Barley and flax are common resources you can find in the Plains biome in Valheim. You don’t want to visit this location unless you have the proper gear because it contains several hazardous enemies that are aggressive towards you and can take you down with only a few hits. We recommend visiting this region when you have full silver and wolf armor. When you’re properly geared to adventure into the Plains, you’ll notice that the goblin-like enemies, the fulings, have numerous villages and outposts all over this region. It can take quite a bit of effort to remove them, but when you do, there’s a worthy prize waiting for you: barley. It’s an excellent resource you can turn into barley flour to turn into food to increase your health and stamina.
However, finding barley in these villages can cause you to travel far and wide. You’re better off harvesting it from a garden. But unlike turnips or carrots, barley does not grow in regular biomes.
You can only plant barley in the Plains biome. It does not appear to grow in any other location. When you place barley down into a Meadows or Black Forest biome, it wastes the resource, and it doesn’t become seeds, and you can’t pick it back up. If you want to cultivate barley actively, you’ll need to create a base in the Plains.
This can be tricky due to the dangerous enemies that roam these regions. We recommend removing the fuling from an outpost or a village and then using those as a framework. The fulings will not respawn here, but the ones that patrol at night do reappear at random, so you’ll have to make sure you prepare for those.
A barley plant only yields two seeds, not three, like the turnips and carrots when you turn them into seeds. You want to make sure you don’t always turn your barley into the flour. It’s better to be patient, receive two seeds, and then steadily increase your crop output, so you don’t have to travel all over your Valheim world, seeking out fuling villages to find barley. They don’t always show up.
