Elite Creatures Reborn

Creatures spawn with mutations — named, visible traits that change how a fight goes. A Mad greydwarf comes at you twice as fast on half the health. A Bloated draugr takes twice the killing and then explodes in your face. A Devouring wolf eats the boars around it and grows on what it eats until it comes looking for you.

Bosses take an aspect instead: one modifier, shown at the altar before you summon, that changes what kind of fight it is. A Twin Bonemass comes as two sharing one health pool; a Reflective Moder hurts you with every hit you land.

The world hardens as bosses fall: every boss's first defeat raises the world tier, and each tier makes stars and mutations more common everywhere. Tamed creatures pass their traits on: a newborn inherits a mutation and stars from its parents.

Rebuilt from scratch. This release covers mutations, stars, world tiers, breeding, loot and boss aspects; the rest returns over the next releases.

Mutations

Thirteen, one per creature by default, each with its own colour and its own name on the nameplate.

Gilded is the rarest, on purpose, and the only one in your favour: it runs, and pays well if you catch it.

Mutation power fields

mutation power in the rule file sets how strong each mutation is, in named fields rather than positional numbers. A field marked (enhanced) is multiplied by large star power on a large star; a cost field never is. Any mutation can also be switched off entirely with mutations enabled, regardless of its chance curves.

• Mad - move/attack speed multipliers (enhanced); health multiplier, its cost
• Bloated - health multiplier (enhanced); delay seconds from death to the blast, 2 by default; the blast goes off at the corpse's resting place and the corpse goes with it, dropping its loot there; damage (enhanced) and radius (enhanced) of the blast; blast effect/warning effect vanilla prefabs for the explosion and the smoke that rides the corpse until it blows, blast sound the vanilla sound it goes off with (elite effects <text> lists and plays the game's effect and sound prefabs)
• Cloaked - reveal distance metres to become visible (enhanced), 10 by default and 15 for trolls and lox through their creatures: entries; fade time seconds to phase, 0 snaps; fade margin extra metres before fading back out, to stop strobing
• Splintering - damage multiplier per split; max generations cascade-depth cap, 0 = unlimited; max descendants live-descendant cap, 0 = unlimited
• Leeching - regen percent max health per second, never enhanced; regen cap hard HP/s ceiling on a single tick, so a huge-health creature cannot out-heal a fight; combat cooldown seconds since its last damage taken before regen resumes; lifesteal percent of damage dealt returned as health (enhanced)
• Warding - reflect percent of the base hit returned (enhanced). The base hit is the health the hit actually took off the creature, after its resistances and armour, without the sneak-attack or stagger bonus; a hit that took no health reflects nothing. max reflect caps any one reflect at that percent of the attacker's maximum health, before the attacker's own armour (never enhanced; 0 removes the cap); knockback force on a melee attacker (enhanced)
• Plated - armour percent of incoming damage cut at full health, to 0 hurt (enhanced); max reduction hard ceiling on that percent, so enhancement cannot approach invulnerability; damage percent bonus at zero health, to 0 full (enhanced)
• Miasmic - cloud life seconds a dropped cloud lasts; cloud damage strength of the vanilla Poison a cloud or hit applies, not direct damage (enhanced); clouds per second while moving (enhanced); cloud radius metres; cloud effect/body effect vanilla prefabs for the trail cloud and the permanent worn poison look (cosmetic)
• Devouring - absorb health/absorb damage percent kept permanently from a victim (enhanced; an instant kill always lands the killing blow, so the full amount is kept); slow per 100 health, its cost; move base speed multiplier before the slow (0.5 halves it; not enhanced); player threshold fraction of a player's max health a hit must pass before it hunts players for good; devour cooldown seconds after a meal before it can eat again
• Thieving - it holds one item per star; max items is the fewest it holds whatever its stars (enhanced), and 8 is the most. It never takes equipped gear or more than one item per landed hit, and gives back everything it holds when it is killed
• Gilded - loot multiplier on its drops (enhanced), applied in every loot mode; bonus item the item prefab of its purse and bonus amount how many per star plus one (enhanced), never multiplied and capped at 100; flee distance metres within which it runs from a player it can see; glitter effect the vanilla prefab it glitters with. A tamed Gilded creature flees no one and drops ordinary loot
• Blinking - health multiplier, its cost; every seconds of combat between blinks, 0 turns them off; distance metres behind its target it lands; tell time seconds of warning at the spot before it arrives; blink effect/tell effect vanilla prefabs for the puff and the marker, tell sound the chime. None is enhanced
• Relentless - chase distance metres within which it keeps its target, 0 turns the hold off (not enhanced). Its cost is fixed: it is never faster than its base speed

