How to summon and defeat the Elder in Valheim

There are multiple Forsaken bosses that you need to defeat in Valheim. Each time you defeat them, they drop a trophy that you need to ferry back to the game’s original start point and hang up. These trophies grand you access to a power-up that you can use to buff your character for a limited time. The second boss of the game, the Elder, can be found in the Dark Forest. It’s the leader of the Greydwarves, and like the first boss, Eikthyr, you need to summon it using a specific item.

How to find the Elder

Unlike Eikthyr, you won’t be able to have the Elder’s location when you start. You need to find a runestone similar to the one you use to find the Eikthyr’s location. It’ll be somewhere randomly spawned in the Black Forest, much like its actual location. Once you find it, interact with the runestone, and then you’ll have the Elder’s location on your map. Anyone who wants the Elder’s location needs to interact with the runestone. You can expect several Greydwarves to be wandering around it.

How to summon the Elder

After finding the runestone that points you to the Elder’s location, you need to locate ancient seeds. You can find them dropping from Greydwarf Brutes and Shamans. These variations of Greydwarf are significantly bigger than the standard ones. The brutes have a heavy melee attack, and they’re petty tough to fight. The Shamans release a poison cloud in front of them that can damage over time, and they release a healing cloud to other Greydwarves around them during battle. If you see a Shaman, you typically want to go for those first.

How to beat the Elder

The Elder is a large, Groot-like creature that wanders around the location you summoned it. It has three attacks that you want to watch out for. Two of them are ranged. The first, most common attack is one where it sends tangled vines at your position, chasing after you from afar. You typically want to stand behind a tree or remain around one of the massive pillars where you summon the Elder.

The second attack is where the Elder summons roots at your position, sprouting them up from the ground to surround you. The roots lash out, attempting to hit you. You typically want to leave this location after it’s infected with roots, and they’ll go away after a little bit, so you’re better off running away rather than fighting them.

The third attack is a melee one, and it’s where the Elder lifts one foot off the ground and smashes you. For the melee attack to appear, you typically have to be within melee range of it. We highly recommend you never engage it in melee range, as the foot stomp is mighty and can typically take you down from full health to none, even if you’re wearing all of the troll armor.

To battle the Elder, we succeeded by keeping it at a range. We used fire arrows and standard wood ones, lowering their health over time. There were two of us battling it, and the Elder would switch which character it would focus with its attacks, allowing the other to get in a few shots before the Elder turned to attack them. The Elder has a minor passive healing ability, so we highly recommend making multiple fire arrows to prevent the passive healing from taking effect.

Once you’ve defeated the Elder, it will drop its trophy you can take back to the starting location and a Swamp key.