How to Share a Valheim Seed with Friends (and Actually Get Them Into Your World)

The part most guides miss

Sharing a seed with a friend does not put them in your world. The seed string makes their new world look like yours — same biomes, same boss stone positions, same ocean routes. But they still spawn in their own fresh save with their own character. To actually play together you need two things: the seed (so you’re on the same map) and a way to join (so you’re in the same world).

This page covers both.

Step 1 — Find your seed string

In-game: Pause menu → World → the World tab. The Seed field shows the exact string that generated your world. If you never set one, the field shows the value that was used (the game always stores what it generated with).

• Copy it verbatim — seed strings are case sensitive: valheim and Valheim are two different worlds.
• Strings up to roughly 20–30 characters work fine; there is no publicly documented hard limit.

Step 2 — Send it so it survives the trip

• Paste, don’t retype. A single mistyped character produces a completely different map, and there is no error message — it just “works” on the wrong world.
• For long seeds, send a screenshot alongside the text, because chat messages wrap and truncate.
• Keep it in one message. Seeds split across several messages are where typos happen.

Step 3 — Get them into your world

The seed makes the maps match; the join mechanism makes the characters meet. Three options, in order of effort:

The two conditions that carry almost all of the weight: every side on the same game version, and crossplay enabled on the host. Full walkthrough: crossplay guide. If the join keeps failing, work through the connection troubleshooting checklist in order.

For an always-on world the group can find even when nobody is online, a dedicated server is the standard answer — a side-by-side comparison of the main hosting providers (and how to back up your world before moving it) is in the dedicated server guide.

Step 4 — Verify you’re on the same map

The fastest sanity check while everyone is in their world: have each friend note one landmark’s position from spawn — where the swamp sits relative to the start island, or which direction the Black Forest is. If everyone’s notes match, you are on the same world.

If they don’t match:

1. Compare version numbers in each main menu (the most common cause).
2. Re-send the seed as a screenshot and re-check character by character.

Sharing seeds before you even pick one

If you are starting a new group, you don’t have to discover the seed after the fact — you can pick it beforehand. The seed map library has 700+ pre-rendered 1.0 worlds with spawn, bosses and biomes marked, so you can propose “shall we all type this-string?” with a map to show everyone. The seed finder lists verified seeds where several Forsaken bosses are walkable from spawn — a good starting point for groups that want a front-loaded world. The mechanics of how seeds generate layout are in the world seed guide.

Links

• world seed guide — how the seed generates the layout, what it does and does not control
• seed map library — 700+ pre-rendered 1.0 worlds with spawn, bosses, traders and biomes marked
• seed finder — verified seeds where several Forsaken bosses are reachable on foot from the start
• crossplay guide — join codes, version parity and how to host a cross-platform session
• connection troubleshooting — rejected codes, invisible crossplay players, unreachable servers
• dedicated server guide — self-hosting vs renting, port setup, and backing up your world before you move it
• new save vs old world — when a group should start a fresh world instead of inheriting an old one