Stars

Beyond vanilla's two, counted in fives on the nameplate: a small star is one, a large star is five. A mutation on a large star is stronger. Star chances and mutation chances are set per biome, so the Meadows stay the Meadows.

Bosses have their own star table, the same for the whole world, and nine in ten stay plain by default. A boss's stars are drawn under its health bar at the top of the screen.

World tiers

The world starts at tier 0 and goes up one tier the first time each boss is defeated - by anyone, in any order - so the seven bosses take it to tier 7. Killing a boss again changes nothing. Every rise is announced to everyone on the server.

Each tier makes stars and mutations more common in every biome while keeping each biome's character. At the default settings, by tier 7 the share of unstarred Meadows creatures falls from 73 in 100 to 44, five-star Plains creatures rise from 5 in 100 to 22, and every mutation chance doubles. Bosses are unaffected, and creatures already alive keep what they rolled - the tier decides what the next one rolls. A world that killed bosses before the mod was installed starts at that tier.

The inventory shows the tier on a plate with a globe under the weight ("3/7"); the armor and weight plates move up to make room, and every plate on that side names itself when hovered. Show world tier in the .cfg hides the plate for one player. With OpenKeep installed its trash plate joins the same column.

elite tier shows any player the current tier, what it is doing to the rolls, and which bosses count. The world tiers: block in the rule file has the off switch, the list of bosses that count (a modded boss counts once its defeat key is listed; elite tier shows every boss's key), and the star and mutation boost for each tier.

Breeding

Tamed creatures keep their traits and pass them on. A newborn - a pup, a piglet, a calf, or an egg and the chick that hatches from it - takes one of its parents' mutations whenever either has one, and a star count from 0 up to its stronger parent's, every count equally likely. Two plain parents have plain young and nothing new is ever rolled, so a strong line stays strong only if you keep the good ones.

Young creatures keep their traits when they grow up. Eggs keep theirs when carried, and say what they will hatch ("Hatches with 2 stars, Leeching") on their hover text and tooltip; an egg's stars are its quality, so eggs of different stars do not stack. A bred mutation behaves exactly as it does in the wild - a Miasmic pet still trails poison. The breeding: block in the rule file has an off switch and the mutation chance (100 by default).

Boss aspects

A boss never takes a mutation. It takes an aspect, which is in its name - "Enraged Eikthyr" - and on its altar before you commit: hover the offering bowl to see the current aspect, what it does, what it pays, and how long until it shifts. Every altar shifts to a different aspect each in-game hour (75 real seconds), so a group can wait for the fight it wants. The aspect on the bowl when you make the offering is the one you fight. A boss with no altar - the Queen, or a console spawn - rolls its aspect when it first appears.

The chances are weights: 30 for the plain fight and 10 for each of the thirteen aspects, so about one boss fight in five stays as the game ships it. Stormbound's lightning, Gravitic's slam and Colossal's shockwave are dodged, not blocked: a roll timed through them avoids them, and a raised shield does not.

Everything is in the aspects: block under bosses: in the rule file: the off switch, the shift interval (0 fixes each altar), the chance of each outcome, the loot multiplier, every aspect's numbers, and per boss the creatures Summoner calls and, optionally, which aspects that boss may roll.

Boss damage board

When a boss dies, everyone on the server sees who fought it: the boss's name and every player who hurt it, with the health each one took off it, most first, at the far left of the screen, halfway down, for a minute. It counts what the boss actually lost - after its resistances, without the overkill - and only players count, not tames or summons. Twin bosses are one fight and one board. On a Phantom boss's board, the health players took off its copies counts too, including copies killed early. Each player can turn it off (Boss damage board) or change how long it stays (Boss damage board seconds) in the .cfg.

