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Lox, the lumbering beasts of the Plains, are hard to fight and harder still to take down, but if you’ve just been using these animals for their hides and meat, you’re missing out.
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Loxes are one of the few tameable animals inValheim,and their uses as livestock go far beyond providing free, high-quality food: They are actually the only rideable animal in the game. That’s right, you can speed across the Plains on the back of a lizard bison, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Here’s everything you need to know about taming, breeding, and riding Lox.
How To Tame Loxes
The first hurdle to ridding these bad boys throughthe Plains of Valheimis getting them to like you first.Loxes, while not actively hostile creatures, don’t take kindly to playersand have no problems smashing would-be Lox tamers that get too close, so you’ll have to be very careful.
Lox can be tamed in the same basic way as you would tame Boars and Wolves. If you throw down a stack of food for the Lox, it will eventually eat some and slowly become accustomed to you. Yellow hearts will appear over its head, andits “Tameness” will increase slowly over time.Once that number hits 100%, the Lox will no longer attack you, and you’re able to either breed it with other Lox or ride it wherever you want.
However, there are a few conditions that must be met for this process to continue. The Lox can’t be alerted by anything, the player must be relatively nearby, and the Lox must continue to be fed. If any of these conditions aren’t met,the taming process will pause until they are.
Loxes unfortunately don’t eat much.Their only valid foods, Cloudberries,Barley,and Flax, all come from the Plains,and as such, will require some running around to gather at first. However, Cloudberries are one of the most abundant food items in the game, so setting aside a few stacks of them a Lox food is a great idea.
Trapping Loxes
Trying to trap a Lox is a tall task in its own right. The main issue is thatLoxes are devastatingly powerful and can easily smash through the strongest stone and metal structuresin a handful of attacks. This leaves you with only two real options to trap and tame Loxes: repairing a stone pen or digging a pit into the ground.
You can easily build a small stone pen, lure the Lox in, and close the entrance, butthe issue with this method is keeping that pen intact.The Lox will stay alert and aggressive as long as you’re nearby, but you’ll have to be ready to repair the stone walls if they look like they’re about to crumble.
The best way to balance these two needs is torun away when you first trap the Loxand then sneak on a nearby hill. With any luck, the Lox will stop attacking the walls, but if it doesn’t calm down fast enough, you’re able to run in, repair the pen, and try again.
If that sounds too hard,you’re able to always try to dig a pit and push the Lox into it.Since the landscape of Valheim is immune to damage, you won’t have to worry about the Lox breaking out, but it might be harder to trap in the first place.
Loxes won’t willingly walk into a pit, so you’ll have to drag them with the Harpoon,which can take a few tries to get right. On top of that, it takes a lot more time to dig a pit than it does to build a few stone walls.
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How To Breed Loxes
Loxes are the most difficult animals to breed in Valheim. While they use the same breeding mechanics as other tameable creatures,they simply require much more time and space.
Loxes can attempt to breed as long as they’re not alerted, have food nearby, have another Lox to mate with, and aren’t too close to other Lox. They will stop mating if thereare more than four Lox within 20 in-game units,meaning they require nearly double the space of any other tameable animal.
The two will breed, and there’s a small chance one will become pregnant. After a short pregnancy, a Lox Calf will pop out and mature over the course of a few in-game days.This whole process takes around twice as long as it does for other tameable animals.
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How To Ride Loxes
The main use for all your tamed Loxes is as mounts, but before you may ride them, you’ll have to make a saddle. You can craft the Lox Saddle at a Workbench with10 Leather Scraps, 20 Linen Thread, and 15Black Metal.
Once you have a Lox Saddle, put it in your hotbar, andpress the corresponding number while looking at a tamed Lox.It will attach to the Lox’s back, and you can climb into the saddle by interacting with it.
While you’re riding a Lox, you’ll see its health and stamina bar at the bottom of your screen. Running will cause the Lox to run instead, and looking in a direction while pressing forward will tell the Lox to move there.If you press back, you will tell the Lox to stop, which will also let the Lox fight nearby enemies.The only downside of riding Loxes is that they can’t go through portals or ride on boats consistently, so you’ll only be able to ride around what you can reach on foot.
Slaughtering Loxes
Of course, if you’re not too interested in riding a Lox, you may always raise them for their meat.Lox Meat is one of the best food items in the gameand is a key stepping stone for moving into the Mistlands biome. Having a reliable source of it is nothing to scoff at. Lox Pelts are also useful in their own right, but you’ll likely never need so many of them that you decide to tame Loxes to farm them.
