Item Decay And Deleting Items Valheim Guide 

These are the guides for actual dedicated players. This dude is on the frontier of information for this game

Short: campfire and workbench prevent items from despawning. Rest is talking around.

8:31 - 8:45 - How to delete items

About the fire decay radius, it looks to be the size of the heat buff. So if you see the heat buff from the fire where you dropped something then it should be covered. Thanks for the guides, really helps a lot!

Btw you can fast drop stuff by pressing ctrl and left clicking

Entity item limits: While chopping down my "tree-dominoes wood farm" for mass wood (or perhaps more accurately, "setting it off and running for cover"), I definitely hit the game's entity item limit. I was initially afraid I was being cheated out of wood. But what the game does, is start combining items. So instead of there being 20 individual wood from each beech tree, I was finding what looked like single wood items, but was actually stacks of wood. This one wood on the ground is actually 17 wood, 32 in that one, etc. I don't know if that is limited by proximity, or if it matters if the items are all tossed into a pile at the same time. There were definitely plenty of single wood pieces scattered around as well. (interesting tidbit: natural trees are imbalanced and will fall whatever way they want to, natural trees mostly have a slant in them. But planted trees are vertical & balanced and will always fall away from the source of them being knocked down. They are round though, so they really behave more like pool balls than dominoes. My idea was to use a very large number of trees close together on a V shaped slope to get them to pile into each other and crush each other without having to chop them all). PS: just subscribed :)

One of the only ones actually making good guides

About the water: the workbench area is a sphere, so maybe the drop was below the sphere

Want to get rid of items? Fill your inventory, move the character to an open server, drop the stuff and go back to your own world.

Little tip for you guys, if you hold shift while placing a building piece it allows you to free place and it won't snap, handy for when you're trying to place something next to another build piece and it just keeps trying to snap.

Just judging by you walking around in the video, but seems like the radius of items near the fire is the same distance as you receiving the warming effect from it.

The campfire radius is the same as the “campfire” icon that shows up in the upper right corner.

Anyone want any Greydwarf eyes?

They do need to ad a trash bin or something to de-spawn items you don't want. even if it asks to make sure.. it would help for sure.

you should take in mind that the workbench isnt making a circle, but a sphere. this isnt big difference but it can explains your scales of see serpent dissapering

Are you sure the scales were not too deep to be inside the workbench area vertically? The workbench area is a sphere, not a circle.

Did you keep the Fire at 10 or did you let it burn down? Seems like you had 10 that didn't immediately respawn, then a few disappeared later, perhaps as the fire lost fuel.

Must be vertically out of bound cause I have stuff in water near my base and it's not despwning it's been like 20 days.

187 days in game and a torch i threw down at my first base (workbench stil there) it hasnt dissappeared

Just get to the point. Dont be a mrbossmanfwt 2.0

are you sure it was cause of the water? what if it only applies to items you dropped yourself, not drops from mobs you havnt touched yet. not only that but you placed the workbench AFTER they dropped, maybe it doesn't count if the item was there before the workbench. But then again stuff at the bottom of water is near impossible to retrieve so maybe it is just the water.

About the serpent scales, the workbench might maybe show a circle as a range but the actual range might be a sphere rather than a cylinder and the serpent scales were outside of the sphere

In my world I made a flushable toilet for my items that would just push and drop them into a deep hole using a door

Wish it was possible to turn off autopickup. I feel like i spend so much time throwing stuff i didnt want out of my inventory.

The reasons your Scales could have despwaned could also be because your character NEVER picked them up, so it might not have registered as a player item in the work bench area. or could also be that the item dropped BEFORE a work bench. those are 2 additional factors that could play into it.

The workbench radius is actually a sphere, I've had times where vertically I've been out of range of my bench

The workbench area is made with a sphere collider, everything inside that sphere don't get destroyed. So in the surface of earth the itens will be very close to the sphere radius, and itens at bottom of a sea or clif won't reach the area. This makes more sense to me than your water theory.

I think the scales despawn because it wasnt an item you dropped, it dropped from a mob. Soo that could be a thing maybe?

