Valheim: How to Get Deer Trophies in the Meadows

The Deer Trophy is the item that gates Valheim’s first boss. It is a random drop from the deer that wander the Meadows, and until you have two of them sitting in your inventory, Eikthyr’s altar will not do anything for you.

Quick answer: Hunt deer in the Meadows with a bow. Each deer has roughly a 50% chance to drop a Deer Trophy, and you need two of them to summon Eikthyr at his Forsaken altar.

Deer Trophy drop rate, weight, and item code

Meat and hide come off every deer you kill. The trophy does not. It rolls separately, so a run of five kills with nothing to show for it is normal variance rather than a bug.

Property	Value
Item type	Trophy
Drop chance	~50% per deer kill
Weight	2.0
Stack size	20
Spawn code	`TrophyDeer`
In-game text	“A fine specimen but you’ll need to kill more than deer to enter Valhalla.”

Star-ranked deer roll the same trophy chance as ordinary ones, but they carry more meat and hide, which is useful while you are grinding for the two heads you need.

Where deer spawn and when to hunt them

Deer live in the Meadows, the grassy starting biome where every world drops you in, and they also appear in the Black Forest. In practice the Meadows is where you want to farm, because nothing there hits hard enough to punish a missed shot.

Open Meadows terrain where deer graze near the starting area — Open Meadows ground, the biome where deer graze and drop their trophies. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Deer make a loud, distinctive call. If you stop moving and listen, that noise will usually point you toward a herd before you can see one through the trees. Hunt during daylight. At night the Meadows fills in with hostile spawns, and a stag chase in the dark tends to end with you fighting something else entirely.

How to hunt deer with a bow

Build a workbench and craft a Crude Bow with wood arrows. Deer bolt the moment they notice you, so a ranged opener is far more reliable than chasing one down with a melee weapon.

Crafting menu with the Stone Axe selected and the Craft button ready — The crafting menu with the Stone Axe selected, the same list where your early bow and arrows are made. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Crouch to enter stealth and approach through tall grass. Sneaking keeps the herd calm and sets up a heavy sneak-attack hit, which frequently kills a standard deer outright.

Player crouching in the Meadows with the bow drawn from hotbar slot three — Sneaking through the Meadows with the bow equipped in hotbar slot 3. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Draw the bow fully and aim while the deer is standing still. A drawn shot costs stamina, so pick your moment instead of spamming arrows at a moving target.

Bow drawn on a deer while crouched in tall grass, hotbar slot three highlighted — Lining up a drawn shot on a deer, with the bow highlighted in the hotbar. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Collect the loot pile and check the pickup log in the corner of the screen. Deer Hide and Deer Meat appear every time; a line reading “Added: Deer Trophy” means the roll went your way.

Loot dropped from a killed deer being picked up in the Meadows — Picking up the drops from a downed deer, where the trophy line appears if it rolled. Image: Iron Gate Studio

Repeat until you have two trophies. Wounded deer sprint a long way, so retrieve your arrows and track the blood trail rather than starting a fresh stalk each time.

What Deer Trophies are used for

Deer Trophies keep their value long after the first boss, which is a good reason not to feed spares into the Obliterator the moment your inventory fills up.

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 crafting station
Mead horn of Odin	Crafting ingredient	Consumed as part of the recipe
Item stand decoration	1 per stand	Mounted on a wall or surface
Ballista targeting	1	Programs the ballista to fire at that creature type
Obliterator	Any	Returns 1 Coal per trophy

How to offer two Deer Trophies at Eikthyr’s altar

Interact with the Vegvisir, the small glowing runestone beside Eikthyr’s Sacrificial Stone at spawn. It pins the nearest Forsaken altar on your map, which matters because world generation puts it somewhere different for everyone.

Travel to the marked altar in the Meadows with both trophies on you. Storing them in a chest at base does nothing; they have to be in your inventory.

Drag the trophies into one of the eight hotbar slots, stand at the stone table with your crosshair on it, and press that slot’s number key. The prompt to offer the sacrifice appears when you are close enough and facing it.

Confirm it worked. The sky darkens, thunder rolls in around the altar, the music switches, and Eikthyr materialises a short distance away rather than on top of the stone. Only the two required trophies are consumed, even if you brought more.

Note: once summoned, Eikthyr stays in the world until he is killed. Dying mid-fight costs you nothing in trophies. You can also summon him again later, as many times as you like, provided you bring another two Deer Trophies each time.

Common reasons the summon fails

Only one trophy in the hotbar. The altar needs two before anything happens.
Standing too far back or with something between you and the stone table, so the offer prompt never shows.
Confusing the Deer Trophy with the Eikthyr Trophy. The boss’s own head is a separate 100% drop that goes on the Sacrificial Stones to unlock his Forsaken power, and it cannot be used to summon him.

Spawning a Deer Trophy with console commands

If you would rather skip the hunt, open the console with F5, enable cheats, then spawn the item directly.

devcommands
spawn TrophyDeer

Trophies aside, the hunting trip pays for itself. Two heads unlock the boss, and the hide and meat piling up alongside them cover a leather armor set and the cooked food you will want in your stomach before Eikthyr’s lightning starts landing.