The Valheim Deep North progression chain is a single loop run three times, from your first Frostcore to the final boss. This guide covers the entry requirements, the Intricate Key chain, the Gates of Mörkhalla, the Jotun Invasions, the Aesir Passage and Kall Fimbulbringer, with the exact materials and stations for every step.
Valheim reached 1.0 on 9 September 2026 and made the Deep North its final biome. The endgame is not a sequence of new areas but one loop repeated three times, and almost every step of it depends on something you had to set up two steps earlier. What follows is the shortest correct path through the whole thing, with the dead ends and the prerequisites named before you hit them.
The Whole Chain in Ten Steps
- Beat Fader in the Ashlands. Take the Fader Relic.
- Build the Eternal Pyre. Collect Embers.
- Reach the Deep North. Set up a forward base and portal.
- Clear Winding Tunnels. Take Frostcores and three Intricate Key moulds.
- Build the Frost Foundry and the Frigid Kiln. Mine Ice.
- Kill a Gammeltroll, blast the remains with Ember Charges, smelt Petrified Tissue into Bloodgold.
- Cast and forge one Intricate Key.
- Open the Gates of Mörkhalla. Destroy the Malicious Ice inside. This triggers a Jotun Invasion.
- Clear the invasion. Take one Malicious Blood. Repeat steps 6 to 9 twice more.
- Offer three Malicious Blood at the Strange Bowl, open the Aesir Passage, kill Kall Fimbulbringer.
What You Need Before You Set Out
The entire chain is gated behind Fader, the Ashlands boss, because the Fader Relic he drops is your only source of Embers, and without Embers you can neither craft the Snow Shovel nor make a single Ember Charge. If Fader is still standing, nothing below is available to you.
Bring one armour set upgraded to quality 3. Flametal gives 126 armour and suits melee, Ask gives 96 and suits ranged or agile builds, and Embla gives 69 and is the Eitr option. Whichever you pick, equip either the Asksvin Cloak or the Ashen Cape, since both carry Resistant vs Frost and the Deep North will apply Cold and Freezing without it. Weapons should be Ashlands tier, upgraded at the Black Forge with Bloodstone, Iolite or Jade; the Slayer, Nidhögg, Berserkir Axes, Ashfang Bow and Trollstav all qualify.
Two tools matter more than the rest. The Snow Shovel is built at a level 3 Black Forge from 5 Finewood, 4 Flametal and 2 Embers, and you will not be building anything up north without it. A black metal pickaxe is the only way to mine Ice. You also want the Black Forge at level 5 and the Galdr Table at level 4 to upgrade gear once you are established.
For the rest, fill your three food slots with Piquant Pie, Mashed Meat and Roasted Crust Pie, or swap in Marinated Greens, Sparkling Shroomshake and Sizzling Berry Broth if you are casting. Carry Frost Resistance, Major Healing, Medium Stamina, Lingering Eitr and Troll Endurance meads. Bring portal materials, either 10 Greydwarf Eye, 20 Finewood and 2 Surtling Core for a standard portal or 10 Greydwarf Eye, 30 Grausten and 2 Molten Core for a stone one. Bring a light source too, whether that is a Torch, a Dvergr Lantern or Circlet, a Wisplight or Dyrnwyn itself.
Step 1: Build the Eternal Pyre Before You Go Anywhere
The Eternal Pyre costs a Fader Relic and 10 Stone at the Stonecutter, and once placed it generates Embers on its own, which you collect as they drift around it. Build it at your main base rather than in the Deep North, because you will be returning to it throughout the chain and there is no way to hurry it along. Every Ember Charge you throw at a Gammeltroll traces back to this structure, so the earlier it goes up, the less waiting you do later.
If you are cross-referencing other guides, note that this same structure is called the Ember Monument by PC Gamer and the Ember Pile elsewhere. It is one building with one recipe, and the naming has simply not settled yet.
Step 2: Arriving and Setting Up a Forward Base
Sail in on a Longship or Drakkar and watch the approach for ice flats, which will stop a ship dead. Once ashore, two environmental rules govern everything you do. Snow lies deep enough to block construction outright, so nothing gets built until you have cleared the ground with the Snow Shovel. Frozen water is a genuine hazard on both seas and ponds, and the way you identify ice underfoot is that you start sliding on it.
The abandoned villages scattered across the biome are the best forward bases in the game right now, largely because they sit on flat ground and spare you the snow clearing entirely. Patch a roof, drop a bed and a fire inside an existing structure, and place a portal home before you go any further. You will be running back to your Blast Furnace and your Eternal Pyre more often than you expect.
