Morkhalla is one of the two new dungeon types in Valheim’s Deep North biome. The entrance to the dungeon itself is much easier to spot than something like the Ice Caves or Burial Chambers. It’s a dilapidated tower taller than all the pines in this region, and its dark color also sticks out against the frozen landscape.
Instances of this dungeon are also quite plentiful relative to the limited size of the average landmass in this biome. All of these factors mean you will come across Morkhalla soon after you ram your longship into the Deep North shores.
However, this dungeon takes quite a lot of preparation, so if you’re wondering what you need, that’s what this guide is for.
How to prepare for the Gates of Morkhalla dungeons in Valheim
As you approach one of these Morkhalla towers, you’ll find that their entry points are often out of reach.
Technically, you could pop down a workbench and mount a makeshift bridge to its broken-down stairs. That method of bypassing it would be ill-advised. It’s intentionally put out of reach because you can’t really navigate the dungeon without getting a Grappling Hook in Valheim.
Furthermore, to even get in, you’ll need an Intricate Key that unlocks the gate. This is a consumable key item that you can get from Winding Tunnels dungeons found in abandoned villages. Here, Scrap piles and Eyeless Ones tend to have Intricate Key moulds, which then need to be put into a Frost Foundry.
On the whole, this is what I would recommend you get before you try a proper Morkhalla run in Valheim:
- Intricate Key to get in (of course)
- Grappling Hook
- Gear with Slash or Blunt damage
- Ranged weapon with fire ammunition (an upgraded Staff of Embers if you’re a caster)
- Poison Resistance Mead and Stamina potion(s)
- Ember Charges for some cheesing opportunities
- Timberwood and Luminous Larvae for Hooded Lanterns (for navigational purposes)
- In terms of armor, it’s best to run a heavy armor set, since there’s not much point to kiting here. Flametal Armor with some upgrade levels will suffice for the purposes of the average Morkhalla run.
Just in case you didn’t know yet: you can increase your number of inventory slots by two full rows after the Deep North update. This makes material collection from Morkhalla easier, and as these tend to be long dungeons, I recommend you get these upgrades as soon as possible.
How to explore and clear a Morkhalla dungeon in Valheim
Morkhalla is a pair of towers dug deep underground, with multiple (often broken) stairways and rickety drawbridges connecting the two. Once you unlock the Gates of Morkhalla and dive in, your general goal is:
- Not to fall through the chasm between the towers, as the drop is long enough to kill you even at upwards of 250 HP
- Work your way down each floor, slowly killing and looting enemies as you go
- The rough plan is usually to clear your proximity (especially the Hexen if you hear one nearby), and then find corner stairs in the inner corners of each tower to go down the floors.
- When you cannot find any, break the wooden and metal barricades that you can spot, and/or grapple your way across to the other tower on the same floor to see if the path below lies there.
- Staircases with red carpet leading below mean you’re closing in on the final floor.
Once you get to the bottom of the dungeon, you’ll find a Malicious Ice entity that you need to destroy (any damage type works, but it may take a few swings). Once you do this, a message will let you know that “the Jotun advance“.
This spawns a Jotun invasion event on a random spot in the world (usually closer to the center of the map). After you exit the dungeon, clearing that invasion in turn gives you a progression material critical to summoning the final boss of the Deep North.
The general gist from here may seem straightforward, but like most other Valheim dungeons, it’s the labyrinthine structure that makes it tricky.
As I’ve outlined previously, bring a full stack of Timberwood and Luminous Larvae from Winding Tunnels so that you can build Hooded Lanterns to mark rooms you’ve cleared.
All enemy types in Valheim’s Morkhalla dungeon (and what they drop)
There are three enemy types in Valheim native to the Morkhalla dungeons: Shapeless Pulps, Krigen, and Hexen.
- Shapeless Pulps are fast-moving blobs that mainly deal a bunch of Poison damage, so that’s where the Poison Resistance Mead comes in clutch. On death, they split into mini-blobs that you also need to kill. Some rooms also have giant Hexagonal blobs that you need to destroy first.
- Krigen are giant melee brawler units, usually wielding swords and battleaxes, so their damage type varies. Other than a snappy lunge attack, their moves are very telegraphed, so they’re not a big threat one-on-one. However, some rooms have surprise Krigen ganks with a multi-star Elite. In these cases, you need to pull them away one by one and take it slow.
- Hexen are flying caster units that deal some Lightning nukes and teleport around when you get near them. The only strategy is to lure them into smaller rooms and loosen them up with ranged fire damage. If you’re a melee-only build, get ready for a frustrating fight.
The following table outlines their weaknesses and resistances; additionally, note that all the enemy types in Morkhalla are immune to Poison and Spirit debuffs.
Krigen and Hexen are Jotun creatures who also attack during the overworld invasions in Valheim once you clear out each Malicious Ice.
Finally, there are also Captive Fulings you can optionally kill in Morkhalla, although I tend to just ignore them.
Also Read: All new creatures in Valheim 1.0 Deep North update
All resources and valuables in Valheim’s Morkhalla dungeon
There are Ancient Chests and small piles of brick in Valheim that can give you generic dungeon loot like Coins, metal ingots, Black Cores, and arrows. That being said, the following are what you specifically delve into the Morkhalla dungeons for:
- There are golden crests on the walls (usually next to stairs) that can give you four new Gem types (Solryth, Grimvarn, Draumyx, and Veydris), as well as the older Bloodstone, Jade, and Iolite gems. Unlike these older gems from Valheim’s Ashlands update, the new Deep North Gems are just valuables and aren’t required for crafting, from what I can tell. However, Valheim will continue to receive updates past 1.0, so they might be relevant in the future.
- Krigen are the more important enemy type to farm here, as they’re the primary source for Memorial Coals, with a chance for the heavy Vanguard armor set’s moulds.
- Ancient Coin is a new Morkhalla-exclusive currency type, found in large quantities from Ancient Chests, but also from smashing down rubble piles throughout the floors.
- You can also sometimes find Battle Idols from the chests. These are needed for upgrading weapons in the unique Forge of Potential added with the 1.0 update.
Check out our other Valheim Deep North guides:
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Edited by Sambit Pal