Type /damage in chat, or damage in the F5 console, to see the latest board again for the full time, even if it has faded or you turned the board off. Any player can. A player who joined after the kill gets the board from the server, which remembers the latest one until it restarts.

Loot

What a kill drops is governed by a loot: block in the rule file. Four modes, chosen for the whole world: Vanilla (drops untouched), Scaled (quantities raised by the per-star drops line), Rolled (the creature's own drop table rolled once more per star, each roll independent — the default, so a hard fight has a real chance at the rare thing), and Curated (per-creature rules decide everything). An extra roll chance line and a max extra rolls cap tune Rolled; a global multiplier and a separate boss multiplier scale everything after the mode, and a boss's aspect multiplies its drops on top - even in Vanilla mode. A wild Gilded creature is the one mutation that pays: its loot multiplier and coin purse apply in every mode, Vanilla included. Trophies are never multiplied unless you switch that on — one kill, one trophy.

Per-creature rules in the same file, matched by prefab name, override any of it: a creature's own drops line, adjusted or removed rows of its drop table, extra drops with their own chance and amounts. elite reference writes creature_reference.yml with every creature the game knows — modded ones included — under its exact prefab name with its vanilla drop table; paste it and creature_rules.yml at an AI assistant, describe the economy you want, and drop the rules it writes back into the file.

Configuration

Two files, both written and documented on first run, both hot-reloaded while you play:

• BepInEx/config/gglasgow.elitecreaturesreborn.cfg — each player's display preferences: star colours and sizes, whether trait names show, nameplate distance, effect density, stolen-item icons, the boss damage board, the world tier plate, and a diagnostics switch.
• BepInEx/config/creature_rules.yml — the rules: star chances, star power, mutation chances and strength per biome and per creature, a mutations enabled switch that turns any mutation off everywhere, and the boss stars and aspects, world tiers, breeding, loot and respawning blocks, each with its own off switch.

A server binds connected players to its rule file. Display preferences stay with each player and are never locked.

A creature can have mutation rules of its own. An entry under creatures: in the rule file, matched by prefab name, takes mutation chance, mutation chances and mutation power exactly as a biome block does. They change that creature only, in whatever biome it is in, and everything they do not name still comes from the biome. This ends Cloaked mosquitoes and leaves the rest of the Plains alone:

creatures:
  - match: Deathsquito
    mutation chances:
      Cloaked: [0]

mutation power changes only the fields it names. mutation chances replaces the named mutation's curve. mutation chance replaces the creature's default curve, but any mutation with its own curve in the biome (or in defaults, like Devouring and Gilded) keeps it, so set that mutation to [0] under mutation chances to stop it. mutations enabled still wins, the world tier still raises the chances, and bosses ignore these entries. Two entries for the same creature merge: later keys win and drop rows add up. A new rule file ships with three: Troll and Lox raise Cloaked's reveal distance to 15, and Hatchling (the drake) sets Cloaked to [0], so drakes are never Cloaked.

Console commands

Install

With a mod manager, install it. By hand, drop EliteCreaturesReborn.dll into BepInEx/plugins. Requires BepInEx. On a server, install it on the server and on every client.

Multiplayer

Creature state travels in the world data the game already shares, so every player sees the same creature with the same traits. Install it on the dedicated server as well as the clients.

Files

• plugins/EliteCreaturesReborn.dll — the mod, a single merged assembly
• config/gglasgow.elitecreaturesreborn.cfg — display preferences, per player
• config/creature_rules.yml — creature rules

Building

.NET SDK 8, with Valheim installed:

dotnet build EliteCreaturesReborn/EliteCreaturesReborn.csproj -c Release

Override -p:GamePath=..., -p:BepInExCore=... or -p:ModLibsPath=... if your layout differs. The build merges the shared libraries into one DLL and writes it to dist/.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0). You are free to use, study, share and modify it, and anything you distribute that is built from it must carry the same freedoms and be released under the same licence, with source. See the LICENSE file for the full terms.

Changelog

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.