Valheim Deep North Guide — Bloodgold, Gammeltroll and Kall Fimbulbringer

The Deep North is Valheim’s final frontier — and its most tangled progression puzzle

The Deep North sits at the very top of the world map — a frozen continent of buried Viking villages, ice sheets, and giants that resist nearly every weapon type. This is the end of the 8-biome progression line, and its final boss, Kall Fimbulbringer, has the highest health of any boss in the game (about 47,000 HP across three phases).

Unlike every previous biome, the Deep North’s progression is tied to a world event — breaking Malicious Ice in Mörkhalla triggers a Jotun invasion that appears at a random spot on your map. And Bloodgold — the metal behind the new Nord weapons — cannot be mined at all; it is smelted from Petrified Tissue harvested from Gammeltrolls.

Accuracy note: This guide covers the Deep North as it shipped in 1.0 (September 9, 2026). Exact drop rates and some finer mechanics can change with hotfixes. Where we could not confirm a value, we say so rather than guess. If you find something that no longer matches your build, use the contact address in the site footer — see how we handle corrections.

Valheim: Deep North — Official Animated Trailer

Getting there — sail north, watch your hull

The Deep North forms a continuous frozen landmass at the far northern edge of every world. Sail north until you hit floating ice sheets, then cross onto the continent. Watch your hull — ice flats can damage boats if you approach at speed.

Minimum gear: Ashlands-tier gear, a fire-damage weapon (most Deep North creatures are weak to fire), and frost resistance. Snowstorms deal continuous freezing damage without the Wolf Cape or equivalent. Bring iron and portal materials so you can set up a return point the moment you land.

Forward base: Abandoned Villages

The best forward base is an Abandoned Village — snow-buried Viking settlements that already contain finished buildings. Walk into a house, patch the roof, and drop a fire, a bed, and a portal. Spectral Vikings wander these villages but are harmless.

The largest building in a village is usually a longhouse, and the one beneath it leads down into the Winding Tunnels.

Dungeon 1: Winding Tunnels — Frostcores and the Intricate Key

The Winding Tunnels are the first Deep North dungeon. They give you Frostcores (needed for the new crafting stations) and the Mould: Intricate Key.

Winding Tunnels layout

• Entrance: under the longhouse in each large Abandoned Village
• Frostcores: found as bright blue icy formations on the walls, some high up. You need roughly 20 for the Frost Foundry and Frigid Kiln combined.
• Elaking: 350 HP, weak to fire. Most active at night. Drops the Mould: Intricate Key and Elaking Hair Bundle.
• Eyeless One: 1400 HP, burrows and ambushes from underground. Drops Long Claws (used for fist weapons). Weak to physical damage, resists frost and spirit.
• The Mould: Intricate Key can also be found in scrap piles and rubble, and sometimes drops from Eyeless Ones.

Intricate Key → Gates of Mörkhalla

The Intricate Key is made from the Mould: Intricate Key, cast at a Frost Foundry using Bloodgold. Because each mould is consumed, and you will want several keys across the biome, plan to farm more than one mould.

The key opens the Gates of Mörkhalla — the massive stone gates marked by a Vegvisir.

The crafting chain: Frigid Kiln, Frost Foundry and Blast Furnace

The Deep North runs on a multi-step crafting system. These are the key stations:

• Frigid Kiln (10 Frostcores, 20 Stone, 5 Ice): converts Ice into Liquid Frost.
• Frost Foundry (15 Iron, 20 Stone, 10 Frostcores): takes a Mould, its cast materials and Liquid Frost to produce Deep North items such as the Intricate Key and Nord weapons.
• Blast Furnace (20 Stone, 5 Surtling Cores, 10 Iron, 20 Finewood): smelts Petrified Tissue + Coal into Bloodgold ingots.
• Black Forge (Mistlands tier): used for tools like the Grappling Hook.

Common mix-up: Bloodgold is produced in the Blast Furnace, not the Frost Foundry. The Frost Foundry is for casting moulds into finished items.

Dungeon 2: Mörkhalla — Jotun invasions and Malicious Blood

Mörkhalla is one of the two Deep North dungeons (a pair of tall, ruined towers connected by bridges). It contains the Jotun-invasion trigger and, deep inside, the Vegvisir runestone that marks the Aesir Passage.

