AmmoVariants

Scatter, piercing and energy ammunition for bows and crossbows. Adds 42 variants across vanilla ammo tiers, from wood and bone to Bloodgold.

What it does

• Scatter arrows. Five projectiles per shot, each dealing 30% of normal shot damage, with a tighter spread than scatter bolts.
• Scatter bolts. Fourteen small pellets per shot, each dealing about 11.43% of normal shot damage, for up to 160% before armor and resistances.
• Piercing. Starts at 110% of normal shot damage and passes through up to four creatures, losing 15% of its remaining damage after each. No distance damage loss. Stops on ground, trees, rocks and structures. Each creature is hit once per projectile.
• Energy. Flies straight through creatures and terrain. Full shot damage becomes 85% lightning and 15% pierce, plus 15% additional fire damage that sets targets burning. All three shares are in the config. Damage falls to 25% at 200 meters, where flight ends. No creature limit or damage loss per creature. Chop and pickaxe damage are excluded from conversion.
• Piercing and energy have an extra 0.35-meter hit radius against enemies. Piercing keeps a thin collision ray against terrain and objects.
• Icons based on vanilla inventory sprites, native elemental flight effects and compact effects at held and dropped tips. Piercing and scatter trails match the material or element, energy keeps blue lightning. Separate bow and crossbow firing sounds retain the original weapon mechanism.
• Optional material-colored trails for existing ballista bolts. Trail size follows the larger bolt. Ballista damage, targeting, flight and ammo use stay unchanged.

Scatter scales the complete weapon and ammo damage, including elemental damage. Bow draw strength and the weapon's original accuracy still apply.

Crafting

Scatter and piercing cover thirteen arrow types and six bolt tiers. Extra materials follow the ammo tier, such as resin, coal, flint, metals or carapace. Energy is available for Carapace and Bloodgold arrows and bolts. Recipes unlock through normal ingredient discovery.

Config

The file is BepInEx/config/com.onononoki.ammovariants.cfg. Gameplay and recipe settings are synced from the server. Visual and sound settings are each player's own.

Existing configs retain their saved values. For the release balance, set Scatter.Pellets to 14, Scatter.CrossbowDamageShare to 0.1142857 and Piercing.MaxCreatures to 4.

Crafting amounts and materials are configurable. Recipe changes apply during play. Restart after changing prefab visuals or the original weapon release volume.

Trail switches affect custom flight lines and energy flight lightning. Native elemental particles and effects at held or dropped tips remain.

Installation and compatibility

• Use a mod manager, or put AmmoVariants.dll into BepInEx/plugins. Requires BepInExPack Valheim and Jotunn.
• Install the same version on the server and every player.
• BetterArchery is optional. Its drawing, aiming, velocity changes and quivers remain active. Its arrow recovery is disabled for AmmoVariants ammunition. Energy ammo flies without gravity, so aim offsets from BetterArchery or other mods are ignored for it and it flies straight at the crosshair. Ordinary ammo keeps its usual BetterArchery behavior.
• Secondary volleys from BowSecondaryMultishot do not receive AmmoVariants effects. ProjectileTweaks combinations have not been playtested.

Feedback and bug reports

Report problems on GitHub. Include the mod version, ammo type, weapon mods and relevant BepInEx log lines.

Changelog

1.0.0

• First public release with 42 scatter, piercing and energy arrows and bolts.
• Tiered recipes, five scatter arrows at 30% damage each, fourteen scatter bolts at about 11.43% each, and enemy-only collision widening.
• Piercing starts at 110% damage, passes up to four creatures and loses 15% after each. Energy turns the full shot into 85% lightning and 15% pierce plus 15% fire (each share in the config), has distance falloff only, and excludes utility damage from conversion.
• Vanilla-based ammo icons, held and dropped models with localized tip effects, native flight effects, firing sounds and fading trails.
• Optional ballista bolt trails and separate config switches for scatter, piercing, energy and ballista trails.
• BetterArchery support preserves aiming, drawing and quivers while excluding variant arrow recovery.
• Energy arrows and bolts fly straight at the crosshair. Aim offsets from other mods are ignored for them.
• Energy arrows and bolts have their own blue icons with small lightning arcs.