Love your videos(super informative) but absolutely HATE that intro

9:24 I feel strongly offended by you calling resing trash. We have a team of 4 and we are constantly running out of resin by just refueling torches. And that's only talking about our main base.

Regarding the sea serpent scales despawning.. try dropping items on land and then creating a workbench AFTER dropping them. It's possible the developers only trigger the flag for the dropped item (whether it's protected or not) when the item is dropped.. so placing a workbench afterwards may not impact items that are already on the ground.

They didn't decay because of the water, they decayed because the white circle of the workbench represents the limit of a sphere, not a cylinder. Imagine a ball instead of a can. In this case the scales were so deep that they were outside the sphere of the workbench.

About the scales, keep in mind that the workbench area is a sphere, not a cylinder. Your scales might have been inside the line in a 2D projection but maybe not in 3D.

Items thrown in water will not despawn if there was a work bench there to begin with. You can't add one to save already dropped items.

How close was the work bench to the scales? It covers a sphere, not a cylinder, so if the scales were significantly below the work bench, it might be that they were within the lines, but outside the sphere.

i think the scales despawned because u didnt drop them. i have thrown stuff in the water next to my base and they r still there weeks later

Firespark, I "tested" the multiple entity thing -- I cut at least 100 trees, popped the elder ability, and started chopping all the fallen logs. The piles of wood that dropped began dropping in stacks of 10 instead of 10 individual items. There is definitely a optimization implemented to prevent lag, but as far as i can tell there was no reasonable max. If there is, I'd guess its more than 250 (I did a 2500 Wood run, 5 full chests when I finished) and tbh some may have even despawned. TEST THIS! XD

Great video was wondering about this the other day

I just go to the middle of the ocean and drop all the garbage there

From my testing the work bench area is not a circle but a SPHERE so the scales were probably too deep so not affected by the work bench safe area and despowned.

Holding Ctrl and left clicking will automatically throw items on the ground.

Workbench area is actually a sphere around it. The serpent scales probably were outside the sphere.

With the scales in the water issue, could it be that they despawned because they existed in the world BEFORE the workbench was put down? If the workbench was down first and they spawned inside its radius, maybe they would have stayed longer? But putting a workbench down AFTER they hit the floor meant their decay countdown started? Where as if they hit the floor in a workbench radius that was already there, then it doesnt start counting down.

As for the scales being below water, you might try building a tower of stone, earth, wood, whatever, and diving off of it over the loot location. You will submerge for a few seconds and sometimes that's enough to get you close enough to retrieve the items. I've done this with pretty good success.

I think this needs to be revisited. I think monster drops are different then the items thrown from the player inventory. I have noticed this with the gray dwarf farm and letting it run for a few hours. Things I have noticed is 1. If a bunch of single like items are clustered in a small aria they will begin to stack( I have had this happen in my logging aria where I'd cut the trees and not pick up the wood till I cut all the trees I'd find stacks of 50 wood on the ground) I have found large stacks of 50 wood eyes and stone in the spawn aria where the graydwarvs burn. 2. If I let the farm run while AFK a few hours and found that I didnt have as many items as expected. With items that have been thrown out of the inventory they seam to last significantly longer. Just food for thought.

I'm curious if you drop an item to start its clock and THEN place a workbench near it, will it still disappear?

The despawn protection radius on the fire looks like it's about the same as the fire/resting buff radius. The game probably prevents items from despawning in areas that are considered "safe" or "home" areas in general. The items in the water may have despawned because water naturally decays items. They may have despawned because you placed the workbench after the items were dropped. They may have despawned because they were dropped by a mob and the game only protects items thrown out by a player. They may have despawned because the workbench area is a sphere rather than a circle, which means that the bottom of the ocean is a smaller-radius cross-section of the sphere than the surface which put the scales outside of the protected area. There are too many untested variables to draw a conclusion from a single observation.

