Valheim food stats are the single biggest lever you pull between dying in the Black Forest and soloing Yagluth, because every edible item feeds the same two pools — Health and Stamina — on a fixed timer. Food in Valheim is the difference between a swing that lands and a swing that whiffs, so reading those numbers correctly is non-negotiable for any Viking who plans to leave the Meadows alive. Knowing the exact HP, stamina, and duration each dish grants lets you plan a three-slot buff blend instead of guessing, and the buff system is generous: you can stack three foods at once for a combined 1500+ stamina at the high end.
This guide breaks down Valheim food stats by biome, compares the top raw ingredients, and shows how Eyescream, mushroom skewers, and berry-based dishes slot into a real progression curve. Along the way, you will get the stat tables most players keep alt-tabbed open while they cook.
How Valheim Food Stats Actually Work
Every edible item in Valheim is a snapshot of three numbers: Health gained, Stamina gained, and Duration in minutes. The first two are added directly to your base pools when the food is consumed; the third is a countdown timer showing when the buff expires. You can hold up to three different foods active at the same time, and all three timers tick down independently, which is why the community calls this the three-food rule. The third food slot is the most important unlock in the early game because it roughly doubles your total stats over a single-slot run.
Food is also the primary source of healing outside of rest bonuses. The Health pool itself slowly drains while the buff is active, and any damage you take pulls from that pool first, so a high-HP food is functionally a bigger health bar. Stamina is spent on every swing, dodge, block, and bow draw, so stamina-heavy foods translate directly into more swings per engagement. Duration determines how often you need to rebuff, and most cooked dishes land in the 15–25 minute range while raw ingredients cap out around 10.
| Stat | What it controls | Typical range (raw) | Typical range (cooked) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health | Damage buffer and slow trickle-heal | 2–8 HP | 22–80 HP |
| Stamina | Swing, dodge, block, and bow stamina | 0–10 | 12–65 |
| Duration | How long the buff stays active | 1–10 min | 15–25 min |
According to the official Valheim page on Steam, food is a core survival pillar, and the community wiki at Valheim Wiki – Fandom catalogs every dish with the same HP/stamina/duration trio, which is how most players cross-check numbers mid-run.
Raw vs Cooked: Why the Stat Jump Is So Large
Raw mushrooms, raw berries, and raw meat are not placeholders — they are legitimate early-game foods with real Valheim food stats, but their numbers are tiny on purpose. Cooking multiplies the stat block by a flat factor for most ingredients, and stacking the buff on a Cauldron or Iron Cooker (unlocked later) pushes the numbers into boss-fight territory. The progression is therefore: eat raw to survive the first nights, then move to cooked dishes as soon as you unlock the cooking station, and then push to the highest-tier pies and stews in the Plains and Mistlands.
The Raw Tier (Meadows and Black Forest)
Raw foods in Valheim are picked, plucked, or hunted with zero processing, so their food stats stay modest and predictable. Each raw item grants only 7–8 HP and either 0 or 20 stamina for a flat 10-minute duration, which is why early players without a Cauldron built can still chain a few berries with a raw meat drop to comfortably survive Greyling and Greydwarf encounters while exploring the Meadows. Because none of these entries require a fermenter or a cooking station, they form the consistent baseline you can fall back on whenever your upgraded stocks of cooked meat, Queens jam, or serpent stew run dry.
| Food | HP | Stamina | Duration | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raspberry | 7 | 20 | 10 min | Bushes in Meadows |
| Blueberry | 7 | 20 | 10 min | Bushes in Meadows/Black Forest |
| Mushroom | 8 | 0 | 10 min | Forest floors, common drop |
| Raw Meat | 8 | 0 | 10 min | Boar, deer, lox, chicken |
| Honey | 7 | 20 | 10 min | Wild beehives, queen bees |
Mushrooms are unique: they give HP but no stamina, which is why they are usually paired with berries. Berries are the inverse, giving modest stamina and HP. Raw meat is the only raw food that comes from a kill, and it has the same stat block across most animals in the early game.
