Valheim: How to Make a Forge

The Forge is the crafting station that ends the wood-and-flint era of a Valheim run. Everything metal — bronze gear, iron tools, arrows, nails for a proper boat — routes through it. It is also the one station new players stall on, because the recipe stays hidden until you have actually processed copper, and the finished building refuses to work if you drop it in the open air.

Quick answer: Smelt copper ore in a Smelter to unlock the recipe, then place the Forge with 4 Stone, 4 Coal, 10 Wood, and 6 Copper inside a roofed structure that sits within range of a Workbench.

What you need before the Forge recipe unlocks

The Forge does not appear in the build menu just because you own the materials. Valheim gates it behind the metal pipeline, so you need two support structures running first: a Smelter to turn copper ore into copper bars, and a Charcoal Kiln to turn wood into coal. Both feed directly into the Forge’s build cost.

Valheim build menu showing the Smelter and Charcoal Kiln entries and their material costs — The build menu listing the Smelter and Charcoal Kiln, the two structures that have to exist before the Forge becomes available. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Both of those structures require Surtling Cores, which are not craftable. They sit inside Burial Chambers in the Black Forest biome, guarded by skeletons, so bring a shield and a weapon you trust before you start opening doors. Cores are the usual bottleneck, not the ore.

Valheim world map with pins marking Black Forest territory where Burial Chambers hold Surtling Cores — The map view used to track Black Forest territory, where Burial Chambers hide the Surtling Cores needed for the Smelter and Kiln. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Copper itself comes from large deposits in the Black Forest, and you cannot touch them without a pickaxe. Mine the vein, haul the ore back to base, and run it through the Smelter with coal as fuel. The moment the first copper bar exists in your inventory, the Forge recipe unlocks.

Valheim player holding a shield while walking up to a large rocky deposit outdoors — Approaching a mineable stone deposit with a shield equipped — copper runs are safer with a blocking option on hand. Image: Iron Gate Studio / via @PazarGamingGuides

Forge materials and build requirements

The recipe is cheap once the prerequisites are cleared. Gather everything before you start placing, because a half-built plan is easy to lose to a Greydwarf raid.

Requirement	Details
Stone	4 (picked up off the ground anywhere)
Coal	4 (Charcoal Kiln output)
Wood	10 (any standard tree)
Copper	6 (smelted copper bars)
Crafting station needed	Workbench in range
Placement	Roofed, with at least 70% cover
Footprint	1×2 tiles, 200 durability

Note: the Forge is not damaged by rain, but the cover rule still applies. A roof with open walls on every side will usually fail the check.

How to place the Forge

Equip your Hammer and open the build menu. On keyboard and mouse that is the right mouse button to bring up the wheel, with the build categories cycled using Q and E.

Switch to the Crafting tab and scroll to the Forge. Its description reads “Crafting station – When you want to work with metal, you need a forge,” and the material list should show all four ingredients highlighted rather than greyed out.

Valheim build menu open on the Show All category with a stack piece selected and its costs listed — Browsing the build menu with Categories set to Show All — the Forge sits alongside the other craftable stations and piles here. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Step inside a shelter that has a solid roof and enough walls to pass the cover check, then aim at the floor. The ghost outline turns from red to a placeable green when the game accepts both the shelter and the nearby Workbench.

Left click to build. Leave a metre or so of clear space around the Forge — the six upgrade pieces have to be placed nearby later, and a cramped corner will box you in.

How to confirm the Forge worked

Valheim tells you immediately. The instant the Forge lands, a stack of unlock notifications rolls across the screen: New crafting station: Forge, followed by new crafting recipes for Bronze, the Butcher Knife, and the Copper Knife, plus new build pieces for the Cauldron, Mead Ketill, and Sconce.

Walk up and interact with it. A working Forge opens a crafting interface with those metal recipes listed and selectable. If the interface refuses to open, or the station reads as unusable, the placement failed the shelter check even though the building itself exists.

Valheim Forge crafting screen with the Butcher Knife highlighted and the Craft button active — The Forge interface with the Butcher Knife selected and ready to craft — proof the station passed its shelter check. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Why the Forge won’t build or won’t work

There are only a handful of reasons it fails, and each one has an exact fix.

The recipe is missing from the build menu. You have not held smelted copper yet. Mining ore is not enough — run it through the Smelter.
The placement ghost stays red. No Workbench in range. Drop one nearby, or extend coverage from an existing bench.
It builds but cannot be used. The spot fails the roof and 70% cover requirement. Add walls or close the gaps above it.
Materials show greyed out. Coal is the usual gap, since it only comes from a Charcoal Kiln or burnt cooked meat.

What the Forge does once it is built

The Forge handles three jobs. It crafts metal weapons, armour, tools, arrows, and materials like Bronze and Bronze Nails. It upgrades that metal gear through the Upgrade tab for a small extra resource cost per level. And it repairs items for free — interact with the station and click the glowing hammer icon to restore durability at no charge.

Bronze is the immediate unlock, made from 2 Copper and 1 Tin. Tip: crafting Bronze one bar at a time levels your Crafting skill on each craft, while holding Shift to batch five at once counts as a single craft.

Forge upgrade levels and costs

A fresh Forge sits at level one and caps at level seven. Each level comes from building one of six improvement pieces near the station, in any order, and every level also pushes the build radius out by three metres up to a maximum of 38 metres. You cannot interact with the improvements after placing them; they just have to be in range.

Improvement	Materials
Forge Cooler	25 Finewood, 10 Copper
Anvils	5 Wood, 2 Bronze
Smith’s Anvil	5 Wood, 20 Iron
Forge Toolrack	10 Wood, 15 Iron
Forge Bellows	5 Wood, 5 Deer Hide, 4 Chain
Grinding Wheel	25 Wood, 1 Sharpening Stone (needs a Stonecutter)

Plan the room around that. If your house is tight, improvement pieces can hang on an outside wall as long as they stay within the Forge’s radius — the game only cares about distance, not whether the anvil shares your roof. Build the shelter one size larger than you think you need, and the copper age gets a lot less annoying.