Valheim dragon eggs: How to find them and what they're for

Valheim Dragon Egg guide
(Image credit: Iron Gate Studios)

Valheim dragon eggs are one of the game's most unusual items. They can be hard to find, requiring dangerous excursions into a freezing cold and deadly area of the world. And once you've found some they can be extremely difficult to take with you, for reasons I'll explain further down in this Valheim dragon egg guide.

Before you begin your search, you should have already taken on the Swamps and defeated Bonemass, Valheim's third boss.

Where they are

Where to find Valheim dragon eggs

To find dragon eggs, you'll need to begin searching in the Mountain biome. This biome is exceptionally difficult to travel in, as it consists of tall mountains and steep cliffs that will sap your stamina as you try to jump and climb to the top. It's also freezing cold, which is a problem if you don't have the right armor to keep you warm or enough frost resistance mead to protect you from the cold. Without those, you will lose health at a steady tick the moment you begin climbing a snowy mountain. And of course, the Mountain biome is full of deadly creatures like wolves, stone golems, drakes, and fenrigs, and is prone to blinding blizzards that make it hard to find your way around.

Valheim Dragon Egg guide

Valheim dragon egg in a drake's nest (Image credit: Iron Gate Studios)

Once you're in a Mountain biome, keep your eyes out for drakes, the small dragon-like creatures that fly overhead. They sometimes, though not always, will be guarding nests, which can be recognized by small rock formations and glowing crystals. These nests may contain a single dragon egg, which is black and scaly with pink and red hues.

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But much more challenging than finding dragon eggs is transporting them. Each egg has a weight of 200, making it by far the heaviest item in Valheim. For reference, the base carry weight for players is 300, meaning a single dragon egg will take up two-thirds of your weight limit. Even with the Merjinger belt (you can buy one from the Valheim trader) which increases your carry weight to 350, a player will only be able to carry a single dragon egg at a time. And with an egg in your inventory, that doesn't leave a whole lot of extra room to carry everything else. When you go out to search for dragon eggs, pack as lightly as possible.

Another issue that makes things even more difficult: dragon eggs can not be carried through portals. The same as with metal ores and bars, you can't teleport while carrying a dragon egg, so when you find one you'll have to carry it all the way with you, on foot or by ship, to bring it where you need to go.

What they're for

How to use a Valheim dragon egg

Dragon eggs are used to summon Valheim's fourth boss, Moder, in the Mountain biome. Since they're so difficult to transport, you should do most of your searching in the same Mountain region where Moder can be summoned. If you find an egg in one Mountain biome and Moder is in another, you'll have to haul it all the way there with you to use it, no portals allowed.

Valheim Dragon Egg guide

A dragon egg placed on Moder's summoning altar (Image credit: Iron Gate Studios)

Ready for more good news? You'll need a total of three dragon eggs to summon Moder. So, if you're playing solo, you'll need to bring these eggs up to Moder's altar one at a time (unless you use some Valheim cheats to spawn them) and place them on his altar. You can place one egg in Moder's altar and return later to place the second or third egg, but that's going to be a tough trip, even with friends along to help.

On the plus side, if you find a dragon egg near Moder's summoning altar, you can take it and return to the same nest later. Dragon eggs respawn in 480 minutes, or 8 hours.

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.