Valheim: how to get Tar and defeat Growths

Tar is a vital component of our modern lifestyle. It paves our roads, it’s processed into oil and gasoline, and apparently, if Valheim is any indication, it works great as a pigmentation. Since tar is created from the hyper-compressed remains of ancient animals, and there are a lot of animals in Valheim, it’s pretty easy to spot once you know where to look, though the tricky part comes after that. Here are the Valheim tar locations, and how to defeat Growths that guard it.

Tar pits spawn exclusively in the Plains biome. Due to the nature of Valheim’s world generation, there’s no hard and fast spot you can find them in, but they’re not exactly hidden either. Just find a tall hill somewhere, take a look around, and if you see any big black spots on the ground in the distance, congratulations, you’ve found a tar pit. Harvesting the tar from a pit is a snap, but before you can do that, you have to deal with the pit’s bodyguards: the Growths.

How to find tar and defeat Growths in Valheim

Here’s how to find Tar in Valheim:

1. Go to the Plains Biome and look for tar pits.
2. Defeat the Growths with Blunt and Fire attacks.
3. Harvest the Tar from the Growth bodies, tar clumps, and the pit itself.

Growths are an offshoot of Blobs, except instead of green goo, they’re composed of sticky tar. A base-level Growth only has about 100 health, but the problem comes from their composition. Growths are resistant to Frost, Pierce, and Slash attacks, as well as completely immune to Poison and Stagger. If they get within range, they’ll spit tar at you, which slows your movement and inflicts poison, making it harder to get away.

The best way to defeat a Growth is to keep your distance and use Fire bow attacks, one of their only weaknesses besides Blunt attacks. As long as they can’t spit tar at you, they’ll go down pretty painlessly.

Once the Growths are dead, you can loot their bodies for Tar, as well as harvest Tar from the large clumps around the pit. You can even drain the pit by digging a little trench next to it, allowing you to harvest Tar from the clumps at the bottom.