1. I have a theory about the scales. Could the circle of influence actually be a ...... sphere? So assuming that the scales were on the edge of the circle of influence, being at the bottom it would actually be outside of the sphere, since the circle of influence will be marked on the surface. If it makes sense? 2. On the item drop, is it the best way to store wood? Since i dont think it will decay in the rain that way

dont store things in the ground man, that could work fine in private servers but if youre hosting a dedicated server this will cause frame issues and lag issues, also why would you not make a room with chests with names for your stuff, thats the best way to store stuff

Work Bench is actually in a sphere shape (not a 2D circle), so there might be a chance the bottom of the sea bed was outside the sphere shape

Dam he goin hard on that Valheim grind

@firespark81 I have greydwarf eyes in all the ponds around my base. they are within workbench area and never despawn despite being in water

Theory: Maybe it wasn't the water, maybe it has to do with items you drop, or unclaimed loot like from the serpent? Maybe for a next test slay a monster around the fire/workbench and don't pick the items up and let it sit.

The scales in the water despawn, might be an issue of elevation rather than water. When i've been building upwards around a tall stone pillar in the Plains, I've had to place down multiple workbenches, even though I'm definitly inside the circle on the ground, this makes me think the area of effect might be a spere instead of a flat area.

One thing you probably missed about the despawning in the water is that you never had the scales in your inventory. That's probably why they despawned inside the work bench area. That would be a good follow up experiment. Try throwing something out that has been in your inventory into the water that is within a workbench area.

i dont think that it was because they were in the water, i think it was becuase you the player didnt drop them. or that they were dropped before the workbench was placed

I think the scales despawned because You didn't drop them. Dropped from a mob is different than dropped from bag

I appreciate the content, but I think you could have made this video last 2-3 minutes maximum, still providing all the information you brought us

Could the campfire range be based on how many logs are on the fire? It would explain why they despawned a day later - a log finished burning.

Is there a limt to the amount of items that will not despawn, while in the workbench area?

ctrl+leftclick is directly throwing the item you want out of your inventory

The circle line you see isnt a cylindrical space... its a sphere... the scales was on the bottom part outside the sphere.

Regarding the scales, they were loot that you never picked up. They have a timer to despawn.?

I throw all of my trash out of a window, its been between 50-100 days and there is still a heap of items outside of my window. Can confirm it does work.

I think the stuff in the water disappeared, cause it wasnt in the work bench area. As far as i know the workbench area is a sphere and not a cylinder. So even if the circle of the workbench area includes the stuff in the water the sphere doesnt cause it was to deep down.

I'm totally making a greydwarf eye pit/storage

Firstly, NEVER discard resin, are you crazy? You think you have too much, just wait until you build a good house/castle/keep with sconces everywhere. Also, fire arrows, but mostly sconces, must light the sconces. Are you sure the scales despawned? I had a similar situation with a Lox out in the water, and I did exactly what you did here. Only I can see that when I raised the earth, it kept pushing the items farther into the water. Eventually the pelts went out of sight, and I gave up after wasting too much stone.

I may be naive here but why not just use the trash item mod?

perhaps it is only the distance of the heat as that is smaller than the workbench area

i can confirm that it an item is in the water in range of a workbench it will not despawn. i have a shield that has been floating near my base for like two weeks. in this case the workbench sphere was probably out of range

its not just because of the water, maybe something to do with height, because i have a workbench on shore at my dock and ive been throwing items off my dock and into the water and its been roughly 50 days or so and none of those items have disappeared, they are in a bit shallower water than that, but def under water.

Scales probably despawned because you never touched them, not because of water.

Or might it be that it was too deep in the water? Workbench area is a sphere not a circle (or cylinder)

The "workbench area", wasn't it a sphere? I know it has a maximum height and depth, you can use the 4m logs to go up very high, or stone, then you'll see you need a workbench higher than your previous one, will be the same in regards to depth. Should probably be a sphere.

Nice! :) How about a video on the cart? (max weight, how to use it efficiently etc.). I once found that another entity can help you go faster if they push from behind - it was a boar that was chasing me and was running straight into the back on the cart :)). But I guess you could do that with friends helping out. Also, how about something about boats and rafts? So far that is the part of the game I hate most :)))

The crafting bench has a sphere of influence rather than a circle\cylinder. In other words, if you go above or below the height of the crafting bench than you'll get out of the sphere even though you are technically in the line.

