Version 1.0.0 — Updated for Valheim Deep North! Brand new skills for magic! Quashed bugs, full multiplayer sync, and more!

Adds a unique skill to every martial weapon AND magic staves (most) in Valheim!

How does this mod work? Since we needed another button for controller, this mod moves the Heavy Attack from its default button to a press and hold of the normal attack. This frees up the old Heavy Attack button for these unique skills!

Press Middle Mouse Button (or Right Trigger on controller) to activate your equipped weapon's unique skill!

Who is this mod for? Those looking to put a bit more action-combat into their Valheim experience. This mod is designed for players looking to add a new, unique take on Valheim's combat. Spend more time playing and less time preparing!

MARTIAL WEAPON SKILLS

Blink Strike (Sword): Dash forward in the direction the camera is facing, striking all enemies in your path.

Bulwark (Mace): Flex and fortify yourself, reducing incoming damage and regenerating health for a short time.

Frenzy (Axe / Dual Axe): Let out a battle roar (a cry many of you Vikings have heard before), temporarily boosting your attack speed and movement speed.

Falcon Blitz (Atgeir / Spear): Unleash a rapid six-hit flurry, locking yourself in place while striking everything in range.

Rapid Fire (Crossbow): Fire six bolts in quick succession in the direction you are aiming, consuming no ammunition.

Assassination (Knife): Vanish into the shadows with a familiar sound (to some of you). Enemies lose track of you. Press the skill button again to unleash a devastating backstab.

Whirlwind (2H Sword / 2H Axe): Spin twice in a devastating double sweep, carving through all enemies around you while moving forward.

Poison Mayhem (Dual Knife): Leap backward and drop a cluster of poison bombs at your original position, dealing direct and poison damage to all nearby enemies.

Onslaught (Fist): Launch into a ferocious forward combo, finishing with a powerful lunge that damages all enemies in a long line ahead.

Earthquake (2H Mace): Slam the ground and send four shockwaves rippling forward in sequence, dealing heavy damage to everything in their path.

Primal Rally (Bow): Call a wild beast to fight by your side. The creature summoned depends on your bow. The beast follows you, attacks your enemies, and despawns after one minute.

Larger creatures are scaled down to a more manageable size. Custom bow creature mappings (including size, damage and health) can be added in the configuration manager for full mod compatibility.

HOW TO EDIT THE PRIMAL RALLY SUMMONS IN THE CONFIGURATION MANAGER

You need to find the internal ID names for the weapon and creatures you want to edit. You can find those here: Item IDs | Valheim Wiki | Fandom

In your configuration manager (Azu's or Shudnal's):

MAGIC WEAPON SKILLS — NEW!

Staff skills cost Eitr instead of using a cooldown. Blood Magic skills also cost health — but never enough to kill you.

Meteor Strike (Staff of Embers): Call down a storm of meteors on your position for 12 seconds. Each meteor hits as hard as a fireball from the staff. You're slowed while you commit to the cast, so choose your ground wisely.

Ice Nova (Staff of Frost): Unleash a burst of frost that deals double frost damage and freezes nearby enemies in blocks of ice for 8 seconds. Frozen enemies can't move — but they can still swing if you get too close! When the ice shatters, they stay slowed for a few more seconds.

Ragnarök (Staff of Fracturing): Hold the skill button to charge, then release to fire. Charge for 2 seconds for two shots, or the full 3 seconds for three. A charge bar shows your power, and you move slower while channeling.

Regeneration (Staff of the Wild): Heal yourself and all nearby allies, tames and summons for 30% of their max health over 6 seconds.

Thunderstruck (Thunderblood Staff): Bathe yourself in electrical energy for 10 minutes. Any enemy that lingers within 30 meters of you is periodically struck by lightning from the sky. Passive wildlife and creatures you're still taming are never targeted.

Sanctuary (Staff of Protection): Raise a warding dome for 10 seconds. Enemies — and their arrows and spells — are slowed to a crawl while inside.

Charred Requiem (Dead Raiser): Sacrifice Eitr and blood to raise a Charred Archer that fights at your side for 10 minutes. Upgrading the staff lowers the cost, and at level 4 you raise two archers.

The Staff of the Red Troll and Spirit Caller keep their vanilla behavior.

Magic Cost Scaling: All staff costs are balanced for a magic skill level of 100. Below that, costs rise by 1% for every 5 levels you're missing (up to +20% at level 1). Train your magic and your spells get cheaper! This can be adjusted or turned off in the config.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

Skill Tooltips — Hover over any weapon to see its skill, description, damage, costs and cooldown right in the tooltip. Eitr and health costs reflect your current magic skill level.

Multiplayer Sync — All skill animations, visual effects and sounds are shared with other players. Crowd-control skills like Ice Nova and Sanctuary work on every enemy, no matter who is nearest to it.

2H Mace Combo — Two-handed maces get a 3-hit combo for their normal attack, while the heavy attack is the full vanilla sledge slam. Works on all two-handed maces, including new and modded ones.

Fully Configurable — Cooldowns, damage, Eitr costs, radius, durations and more are adjustable via the Configuration Manager (F1 in-game).

Skill Compendium — All skills are documented in the in-game compendium under "Keen Combat Skills".

Auto Shield Equip — Automatically equips your best shield when drawing a one-handed weapon. Using a config manager you can enable or disable this feature. You can also choose to enable or disable it for axes or knives.

