Valheim stone: how to unlock stone buildings

Valheim stone building — (Image credit: Iron Gate Studios)

Valheim stone may seem pretty dull, but it's one of the most important resources to collect in the game, especially if you're just getting started. It's easy to spot in the grassy banks of the Meadows, and these tiny rocks are well worth squirrelling away in a chest for later.

If you're sick of looking at your measly wooden hut, it sounds like you're ready to remodel. Building the perfect settlement is a DIY job after all, and you deserve a stone castle to retreat to after a hard day's work. Here's what you need to know about the resource, including how to craft a Valheim stone cutter to unlock more building tiles, and how to make a sharpening stone.

How to get stone

Stone is one of the first materials you'll need to gather in Valheim. It can be used to craft early game tools such as stone axes. Even as you continue to progress and upgrade your Valheim workbench, stone continues to be a vital material in various recipes.

If you've just landed on the Valheim map, the easiest way to find stone is by checking the floor. Stone is easy to spot in the Meadows, especially around bodies of water. While you're hunting for this resource, you're sure to come across some Valheim flint, too.

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Craft a stone axe

Once you've collected enough stone, you can craft a stone axe (wood x5, stone x4) at your workbench. This makes it much faster to chop down beech, pine, and fir trees when you're gathering wood. As you continue to upgrade your crafting station, you can also upgrade your stone axe:

Level 2 stone axe: Requires stone x2 and a level 2 workbench.
Level 3 stone axe: Requires stone x4 and a level 3 workbench.

Valheim stone building tiles: crafting a stone cutter

Later on, you'll want to invest in a stone cutter. This bench is essential if you want to level up your construction game. You interact with it similarly to a workbench, and it'll add stone building tiles including stone walls, floors, pillars, stairs, and arches to your build menu.

Before unlocking the stone cutter, you need to find Valheim iron, which must be extracted from Muddy Scrap Piles in the Sunken Crypts. These are found in the Swamp, so don your shiny bronze armour, and prepare for a harrowing journey through Valheim's scariest biome. After returning and smelting your scrap iron, here are the resources you need to craft a stone cutter:

Wood x10
Iron x2
Stone x4

Sharpening stone and grinding wheel

Unlocking the stone cutter adds a bunch of new recipes to your crafting menu, and one of the items is a sharpening stone. This item is required for creating a grinding wheel, which is one of the items you need to place around your forge to upgrade it. Here's how to craft each one:

Sharpening stone recipe: Stone x5.
Grinding wheel recipe: Wood x5, sharpening stone x1.

As PC Gamer's guides writer, Emma is usually juggling several games at once. She loves competitive first-person shooters like CS:GO and Call of Duty, but she always has time for a few rounds of Hearthstone. She's happiest when she's rescuing pugs in Spelunky 2.