Valheim World Generator Seed maps & tools

Guide

How the Valheim map is laid out

Valheim's world is a single circular disk of roughly ten kilometres' radius, and almost everything about difficulty, resources and progression is a function of how far from the centre you have sailed. Read that shape once and the map stops being a mystery.

The world is a disk, and it gets harder outwards

Every world is generated from your seed as a rough circle. The sacrificial stones at spawn always sit near the centre, in Meadows, so that a new character has wood, stone and a fighting chance without crossing open water. From there the generator bands the world by radius: the inner circle is Meadows and Black Forest, the middle holds Swamp, Mountain and Plains, and the outer rim belongs to Mistlands, with the two polar extremes — Deep North to the north, Ashlands to the south — at the very edge.

The exact numbers are in the table below. The important part is the shape of the rule: it is radial. That is why "how do I progress" in Valheim is really "how far out can I sail".

Schematic of Valheim's radial world layout A schematic circle showing biome bands by distance from the world centre: Meadows at the centre, then Black Forest, Swamp and Plains, then Mistlands at the outer rim, with Deep North along the northern edge and Ashlands along the southern edge. This is an illustration of the layout rule, not a map of any particular seed. Meadows spawn, 0 m Black Forest Plains Mistlands Deep North — 1.0 Ashlands ~10,000 m outer edge Schematic of the generation rule — not a map of any particular seed. Biome bands overlap and shift.

Biome boundaries in Valheim are bands, not walls. The generator jitters them by up to about a hundred metres around each ring, so treat every number below as "roughly here" rather than "exactly here".

Approximate biome bands, measured from the centre of the world.
Biome Starts around What it means in practice
Meadows 0 m Every world starts here. The sacrificial stones sit at the centre of the disk.
Black Forest ~500–600 m Copper, tin and core wood. The first biome that punishes you for being under-geared.
Mountain ~600 m out, and above ~50 m altitude Altitude-driven rather than purely distance-driven, so mountains can appear well inside the disk.
Swamp ~2,000 m Ends around 6,000 m — or 8,000 m in worlds created before the Mistlands update.
Plains ~3,000 m Flax, barley and black metal. Runs out around 8,000 m.
Mistlands ~6,000 m The outermost band of the original disk, ending at the ~10,000 m edge.
Deep North Northern edge Added in Valheim 1.0 on 9 September 2026 — the final biome, and the hardest.
Ashlands Southern edge The hostile mirror of Deep North, at the opposite pole of the same disk.

What the map markers mean

Valheim never explains its own map symbols, which is a large part of why people search for them. Broadly there are three layers: the terrain you have uncovered, the pins you place yourself, and the temporary signals you send to other players.

  • Placeable pins Choose from a set of icon types — house, ore, danger and others — and attach a short text note to each. This is the only permanent way to mark something yourself.
  • The ping Middle-click the map to drop a temporary blue dot that every player in the session sees for about ten seconds. Use it to point at something right now; use a pin for anything you want to find again.
  • Coordinates (X, Z) The map reports position as X and Z. X increases to the right, Z increases upward, which is why a coordinate pair can look "backwards" if you read it as latitude and longitude.
  • Cartography Table A buildable structure that shares exploration in multiplayer. One player uses Record discoveries to write their map to the table; another uses Read the map to copy it. Areas the second player has not personally seen stay dimmed. The table has low durability, so do not leave it where a raid can reach it.
  • Biome tooltips Hovering over a region on the map names that biome. It is a quick way to sanity-check where you are without opening a wiki.

Fog of war, and what your map does not show

Your map starts dark and stays dark until you physically go somewhere. That is by design — it forces exploration — but it has two consequences worth knowing. In multiplayer, another player's exploration does not appear on your map at all until you copy it across at a cartography table. And when you do copy it, the regions they walked still render dimmed, because you have not seen them yourself.

A seed preview is the opposite of this. It shows you terrain you have never visited, which is exactly why it is useful for planning — and exactly why it cannot show your buildings, portals, ships or what your group has actually explored. None of that exists until a world is created and played.

Why a preview can disagree with your game

If you have loaded your seed and the map does not match what you see in game, work through these in order:

  1. The wrong seed. The console prints your seed as -925266684/MXADgi5IxT; only the part after the slash is the seed. See how to find your seed.
  2. The wrong world generation version. A world's generation version is set when it is created and does not change as you update the game. Predict against the wrong one and you get a realistic map of a world you do not have.
  3. World-altering mods. If a mod changes terrain generation, the seed stops describing your world and no prediction will be accurate.
  4. A world made before 1.0. Valheim 1.0 reshuffled locations in older worlds. For those, only the data file knows where things actually are — which is why reading your own save file is the reliable route.

If your map is right but you have no plan for the base you want to build on it, the build planner is the next stop.

Map questions

How big is a Valheim world?

The world disk has a radius of roughly 10,000 metres, so about 20 kilometres across. It is not exactly circular and the coastline is irregular, but the generator works from a circular coordinate space, which is why biomes form bands around the centre rather than being scattered randomly.

Are all biomes on every seed?

Yes. Every seed generates every biome; what changes is the layout, how far you have to sail to reach each one, and how much of it there is. The centre is biased towards Meadows and Black Forest, so endgame biomes are statistically unlikely to sit next to your spawn.

How do I find the trader?

Haldor never spawns closer than about 1,500 metres from the world centre, which is the single most useful rule for finding him: do not bother searching the starting area. Beyond that he is in Black Forest, and the most reliable method is to generate a full map from your seed and look, rather than sailing and hoping.

Can I share my map with friends in Valheim?

Build a Cartography Table and use Record discoveries on it, then have each friend use Read the map. That copies your explored regions and your pins onto their map. Regions they have not walked stay dimmed. The table has low durability, so keep it inside your defences rather than on an exposed dock.

Why is part of my map dimmed after using the cartography table?

Because dimmed means "known from the table, not seen in person". Valheim keeps the two states separate so that copying someone else's exploration does not pretend you were there. You can toggle the shared layer off again from the cartography table icon in the bottom right of the map screen.