COMPATIBILITY

• Works with most other weapon and armor mods like Therzie's and WoW Weapons.
• Client-side only — no server installation required.
• All players in multiplayer should have the mod installed.
• Config is not synced from the server yet (will update this) — players should use matching config values.

RECOMMENDED MODS

• BepInEx Configuration Manager or Shudnal's Configuration Manager — for adjusting skill values in-game via F1/menu.
• Because one Viking's "easy" is another Viking's "hard", I do suggest adding these mods if you are an experienced player and find my mod makes the vanilla game too easy:
  • CreatureLevelAndLootControl
  • EpicBossFights

INSTALLATION

With a mod manager (recommended): Install with r2modman, or Gale — everything is set up for you automatically.

Manual install:

• Install BepInExPack Valheim
• Create a folder named KeenCombat inside BepInEx/plugins/
• Extract the zip's contents into that KeenCombat folder
• Your KeenCombat folder should contain KeenCombat.dll, the audio folder and the icons folder (the other files, like manifest.json, are only used by mod managers and are harmless)
• Launch the game!

Codebase GitHub Page https://github.com/BhimaJenkins/KeenCombat

Credits Mod by Bhima Jenkins. Built with BepInEx and HarmonyX.

Like the mod and want to support further development? Buy me a coffee at Ko-fi!

Changelog

1.1.0 — Controls Update

Added

• Rebindable skill key for mouse & keyboard (SkillKeybind in the Input section)
• Vanilla heavy attacks for mouse & keyboard — choose between Valheim's own heavy attack button or hold-to-heavy (KeyboardHeavyAttack in the Input section)
• Per-weapon hold timing — tune how long you hold the attack button for a heavy attack, per weapon type (new Hold To Heavy Timing section)

Changed

• New mouse & keyboard defaults: left click is your normal attack, middle mouse is Valheim's heavy attack, and Z activates your KeenCombat skill. Prefer the old controls? Set KeyboardHeavyAttack to HoldAttack and SkillKeybind to middle mouse.
• Controller controls are unchanged: Right Trigger for skills, hold attack for heavy attacks.

Fixed

• Primal Rally and Charred Requiem summons attacking player-planted crops

1.0.1

Fixed

• The skill button also triggering a heavy attack after changing a setting in a configuration manager (such as Shudnal's), caused by other mods reloading Valheim's input system. Vanilla heavy attacks are now blocked at the source on weapons with a KeenCombat skill.

1.0.0 — The Magic Update

Updated for Valheim Deep North!

Added

• 7 new magic staff skills, powered by Eitr instead of cooldowns:
  • Meteor Strike (Staff of Embers) — a 12-second meteor storm on your position
  • Ice Nova (Staff of Frost) — freeze nearby enemies in blocks of ice
  • Ragnarök (Staff of Fracturing) — hold to charge, release to fire up to three shots
  • Regeneration (Staff of the Wild) — heal yourself, allies, tames and summons over time
  • Charred Requiem (Dead Raiser) — raise Charred Archers to fight for you
  • Thunderstruck (Thunderblood Staff) — lightning strikes enemies that linger near you
  • Sanctuary (Staff of Protection) — a dome that slows enemies and their projectiles
• Full multiplayer sync — all skill animations, effects and sounds now show for every player
• Skill tooltips — hover any weapon to see its skill, damage, costs and cooldown
• Magic cost scaling — staff skills cost more at low magic skill levels, down to their base cost at level 100 (configurable)
• Eitr bar flash — the Eitr bar blinks red when you don't have enough to cast, just like vanilla spells
• Rapid Fire projectiles — visible bolts matching the bolts you have loaded, with damage landing on impact
• Stealth is visible to other players — teammates now see you vanish into the shadows
• 2H mace swing sound — a custom swing sound for the combo (configurable)

Changed

• 2H mace rework — every two-handed mace, including new and modded ones, gets a 3-hit combo for its normal attack, while the heavy attack is the full vanilla sledge slam
• Frenzy's roar is now tinted a fiery orange
• Higher resolution buff icons (64×64)
• Faster custom sounds — each sound now loads once and replays instantly

Fixed

• Skills missing enemies controlled by other players in multiplayer
• Regeneration not healing other players
• Meteors freezing in the sky on other players' screens
• Ice Nova's ice blocks reappearing after logging out and back in
• Ice Nova and Sanctuary not affecting enemies controlled by other players
• Stealth not hiding you from enemies controlled by other players
• The stealth smoke bomb being able to poison allies
• Stealth getting stuck on after dying or logging out while stealthed
• Leaving stealth resetting your run speed, cancelling other speed effects
• Rapid Fire permanently lowering mouse sensitivity if you died mid-volley
• Rapid Fire sometimes hitting a farther enemy instead of the nearest one
• Right Trigger triggering an attack while a skill was on cooldown (controller)
• Staff skills also firing the staff's normal attack after a normal attack had been used
• Bulwark's health regen not working with other players online
• Frenzy's attack speed not showing for other players, and being triggered by nearby enemies' attacks
• Area skills dealing reduced damage to groups, or hitting some creatures more than once
• Primal Rally summons appearing full size to other players
• Animations getting stuck at the wrong speed after dying mid-skill
• Earthquake leaving you rooted if it was interrupted
• 2H mace normal attacks showing the heavy slam's ground shockwave
• Buff icons missing for players who installed with r2modman or Gale
• An error when returning to the main menu

Previous Versions