Valheim: How to Get the Antler Pickaxe

Mining is locked behind a boss fight in Valheim. You cannot chop, punch, or buy your way into copper and tin — the only tool that breaks ore deposits is a pickaxe, and the first one you can own is the Antler Pickaxe. That means the Meadows starting loop of wood, flint, and deer hunting has to end with a dead stag god before your Bronze Age begins.

Quick answer: Kill Eikthyr to get Hard Antler, stand next to a Workbench upgraded to level 3, and craft the Antler Pickaxe for 10 Wood and 1 Hard Antler.

What you need before you can craft a pickaxe in Valheim

Three things gate the Antler Pickaxe, and all of them are early-game tasks. None of them can be skipped or substituted.

Requirement	How you get it
Hard Antler	Dropped by Eikthyr, the first boss, after you defeat him
Workbench at level 3	Build a Chopping Block and a Tanning Rack next to the Workbench
10 Wood	Chop trees, bushes, and stumps, or pick logs off the ground

Wood is the easy part. Greydwarves drop it when killed, and the Meadows are full of small trees you can fell with a stone or flint axe. Hard Antler is the real bottleneck, since there is no other way to obtain it.

Beat Eikthyr to get Hard Antler

Gear up first. A shield, some leather armor, and a flint axe or knife make the fight survivable, and a bow lets you chip away at the boss from a distance. Deer Pelts, Leather Scraps, Flint, Stone, and Wood cover everything you need for that starter kit.

Valheim crafting menu with the Club recipe selected and the Craft button available — The crafting menu with a basic weapon selected and the Craft button ready. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Hunt deer until you have two Deer Trophies. Trophies are a chance drop, not a guarantee, so expect to kill more than two deer. A bow makes this far less painful than chasing them with a club.

Open your map and travel to the Eikthyr marker. The game pins the boss altar for you at the start of every world, and it always sits in the Meadows, so the trip is usually short.

Valheim Meadows map screen with marker filters and a home pin visible — The map screen with marker filters, used here to check pins around the Meadows base. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Place the two Deer Trophies on the summoning stones and fight. Eikthyr has a deep health pool and a telegraphed lightning attack, so back off and create distance whenever he winds up. If the fight goes badly, you can farm two more trophies and summon him again as many times as you like.

Loot the drops. Eikthyr leaves behind a stack of Hard Antler plus his trophy. One Hard Antler covers a single pickaxe, so the stack you collect is enough for spares and replacements.

Upgrade the Workbench to level 3

A bare Workbench will not craft the pickaxe. The bench needs to be at level 3, and its level rises when you build supporting stations inside its radius. Two additions get you there.

Build a Chopping Block near the Workbench. It only needs wood and stone, and placing it inside the bench’s build circle immediately bumps the bench up a level.

Player standing in front of a highlighted Chopping Block built beside a Valheim workbench — The Chopping Block placed inside the Workbench’s build radius. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Build a Tanning Rack in the same area. With both stations up, the Workbench reads Level 3 when you look at it, and the Antler Pickaxe recipe becomes craftable.

Tip: keep both stations under a roof. Rain damages exposed crafting stations, and rebuilding them mid-run wastes wood you would rather spend on the pickaxe itself.

Craft the Antler Pickaxe and confirm it worked

Stand next to the upgraded Workbench and open your inventory to reach the crafting tab. The bench must be in range or the recipe list stays greyed out.

Valheim crafting tab open at a workbench with a recipe highlighted and the Craft button active — The crafting tab open at the Workbench, with the Craft button active. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Select the Antler Pickaxe and hit Craft. The cost is 10 Wood and 1 Hard Antler, and the tool appears in your inventory a second later.

The Antler Pickaxe being crafted at a Valheim workbench with the recipe cost shown — The Antler Pickaxe recipe being crafted at the Workbench. Image: Iron Gate Studio

You will know it worked when the “New Item” popup fires and the message log notes new unlocks. Equip the pickaxe on your hotbar and swing it at a rock, boulder, or copper deposit. If it chips the terrain and drops stone, you are set.

If the recipe does not show up, the cause is almost always one of two things. Either you have not killed Eikthyr yet and never unlocked the blueprint, or the Workbench is still below level 3 because the Chopping Block and Tanning Rack sit outside its radius.

What the Antler Pickaxe can mine

The Antler Pickaxe deals 18 Pickaxe and Pierce damage, costs 6 stamina per swing, and has a durability of 100. It repairs for free at any Workbench, so keep one near your mining sites. Its primary attack is a downward swing with no secondary attack, and since the Hearth and Home update pickaxes cleave in a 20 degree arc instead of hitting a single target.

Deposit	Can the Antler Pickaxe break it?
Stone and boulders	Yes
Copper deposits	Yes
Tin deposits	Yes
Muddy scrap piles	Yes
Abyssal barnacle	Yes
Obsidian, Silver	No — needs an Iron Pickaxe or better
Black marble, soft tissue, flametal	No — needs a Black Metal Pickaxe

Beyond ore, the pickaxe doubles as a terrain tool. You can dig out ground, lower hills, and clear the rocks scattered across a base site, which matters when you want a flat platform for building or farming.

When to upgrade past the Antler Pickaxe

The Antler Pickaxe is slow and fragile compared to what comes later, but it is all you need to reach the Bronze Age. Copper and tin from the Black Forest smelt into bronze, and bronze buys you the next tier.

Pickaxe	Station and cost	Damage / stamina
Antler Pickaxe	Workbench — 10 Wood, 1 Hard Antler	18 / 6
Bronze Pickaxe	Forge — 10 Bronze, 3 Core Wood	25–40 / 8
Iron Pickaxe	Forge — 20 Iron, 3 Core Wood	33–48 / 10
Black Metal Pickaxe	Black Forge	49–64 / 14

Note that the Bronze Pickaxe and everything above it are crafted and repaired at the Forge rather than the Workbench, so a mining outpost built around a lone bench stops being enough once you move past antler.

Once the Antler Pickaxe is on your hotbar, the sensible next move is a run into the Black Forest for copper and tin. Bring spare wood for repairs, mark the deposits on your map, and the rest of Valheim’s progression opens up from there.