 × armor), the diminishing curve SnazzyGames plots for a 100-point hit (Damage mechanics, Valheim Wiki). Because resistance shrinks the hit before armor sees it, a resistance can be worth up to twice its face value (Resistance, Valheim Wiki; Armor and Capes).

Player resistances do not stack; the strongest applies and overrides any weakness to the same type, so Fire Resistance Barley Wine cancels the Root harnesk's fire weakness. Sources include the resistance meads, frost-resistant capes, the Root mask and harnesk, and five Forsaken Powers: Bonemass's 25 percent against physical damage and 50 percent from Moder against frost, Yagluth against lightning, The Queen against poison and Fader against fire (Iron Gate, Patch 0.221.4). Weaknesses come from Tarred and Slimed (fire ×2), Wet, the Berserkir Mead and the Bear and Vilebone sets (Mead and Potions). A raised shield's block armor takes the first cut of all (Parrying and Blocking).

Weapon damage and multipliers

0:41 MalinaPlays breaks every hit into four steps. The weapon's orange number is its damage at skill 100; the yellow range in brackets is what the current skill rolls, 25 to 55 percent of it at level 0 (Skills). The type modifier comes next, then backstabs (2× to 6×), the doubled damage of a staggered target and special attacks (Combat). Last, a swing that hits several targets deals less to each, 4 ÷ (3 × targets), and trees and ground count as targets (Damage mechanics, Valheim Wiki). The Combat setting of the World Modifiers scales player damage from 125 percent on Very Easy to 70 on Very Hard.

Frostfire, Thunderblood and 1.0

4:47 The Valheim 1.0 Release of Sep 9, 2026 added two elemental versions of every Nord weapon. Frostfire adds fire and frost, trading away some physical damage; Thunderblood adds a 25 percent chance of a lightning strike plus 0.2 percent more damage for every point of health the wielder is missing (AllThings.How). The essences come from the Fallen Warriors of the Deep North. Kall Fimbulbringer resists pierce, fire, frost and lightning and is immune to spirit, which leaves blunt, slash and poison as the only types he takes in full (Physgun).

Frequently asked questions

What are the damage types in Valheim? Blunt, slash and pierce (physical); fire, frost, poison, spirit and lightning (elemental); chop and pickaxe (terrain); plus pure damage, which ignores all defenses.

What do yellow, white and gray damage numbers mean? Yellow means the target is weak to that type, white neutral and gray resistant.

What damage type are trolls weak to? Pierce, at 1.5 times, and twice that on the head; trolls resist blunt.

What is Kall Fimbulbringer weak to? Nothing. He resists pierce, fire, frost and lightning and is immune to spirit, so blunt, slash and poison are the only types he takes in full.

Sources

• Damage, Damage mechanics, Resistance and Poison, Valheim Wiki (weirdgloop)
• Barka, Gammeltroll and Kall Fimbulbringer, Physgun
• How to Unlock the Frostfire and Thunderblood Enchantments, AllThings.How, Sep 11, 2026
• Patch 0.221.4 – Call To Arms, Iron Gate Studio (Steam news)
• Ultimate Guide to Creatures Strengths and Weaknesses in Valheim, SnazzyGames (video)
• Never Die in Valheim EVER Again!, SnazzyGames (video)
• 6 Mysterious Valheim Mechanics YOU Misunderstand, SnazzyGames (video)
• The Real Damage Formula Behind Every Valheim Hit, MalinaPlays (video)
• So...You can be a GOD in Valheim Now, SnazzyGames (video)