Spark you are rocking it again with this type of guides/tips on this game, love it!

There may be a difference between things you dropped for testing, and those serpent scales which you never touched. stuff dropped by enemies seems to despawn after defending base attacks if you don't touch them.

CONFIRMED. I have a despawning pool in my base. surrounded by wb i have a water filled hole that i use to despawn all my annoying extras like bones and extra hammers.

For a campire, could it be relative to the amount of fuel it has at a given moment? A full fire is lit more brightly than one that has only 1 wood inside of it, so perhaps this mechanic that stops items from despawning works in a similar manner, and the radius is lesser as the fire's fuel runs out. Also, could have been a good idea to use the clamping feature when you build to space the beams at an exact distance, so each of the pegs could have been exactly 2m apart, if you use for instance 2 meter beams to space them out. Otherwise, good to see someone who has actually went ahead and tested it out.

I get that you need ad revenue but pumping out 14-minute videos back to back on 2 - 3 minute concepts is both frustrating and repetitive.

I hope you have by now realized that the things in Valheim have a spherical radius of influence, it is not a column, so the items in the water were still likely outside the radius of that sphere.

2 Questions: Does the fireplace need to be enclosed? Does the fireplace need to be lit?

Pretty sure the first 8 seconds of this video are in Spanish.

Did you throw something in the water? Maybe they despawned cause the enemy dropped it...not you?

Great video. Always wanted to know this about the game, I've been bothered by unusable crap around my base.

There's one more difference beside being in water- you did not place them there. Maybe kill something, place workbench nearby but not interact with dropped items in any way.

Useful info. First few hours of my game, I would start a new world, go there dump my stuff, come back to my world and delete the second one

You are the Odin to my Valheim experience. Keep up the amazing work!

I don't think it has anything to do with the water. I assume it is because you do not yet own the objects. You need to either create them or have them once picked up

I have an island that I throw stuff off of.. and seems that even with a work bench they do despawn. There also does seem to be a limit to how many items can be dropped in the same area.... I have a few coal making buildings dropping items in the same spot and sometimes I do not get the full amount of coal as wood I put in there. (Though this could just be a bug when it is trying to stack.... if I am nearby the whole time I seem to be able to pick them all up, but if I wander off and come back the items are in stacks of 50 - with the exception of the lost coal.)

I've found that there's an item limit in the the world, when trying to max out the usage of the elder power, the wood started to disappear as i chopped. Also found that there's a hight limit of workbenches, at least if you're working underneath it, by about 10 walls of depth 10 feet from the edge of the zone, may go deeper if you're right under it.

Your videos are good, but they're a little wordy and you often get a bit redundant. I'd try to trim it down a little. Also, isn't building an entire hut for resin and eyes more work than just...building a couple more chests to put them in...?

I noticed after chopping down like 50 trees that the wood entities would combine. It would look like just one wood, but would say something like 23 wood as if I threw down that amount rather than the normal 1 wood.

About the water, maybe the workbench area is a sphere, not a cylinder.

What if the campfire is off?

tossing stuff into water doesn't work like that, i have an extra hammer that's been sitting in my moat outside my house for a good 50 days now

The workbench zone concept is interesting but is implemented weirdly. Requiring a workbench to destroy old buildings doesn't make sense. Nor does requiring it to have a roof. Why? But I get (for performance reasons) to have workbench zones for permanence.

I wonder if the fire's "protection radius" is based on how much wood is in it. The workbench is constant so it's protection radius wouldn't change...but perhaps a campfire with 10 wood covers a radius of 10 but once it burns down to having 9 pieces inside, the radius shrinks to 9 which could explain why the items were despawning how they did in your experiment.

I know this was made months ago, but I've got a silly question.. Anyway to get rid of the old gear you no longer need (like leather armour etc.)? Is there a deconstruct type thing?