Valheim features a day-night cycle where the sun slowly moves across the sky during the day and sets to usher in the night. Many players wonder how long a day actually lasts. MeinMMO explains that a day in Valheim lasts 30 minutes and that during the 9-minute night, special caution is required.
This is how long a day lasts in Valheim: The time it takes for a day to pass in Valheim is predetermined. The durations of day and night vary:
- the day lasts 21 minutes
- the night lasts 9 minutes
- in total, a day lasts 30 minutes
This is the standard time without any potential mods or console commands. As the owner of a server or a world, you can manually change the time or even set it to a specific point. You can read more about it in our guide to admin commands in Valheim and how to use them. However, keep in mind that time is client-side, so you are only setting the time for yourself, not for friends playing with you.
Days are significantly longer in Valheim than nights, which also has its reasons. At night, you face certain disadvantages, and it is considerably more dangerous.
Day and Night – What You Should Keep in Mind
What changes at night? As soon as the sun sets, you will receive the “cold” debuff. This gives you a penalty on stamina and health regeneration unless you protect yourself with a fire, warm clothing, or home-brewed mead.
Additionally, at night, there is a higher chance of encountering strong elite enemies with one or two stars. While the world is calmer in the moonlight, it is also significantly more dangerous.
Especially if you are relatively new and inexperienced in Valheim, it is better to wait for the next day than to confront the enemies. Even if you are planning large construction projects, it is advisable to sleep at night – this way you won’t have annoying breaks when your stamina runs low while building.
How can I measure time? You can of course always check the clock on your computer, on your phone, or go old-school by looking at the wall to see when 21 minutes, and thus the day, is over. However, this requires estimating the current game time.
Experienced players might be able to do this by the position of the sun. However, it is much easier and more authentic with a sundial. You can make one yourself with very simple materials. In our guide, we explain how to build a sundial in Valheim and measure time.
A sundial can show you the time both during the day and at night if you build it completely round. However, a semicircle is sufficient. Then you will have the times from sunrise to sunset:
- in Valheim the sun roughly rises around 9:00 AM
- it sets again around 4:00 PM
- an hour thus lasts exactly three minutes
With this information, you can reasonably estimate how much time you have left before you should hop into bed. Another advantage of sleeping: you are rested and even have a bonus on your regenerations.
With the sundial, you can also fairly accurately estimate how much time you have already spent in your session to brag about how good your base looks after 200 hours in the game.