Step 3: Winding Tunnels, for Frostcores and Moulds
Find a snow-covered village, identify the largest multi-storey building, and go inside. Somewhere in the interior is a hole in the floor; drop through it and you are in the Winding Tunnels. Go in expecting a fight, because Elaking and Eyeless Ones live down there.
You are after two things. Frostcores look like glowing blue ice and usually sit overhead, and touching your first one teaches you the Frost Foundry recipe. Gather around twenty, which is enough to cover both of the new stations. Moulds are the second prize, and they are easier to miss: flat black rectangles with shapes etched into them, frequently buried inside piles of wooden rubble that you have to smash open.
The mould that matters is the Intricate Key mould, and this is the detail that catches people out. You will need three Intricate Keys before the chain is finished, each mould is consumed when you cast with it, and each finished key is consumed when it opens a Mörkhalla, so you need three separate moulds. Keep clearing tunnels until you have all three, because coming back for the third one after you have built everything else is a long trip for nothing.
Step 4: The Two Stations You Cannot Skip
The Frost Foundry costs 10 Frostcore, 15 Iron and 20 Stone, and its job is hardening casts into finished items. The Frigid Kiln costs 10 Frostcore, 20 Stone and 5 Ice, and it converts Ice into Liquid Frost; its recipe unlocks the moment you pick up your first piece of Ice.
Ice itself comes out of the ice terrain with a black metal pickaxe, and you want several stacks rather than the bare five, since Ice also fuels the kiln for every key you make.
Step 5: The Bloodgold Chain
This is the longest stretch of the loop, and you run it again for every key.
Start with Ember Charges, which are crafted at a Workbench from 1 Ember and 2 Seal Pelts and come out ten at a time. Seal Pelts come from adult seals along the Deep North shoreline, so a short hunting route near your forward base pays for itself quickly.
Gammeltrolls are the enormous stone trolls roaming the overworld, and you do not need to go looking for one. Explore for long enough and one will find you. Kill it and it petrifies where it falls, at which point the corpse becomes a mining target rather than a loot pile. Throw Ember Charges at the petrified remains to break them open, and they yield multiple Petrified Tissue.
Take that back to a Blast Furnace, which is the existing Mistlands station costing 20 Stone, 5 Surtling Core, 10 Iron and 20 Finewood. Each Petrified Tissue smelts down into one Bloodgold. Coal is burned as fuel rather than consumed as a recipe ingredient, so budget around 21 Coal per ten items processed and keep a Charcoal Kiln running rather than counting lumps one for one. Each Intricate Key consumes 5 Bloodgold, which means 15 across the full chain, so a single Gammeltroll rarely covers more than one key’s worth.
Step 6: Crafting the Intricate Key
At a level 4 Black Forge, combine 5 Bloodgold with a Mould: Intricate Key to produce a Cast: Intricate Key. Put that cast into the Frost Foundry, feed Ice through the Frigid Kiln to make Liquid Frost, then supply the Liquid Frost to the foundry. The key finishes in about a minute, and you can collect it straight from the foundry.
Step 7: The Gates of Mörkhalla
Mörkhalla is the towering stone structure out on the tundra, and the way in is over the top rather than through the front. The Grappling Hook is the documented way up, and you unlock it back in the Mistlands by finding a Hook in a Dvergr treasure chest inside an Infested Mine. It has unlimited uses and works anywhere in the world. Players have also reached the upper section by catapult, but that is improvisation rather than a prescribed route.
Inside, work your way down past the stairs until you reach an ornate chained door, which is what the Intricate Key opens. Beyond it you will be fighting Krigen and Hexahedric Pulp, and both are worth killing for reasons beyond survival: Krigen drop Leather Straps, Hexen drop Nornathread, and the Deep North armour sets are built from those plus Bloodgold.
Your objective is at the bottom, where a central shard of Malicious Ice sits. Destroy it. Before you leave, collect the Memorial Coal and find the Vegvisir runestone, because that runestone is what marks the Aesir Passage on your map and you will want it long before you are ready to use it.
Step 8: The Jotun Invasion
Breaking the shard puts a red Jotun Invasion marker on your world map, and the invasion does not stay in the Deep North. It lands elsewhere entirely, with the Plains, Mountains and Black Forest all reported as destinations, which means the trip out is on you.
When you arrive, Krigen and Hexen will be converging on a cluster of ice at the centre. Clear them, then destroy the flower-shaped Malicious Ice formation in the middle. It drops a single Malicious Blood, and that is the whole point of the excursion.
