9 Bottle Guardians

By Enoq · Version 0.20.4

This update checks guardian order boundaries before visibility calculations and adds brief acknowledged retries for level, star and death announcements, including reports arriving during simulation handoffs or shortly after death. It includes the inspection, map and completed-training optimizations from 0.20.3. Balance and save formats remain unchanged.

Turn trophies into bottled companions. Choose from 75 creature variants across nine biomes, release them to defend your home or follow your adventures, and keep up to 9 active guardians per original owner, per world.

Normal and miniboss guardians start with 20% of their original health and damage; the seven main boss guardians start with 30%. Large creatures are reduced in size. Bottles use eight palettes (Ocean shares the blue palette), and small green arrows with guardian names help you find them on the map. Dropped bottles and wooden item stands display the animated spirit, moving motes and colored interior light. Geirrhafa, Brenna and the Zil & Thungr duo are included. All seven main bosses from Eikthyr through Fader are included; the Deep North boss and its aspects are excluded. Hares and seals are peaceful companions.

Craft and summon

At the Artisan Table, craft a guardian bottle with:

• 1 Corked Vial from the merchant
• 2 trophies of the chosen creature
• 1 Surtling Core
• 1 Fine Wood

The frozen greydwarf, frozen greydwarf shaman and Deep North skeleton also require 2 Ice. Greyling uses greydwarf trophies. Dvergr, Krigen and Elaking variants have separate recipes even when they share a trophy.

Zil & Thungr: three recipes make the same bottle with 2 Thungr trophies, 2 Zil trophies, or 1 of each, plus the usual vial, core and wood. Both fight together initially (840 base health); when Thungr falls, the same guardian transforms into Zil (480 base health). Each form has 65% native size. They occupy one active slot throughout, keeping their name, owner and orders. Losing Zil ends the guardian. Storing and resting preserve the current form: resting Zil does not revive Thungr. These are base health values before game difficulty modifiers.

Use the filled bottle from your inventory or hotbar to summon your guardian. Every successful summon returns one empty vial, including release from resting bottles. If your inventory is full, delivery waits for room; retries do not duplicate it. Aquatic guardians need sufficiently deep water nearby. Stored bottles do not count toward the active limit; guardians in distant or unloaded areas do.

Eikthyr: uses 2 Eikthyr trophies and the usual vial, core and wood. It has 150 base health, 60% native size and one active guardian slot. Antler attacks deal 6 pierce damage; the frontal discharge and stomp deal 4.5 lightning damage before modifiers. Effects, attack reach and the ragdoll are reduced to match. It follows the ordinary orders, sharing and rest rules. Guardian death gives no boss loot or progression, and does not trigger the native encounter messages, boss event or dream.

Boss bottles: all use 2 trophies of their own boss, plus the usual vial, core and wood, and occupy one active slot. Orders, allied control, resting bottles and map markers work through the existing guardian system.

At level one, boss attacks retain 30% native damage before difficulty and other modifiers. The Elder keeps ranged vines and stomp; Bonemass keeps punch and poison cloud; Moder keeps melee, frost breath and ice volleys with low flight and landing; Yagluth keeps beam, nova and meteors; The Queen keeps melee, rush and poison spit; Fader keeps melee, flame breath, meteors, fissures and walls of fire. Summoning roots/minions, the Queen's arena teleport, Moder's ice blockers, walking damage and Fader's passive fire trail are removed. Delayed volleys retain their caster and stop when it dies, is bottled, loses network authority or has no valid target. Private effects, projectiles and remains leave wild bosses unchanged.

Yagluth's continuous pink body aura and ambient magenta lights are removed; his eye and attack effects remain. On updating to 0.19.1, already active boss guardians gain the new maximum health once while keeping their current health percentage. Resting bottles use the new health when released. Normal creatures and minibosses keep their previous balance.

Boss and miniboss settings

In BepInEx/config/com.enoq.trophyguard.cfg, use:

[Summoning]
AllowMinibossSummons = true
AllowBossSummons = true

true enables Geirrhafa, Brenna and Zil & Thungr (default); false hides their crafting recipes and blocks new summons, including release from resting bottles and Zil's second form. The host/server administrator controls this synchronized setting. Existing active guardians keep their orders, can be stored, and the duo keeps its second life. Disabled summons preserve or refund the bottle; changing the setting never refunds an already completed summon. Configuration changes made through a compatible configuration manager apply during play; for manual file edits, close the game/server first.

AllowBossSummons works independently with the same rules for main boss guardians, covering Eikthyr, The Elder, Bonemass, Moder, Yagluth, The Queen and Fader. Both switches default to true and are controlled by the host/server administrator.

