World Generation
Every Valheim world is generated from its seed, so no biome sits in a fixed place — but the rules that place them never change. The generator tests 9 of them in a fixed order and returns on the first match, inside a world 10,000 metres across. That is why the Meadows are always in the middle, the Mistlands are always far out, and no amount of sailing finds a Swamp within 2,000 metres of where you woke up.
How far out each biome starts
- Swamp: 2,000–6,000 m
- Mistlands: 6,000–10,000 m
- Plains: 3,000–8,000 m
- Black Forest: 600–6,000 m
- Meadows: within 5,000 m
Mountain and Ocean are left out of the diagram on purpose: the generator picks them by terrain height rather than by distance, so drawing them as rings would claim a rule they do not have.
Tested | Biome | Distance from centre | Noise above | Base height | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ashlands | beyond 12,000 m of an offset centre | none | any | Measured from a centre 4,000 metres south of yours, then required to be 12,000 metres from it — which places it as a band across the far south rather than a ring, and outside the world radius entirely. Tested before everything, so it overrides even the ocean. |
| 2 | Ocean | anywhere | none | 0.02 or below | Anywhere the terrain height falls to 0.02 or below. Distance plays no part: an inland basin deep enough is ocean, which is how lakes form. |
| 3 | Deep North | beyond 12,000 m of an offset centre | none | any | The mirror of the Ashlands, offset 4,000 metres north. Tested after the ocean rather than before it, which is the one asymmetry between the two. |
| 4 | Mountain | anywhere | none | above 0.4 | Any point whose terrain height passes 0.4, at any distance. Peaks are suppressed within 1,000 metres of the centre so that spawn cannot be walled in. |
| 5 | Swamp | 2,000–6,000 m | 0.6 | 0.05–0.25 | The only biome with a height band as well as a distance band: it needs low, flat, barely-above-water ground, which is why swamps are wide and featureless and why they never appear on a slope. |
| 6 | Mistlands | 6,000–10,000 m | 0.4 | any | The outermost of the noise biomes, pressed against the world edge. Its ring overlaps the Plains ring, and it is tested first, so where both would qualify the Mistlands win. |
| 7 | Plains | 3,000–8,000 m | 0.4 | any | Tested after the Mistlands and before the Black Forest, so it fills the gap between them — near enough to reach by ship, far enough that you will not stumble into one early. |
| 8 | Black Forest | 600–6,000 m | 0.4 | any | The widest ring in the game, and the reason your first Meadows is ringed by forest: anything past 600 metres that fails every earlier test and clears the noise threshold becomes Black Forest. |
| 9 | Meadows | within 5,000 m | none | any | What is left. Everything that matched nothing else and sits within 5,000 metres of the centre is Meadows — which is why you always start in one, and why they run out as you sail. |
The order is the rule
GetBiome returns on its first match, so a band only applies where every earlier test missed. A point 6,000 metres out sits inside the Mistlands ring, but if its terrain height is above 0.4 it is Mountain instead, because Mountain is tested first. This is why biomes interrupt each other rather than stacking, and why a Mistlands ring can be almost entirely Ocean on a watery seed.
The rings are not circles
Several of the minimum distances have a term added to them that swings with the compass bearing, worth up to 100 metres either way. The Black Forest, Plains, Mistlands and Meadows edges therefore ripple around the world rather than forming true circles — which is why the same seed can put Plains at 3,000 metres due north and not until noticeably further out due east.
The edge of the world
Land generation stops at 10,000 metres. From there to 10,500 metres the sea floor is pulled steadily downward, and over the last ten metres it drops away completely — the hard edge you cannot sail past. Rivers and 3,000 streams are placed before any of this, which is why a stream can cut through any biome on the list.
Why we do not publish a seed map
A biome map for one seed needs a bit-exact reimplementation of two pieces of Unity that ship as native code, and there is no way to confirm such a port is right without comparing it against the game itself. A map that is subtly wrong is worse than no map, so what is here instead is the part that holds for every seed — and unlike a screenshot of somebody else's world, it holds for yours.
A Valheim world is a disc 10,000 metres in radius, and every point in it is assigned a biome by the same 9 rules in the same order. Four of those rules combine a Perlin noise field with a distance band, one adds a height band on top, two go by terrain height alone, and two measure from a centre thousands of metres outside the map. Nothing here changes between seeds. What changes is where the noise happens to land — which is why two worlds look nothing alike and still obey exactly the same geography.
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Valheim world generation FAQ
Is the Valheim map the same for everyone?
No. The terrain is generated from your world's seed, so two players with different seeds share no coastline at all. What they do share is the structure: Meadows in the middle, Black Forest around it, Swamp and Plains further out, Mistlands at the edge, and the Ashlands and Deep North beyond it. Those bands come from fixed numbers in the generator and hold for every seed ever made.
How big is a Valheim world?
10,000 metres from the centre to the edge of the land, and 10,500 metres to the point where the sea floor falls away and you can sail no further. That is a disc a little over 20 kilometres across, which is why crossing one end to the other takes a real voyage rather than a jog.
Why can I not find a Swamp near my base?
Because the rule forbids it. Swamp only generates between 2,000 and 6,000 metres from the centre of the world, and it additionally needs ground in a narrow height band just above sea level. If your base is inside 2,000 metres, no amount of exploring nearby will turn one up — you have to sail out.
Where are the Ashlands and the Deep North?
Far south and far north respectively, and measured differently from everything else: the generator shifts the centre 4,000 metres along the north-south axis and then asks for 12,000 metres from that shifted point. Since the world itself is only 10,000 metres in radius, the result is a band across one end of the map rather than a ring around it.
Can biomes overlap in Valheim?
No — every point gets exactly one, because the generator returns on its first match. That ordering is what makes them interrupt each other: a mountain rising inside a Plains ring is Mountain, not Plains, and a basin inside a Black Forest is Ocean. The rings describe where a biome is allowed to appear, not where it will.