Ultimate Hardcore

A harder Valheim: tougher creatures and bosses, star tables, creature infusions, heavier skill loss on death and dungeons that refill themselves.

⌨️ PRESS F3 IN THE GAME TO OPEN THE SETTINGS PANEL ⌨️

Every feature of this mod is turned on and tuned in the in-game panel.
Can't use F3? Open the console with F5 and type ultimateqol_config.

⌨️ How to use

1. Install and start the game.
2. Press F3 to open the settings panel.
3. Find the Hardcore options in the sidebar (or type in the search box at the top) and turn on what you want.

Everything is off by default, so the game stays vanilla until you turn something on.

🔑 To change settings you need admin access with devcommands: be listed in the server's adminlist.txt (on a dedicated server) or be the host of the world. Changes are synchronized to all players in real time.

Features

Difficulty

A Difficulty page (off by default, everything 100% = vanilla), inspired by the main ideas of creature/loot difficulty mods but built on the game's own world rates. The values multiply the world's own settings (world modifiers), so 100% always means "as this world is" and turning the page off restores the world at once:

• Creature health, Boss health (applied when a creature spawns or is at full health; stars multiply as usual; tamed animals keep vanilla health).
• Creature damage, Boss damage, Player damage, Chance of each star (0-100%: 0% never, 10% normal game, 100% always the most stars; the panel shows the resulting odds of 0, 1, 2... stars), Loot and resources, Raid frequency (0% = no raids).
• Stamina use, Stamina regeneration, Eitr use, Durability loss, Food duration, Carry weight.
• Group scaling: extra toughness and damage per additional player nearby (0% = none), maximum players counted and distance (0 = vanilla).
• Minimum / maximum stars (used when the star table is off) for creatures and for bosses (vanilla: creatures 0-2, bosses 0). Above the game's limit a creature keeps rolling one more star at a time with the game's star chance. Decided once per creature by its owner and saved in the world, so every player sees the same stars.

Stars

A Stars page under Difficulty (needs Custom difficulty on):

• Use star table (off by default) – while it is on, a summary at the top of the page shows the current odds for creatures and bosses, today's day and how much each growth (bosses, days) adds; instead of the star chance and the minimum/maximum stars, two tables decide the stars: creatures and bosses, each with the chance of exactly 1 to 10 stars. What is left of 100% is the chance of no star (shown live under each table). A change that would push a table above 100% is refused with a red warning. The creature table starts at 9% one star / 1% two stars (about the normal game), the boss table at 0%. It applies to every creature, dungeons and camps included; creatures that already exist keep their stars; split creatures still get one star less.
• Growth with progress (creatures only) – Increase per boss defeated (+% of the chances for each boss defeated in the world) and Increase by days (+% every N days). Both add up and multiply the star chances; the no-star chance shrinks to make room and the total never passes 100%. A preview line shows the chances in force now, e.g. Now (day 40, 3 bosses defeated, chances x1.5): no star 55% · 1★ 30% · 2★ 15%. Bosses never grow: their table is exactly what the admin sets.
• Size per star for creatures and for bosses (0% = vanilla). Careful: big sizes can get creatures stuck in doors, caves and dungeons.
• When the table is on, Chance of each star and the minimum/maximum stars on the Difficulty page are greyed out ("controlled by the star table").

Creature infusions

A Creature infusions page (off by default), inspired by the idea of special creatures in creature/loot difficulty mods but written from scratch. Creatures may spawn with a trait (shown by colored level stars) and/or an elemental infusion (shown by a soft glow in the element's color); the name shows both in their colors (Name · Trait · Infusion).

• Traits: Aggressive (red, +30% damage, attacks more often), Quick (magenta, +40% speed), Regenerating (green, 2% health every 2 s), Vigilant (cyan, sees and hears 60% farther), Splitting (white, only on creatures with stars: when it dies it splits into two creatures with one star less that keep splitting, until the last ones have no star; split creatures drop nothing), Armored (blue, -35% damage taken), Vampiric (crimson, heals 30% of the damage it deals).
• Infusions: Fire, Frost, Lightning, Poison, Spirit – hits gain 35% of their damage as the element (with the game's own effects: burning, chill, shock, poison) and the creature takes half damage from its own element; Chaos – a random element on every hit, a bit stronger, and a little resistance to all of them.
• Trait chance, infusion chance, extra chance per star, bosses on/off (never Splitting), trait strength, infusion strength, extra health, extra loot (trophies are never multiplied), name tags, colored stars and glow – plus an on/off for every trait and every infusion.
• Each creature is rolled once, by the client that owns it, and the result is saved in the creature's own world data, so every player sees the same creature and nothing re-rolls after a restart. Turning the page (or a single trait) off makes the creatures act as in vanilla again at once.
• Performance: only creatures that rolled something are tracked; the damage, name and HUD hooks cost one lookup for every other creature and nothing at all while the page is off.

Skills

A Skills page (off by default): Custom skills switch, Skill loss on death (%, the game's normal difficulty uses 5%), Protected level (death never takes a skill below it) and, for every skill, Experience (%) and Loss on death (share of the general loss, 0% = never drops).

Dungeons

Admin control of how many rooms dungeons get. Everything is off (the game's own numbers) until the admin turns it on.

• The general numbers apply to every dungeon made of rooms, including ones from other mods. Camps are never changed.
• Only dungeons that have not been generated yet are affected. The game builds a dungeon once, when a player first loads its area (getting close is enough, going in is not needed), and saves its rooms in the world. From then on the dungeon is loaded from that save, also when you leave and come back. A dungeon already generated keeps its rooms, even with this option on. The only way this mod builds one again is Dungeon reset (below).
• Everybody must use the same numbers (they are synchronized). A player on a server without this mod stays vanilla.
• The first time each dungeon is built, the log shows its name and the numbers used.

Dungeon reset

Dungeons never reset in the vanilla game. Here the admin can make them refill themselves.

• Only the inside is rebuilt. The entrance, the terrain and everything built outside stay as they are.
• Each dungeon has its own timer, saved in the world. It starts the first time the mod sees the dungeon, so nothing resets the moment the option is turned on.
• A dungeon is never reset while a player is inside it. The reset is done by the game that owns the dungeon and stands within about 120 m of its entrance, so a dungeon nobody visits waits until somebody comes.
• The mod must also be installed on the server. A player on a server without the mod sees vanilla dungeons.
• Admin console command (host and server admins only; anybody else gets a refusal): ultimateqol_resetdungeons [range] resets the loaded dungeons within range (default 50 m, at most 200) now, ignoring the timers, and logs the result. Meant for testing.
• When the room count (see above) is on, a reset builds the dungeon with the current numbers. The reset uses the same seed as the first build, so the layout is the same only if the numbers have not changed since the dungeon was first built; if they changed, the reset gives the dungeon a new layout, and that layout is saved in the world.

⚠️ Experimental

This mod is still experimental and may contain bugs. Back up your world and your character, and turn features on a few at a time.

💬 Bugs and suggestions

Join the Discord: discord.gg/aMkN89Cuas

_{Powered by Ultimate QOL, installed automatically as a dependency. The F3 panel also shows its other options, all off by default.}