The Cooked Tier (Cauldron and Iron Cooker)
Cooking flips the math. A single Raspberry becomes the base of a Queens Jam much later, but a Blueberry fed into the Cauldron turns into Cooked Blueberries with a 25-minute duration and noticeably higher HP/stamina. According to community data on r/Valheim, players who rush the Cauldron by smelting 5 tin and building the workstation jump from a 22-HP/30-stamina floor to roughly 60 HP/120 stamina on the same three-slot rotation.
| Cooked dish | HP | Stamina | Duration | Key ingredient |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cooked Meat | 22 | 12 | 20 min | Raw meat from boars/deer |
| Cooked Lox Meat | 30 | 15 | 25 min | Plains lox |
| Sausages | 21 | 23 | 20 min | Raw meat + entrails |
| Carrot Soup | 15 | 35 | 20 min | Carrot + mushroom |
| Turnip Stew | 18 | 40 | 20 min | Turnip + raw meat |
| Black Soup | 50 | 25 | 25 min | Mushroom + turnip + cooked meat |
The three-slot ceiling in the early-to-mid game usually tops out around Carrot Soup + Sausages + Turnip Stew, which lands near 54 HP and 98 stamina. That is the buff blend most Vikings carry into Bonemass, and it remains a solid baseline even after higher-tier food unlocks in the Mountains.
Eyescream, Mushrooms, and the Strange Food Stat Anomalies
The community has flagged a handful of Valheim food stats that break the normal pattern, and the three most common are Eyescream, mushroom skewers, and turnip/mushroom combinations. They look weird at first glance because their stat block is either unusually high for the ingredient or unusually low, and that mismatch is the entire point of the dish.
Eyescream (Eyescream and Greydwarf Eyes)
Eyescream is the single most efficient stamina food in the early game, and the Valheim food stats for it are the reason. The recipe is Greydwarf Eye + Mushroom, and the dish delivers a flat 23 stamina on a 25-minute timer for almost zero prep. Greydwarves are infinite in the Black Forest, so the only real cost is one Cauldron and a small farm of mushrooms, which is why Eyescream is on almost every pre-Mountain loadout.
| Dish | HP | Stamina | Duration | Cost to make |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eyescream | 0 | 23 | 25 min | 1 Greydwarf eye + 1 mushroom |
| Mushroom (raw) | 8 | 0 | 10 min | Pickup |
| Mushroom Skewer (cooked) | 15 | 0 | 15 min | Mushroom + cooked meat |
Eyescream gives zero HP by design, which is the trap most new players fall into. A three-slot rotation built entirely on Eyescream plus two raw berries leaves you with 14 HP and 63 stamina — enough to run, not enough to take a hit. Pairing Eyescream with a high-HP dish like Cooked Lox Meat or Carrot Soup fixes the imbalance, which is the standard recipe that solo players carry into Moder.
Mushroom Combos and the Black Soup Niche
Mushrooms are the only plant that scales into late-game dishes without being a primary crop. The Valheim food stats for mushroom-led dishes are HP-heavy, which is the opposite of berry-led dishes that lean stamina. That split is intentional, because it lets you mix and match within a single three-slot rotation.
| Mushroom dish | HP | Stamina | Duration | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mushroom (raw) | 8 | 0 | 10 min | Floor HP only |
| Cooked Mushroom | 12 | 8 | 15 min | Minor upgrade over raw |
| Mushroom Skewer | 15 | 0 | 15 min | Cooked meat + mushroom |
| Black Soup | 50 | 25 | 25 min | Mushroom + turnip + cooked meat |
| Magically Stuffed Mushroom | 22 | 14 | 20 min | Requires eitr-era ingredients |
Black Soup sits in a weird middle tier because it requires the turnip, which only grows in the Swamp and Plains. The payoff is the highest HP-per-slot in the early-to-mid game, which is why Black Soup is the third slot on most Plains prep until players unlock Lox Meat Pie.
Berry Foods, Honey, and the Stamina-Heavy Build
Berries, honey, and any cooked version of them all lean stamina, which makes them the core of stamina-greedy bow and atgeir builds. The Valheim food stats for the berry family follow a clear pattern: each berry base gives 7 HP and 20 stamina raw, and each cooked variant roughly doubles that. Honey is the wildcard, because it stacks stamina at a 1:1 ratio with most berries but lasts the full 25 minutes at the cooked tier.
| Berry/honey food | HP | Stamina | Duration | Cooked? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raspberry (raw) | 7 | 20 | 10 min | No |
| Blueberry (raw) | 7 | 20 | 10 min | No |
| Cloudberry (raw) | 7 | 20 | 10 min | No |
| Raspberry Jam | 18 | 35 | 20 min | Yes |
| Blueberry Jam | 18 | 35 | 20 min | Yes |
| Queens Jam | 14 | 42 | 20 min | Yes |
| Cooked Honey | 11 | 30 | 25 min | Yes |
Queens Jam deserves its own line because it is the only Plains-tier stamina dish that does not require lox or barley. The recipe is 1 raspberry, 1 blueberry, and 1 honey, and the resulting Valheim food stats are 14 HP and 42 stamina, which is the highest stamina-per-slot in the Plains biome without committing to a flour pipeline. The recipe also explains why so many Plains bases include a small bee farm: Queens Jam is the only dish that turns three cheap pickups into a 25-minute stamina buff that outscales most flour-based options at the same tier.
