Gatling

Formerly MachineArbalest. The plugin ID (com.oddhatter.machinearbalest) is unchanged, so existing settings carry over.

Turns Valheim's crossbows, bows and elemental staffs (Dundr, Staff of Embers, Staff of Frost, Staff of Fracturing) into automatic weapons. Equip one, hold primary attack, and it keeps firing until you release, swap weapons, run out of ammo, die, or open a menu. Each weapon type has its own on/off toggle and fire rate: crossbows 10/s, bows 5/s, staffs about 3/s by default. Arrows always fly as if fully drawn.

Every shot goes through Valheim's own Attack code, so ammo use, projectile, damage, skill gain, status effects, durability, sounds/effects, recoil and multiplayer sync stay vanilla.

Standalone. Does not depend on or modify FastArbalest; works alongside it.

Config (BepInEx/config/com.oddhatter.machinearbalest.cfg)

Settings apply live, with no restart needed. The mod watches its .cfg file and reloads about 0.5 s after it is saved, whether you edit it in a text editor or r2modman's config editor. Changes made in ConfigurationManager (F1) also apply immediately.

How it works

Based on decompiling assembly_valheim.dll (Valheim 1.0.21) and FastArbalest.dll 1.0.1.

• Vanilla crossbow cycle: Player.PlayerAttackInput (each physics step) → Humanoid.StartAttack → Attack.Start (requires the weapon to be loaded) → animation event → Attack.OnAttackTrigger (ammo, projectile, recoil, ResetLoadedWeapon) → a Reload minor action of GetWeaponLoadingTime() seconds → loaded again. Vanilla already re-fires while the button is held; the attack animation and the reload are what limit the rate. FastArbalest shortens only the reload (postfix on GetWeaponLoadingTime).
• Machine mode: a Harmony prefix on Player.PlayerAttackInput replaces vanilla's crossbow input handling. It keeps the weapon loaded and fires on a fixed schedule with Attack.StartWithoutAnimation, which runs the real OnAttackTrigger. It checks the same gates vanilla does (dodging, stagger, knockback, minor actions, stamina, eitr, ammo). There is one state block for the local player and no coroutines, so loops can't stack.
• "Held" is Character.m_attackHold, which Valheim already forces false while a menu, chat, console, inventory, map, store or radial menu has focus.
• No body animation plays in machine mode (the vanilla one is longer than one shot interval). Sounds, trigger/start effects and recoil still play every shot.
• Bows and staffs always use machine mode. Bow shots pass a full draw to StartWithoutAnimation, because accuracy, speed and damage scale with draw. Looping attacks (Staff of Frost) fire one cast per shot.
• Multi-volley weapons: the next shot waits until the current shot's volleys have all fired, so none are cut off. Stamina, eitr and health costs follow the weapon's own rules (per shot, or per volley for weapons that charge per burst).
• Costs: many weapons charge nothing per attack. Their cost is the reload drain (crossbows) or the draw drain (bows, some staffs), paid per second. Machine mode skips both, so each shot is charged one full reload's or draw's worth of stamina and eitr on top of the attack cost.

Build

Requires the .NET SDK (8+). References the installed game and the r2modman profile's BepInEx; override paths with -p:ValheimDir=... -p:ProfileDir=....

dotnet build -c Release                 # → bin/Release/Gatling.dll
dotnet build -c Release -p:Deploy=true  # also copies into <profile>/BepInEx/plugins/Oddhatter-Gatling/
dotnet build -c Release -p:Package=true # → dist/Oddhatter-Gatling-<version>.zip (r2modman: Settings → Import local mod)

Bump the version in three places: MachineArbalest.csproj <Version>, manifest.json, and MachineArbalestPlugin.Version.

Install

Install with r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager; they also install BepInExPack_Valheim, which this mod needs. Manual install: put Gatling.dll in BepInEx/plugins.

License

MIT. See LICENSE. Source: https://github.com/OddHatter/Gatling