Adaptive Creature Scaling

Adaptive Creature Scaling fixes Valheim enemies at the difficulty intended for maximum-upgrade equipment. It does not reduce enemy scaling for lower-geared players; those players must improve their equipment before fighting the same enemies comfortably.

Default behavior

• Every hostile creature permanently uses the detected maximum-upgrade difficulty tier.
• Creatures have 3x maximum health and deal 2x damage by default.
• Scaling does not change when stronger or weaker players approach or leave.
• A monster keeps the same health percentage when its scaled maximum is initialized or recalculated after a server configuration change.
• Bosses scale by default. Tamed creatures and players never scale.
• Vanilla star-level and multiplayer difficulty modifiers remain active; this mod adds its fixed maximum-equipment scaling on top of them.

When Potential Draught is installed, the mod automatically reads its live Forge upgrade cap. The maximumitemquality <quality> command therefore changes both the upgrade ceiling and creature tier without rebuilding either mod. If Potential Draught is absent or automatic detection is disabled, MaximumItemQuality is used as the fallback.

The default 3x-health and 2x-damage values are calibrated at reference quality 25. A cap above 25 extrapolates that same per-level curve instead of keeping the old fixed multipliers. For example, with baseline quality 4, a cap of 50 produces about 5.38x health and 3.19x damage. Player equipment quality is deliberately not inspected.

Starred bosses

Every naturally spawned unstarred boss receives one persistent roll:

• 10% chance to become a one-star boss
• 2% chance to become a two-star boss
• 88% chance to remain unstarred

The two-star roll is evaluated first. Boss levels already assigned by developer commands, another mod, or saved data are preserved. Vanilla star bonuses stack with this mod's fixed creature multipliers, so starred bosses are substantially more dangerous.

Server-synchronized configuration

• BaselineItemQuality = 4
• AutoDetectUpgradeCap = true
• MaximumItemQuality = 25 (fallback)
• ReferenceItemQuality = 25
• MaximumHealthMultiplier = 3
• MaximumDamageMultiplier = 2
• ScaleBosses = true
• Boss Stars.Enabled = true
• Boss Stars.OneStarChancePercent = 10
• Boss Stars.TwoStarChancePercent = 2

Jotunn synchronizes these values from the server. Install the same mod version on the server and every client.

Installation

1. Install BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2350 or newer.
2. Install Jotunn 2.30.0 on the server and every client.
3. Put AdaptiveCreatureScaling.dll in BepInEx/plugins/AdaptiveCreatureScaling/ everywhere.

Changelog

1.3.1

• Reads Potential Draught's live synchronized MaximumItemQuality value.
• Creature scaling now reacts automatically to the maximumitemquality server command.

1.3.0

• Automatically detects Potential Draught's compiled Forge upgrade cap when installed.
• Keeps MaximumItemQuality as a manual fallback when detection is unavailable or disabled.
• Extrapolates the quality-25 health and damage curve for higher upgrade caps instead of keeping the multipliers fixed.
• Recalculates already loaded owned creatures when the effective cap changes.

1.2.1

• Fixed a startup exception caused by registering the default BepInEx configuration as a Jotunn custom configuration.
• The configuration continues to synchronize automatically through Jotunn's built-in default-mod-config handling.

1.2.0

• Added a persistent one-time star roll for naturally spawned bosses.
• Bosses have a configurable 10% one-star chance and 2% two-star chance by default.
• Preserves boss levels assigned by developer commands, other mods, or existing save data.
• Vanilla boss-star bonuses stack with the fixed maximum-quality health and damage scaling.

1.1.0

• Replaced nearby-player adaptive scaling with a permanent maximum-quality tier.
• Every hostile creature now uses the quality-25 health and damage multipliers regardless of nearby player equipment.
• Removed player equipment reporting and the player-detection radius setting.

1.0.0

• Added equipment-quality-aware creature health and damage scaling.
• Added strongest-nearby-player selection for multiplayer creature health.
• Added server-synchronized progression ceiling, multipliers, radius, and boss toggle.
• Preserved vanilla balance through item quality 4 and capped scaling at quality 25.