Forsaken Ascension

Repeated boss victories. Stronger permanent blessings.

Return to Valheim's bosses for harder challenges, earn upgraded trophies and offer them at the sacrificial stones to strengthen your blessings. All earned blessings can remain active together.

Covers Eikthyr, the Elder, Bonemass, Moder, Yagluth, the Queen and Fader. The final Deep North boss is excluded.

This mod is still being developed, so expect bugs and balance issues. Bug reports and feedback are welcome and help improve future updates.

Features

• Normal fights plus five starred challenge tiers for each boss.
• 42 trophies to earn and upgrade your blessings.
• Five cumulative move unlocks per boss, with distinct tier appearances.
• Health and damage scaling that follows your world's boss progression.
• Refight any previously beaten tier.
• Press F8 to view your progress and blessings.
• Configurable difficulty, offering costs, rewards and passive benefits.

How to progress

1. Defeat a normal boss and offer its trophy at the sacrificial stones.
2. Return to its summoning altar and choose an unlocked challenge.
3. Defeat the challenge and offer its upgraded trophy to strengthen your blessing.
4. Continue through five stars, or refight an earlier tier.

Altar upgrades and challenge unlocks are shared across the world. Existing vanilla trophies at the sacrificial stones grant normal blessings and unlock the first starred challenge. Higher blessings require eligible participation; lower-tier trophies never downgrade an earned blessing.

Blessings

Default benefits range from the normal tier to five stars. The host can adjust them.

Boss moves

Each star unlocks another move. Higher tiers retain earlier moves; normal fights keep their native attacks.

Break Elder's ward roots to remove protection, Moder's crystals before they burst, and Yagluth's emberstones to weaken his ritual. Summoned special guards are temporary and give no loot.

Compatibility and settings

Requires BepInEx and Jotunn. Epic Loot and Creature Level & Loot Control are optional. Disable Passive Powers when using this mod.

Every player and the host/server need the same mod build. All earned blessings stack by default; an optional single-blessing mode is available.

Edit BepInEx/config/thema.forsakenascension.cfg to adjust gameplay. Automatic world progression is enabled by default. Restart after changing gameplay settings; already accepted fights retain their saved difficulty and moves.

Changelog

0.0.38 — summon camera shake fix

• Removes continuous camera shake from the local summon sound copies before they start. Native buildup and arrival audio remain enabled for every boss.
• Uses the sound prefab's native cleanup time instead of extending every sound object to at least 30 seconds.
• Retains the server summoning and trophy behavior from 0.0.37. Server and all clients must update to 0.0.38; preserve configuration and progression.

0.0.37 — summon atmosphere and reward diagnostics

• Restores native preparation and arrival sounds locally for nearby players, including single-player and dedicated-server challenges. Sound cues cannot create network objects, damage effects or another boss.
• Keeps native visual/gameplay effects on the host and retains referenced summon assets for their lifetime.
• Logs why a death earns no Ascension trophy when nobody meets the participation requirement. Kill commands alone do not earn progression; weapon damage and other configured participation still do.
• Reward checks cover every boss and tier in local-host and remote-owner paths, including exact trophy identity, duplicate death reports and altar upgrades.
• Server and every client must update to 0.0.37. Preserve existing configuration and progress.

0.0.36 — remote altar summoning

• Summoning can read the native altar definition from saved world data without loading its arena on the server.
• The summoning client checks native terrain and clearance; the server checks altar identity, proximity, offering, unlocked tier and spawn bounds before creating the challenge.
• The initialized boss uses normal network ownership on the nearby client. Duplicate requests reconcile the existing boss instead of creating another.
• Mounted offerings can be read from saved ritual stands. A disconnect before spawning cancels the ritual and keeps offering recovery available.
• Server and every client must update to 0.0.36. Preserve existing configuration and progress. Live dedicated-server validation remains in progress.