What you find in Mörkhalla

• Krigen: a melee Jotun. Drops Memorial Coal, Leather Straps and the Vanguard armour moulds (one of the best armour sets in the game).
• Hexen: a magic-casting Jotun. Drops Nornathread and the Caller armour moulds.
• Shapeless Pulp: fast poison blobs (150 HP) that turn into smaller Tiny Pulp when destroyed. Bring a poison-resistance mead.
• Malicious Ice: breaking it (any damage works) triggers the Jotun invasion event. The invasion then appears at a random location on your world map — often near the centre — and you must travel there and clear it. Clearing an invasion yields 1 Malicious Blood.

The Jotun invasion matters

You need to repeat this loop three times (three Malicious Blood) to summon Kall Fimbulbringer. Set up a portal hub so you can travel to wherever the invasion spawns, and bring the gear to defend it.

Gammeltrolls — Ember Charges for Petrified Tissue

Gammeltrolls are the largest creature in all of Valheim (3000 HP). They are very resistant to almost every physical weapon damage type — but their head is a weakness (very weak). In practice a Gammeltroll is still effectively unkillable with normal weapons: even hitting the head takes an impractical number of hits, so Ember Charges remain the recommended method.

How to kill a Gammeltroll

Ember Charges are the reliable route. An Ember Charge is crafted at a Workbench from 1 Ember + 2 Seal Pelts (a single craft yields a stack of 10).

Where the ingredients come from:

• Embers are produced passively by the Eternal Pyre (10 Stone + a Fader Relic, built with the Stonecutter). Build it at your home base after beating Fader.
• Seal Pelts drop from adult Seals along the Deep North coast.

The kill sequence

1. Build the Eternal Pyre at home → produce Embers
2. Gather Seal Pelts from adult Seals on the coast
3. Craft Ember Charges at a Workbench
4. Find a Gammeltroll roaming the open Deep North
5. Hit it with Ember Charges until it dies — it then petrifies into a statue (a petrified Gammeltroll is a resource node of 52 segments that becomes part of the terrain)
6. Blow the statue up with more Ember Charges (it cannot be mined with a pickaxe) → on average about 86.6 Stone and 43.3 Petrified Tissue (each segment yields Stone 66.6% / Petrified Tissue 33.3%)
7. Smelt Petrified Tissue with Coal in a Blast Furnace → Bloodgold ingots

Bloodgold is the final metal tier and the base of the Nord weapons and armour.

Nord weapons — the final weapon tier

Nord weapons are Bloodgold-based and have the highest raw damage in the game. They are cast through the mould/cast system at the Frost Foundry. New 1.0 elements include Frostfire and Thunderblood, and the deep North also adds new staffs such as the Spirit Caller.

For Kall Fimbulbringer specifically, you want high blunt (e.g. a Nord sledge) or slash (e.g. a Nord greatsword) weapon, since the boss resists everything else.

Grappling Hook — very useful for exploration

Craft the finished Grappling Hook at a Black Forge: 1 Hook (from a Dvergr Treasure Chest in the Infested Mines) + 10 Yggdrasil Wood + 10 Refined Eitr + 4 Mandibles (Seeker Soldiers). It has unlimited uses and makes the steepest, most vertical parts of the Deep North far easier to cross. It is not strictly required everywhere, but it removes a lot of tedious bridging.

Deep North enemies at a glance

Creature	Health	Weak to	Note
Seal	400	Fire	Coastline. Not tameable. Drops Seal Pelt and Seal Blubber.
Moose	1000	Fire	Tameable (Lingonberries) + rideable (Moose Saddle). Drops Moose Meat/Hide/Sinew.
Barka	2200	Fire (effective option)	Frozen Elder-like tree. Resistant to most physical damage types; takes normal chop damage. Drops Frozen Branch.
Elaking	350	Fire	Tunnels + above-ground at night. Drops Mould: Intricate Key and Elaking Hair Bundle.
Eyeless One	1400	Physical	Burrows + ambushes. Drops Long Claws.
Krigen	1300	—	Mörkhalla + Jotun invasions. Three variants (sword, axe, greataxe). Drops Memorial Coal, Leather Straps and Protector/Vanguard armour moulds.
Hexen	—	—	Mörkhalla + Jotun invasions. Flying magic Jotun. Drops Nornathread, Intricate Key and Caller armour moulds.

Krigen’s 1300 HP is confirmed by game-data sources; Hexen’s health is not confirmed in our sources, so we have left it out rather than guess.