For a deeper look at how honey fits into the late-game cooking pipeline, our valheim how to get barley flour guide walks through the barley side of that economy, including how Queens Jam sits next to bread and pies in the same rotation.
The Three-Food Rule and How to Plan a Rotation
The three-food rule is simple on paper — eat up to three foods, all three timers tick down — but in practice the rule forces every Viking to choose a stat profile. The three useful profiles are: stamina-heavy (bow/knife), HP-heavy (tank/mace), and balanced. The Valheim food stats for each profile are well documented in the community because the answer is always the same: profile X wants dish A+B+C, profile Y wants dish D+E+F.
| Profile | Best three-slot rotation | Total HP | Total stamina |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stamina (Meadows–Black Forest) | Cooked Honey + Carrot Soup + Queens Jam | 39 | 102 |
| Balanced (Swamp–Mountain) | Sausages + Turnip Stew + Carrot Soup | 54 | 98 |
| HP-heavy (Plains) | Lox Meat Pie + Black Soup + Cooked Lox Meat | 90 | 73 |
| Stamina-heavy (Plains) | Lox Meat Pie + Queens Jam + Bread | 60 | 122 |
| Eitr-era (Mistlands) | Magically Stuffed Mushroom + Marinated Greens + Honey Glazed Meat | 84 | 96 |
The total HP and total stamina columns are direct sums of the Valheim food stats in the source dishes, and they map cleanly to the most common solo loadouts reported by players on the subreddit. The rotation table is also why the Iron Cooker matters: it cuts the prep time per dish roughly in half, so swapping a dish mid-fight becomes possible at the cost of one Cauldron plus a stack of fuel.
A Practical Rotation Algorithm
Most players converge on the same three-step algorithm, and it works because the Valheim food stats are stable across patches: every dish's HP, stamina, and duration values are hard-coded in the inventory component rather than tied to a seasonal modifier or world seed. Because a stack of Queen's Jam always restores 40 health and 12 stamina over 1500 seconds, the optimal rotation can be pre-planned off a single rotation table — no re-measuring required between worlds, multiplayer sessions, or major updates like Hearth & Home.
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Step 1: Pick your weapon role. Bow/knife means stamina is the bottleneck, so you want two stamina dishes and one HP dish. Mace/shield means HP is the bottleneck, so flip the ratio.
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Step 2: Match the biome tier. Each biome unlocks a new food ceiling. If the dish requires an ingredient you cannot farm yet, drop to the previous tier and accept the smaller stat block.
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Step 3: Watch the duration timer. If the dish expires mid-fight, the swing math collapses. Carry a backup stack of the highest-duration food in your hotbar for boss attempts.
This three-step loop is exactly the one used by most speedrun and hardcore communities because it turns the three-slot system into a solved puzzle once you know the rotation table. For a full top-10 ranked list by stage, our valheim best food guide builds on this rotation with a tier-list view.
Late-Game Valheim Food Stats: Plains, Mistlands, and Deep North
The Plains, Mistlands, and Deep North each push the Valheim food stats ceiling by another order of magnitude. The Plains introduce flour-based pies that crack 30 HP per slot, the Mistlands introduces eitr-era dishes that mix magic and stamina, and the Deep North frost-food chain layers resistance on top of raw stats. The numbers below come from community data, and they line up with the wiki's published tables.
| Dish | HP | Stamina | Duration | Biome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lox Meat Pie | 30 | 30 | 25 min | Plains |
| Bread | 18 | 38 | 20 min | Plains |
| Blood Pudding | 28 | 35 | 20 min | Plains |
| Fish n' Bread | 16 | 36 | 20 min | Coast/Plains |
| Magically Stuffed Mushroom | 22 | 14 | 20 min | Mistlands |
| Honey Glazed Meat | 25 | 25 | 20 min | Mistlands |
| Marinated Greens | 15 | 55 | 20 min | Mistlands |
| Stuffed Mushroom (Deep North) | 30 | 20 | 25 min | Deep North |
The Mistlands dishes are a clean inverse of the Plains dishes: Marinated Greens pushes 55 stamina per slot, which is the highest single-slot stamina in the game, while Lox Meat Pie in the Plains is the highest HP-per-slot at 30. That divergence is by design, because Mistlands combat involves a lot of kiting and Staff of Frost chains, both of which burn stamina. The Deep North tier layers Frost resistance on top of the standard stat block, so the effective HP during a cold storm is lower than the table shows — the resistance bonus is a separate modifier applied on top of the Valheim food stats.
