Elite Creatures Reborn

Creatures spawn with more stars and mutations, traits that change how a fight goes; bosses take an aspect instead.

Features

• Mutations: nineteen, shown on the nameplate, such as Mad, Bloated, Frostbound and Cloning.
• Difficulty: Easy to Extreme; new biomes start gentle, cleared ones keep hardening.
• Stars: beyond vanilla's two, up to eight on Extreme.
• Boss aspects: one per fight (Twin, Nightfall, Brutal and fifteen more), shown at the altar with the boss's stars.
• World tiers: each boss's first defeat makes stars and mutations more common.
• Breeding: tamed creatures pass a mutation and stars to their young.
• Loot: four drop modes and drop rules per creature.
• Boss damage board: who hurt the boss and how much.
• Death recap: F10 replays the seconds before each death, hit by hit.
• Respawning: cleared camps, dungeons and dungeon chests can refill (off by default).
• Works with PackPanel, GrindstoneSkills' Husbandry and Elite Creatures Pack.

Install

Needed on the server and every client. Install with r2modman or the Thunderstore app, or put EliteCreaturesReborn.dll in BepInEx/plugins. Remove other creature star mods first; their configs are not read.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/gglasgow.elitecreaturesreborn.cfg (each player's own settings) and BepInEx/config/creature_rules.yml (the rules). Both apply without a restart; the server's rules bind every player. Console: elite tier, damage and deaths for everyone, the other elite commands for admins. In detail: reference.

Links

Bugs and ideas: https://github.com/geraldjglasgow/ValheimMods/issues (name the mod and version). Licence: GPL-3.0.

Shout outs

• The BepInEx and Harmony teams, for the tools every Valheim mod stands on.
• Iron Gate Studio, for Valheim.
• Thunderstore, for hosting this page.
• The Valheim modding community, for the hard work and dedication that keeps enhancing an already great game.
• Every modder who keeps their mods open source so others can collaborate, learn and build on them.

Changelog

3.27.0

• Hel's Arena moves outdoors: 130 m across, eight archways, a cavern roof, and a black lake that kills.
• Hel's Arena: starts at your gear's biome, five waves per biome ending in its boss; big creatures come late and few.
• Hel's Arena: kills pay souls, spent at Hel's Anvil to mend gear; a fallen boss may leave healing meads.
• Hel's Arena: F when everyone is ready starts the next wave; E on Hel calls it early.
• Hel's Arena: three Bat-fiends guard it on the first visit and drop runes.
• Fixed: Oozers no longer roll Splintering.
• Update the server and every client together.

3.26.0

• Hel's Arena: a short break between waves; creatures come out of portals in the archways, one at a time.
• Hel's Arena: dying in the hall costs no skill levels.
• Hel's Arena: four broken pillars and four low walls give cover.
• Hel's Arena: rewards by how far you get: Forge of Potential idols, coins, bonus skill XP, and runes and essence with EliteCrafting.
• Horde (Horde, section 13 - Horde, off by default): more creatures in the wild, each weaker; the extra creatures pay no extra loot.
• Compendium: the game's compendium has pages on difficulty, stars, mutations and boss aspects, with your server's numbers (Compendium pages).
• elite inspect works for every player, not only admins.
• Update the server and every client together.

3.25.0

• Hel's Arena (Arena, section 12 - Arena, off by default): build Helgrind, Hel's gate, to enter her hall and fight endless waves, a boss every tenth. Subject to change without warning.
• Commands: elite arena (in and out) and elite arena stop.
• Eikthyr's boss reward is 2-4 Flint instead of 20-40 Coins.
• Boss rewards pay a full share to every player within 100 m of the boss; the altar says "per player".
• Death recap: the video is off by default (Record deaths); the hit list stays. Existing configs keep their value.
• Update the server and every client together.

3.24.0

• Bosses: each defeat makes that boss likelier to have stars next time (harder each kill); the altar shows "Defeated N times".
• Bosses drop their biome's material, one roll plus one per star (rewards); the altar shows what the fight pays.
• Flamebound: creatures burn with a flame aura; their burning ground is 2 m wide and lasts 7 seconds.
• Wiki: how the game's World Difficulty stacks with this mod.

