Build two portals with exactly matching tags, then check what you are carrying before stepping through. Under normal world settings, a wooden portal blocks restricted cargo such as ore and metal bars. A stone portal can carry that cargo, but the portal you enter determines the rule for that direction of travel.
For a first network, our recommendation is one permanent pair between home and a useful outpost. Make the round trip before relying on it for an expedition. Valheim 1.0 arrived on September 9, 2026; the setup below covers the wooden and stone portals available in the current game.
Gather materials for both ends
These quantities build one portal, not a connected pair. Station materials are extra.
| Portal | Materials for one | Nearby station |
|---|---|---|
| Wooden portal | 20 finewood, 10 Greydwarf eyes, 2 Surtling cores | Workbench |
| Stone portal | 30 grausten, 10 Greydwarf eyes, 2 Molten cores | Stonecutter |
For your first wooden pair, reserve 40 finewood, 20 eyes, and 4 Surtling cores. Carry a hammer and another 10 ordinary wood for a workbench at the destination; that wood is separate from the finewood. Add more supplies if you want storage or shelter there.
If the wooden portal recipe is missing, pick up each of its three ingredients yourself. The recipe unlock requires discovering them. You need a workbench in range when placing the portal; it does not need to remain there for teleportation.
If finewood or cores are still blocking you, follow the Black Forest section of our biome progression guide before planning a distant portal network.
Use a tag you can repeat without guessing
Interact with each portal and give both the same tag. Tags are case-sensitive: Swamp1 and swamp1 are different. The limit is ten characters. Blank tags can connect, and each portal pairs with only one other portal.
Our suggested naming rule is lowercase letters plus a number: swamp1, farm1, or trader1. Give each pair its own tag. Write the destination beside the home portal so another player can identify it without entering it.
Before leaving home, write down the tag you chose. At the far end, check the spelling against that note, leave clear walking space around the frame, and wait for the connection to appear. Travel home and back while the area is secure. A glowing frame is useful feedback; a completed round trip confirms that you built the route you intended.
Keep this first pair permanent. Retagging a shared home portal while someone is away makes their return depend on your remembering the previous destination. Add a second pair when the group starts using two outposts regularly.
Why your inventory can stop a working portal
Check for the crossed-out portal symbol on carried items. Under normal rules, wooden portals reject ores and their processed metals; smelting the load does not solve the transport problem. Restrictions also apply to some nonmetal items, so use the item symbol rather than a metal-only checklist.
Our suggested response is to put the blocked cargo in a chest, travel home for food or repairs, and return to arrange the haul. Store it deliberately instead of dropping it where you might pick it up again or lose track of it.
For a mining outpost, decide where the finished material needs to end up. If your main Forge is at home, budget for a land or sea cargo route. If you plan to craft near the mine, list the stations and supplies that outpost needs before sailing. A portal can make repeated visits easier without solving the whole production chain.
Stone portals: check the departure end
Stone portals become available through Ashlands materials and can connect to wooden portals. Their cargo permission applies when you enter the stone end.
With normal portal settings:
| Direction | Can you carry normally restricted cargo? |
|---|---|
| Wood to wood | No |
| Wood to stone | No |
| Stone to wood | Yes |
| Stone to stone | Yes |
For example, placing stone at a mining outpost and wood at home lets you bring metal home. Carrying that metal back from home still fails at the wooden entrance. Use stone at both ends if you need the route in both directions.
Before replacing an established portal, choose space for the larger stone structure and keep an alternative way back available. Check the pair again after the work. Do not turn a remote upgrade into an experiment with your only return route.
World modifiers can change the answer
Check the world's Portals setting before diagnosing broken equipment. The available rules include:
- Portal items: allows normally blocked inventory items through; it does not transport tamed animals.
- Normal: keeps ordinary item restrictions.
- No boss portals: restricts portal use during boss encounters. Plan an escape route on foot for the fight.
- No portals: disables portal travel in the world.
On a shared world, confirm the selected rule with the host before deciding that another player's advice applies to your campaign.
Change the portal setting directly if that is the rule your group wants to adjust. A full preset changes several settings together and overwrites previous modifiers. For save and achievement questions around a changed setup, see our 1.0 world and save guide.
Worked trip: establish a Swamp supply stop
Assume you have an unused home portal reserved for this trip, normal portal settings, and the equipment needed for your Swamp trip. Build a new home portal if your existing ones already serve other routes. The objective is a reliable place to return for supplies, with iron hauling planned separately.
- Before departure: set the reserved home portal's tag to
swamp1, record it, and pack the single wooden-portal kit above plus 10 ordinary wood for its workbench. Add food, your working equipment, and supplies for a chest. Leave a spare recovery kit at home. - On arrival: choose a place you can defend and reach again from the landing. Build the station and portal before spending the trip's remaining supplies elsewhere.
- Before exploring: make the home-and-back trip. Check that your companions know which portal leads here.
- After gathering: put restricted cargo in the chest. Decide whether today's objective ends with a supply visit home or a planned cargo haul.
- Before ending the session: record what remains at the outpost and the next job, such as bringing the ship to collect it. Leave the portal's tag unchanged.
Use the Valheim progress checklist to track the biome preparation this trip supports. Treat the route as ready once it works with your supplies and world rules, rather than simply because the building is standing.
Diagnose the failure before rebuilding
Work through these checks in order:
- Cannot place it: check the recipe, materials, required station range, and available space.
- No connection: compare both tags character by character, check the remote structure still exists, and look for another pair already using that tag.
- Connected but blocked: inspect your inventory, then the world's portal setting.
- Cargo works only one way: compare the two portal types using the direction table above.
- Everything appears correct: ask a companion at the destination to check the area and compare the installed game and mod setup before changing the network.
Do not dismantle the remote end as your first troubleshooting step. A short inventory or tag check is easier to recover from than a missing route home. If the problem began after an update, the worlds, saves, and mods guide is the next useful check.