Step 9: Then Twice More
Three Intricate Keys, three runs through Mörkhalla, three invasions cleared, three Malicious Blood. That is why you needed three moulds and 15 Bloodgold, and it is also why the Eternal Pyre and a reliable seal-hunting route are worth setting up properly on the first pass rather than improvising each time.
Step 10: The Aesir Passage and Kall Fimbulbringer
The Vegvisir runestone you picked up in Mörkhalla marks where the Aesir Passage sits. At its base is the Strange Bowl, and offering three Malicious Blood there opens the way in.
Kall Fimbulbringer is a Jotun, a frost giant, held in the Prison beyond the passage, and he fights using the chains that bind him. His attacks alternate between chain strikes you can block and area or movement attacks that have to be dodged instead, and current coverage warns that the screen shake on his heavier swings is as much of a problem as the damage itself. Ice Fall and a Corkscrew Launch are the two named attacks so far.
He drops the Crown Jewel and the Sacrificial Blood, and the kill unlocks the Crown of Valheim recipe. Crafting and wearing that crown grants the Royalty effect, which stops creatures attacking you at all.
Finishing the Game
Carry the Sacrificial Blood back to the Sacrificial Stones in the Meadows, where the game started, and offer it there rather than simply holding it. Hugin and Munin then summon a Valkyrie, and it is speaking to her that carries you to Valhalla and rolls the credits.
Where the New Materials Come From
- Frostcore: the walls and ceilings of the Winding Tunnels.
- Ice: mined from ice terrain with a black metal pickaxe.
- Liquid Frost: the Frigid Kiln, from Ice.
- Petrified Tissue: petrified Gammeltroll remains, broken open with Ember Charges.
- Bloodgold: the Blast Furnace, from Petrified Tissue.
- Embers: the Eternal Pyre.
- Seal Pelt: adult seals along the shoreline.
- Moose Hide: moose out on the snowfields.
- Nornathread: Hexen, inside the Gates of Mörkhalla.
- Leather Straps: Krigen, inside the Gates of Mörkhalla.
- Memorial Coal: the Gates of Mörkhalla.
- Timberwood: Deep North trees.
- Crown Jewel: Kall Fimbulbringer.
What Else 1.0 Added Up Here
The Deep North brought two dungeons, the Winding Tunnels and Mörkhalla, and ten new hostile enemies: Barka, Elaking, Eyeless One, Fallen Warrior, Gammeltroll, Hexen, Krigen, Hexahedric Pulp, Shapeless Pulp and Tiny Pulp. Those are only the things that want you dead. The update also added Moose and Moose Calf, Seal and Baby Seal, and the Writhan, which brings the biome to fifteen new creature entries before you count Kall Fimbulbringer himself.
Five new crafting build pieces arrived with it, although only two of them are standalone stations. The Frigid Kiln and the Frost Foundry are the ones the chain depends on. The other three extend equipment you already own: Smith’s Aprons for the Black Forge, the Smoker for the Cauldron, and the Standing Loom for the Galdr Table.
There are four new armour sets. Protector is the melee option, Vanguard reduces stamina drain for agile and ranged builds, Caller regenerates Eitr for casters, and Lox Fur rounds out the set. Protector and Vanguard are built from Bloodgold and Leather Straps, while Caller uses Bloodgold and Nornathread, and the Moose Hide Cape adds frost resistance to any of them. The Nord weapon line covers sword, greatsword, axe, greataxe, mace, sledge, atgeir, spear, dagger, knucklechains, bow, crossbow and three shield types, and every one of them follows the same route as the key: Bloodgold plus the matching mould, cast at the Black Forge, hardened in the Frost Foundry with Liquid Frost.
Two smaller additions are worth knowing. Moose can be tamed and ridden with the new Moose Saddle, which makes the snowfields considerably less tedious, and Haldor now sells two permanent inventory upgrades at 1,000 coins each: Wider Pockets, unlocked after Moder, and Deeper Pockets, unlocked after the Queen.
What We Could Not Verify
Every figure in this guide has been checked against multiple independent sources, and two areas are still thin.
The first is Kall Fimbulbringer’s full moveset. Ice Fall and the Corkscrew Launch are confirmed, but nothing authoritative documents the complete set of attacks yet, so treat the boss section above as a route description rather than a finished fight guide.
The second is drop tables for the new creatures. The patch notes list trophies without itemising what else each one gives up.