3.23.0

• Raids: the Raiders Chest (Raiders Chest, section 11 - Raids). Fill it with gold to call a raid on your base; kill every raider to win the gold back with more.
• Raiders hunt players first, then break in to the base's chests and crafting stations.
• Commands: elite raid start <coins> [tier] and elite raid stop.
• Elite Creatures Pack's custom creatures can roll mutations and boss aspects.
• Update the server and every client together.

3.22.0

• New mutation Flamebound: leaves burning ground that sets you on fire.
• New mutations, off by default (mutations enabled): Piercing ignores 15% of your armour, Howling calls up to 4 nearby creatures, Binding roots you briefly.
• Mending heals 0.2% of the boss's current health a second (was 0.3% of its maximum).
• Mending: existing rule files keep their regen value, now a share of current health.
• Update the server and every client together.

3.21.0

• New boss aspect: Echoing, a white ghost repeating the boss's every move and blow 15 s later; x1.3 loot.
• Existing rule files roll Echoing too; set Echoing: 0 under chances: to leave it out.
• Boss hints no longer point to a place already explored on your map.
• A crossbow put away loaded is still loaded when drawn again.
• Fixed: the death recap key no longer stops working after Alt + Tab.
• Update the server and every client together.

3.20.0

• Boss stars add only trophies; other boss drops are no longer multiplied. Remove drops under bosses: star power:.
• Nightfall tornadoes come every 18-28 s, was 10-20 (new rule files; edit every in yours).
• Thieving: an item the creature cannot keep comes back to you.
• Devouring's player threshold uses the toughest player nearby, also on dedicated servers.
• Death recap: Video frames per second defaults to 10, was 15.
• Fixed: dungeon loot refilled dungeon chests that still had items in them.
• Less lag in busy fights and on busy servers.
• Update the server and every client together.

3.19.0

• Boss hints: when Bonemass, Moder, Yagluth or the Elder dies, players nearby are pointed to the Bog Witch, the ancient forge, Haldor or Hildir (Boss hints).
• Fixed: with respawning on, new dungeons and camps get their creatures at once.
• Fixed: respawn and dungeon loot days are world days (each counted as 48 before).

3.18.2

• Fixed: respawning camps no longer refills dungeons; dungeons and dungeon loot now work.
• Respawn settings described more clearly in a new rule file and on the wiki.

3.18.1

• Deathsquitos are never Cloaked, whatever the rule file says; one a world saved Cloaked loads without it.

3.18.0

• Portalbound: Bonemass rolls it too, its slime ball arcing out of a portal above you; only the Elder and Bonemass get it.
• Thieving never steals the Wishbone.

3.17.0

• New creature stars: false rule: creatures keep the game's or another mod's stars, and still mutate.
• stars: false under bosses: keeps a boss's game level instead of resetting it to 1.
• Bosses drop one more trophy for each player within 100 m.
• elite tier, elite inspect and the death recap show kept levels.
• Fixed: Epic Loot's boss trophy mode no longer replaces the boss trophy count.
• Less work every frame; faster loading, the config file is written once instead of once per setting.

3.16.0

• New mutations: Frostbound (ice trail, chilling aura), Mudbound (mud trail), Corrodent (ruins armour) and Cloning (hides behind a decoy).
• New boss aspects: Nightfall (storming midnight, hunting tornadoes) and Brutal (heavy blows throw players far).
• Death recap: Recap key (F10) or /deaths replays your last seconds and every hit.
• Altars show the boss's stars before the offering.
• Phantom's boss hides among its copies; Bountiful doubles boss trophies; Tethered pairs share one damage board.
• New rule files: altars shift every 15 s (shift seconds); stars hit softer; bats are never Mad or Cloaked.
• Fixed: Stormbound no longer strikes players in nearby dungeons.