Controls

Look at a guardian and use the interaction key (E by default):

The window uses Valheim's wood panels, fonts and controls, with three tabs:

• Overview: guardian portrait, owner, level/stars, slim health/XP bars, maximum health, direct damage range, armor, training bonus and editable name.
• Combat: damage per attack, separated into hits, projectiles and area pulses, with damage types and resistances. Numbers include training and show base damage before target defenses, critical hits and world modifiers; actual hits also vary with native combat rolls. Areas are listed separately from the direct damage range. Peaceful companions have no attack stat.
• Vigilance: current order and patrol radii of 2, 5, 10, 15 or 20 metres. Guard here centres the patrol on your position; changing radius keeps the existing centre and order.

The window stays open when the guardian moves. If its area unloads, it keeps a clearly marked last-known snapshot and reconnects when the guardian loads again. Orders, renaming and bottling require you to be within 5 metres; their availability updates automatically. The bottle button is available on every tab. Close with Escape or either close button. Guardians can follow outside your base, but do not teleport through portals.

The level has a large gold badge visible on every tab, with earned stars beneath it. Earning a level or star plays the player's native level-up aura and sound on the guardian. The original owner and authorized allies receive a named announcement with the creature's trophy icon, also kept in Valheim's message log. Multiple promotions from one reward celebrate once at the final attained level/star. Other nearby observers can see and hear the effect.

Final guardian death announces its name. Thungr's fall has a separate Second life announcement because Zil continues. Bottling, unloading and reconnecting do not announce deaths or replay old promotions.

Training

Defeating a hostile enemy gives full XP to each living, loaded guardian within 20 metres, without requiring it to attack. The owner, an authorized ally or their guardians must have damaged the enemy during the last 60 seconds. The original owner must be online. Players, pets, guardians and bottled creatures do not yield or earn training XP.

Levels 1–10 add 7.5% of starting health and damage per level gained, linearly. Ordinary creatures then keep level 10 and earn up to two stars: 33.5% native stats at level 10, 41.75% with one star, exactly 50% with two. Native star colors are used when available, without changing size or stacking native star stat bonuses. Peaceful companions gain health and keep their noncombat behavior.

Bosses and minibosses stop at level 10 with no stars: main bosses reach 50.25% native stats, minibosses 33.5%. Promotions preserve health percentage and heal 25% of the new maximum, once per XP reward even if several ranks are gained. Damage bonuses cover melee, projectiles and areas; support heals and shields keep their previous balance.

Costs rise progressively and depend on the guardian's fixed origin biome. Each star costs more than the late levels; the second costs twice the first. XP, levels, stars and the duo's current life persist through bottles, chests, stands and reconnects. Zil and Thungr share progress across both lives. Old guardians begin at level one without losing names, ownership or wounds. See the training tables for the complete curve, rewards and examples (Spanish).

Rest and share

To bottle a guardian, carry one empty Corked Vial and leave one inventory slot free. It must be calm and at least 10 seconds past its last attack or injury.

The bottle keeps its name, health, identity, training progress and original owner. Rest restores 25 percentage points of maximum health per minute, including time in chests, item stands or offline. You can drop, store, display or lend the bottle.

Ownership is fixed on the first summon. The owner and their explicitly authorized allies can command, rename, bottle and release the guardian; the latest valid order wins. Borrowing never changes ownership or whose limit it counts toward. Resting guardians can only be released in their original world.

Guardians persist when you disconnect. In loaded areas they can fight and die; unloaded areas do not simulate combat.

Install or update

Requires BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2350 and Jötunn 2.30.2, or compatible versions. Install the same mod version on every client and the server.

Close Valheim, then import Enoq-9_Bottle_Guardians-0.20.4.zip as a local mod in Thunderstore/r2modman. Disable or remove the old TrophyGuard package when importing under the new name; keep only one active TrophyGuard.dll. Models, textures, icons and translations are embedded in the DLL.

Previously named TrophyGuard. The internal identifiers, DLL name, configuration and save data remain compatible. If an older world already has ten guardians, all ten remain: bottle two to reach eight before summoning a replacement.

Keep world, character and BepInEx/config/TrophyGuard journals together when backing up or restoring. Journals and Valheim saves are separate; a crash or partial rollback can lose a pending guardian. Preserve the existing configuration and journals when updating.

Version 0.20.4 reads previous resting bottles and journals and uses the same saved formats as 0.20.0. XP-aware bottles and vial-return journal events require 0.20.0 or later; restore the complete pre-training backup if downgrading below that version.

Languages

Text follows Valheim's selected language: English, Spanish, German, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Turkish and Korean. Other languages fall back to English.