DualWieldCore

Two weapons. One fighting style. A Valheim mod by Ketanol.

Combine one-handed swords, axes, knives and clubs, swap your main hand during exploration, and improve your Dual Wield skill through combat.

How to use

1. Equip a supported one-handed weapon.
2. Equip a second supported weapon. It goes into your offhand.
3. Attack with the normal primary and secondary attack controls.
4. Press Left Alt to swap hands. One press performs one swap.

Press R (the default holster key) to put the weapons away or draw them again. Two weapons on the back form a cross. A sword and knife keep their normal back and belt positions, regardless of hand order; two knives use opposite sides of the belt.

Unequip your shield before forming a pair. Equipping a shield, tool, bow or two-handed weapon returns to the game's normal equipment behavior. Removing the main-hand weapon moves the remaining offhand weapon to the main hand.

Hand swapping is unavailable during an attack, dodge, cutscene or text/menu input. The shortcut can be changed in the configuration.

Features

• Mixed or matching one-handed weapons, using existing Valheim dual-weapon animations.
• Both weapons contribute their damage, including their own quality upgrades and elemental damage types.
• Configurable combined damage, stamina/eitr cost and skill progression.
• Offhand durability consumption on hits; follows the world's durability modifier.
• Dual Wield skill with a dedicated icon, English/Russian localization and normal character saving.
• Crossed back mounts and separate belt positions for holstered weapons.
• ServerSync configuration support, with server-controlled combat settings.

Default balance

Combined base damage:

(main-hand damage + offhand damage) × 0.60 × (1 + 0.25 × skill level / 100)

These values are before the usual weapon skill, attack, armor and other game modifiers. Base stamina/eitr cost is 75% of the sum of both corresponding attacks' costs. Primary and secondary attacks are calculated separately.

Installation

Install with a Thunderstore-compatible mod manager. BepInExPack Valheim is the only package dependency.

For manual installation, copy BepInEx/plugins/DualWieldCore/DualWieldCore.dll into your BepInEx plugins directory.

Install the same mod version on participating clients. Install it on the server as well to distribute and lock common combat settings. No separate ServerSync package is needed.

The configuration is created after the first launch:

BepInEx/config/Ketanol.DualWieldCore.cfg

Edit the config while the game is closed, or use an installed BepInEx configuration manager. Auto follows the game language, with English as the fallback. Skill loss follows Valheim's world settings.

Weapon behavior and compatibility

Attacks use the main hand's reach, attack geometry, knockback, backstab bonus and special hit effects. The offhand contributes damage and resource cost. Swap hands to change which weapon supplies those attack properties.

Spears, harpoons, bows, staves, tools, existing paired weapons, and weapons whose primary or secondary attack is not a normal melee swing are excluded. Other mods' custom item effects and inventory systems require their own compatibility testing.

Remove other dual-wield mods before installation. DualWieldCore declares a conflict with RustyMods' DualWielder because both change the same equipment slots.

See VALIDATION.md in the package for the exact tested game version and limits of verification.

Development

Developed with AI assistance. See IMPLEMENTATION.md for the equipment/combat design and acknowledged technical influences, and VALIDATION.md for verification limits.

Credits

Created by Ketanol. Inspired by the gameplay concept of DualWielder by RustyMods, with a new implementation and original icon. ServerSync by Tykea is included under MIT-0. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for details.