Kall Fimbulbringer — the final boss

Kall Fimbulbringer is the 1.0 finale. He has about 47,000 HP across three phases (roughly 10,000 / 7,000 / 30,000), resists fire, pierce, frost and lightning, and is immune to spirit. Use pure blunt or slash damage only.

Summoning

1. Clear three Mörkhalla runs and repel the three Jotun invasions they trigger, for a total of 3 Malicious Blood.
2. Find the Aesir Passage — the runestone marking it is inside Mörkhalla.
3. Offer the 3 Malicious Blood at the Strange Bowl.
4. This opens the gauntlet: you first have to defeat the other bosses in a marathon inside the arena before Kall becomes attackable.

Kall Fimbulbringer mechanics — three phases

• Phase 1 — Kall fights directly (10,000 HP): fast melee combos with his chains that can be blocked or parried with a shield; he summons roots (tendrils) that hit you when you are too close and strike with lightning when you are too far — keep a mid range; rows of ice stakes (Spike Rain) fall across the arena, move through the gaps; a spinning throw that hurls you — dodge sideways rather than blocking.
• Phase 2 — the boss-spirit gauntlet (7,000 HP): Kall hides inside an invincible block of ice that cannot be damaged. While he is sealed, the spirits of the previous bosses are summoned in sequence: first Eikthyr alone; when it is defeated, The Elder and Bonemass appear together; then, as you defeat spirits, they are replaced in order by Moder, Yagluth, The Queen and Fader, so there are always two spirits active at the same time until the last pair. The spirits use most (not all) of their original abilities. The phase ends when all boss spirits have been defeated, and the ice block shatters.
• Phase 3 — the final Kall (30,000 HP): the same attack kit as Phase 1 but with more powerful attacks (his Slam and Whirl now carry fire and frost, and Spike Rain is part of the kit). Preserve stamina and food — this is by far the longest bar.

Recommended gear

Full Bloodgold / Nord armour, a high-blunt sledge or slash greatsword, the Grappling Hook (the arena has gaps), your best 3-food loadout, plenty of stamina and healing meads, and frost + fire resistance for the arena’s elemental attacks.

What you get for beating him

Kall Fimbulbringer drops Sacrificial Blood (and a Crown Jewel). Take the Sacrificial Blood back to the Sacrificial Stones in the Meadows — the first altar where your journey began — and offer it to complete the game. This is the intended finale of Valheim’s whole progression arc.

The final achievement

Defeating Kall Fimbulbringer unlocks the “Kall Fimbulbringer” achievement (in-game title: “defeat the Shackled One”). 1.0 added 53 achievements in total (17 of them hidden); completing them all unlocks the Platinum, “The Most Worthy”.

Before you leave (or: you finished 1.0)

1. Bloodgold and Nord gear — smelt from Petrified Tissue in the Blast Furnace
2. Vanguard armour — the moulds from Krigen make one of the best sets
3. Grappling Hook equipped — makes the vertical terrain manageable
4. Sacrificial Blood offered — finish the game at the Meadows altar

The six mistakes that get you stuck in the Deep North

1. Bringing fire damage to Kall Fimbulbringer

He resists fire, frost, lightning and pierce, and is immune to spirit. Fire arrows and the Staff of Frost are useless on him. Use a blunt or slash Nord weapon.

2. Trying to fight Gammeltrolls with weapons

They are very resistant to almost every weapon damage type (their head is a weakness, but normal weapons are still impractical against them). Ember Charges are the reliable method — and you need the Eternal Pyre (Fader Relic) to produce the Embers.

3. No Grappling Hook

The Deep North has the steepest terrain in the game. The Grappling Hook makes a lot of the vertical terrain far easier to cross.

4. Breaking Malicious Ice without a way to reach the invasion

The Jotun invasion spawns at a random location on your map, not next to Mörkhalla. Have a portal hub so you can travel to it.

5. Overestimating the tunnels

Winding Tunnels have several Elaking and Eyeless Ones. Fight Elaking with a fire bow from choke points rather than in the open.

6. No frost resistance

Snowstorms deal continuous freezing damage. The Wolf Cape is the minimum. Without it, you lose health faster than you can eat.

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Related

• full-progression-guide — the complete 8-biome progression order from Meadows to Deep North
• ashlands guide — Fader Relic → Eternal Pyre → Embers → Ember Charges
• mistlands guide — Infested Mines give you the Hook component for the Grappling Hook
• portal-network-guide — why you want a portal hub for the Jotun invasions