Valheim Stamina Mechanics Deep Dive — Base Values, the Regen Formula and How to Manage the Yellow Bar

Why stamina is the real ceiling

Health decides whether one mistake kills you; stamina decides whether you can make any moves at all. When the bar is empty you cannot sprint, attack, dodge or block — and most Valheim deaths are not “took one too many hits”, they are “hit zero stamina in the middle of a dodge that never came back up”.

The bar is cheap to understand and expensive to ignore. This page is the complete mechanical picture: the base value, every drain, the exact regen formula, and the management rules that fall out of it.

The base value

• 50 base stamina, displayed as two bars of 25.
• Food stacks on top. Each of your three food slots contributes its own stamina bonus, independently — a stamina-heavy meal set (Onion Soup, Blood Pudding, Fish ‘n’ Bread) can roughly double your effective pool. Full values: food & meals.
• Nothing else adds a flat pool (unlike health, which armor also raises). The pool is base 50 + food. Everything else in this page is about how fast the bar refills.

What drains it

Everything except walking and simple interaction:

Action	Notes
Sprinting	The big one. Cost scales down with the Running skill (up to −50% at level 100) and is further cut by the Asksvin cape (−20% run stamina) and Eikthyr’s power (60% reduced movement stamina).
Attacking	Per weapon, per primary/secondary hit; reduced up to −33% by the combat skill, further by the Ashen cape (−10% attack stamina) and Berserkir mead (−80%).
Blocking	Scales with the hit you absorb; the Blocking skill and shields change how much you spend. Blocking also caps regen at ×0.8 while raised.
Dodging	Reduced by the Dodge skill; the Asksvin cape cuts dodge stamina −15%. Dodging a telegraphed attack that misses refunds half the cost.
Jumping	The Feather cape and Lightfoot mead cut jump stamina by ~20–30% (in exchange for more height).
Tools	Chopping, mining, farming all cost stamina, cut by the corresponding skill and by Hildir’s clothing (−20% most, −15% hats).
Swimming / falling	Zero regen while swimming or falling — you can run the bar to the floor and have no way to refill until you’re on ground.

The exact per-hit numbers vary by weapon and are weapon-specific; the management rules below hold for all of them.

The regen formula

Stamina starts regenerating 1 second after you stop spending it, and the rate depends on how full the bar is:

baseRegen = 6 + 6 · (1 − remaining / max)
regen     = baseRegen · modifier₁ · modifier₂ · …

That is the whole curve: 12/s at an empty bar, 6/s at a full bar, linear in between. Positive buffs are added to the base before the negative multipliers are applied — order matters.

From → to	Average base regen
0% → 100%	8.66/s
0% → 50%	10.43/s
50% → 100%	7.40/s
0% → 33%	10.97/s

Modifiers (1.0, valheim.wiki /w/Stamina, cross-checked with gamecore.wiki)

Effect	Regen modifier	Type
Freezing	×0.40	negative (multiplies)
Cold	×0.75	negative
Wet	×0.85	negative
Blocking (while raised)	×0.80	negative (action)
Swimming / falling	×0 (no regen)	negative (action)
Rested	+100%	positive (adds)
Resting (the 20s build-up)	+300%	positive
Tasty Mead	+100%	positive
Lingering Stamina Mead	+25%	positive
Bronze Pendant (active)	+25%	positive
Berserk	+15%	positive

Worked example: Resting + Rested + Tasty Mead = +500% → 6× base regen. At half a bar that is 9 × 6 = 54/s. If you are also Cold, multiply by 0.75 → 40.5/s. Note the negative multiplies the boosted total — it does not subtract 25 points off the +500%.

Verified (1.0): the base formula, the 1s delay, the per-segment average regen rates and every modifier above are confirmed against valheim.wiki’s stamina page (1.0), cross-checked with gamecore.wiki and allthings.how. See our verification workflow.

The rules that fall out of the formula

1. Top up to ~50%, not 100%

Because regen is 10.43/s over the first half and only 7.40/s over the second half, waiting for a full bar costs ~40% more time per stamina point. For travel, mining and building: sprint until the bar is low, pause until it hits ~50%, keep going. Before a boss or a long swim, the reserve is worth the wait.

2. Rested is the highest-ROI free buff in the game

+100% stamina regen, +50% health regen, +50% skill XP, for 7 minutes + Comfort. A Comfort 10 house gives you 17 minutes. Build small roofed outposts with a fire and a chair so you can refresh Rested mid-expedition — the survival basics first-night checklist covers the minimum.

3. Negative status effects are stamina costs, not just health damage

Cold ×0.75, Wet ×0.85, Freezing ×0.40 — and Rested/Resting cannot be active while any negative effect is present. In the Mountains, Swamp and Deep North, keeping Dry and Warm (food, capes, fires) is how you keep your bar working at all. The resistance layer: capes and resistances.

4. The mead stack is the fight-tool

For boss fights: Tasty Mead (+100%, fast top-up, but −50% health regen — fine if you keep your health topped with food) for dodge-and-reposition builds, Lingering Stamina Mead (+25%, but +25% regen over 5 minutes) for long blocking-heavy fights. They share a cooldown group — pick one, not both. The full comparison: mead complete guide.

5. Swimming and falling are the traps

Zero regen while in water or airborne. A bad jump off a cliff, or kiting a boss across a lake, can drain the bar to zero with no recovery until you’re back on solid ground. Plan the route before the swim; don’t kite across open water.

Stamina economy, quick reference

Situation	What to do
Travel / exploration	Refresh Rested at every outpost; sprint in bursts, top up to ~50%.
Mining / building	Rested + Lingering Stamina Mead; the tool skill does the rest.
Normal combat	Rested + Tasty Mead on cooldown; food keeps the pool high.
Boss fight	Full food stack, chosen mead, set Forsaken Power (Bonemass makes blocking free + returns 5 stamina per block).
Mountains / Swamp / Deep North	Dry + Warm status first, then everything above.

Related

• The combat side — blocking vs parrying, dodge timing, damage types: combat basics
• The full food pool and the buff decay formula: food & meals
• Every mead and when to brew it: mead complete guide
• Resisting the Cold/Wet/Freezing that eat your regen: capes and resistances
• Building the base that gives you long Rested: survival basics