3.15.0

• New mutations: Juggernaut (never staggers) and Screecher (a heavy hit makes it shriek and deafen nearby players).
• New boss aspects: Tethered (two linked bosses), Bountiful (two extra aspects) and Portalbound (the Elder's vines come through a portal).
• Bosses drop one trophy per star plus one, whatever the loot settings.
• Gilded is half as common; Gilded and Relentless never roll on large creatures.
• Devouring eats only creatures with no more health than its own, never bosses or large creatures.
• Bloated explodes 1.5 seconds after death.

3.14.0

• New difficulty: line at the top of the rule file: Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard or Extreme.
• On a difficulty, the biome you enter starts gentle and cleared biomes harden with every later boss.
• Extreme allows up to 8 stars; star power lines have nine entries.
• New rule files start on Medium; existing files keep today's rules (Custom).
• elite tier shows the difficulty and what it gives the biome you stand in.

3.13.4

• A new install's rule file has short comments; the full reference is linked at its top.
• Shorter store page; the reference (mutations, aspects, rule fields, commands) is on GitHub.

3.13.3

• Warding no longer draws particles: a reflect is marked by sound alone, the Staff of Protection's shield at 30% volume.
• The Reflective boss aspect's tell changes the same way.
• Devouring no longer draws a burst when it eats; the sound is unchanged.

3.13.2

• The world tier boxes show only with PackPanel; without it the inventory and HUD stay as the game draws them.

3.13.1

• Fixed: the inventory broke with Jewelcrafting, CurrencyPocket, OttoPay, TrashItems or Quick Stack Store Sort Trash Restock installed.
• Those mods' boxes join the stat column; TrashItems' trash can takes dragged stacks there.
• OpenKeep 1.8.0 to 1.9.0 and PackPanel 0.1.0 to 0.2.0 have the same column: update them too.

3.13.0

• Devouring eats only creatures with at most 125% of its current health (max prey health, 0 lifts the limit).
• Devouring eats one creature per star, at least one (min meals), then is sated and acts like its kind.
• A devourer's nameplate shows what it ate (Show devoured creatures, Devoured creature icon size); so does elite inspect.
• The devour flash is a fifth of its size, and its screen shake is felt only close by.
• Bloated's fuse is 1.7 seconds; an older creature_rules.yml keeps its own delay: 2.0.

3.12.0

• New box with the world tier under the minimap (Show world tier under minimap).
• The tier reads as one number ("3"); hovering it shows the total.
• The inventory's stat plates are square boxes in a column.
• Thieving steals only with melee hits, never on a parry or dodge, and with PackPanel never from its slots.
• On a grid wider than eight, thieves no longer spare the top-row cells right of the hotbar.
• Elite Creatures Pack: a sleeping mimic hides its traits; the kraken never rolls Twin or Phantom.
• Warding's max reflect now caps everything reflected to you per second, not per hit.
• Rule changes reach loaded creatures' mutations at once.

3.11.0

• elite purge 30 removes marked creatures within 30 m only; without a number it still removes every loaded one.

3.10.0

• With GrindstoneSkills 0.7.0 or later, Husbandry's "Better offspring" can give a newborn one more star.

3.9.1

• Starred creatures wear the game's own one-star and two-star looks again (a two-star Neck is purple).

3.9.0

• New mutations: Gilded (rare, flees, pays triple loot), Blinking (reappears behind you), Relentless (follows you to 150 m).
• New boss aspects: Adaptive, Fixated, Stormbound, Gravitic and Colossal; one fight in five stays plain.
• Mutation rules per creature under creatures:; two entries for one creature merge.
• Cloaked shows at 10 m (was 6), at 15 m on trolls and lox, and never on drakes.
• Warding reflects only damage taken, at most max reflect (7.5%) of your health; smaller flashes.
• Bloated: a two-second fuse; the corpse vanishes in a smaller blast and drops its loot there.
• Thieving carries one item per star; max items is the minimum, 8 the most.
• Tamed Splintering creatures split into tamed copies.
• Boss damage board moved left; /damage shows it again; damage to Phantom copies counts.
• Fixed: smoke left after a Bloated blast, effects drawn twice, and stolen goods duplicated at dawn.
• Update the server and every player. An older rule file keeps its old numbers until you delete it.
• Gilded ignores mutation chance: stop it with mutations enabled or mutation chances.

