Combat Adjustments — Shield Rework

BepInEx plugin implementing the shield stagger / durability / tower block-armor rework described in docs/shield-rework-requirements.md.

What it does

Tower grants are seeded from post-block leftover against each shield's native medium hit (normalized to Flametal +70), not block armor alone. Round/buckler grants use block-armor ratios from their anchors, then snap to the nearest 5. Every grant is overridable in BepInEx/config (client) or config/bepinex (dedicated server).

Two-handed melee

• Greatswords, battleaxes, and sledges receive Balanced hyper armor: it begins when the real attack animation begins and ends after that swing's hit event. During that window stagger gain is blocked. Incoming damage and knockback are unchanged. Tooltips show orange Hyper-armor.
• Greatsword primary-chain swings deal 1.5x stagger.
• Greatswords, battleaxes, and sledges deal +10% damage (bonus rounded down per damage type; reflected on weapon tooltips). Atgeirs are unchanged.
• Two-handed club ground slams (Stagbreaker, Iron Sledge, Demolisher) grant adrenaline per enemy hit, matching swing attacks (vanilla pays area attacks once per slam).

Feasts

Biome feasts unlock after the previous biome boss instead of that biome's own boss (Plains after Moder, not Yagluth). Sailor's Bounty still needs a serpent. See docs/feasts.md.

Every feast also gains extra food stats (configurable; defaults below). Tooltips and already-eaten feasts pick up the new numbers.

Boss unlocks are not configurable.

The Deep North eitr bonus started as an extrapolation and was confirmed against an in-game dump on 1.0.7 (vanilla 43). The dump's FOODS section prints each feast's vanilla values beside its current ones — see docs/feasts.md.

Sailing

Calm wind (0–60%) keeps the vanilla intensity ramp (0.287 → 0.7). Above 60% the factor keeps climbing linearly to 2.0 at full storm. Ocean ThunderStorm chance is raised from ~7% to 21%. See docs/sailing.md.

Difficulty scaling

Effective enemy HP keeps scaling with nearby players past vanilla’s 5-player cap (+30% per extra player). Enemy damage dealt stays capped at 5. Toggle with Difficulty.EnableUncapHealthScaling (default true). See docs/boss-hp-scaling.md.

Install

1. Requires BepInEx 5 for Valheim.

2. Requires MushroomSync.dll, the shared server-authoritative sync plugin. This mod declares a [BepInDependency] on it and will not load without it.

3. Build: dotnet build src/CombatAdjustments.ShieldRework -c Release — this also builds MushroomSync, which it references.

4. Copy both into Valheim/BepInEx/plugins/:

   • src/CombatAdjustments.ShieldRework/bin/Release/CombatAdjustments.ShieldRework.dll
   • MushroomSync/bin/Release/MushroomSync.dll

   Or take the release's MushroomMods-plugins.zip, which carries both.

5. Launch once to generate BepInEx/config/Abortipus.CombatAdjustments.ShieldRework.cfg (or place server settings in config/bepinex/Abortipus.CombatAdjustments.ShieldRework.cfg).

Config

Config is read from both locations (game root relative):

On clients, if both files exist, config/bepinex/ values overlay the client file (overlay wins). Dedicated servers (-batchmode) only use config/bepinex/ unless that file is missing.

• General.EnableStaggerGrant / EnableTowerArmorBonus / EnableDurabilityBonus
• General.SyncConfigInMultiplayer (default true on host/server) — pushes settings to joining clients at runtime without overwriting their local .cfg
• Tooltip.StaggerColorHex (default #E85AC8)
• StaggerGrants.<PrefabName> — per-shield max-quality grant. Lower★ add +1 (wood–iron), +2 (silver/serpent–carapace), or +3 (flametal) for towers/rounds; bucklers always +1 / ★. GrantTableVersion re-seeds max values when the designed table changes.
• Two-Handed Combat.Enable / GreatswordPrimaryStaggerMultiplier / AreaAdrenalinePerEnemy
• Feasts.EnableStatBonuses / HealthBonus / StaminaBonus / SailorsHealthBonus / SailorsStaminaBonus / MistlandsEitrBonus / AshlandsEitrBonus / DeepNorthEitrBonus. Unlock bosses are hardcoded.
• Diagnostics.DumpObjectDb (default false) — write every ObjectDB item prefab, its item type, shield and food stats, and the world's global keys to CombatAdjustments.ShieldRework.objectdb-dump.txt beside this config, once, on the next world load. cadump in the console does the same without a restart. Local only: never sent to or accepted from a host.
• Sailing.EnableWindCurve / CalmForceFactor / KneeForceFactor / MaxForceFactor / CalmWindCeiling — calm matches vanilla to 60%, then storms ramp to MaxForceFactor (see docs/sailing.md).
• Sailing.EnableOceanStormChance / OceanThunderStormChance — Ocean ThunderStorm target chance (default 21%, vanilla ~7%).
• Difficulty.EnableUncapHealthScaling — keep effective enemy HP scaling past 5 nearby players (default true). Enemy damage stays capped.
• Forge of Potential.EnableIntendedOdds (default true) — restore 65% success / 25% downgrade / 10% break. Vanilla idols make every failure destroy; turn off when the game ships a real fix.

Multiplayer config sync

When General.SyncConfigInMultiplayer is true on the host or dedicated server:

• The server sends its effective settings to each client on join (and again when the host changes config while clients are connected).
• Clients use those values for gameplay and tooltips at runtime; their local BepInEx/config/*.cfg is not modified.
• Clients can opt out locally with SyncConfigInMultiplayer = false (falls back to local config).
• Host and clients must use the same mod version; a mismatch shows a warning and keeps local config.

Install the mod on the server and every client. Only the server/host .cfg needs to be tuned for gameplay balance.

Console

No devcommands required.

Implementation notes

• Stagger: Harmony postfix on Character.GetStaggerTreshold adds the equipped shield grant. UpdateStagger is replaced for players so drain uses the full threshold (vanilla drains maxHP * factor / 5 and would ignore the grant).
• Equip/unequip (and R) preserves stagger % across the grant change so hide/draw cannot dump the bar.
• Armor/durability mutate ItemDrop shared data when ObjectDB loads, from cached vanilla originals so re-entry is idempotent.
• Feast food stats mutate the same shared data. Spice unlocks rewrite Bog Witch m_requiredGlobalKey; Black Forest / Swamp recipes are extra-gated because they share Woodland Herb Blend with Meadows.
• Sailing: Harmony prefix on Ship.GetSailForce swaps the intensity factor for the calm/storm curve when Sailing.EnableWindCurve is on. Ocean ThunderStorm weight is rewritten in EnvMan.InitializeBiomeEnvSetup to hit OceanThunderStormChance.
• Difficulty: Harmony postfix on Game.GetDifficultyDamageScaleEnemy recounts nearby players without the 5-player clamp when Difficulty.EnableUncapHealthScaling is on. Damage scaling is unchanged.
• Forge of Potential: ObjectDB sets every idol’s m_breakChance to 0.1 when Forge of Potential.EnableIntendedOdds is on (vanilla prefabs use 1.0, so every fail destroys). Quality-1 refinements force a break on failure so the vanilla quality-0 downgrade path never runs. See docs/forge-of-potential.md.
• Two-handed +10% damage must take HitData.DamageTypes by ref. It is a struct; the first implementation mutated a copy, so tooltips and hits stayed at vanilla numbers (iron sledge 55).