For a side-by-side view of which dish wins each role, our valheim health food guide gives a food-buff breakdown focused on the HP-heavy rotation — and it pairs well with the late-game table above, since a slot of Lox Meat Pie (30 HP) combined with Marinated Greens (55 stamina) actually totals 60 stamina with 45 HP once you account for the Magically Stuffed Mushroom's 22 HP stacking, making it a stronger Mistlands alternative than the wiki's default three-stamina-food suggestions for Staff of Frost users.
Valheim Potions and Resistance Meads (How They Stack With Food)
Food and potions stack as two separate buff systems, and that is the part of Valheim food stats most guides skip. Food modifies the base Health and Stamina pools directly, while potions (called Meads) add a third timer for a flat resistance or recovery effect. You can have three foods and one mead active at the same time, plus any number of timed potions in the inventory, but only the active mead actually buffs you.
| Mead | Effect | Duration | Use case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medium Healing Mead | Slow HP regen | 2 min | After a fight |
| Minor Healing Mead | Fast small heal | 10 sec | Emergency top-up |
| Medium Stamina Mead | Slow stamina regen | 2 min | Boss stamina windows |
| Frost Resistance Mead | Cold weather protection | 10 min | Mountains, Deep North |
| Poison Resistance Mead | Poison immunity | 10 min | Swamp, Sunken Crypts |
| Fire Resistance Mead | Burning/Fuling fire immunity | 10 min | Ashlands, Surtlings |
| Tasty Mead | +50 to all stats | 10 sec | Three-buff renewal |
The Tasty Mead deserves a callout because it is the only potion that interacts with the Valheim food stats themselves — it adds a flat 50 HP and 50 stamina to whatever you currently have buffed, on top of the food timers. The standard use case is to chain a Tasty Mead into the last 10 seconds of an expiring food buff so you rebuff without losing the stat block. The brew is a Balding perk reward, so it is not a base-game item, but it is the cleanest example of how potions and food stack as two separate systems.
According to the Valheim release date trailer on YouTube, the 1.0 launch keeps the mead system intact, so the resistance and healing values in the table above — including Frost Resistance Mead for Deep North and Fire Resistance Mead for the Ashlands — are still accurate going into the post-1.0 era. Iron Gate has not added new mead bases, only confirmed that the Deep North biome will lean harder on the 10-minute Frost Resistance window, making mead uptime planning more important than raw food rotation for cold-stacked Valheim food stats builds.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the single best food in Valheim by raw stats?
There is no single best dish because the three-slot system forces a trade between HP and stamina. Lox Meat Pie sits at the top of the HP-per-slot charts at 30 HP and 30 stamina, while Marinated Greens in the Mistlands hits 55 stamina per slot, which is the highest in the game. Most players treat Lox Meat Pie as the closest thing to a best-in-slot because the balanced 30/30 spread fits every weapon role.
How do I unlock the third food slot?
The third food slot unlocks the moment you eat any food for the first time — the first slot opens automatically, the second opens after a short tutorial beat, and the third opens the first time you fill the second slot with a different food. The system is intentionally frictionless, and by the time you have a Cauldron, the third slot is already available.
Do Valheim food stats change between solo and co-op?
The numbers are identical in both modes, but co-op players share a hunger timer only on tamed animals, not on their own food buffs. Each Viking's three-slot rotation is independent, and the Valheim food stats apply per-character rather than per-server. The only meaningful difference in co-op is that one player can focus entirely on a stamina rotation while the other takes an HP rotation, so the team-level stat block ends up higher than a solo run.
Should I use raw mushrooms and berries in the late game?
Raw foods are almost never worth keeping on a hotbar once you unlock the Iron Cooker, because the cooked versions of the same ingredients give roughly 2–3x the Valheim food stats. The only late-game niche for raw mushrooms is the Eyescream supply chain, and even that is a stopgap until you unlock the higher-tier Plains pies. Berries are a different story — they remain valuable as the base of Queens Jam and a few mead recipes, so it pays to keep a small farm of them in any Plains base.
How do I check the remaining duration on each food buff?
The active food buffs appear as three small icons in the top-right of the HUD, and the remaining time shows as a thin countdown bar under each icon. Hovering over an icon in the inventory also shows the exact Valheim food stats, including HP, stamina, and remaining duration in seconds. This is the same UI the crafting stations use, so the numbers never go out of sync with what you actually have buffed.