3.8.0

• Phantom splits off one copy per player online at 66% and 33% health (split at, per player, health per tier).
• An older rule file's Phantom copies and health are ignored; replace that line to tune it.
• Fixed: Bloated, Warding, Devouring, Thieving, Summoner and Phantom effects drew nothing; Bloated's blast has a sound (blast sound).
• World tier plate in the inventory under the weight (Show world tier).
• Update the server and every player.

3.7.1

• Fixed: with mods that raise creature health (such as Path of Valheim), creatures spawned with 10-15% health.

3.7.0

• Boss damage board: when a boss dies, everyone sees who hurt it and how much.
• Boss damage board and Boss damage board seconds in the .cfg.
• Update the server and every player.

3.6.1

• Fixed: admins on a dedicated server's adminlist.txt were refused the elite admin commands.
• A refusal names the ID to add to adminlist.txt, which is read again within 10 seconds.
• A mistyped elite subcommand lists the subcommands.
• Update the server and every player.

3.6.0

• World tiers: each boss's first defeat makes stars and mutations more common; bosses are unaffected.
• A world that defeated bosses before starts at that tier. elite tier shows it to any player.
• Breeding: young take a parent's mutation and up to the stronger parent's stars, and keep them when grown.
• Eggs keep their traits, say what they will hatch, and stack only with eggs of the same stars.
• elite inspect shows the tier a creature rolled at.
• New world tiers: and breeding: blocks; an older rule file takes their defaults.

3.5.0

• Boss aspects: Reflective, Shielded, Mending, Summoner, Elementalist, Enraged, Twin or Phantom, or a plain fight.
• Hover the altar's offering bowl to see the aspect; it shifts every in-game hour.
• Harder aspects multiply the boss's loot, in Vanilla loot mode too.
• Boss stars show under the boss health bar.
• New aspects: block under bosses:; stars: false now turns off only boss stars.
• elite spawn Bonemass 2 Twin spawns a boss with an aspect; elite inspect reports it.

3.4.0

• Loot modes in a new loot: block: Vanilla, Scaled, Rolled (default) or Curated.
• extra roll chance, max extra rolls, global multiplier and boss multiplier.
• Trophies are multiplied only with multiply trophies.
• Loot rules per creature under creatures:: drops, drop overrides and extra drops.
• elite reference writes creature_reference.yml: every creature with its drop table.
• Drops added by other loot mods pass through untouched.

3.3.0

• Devouring toned down: devour cooldown 60 (was 10), absorb health 50 and absorb damage 25 (were 100).
• New Devouring move field: its base speed.
• An older rule file keeps the old Devouring numbers; edit that line or delete it.
• Fixed: joining a busy server no longer refuses a correct client.

3.2.0

• New mutation, Thieving: it steals an unequipped stack when it hits and drops everything when it dies.
• A message names what was stolen, and its nameplate shows it.
• Stolen items are never multiplied or destroyed; elite purge drops them too.
• max items sets how many it carries (1 by default, 8 at most).

3.1.0

• New mutations enabled switch turns any mutation off everywhere.
• Shorter rule file comments; the mutation power field reference moved to the README.
• Leeching weaker: regen 0.5% (was 2%), pausing after damage (combat cooldown), capped by regen cap; lifesteal 10% (was 30%).
• Plated's armour is now a damage reduction percent, capped by max reduction; revisit a custom value.
• large star power defaults to 1 (was 2), and five-star health is lower.
• Fewer 4 and 5 star creatures in the Ash Lands and Deep North.
• Fixed: starred and Mad creatures' attacks sped up out of control.

3.0.0

• Rebuilt from scratch: not an update to earlier versions, and none of the old code remains.
• Nine mutations: Mad, Bloated, Cloaked, Splintering, Leeching, Warding, Plated, Miasmic and Devouring.
• Stars beyond vanilla's two, counted in fives on the nameplate.
• A settings file and a YAML rule file, both hot reloaded; chances and strength set per biome.
• Servers can bind connected players to their rules; every player sees the same creature.
• Console: elite spawn, elite inspect, elite purge, elite effects.