0.0.35 — altar compatibility and loading rollback

• Removed the 0.0.34 server area-loading workaround and preparation retry, which did not resolve the reported dedicated-server altar failure.
• Rejected summons close the menu and release input immediately while offering recovery continues.
• Existing vanilla trophies at the sacrificial stones establish normal blessings and unlock one-star challenges, including in worlds created before installing the mod. Higher earned tiers are preserved.
• Trophy display upgrades no longer overwrite the saved native attachment or affect removable decoration stands.
• Retains the 0.0.33 server progression fix. The original dedicated-server summoning failure remains unresolved; this update restores the earlier behavior rather than claiming a server summoning fix.
• Server and every client must update to 0.0.35. Preserve existing config and progress.

0.0.34 — dedicated server summoning

• Fixed remote summoning altars being rejected as unavailable when their saved objects were not instantiated on a dedicated server.
• Temporarily loads the altar's native static area for spawn and offering checks, with bounded loading and automatic cleanup.
• Retries an unready altar briefly before taking offerings and displays the rejection reason if preparation fails.
• Preserves existing progression, configuration and offering recovery. Server and every client must update to 0.0.34.

0.0.33 — dedicated server progression

• Fixed progression synchronization for dedicated servers where Valheim leaves the connection's legacy player ID unset. F8, challenge selection and trophy blessing descriptions can now receive the server's progression.
• Applied the same character identity fix to summoning, trophy offerings, claims, sailing blessings and boss participation tracking.
• Preserved existing progression and settings; no reset or migration is required.
• Both the server and every client must update to plugin 0.0.33.

0.0.32 — gameplay screenshots

• Added a horizontal screenshot strip showing a five-star Eikthyr fight, challenge selection and a permanent trophy blessing.
• Listing-only update; gameplay DLL and default configuration are unchanged.

0.0.31 — feedback note

• Added a short notice about expected bugs and balance issues, welcoming player reports and feedback.
• Documentation-only update; gameplay and configuration are unchanged.

0.0.30 — listing cleanup

• Shortened the description and removed Beta labels from the listing.
• Focused the README on features, progression, blessings, boss moves and compatibility.
• Removed the detailed install, test results, known issues, reporting and credits sections from the listing.
• Documentation-only package update: gameplay DLL and configuration remain identical to 0.0.29.

0.0.29 — beta testing tools

• Added host-only fa_test spawn <boss> <stars 0-5> [stage 0-7] for all seven bosses with current configured scaling, skins and cumulative moves.
• Added native altar/arena shortcuts, loaded test boss information, location lookup and test boss/guard cleanup.
• Test bosses suppress native/Epic Loot drops, boss defeat flags and progression reports; reload/death handling retains the test tag. Regular altar challenges retain their reward flow.
• Added command argument coverage and 42 real Character Awake spawn fixtures. Live AI, console/terrain placement and co-op still need gameplay testing.
• No balance changes or fixes to the previously documented Fader/Elder beta issues.

0.0.28 — beta

• Added five cumulative move unlocks each for Elder, Bonemass, Moder, Yagluth, Queen and Fader: thirty additional boss mechanics.
• Added destructible roots, wards, crystals and ritual stones, plus capped temporary guards.
• Added warned Queen native rush and waypoint-based emergence with floor/path checks.
• Preserved Eikthyr's existing five unlocks, normal fights and accepted fight snapshots.
• Added six independent boss-moveset config switches.
• Prepared a Gale/Thunderstore package with dependency metadata, icon and automatic-progression defaults. Gameplay DLL matches the previously verified 0.0.28 playtest build.
• Known beta issues remain documented in the README; this packaging pass does not change gameplay.

0.0.27

• Replaced fresh one-star Eikthyr Antler Rush with a warned Antler Sweep.
• Added continuous subtle electrical arcs to storm-touched boars.

Earlier playtest milestones

• Added cumulative Eikthyr mechanics, challenge skins, repeatable beaten tiers and world-progression scaling.
• Added permanent simultaneous blessings, tiered trophies, offering/progression interfaces and optional loot integration.

Earlier development milestones are summarized here; this is the first prepared Thunderstore-format package, not a claim that earlier versions were publicly published.