Valheim: How to Get Deer Trophies

The Deer Trophy is the first gate in Valheim. You cannot fight Eikthyr, craft the Stagbreaker, or brew the Mead Horn of Odin without one, and the game never tells you where it comes from. It drops from ordinary deer in the Meadows, and it drops often enough that a single afternoon of hunting is usually all you need.

Quick answer: Kill deer in the Meadows biome with a bow. Each kill has roughly a 50% chance to drop a Deer Trophy, and two trophies placed on Eikthyr’s altar start the boss fight.

How to hunt deer for trophies in the Meadows

Deer live in the starting Meadows biome and wander open clearings and the edges of tree cover. They spook easily and sprint far, so chasing one on foot with a club wastes stamina and drags you toward Greydwarf territory. A bow plus crouching is the reliable method.

Listen before you look. Deer make a loud, distinctive call that carries through trees, and following the sound is far faster than sweeping the map visually.

Player moving through forest cover in Valheim with the bow selected in hotbar slot 3 — Tracking deer through tree cover with the bow ready in hotbar slot 3. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Equip the bow from your hotbar and crouch to enter stealth. Staying hidden lets you close the gap without the herd scattering.

Valheim combat HUD showing the Draw prompt while the player pulls back the bow in the Meadows — Holding Mouse-1 to draw the bow, with the Draw control shown on the combat HUD. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Draw the bow fully before releasing. A partial draw does less damage and usually just startles the animal into a long run.

Player lining up a bow shot on a deer in the Meadows in Valheim — Lining up a shot on a grazing deer from stealth. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Work through a pair or a small group one at a time. Deer that flee will settle again nearby, so a missed shot is rarely a lost kill.

Aiming at a second deer across open ground after the first shot. Shown at 01:09 in PazarGamingGuides’s video. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Loot every corpse. Deer Hide and Deer Meat drop every time, and the trophy appears in the same pile when it rolls.

Valheim HUD after collecting Deer Meat, with the player crossing a meadow to continue hunting — Deer Meat picked up from a kill before moving on to the next group. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Hunt during daylight. Nighttime brings tougher spawns to the Meadows, and getting jumped mid-hunt with a bow drawn is how early Vikings lose their gear.

Deer Trophy drop rate

The Deer Trophy drops from deer at roughly a 50% chance per kill, and that rate is the same for standard deer and starred variants. Nothing you do changes the roll. Weapon choice, headshots, and sneak attacks affect how quickly you kill, not whether the head drops.

In practice the streaks feel worse than the number suggests. Plenty of players report stretches of three to five kills between drops, which is normal variance rather than a bug. Meat and hide accumulate the whole time, so a dry run still funds your first leather armor.

Deer Trophy item details

Property	Value
Item type	Trophy
Source	Deer (Meadows)
Drop chance	~50% per kill
Weight	2.0
Stack size	20
Item code	`TrophyDeer`

Note: on PC you can bypass the hunt entirely by opening the console with F5, enabling devcommands, and typing spawn TrophyDeer. That is a cheat command and it is worth knowing it exists mainly for testing worlds.

What Deer Trophies are used for

Unlike most trophies in the game, the deer head has real recipe value beyond decoration. Keep hunting past your first two, because the Stagbreaker alone eats five of them.

Use	Trophies needed	Notes
Summoning Eikthyr	2	Offered at his Forsaken altar in the Meadows
Stagbreaker	5	Also needs 20 Corewood and 2 Leather Scraps at a level 2 workbench
Mead Horn of Odin	Recipe ingredient	Crafted like other meads
Item stand display	1	Mounts on a wall or surface as decoration
Ballista programming	1	Sets the target type the ballista fires at
Obliterator	1	Converts to 1 Coal per trophy

How to summon Eikthyr with two Deer Trophies

Holding the trophies is not enough. They have to be offered at Eikthyr’s Forsaken altar, and the offering is done from your hotbar rather than from your inventory screen.

Interact with the Vegvisir, the small glowing runestone beside Eikthyr’s Sacrificial Stone at your spawn circle. This marks the nearest altar on your map with a deer icon.

Travel to the marked altar in daylight. The route through the Meadows is usually safe, but arriving at night risks fighting the boss with extra company.

Open your inventory and drag the Deer Trophies into one of the eight numbered hotbar slots. They stack, so both can sit in the same slot.

Stand at the stone table with your crosshair on it and press the matching number key. The game consumes only what it needs, and the offering triggers as soon as the second trophy lands.

You know it worked immediately. The sky darkens, thunder rolls around the altar, the music shifts, and Eikthyr materialises in a burst of lightning a short distance from the stone rather than on top of it. Be fed and at full health before you press the key, because there is no grace period.

Why the sacrifice does not trigger

When the offer prompt never appears, it is almost always one of a short list of causes.

You only have one Deer Trophy. Two are required, every time.
The trophies are sitting in a chest or in your inventory grid instead of a numbered hotbar slot.
You are standing too far from the stone table, or your crosshair is pointed past it.
You are at the Sacrificial Stones rather than the Forsaken altar. The stones are where you later mount Eikthyr’s own trophy to claim his power; the altar is the separate location the Vegvisir marks.

Dying mid-fight does not cost you more trophies. Eikthyr stays in the world until he is beaten, so you can run back and finish him with the same summon. If you want to fight him again later for extra Hard Antlers, the altar accepts another two deer heads with no cooldown, which is the main reason it pays to keep hunting the Meadows long after the first kill.