Ward Cores

Wards protect the buildings in their range. Every ward holds an energy pool, and hits on pieces inside its radius are paid from that pool instead of from the pieces' health. The core installed in the ward sets the pool's size. The pool recharges over time, and Sap speeds that up.

How it works

• Absorbing. A hit on a piece in range of an active ward costs the ward energy instead of costing the piece health: 1 energy per point of damage by default. The ward flashes its shield. Protected pieces take hits without their weaknesses; resistances and immunities still apply.
• What it covers. Monsters, raids, players without access to a covering ward, and hits without an attacker, such as fire and falling trees. Weather wear, collapse from missing support and hits by players with access stay vanilla.
• Several wards. Overlapping wards split the cost evenly. When a ward can't pay its share, the others pay the rest.
• Area attacks. All of one attacker's hits in the same frame count as one hit, like a troll's ground slam across a wall. Each ward pays the average of the hit pieces, not the sum.
• Recharge. A ward regains 1 % of its maximum per second, also while nobody is near. For 5 s after each absorbed hit, it recharges at a quarter of that rate.
• Running low. Below 30 % charge, a ward lets part of each hit through: none at 30 %, rising to half when it is empty. Wards at 30 % or more take over what a weaker ward lets through.
• Empty. A drained ward switches off completely, its access protection included. It switches back on by itself at 30 %. New wards and newly installed cores start empty, so a new ward spends its first 30 s off.

The floating numbers show what actually happens. A protected piece shows the damage that reaches it, a grey 0 when the wards held everything. The ward shows the energy it paid as a light blue number.

Cores

To install a core, look at a ward and press the core's hotbar key (1–8). You need access to the ward. Every ward starts with a built-in Surtling Core. Installing another core gives back the one you installed before. The built-in core comes back with the ward's recipe when the ward is torn down or destroyed. A new core starts empty. Installed cores drop when the ward is torn down or destroyed. Every core shows its "Ward Power" in the item tooltip.

Sap

Players with access feed a ward Sap straight from the inventory with Shift+E, the game's alt key plus use. Holding the keys keeps adding Sap. While Sap burns, the ward recharges an extra 1 % of its maximum per second. One Sap lasts 60 s and burns only while the ward is below its maximum. A ward holds up to 50 Sap. Unburnt Sap drops when the ward is torn down or destroyed.

Hover text

Core: Dragon Tear
Charge: 1200 / 1600 - 75%
Sap: 4 / 50 - 3m 12s
Status: Ready - Protection 100%

• Ready while the ward runs, or while it is off but already charged to 30 %.
• Charging - 12s until ready otherwise, with the slower cooldown and the Sap counted in.
• Protection is the share of each hit the ward holds at its current charge.

Texts are in English and German, following the game's language.

Settings

The settings are in BepInEx/config/valheim.wardcores.cfg. With shudnal's Configuration Manager (F1), the core list shows as a table with item names, checks and an Apply button.

Multiplayer

Every player and the server need Ward Cores, in the same version. The server's settings apply to everyone. Only admins on the server's admin list can change them in F1; everyone else sees them read-only. The server turns away players without Ward Cores or with another version, and a player with Ward Cores can't join a server without it. Singleplayer works as usual.

Requirements

• BepInExPack Valheim
• Conditional Config Sync by shudnal, 1.0.10 or newer
• Recommended: Configuration Manager by shudnal, for the F1 core table

Tested with Valheim 1.0.17. If the game lacks something Ward Cores needs, it logs what is missing and stays off entirely, so no ward takes a core without protecting.

To install by hand, copy WardCores.dll into BepInEx/plugins and install the requirements. Removing the mod leaves installed cores inside their wards.

Changelog

1.2.0

Core Effects

• Molten Core — Molten Core wards now set attackers on fire once per attack, for half the damage the wards absorbed. Every attack adds its own burn on top, so a siege burns hotter the longer it lasts; [Fire] MaxStacks can cap the stacks.
• Frostcore — Frostcore wards now chill hostile creatures and PvP players without access inside their radius, slowing them more each second up to a cap. Frost resistance scales the chill, and tamed animals and bosses are left alone.
• Liquid Frost — Liquid Frost wards chill like the Frostcore and also deal frost damage every second, paid from the ward's energy.
• Shared Payback — Thunder Stone and Molten Core wards covering the same attack now share the payback, so pairing them gives both effects without doubling the damage returned.
• Resistances and Armour — Burns and frost damage now count the target's resistances and armour, like the game's own hits.

Settings

• Element Sections — The effect settings now live in [Thunder], [Fire] and [Frost], with a switch per core, so each effect can be turned off on its own.
• Thunder Stone in the Core List — The Thunder Stone is now an ordinary entry in [Cores] List (Thunderstone:1000) and is edited in the F1 table like every other core. [Thunderstone] MaxEnergy has been removed.
• Config Migration — Configs from earlier versions move their Thunder Stone settings and max energy over on first start, so no values are lost.
• Settings Order — Configuration Manager now lists the settings in a fixed order, with the Liquid Frost settings under their own heading.

Interface

• Core Picker — The F1 core table now picks each core from a searchable list of materials with icons, vanilla and modded alike. Any item ID can still be typed in.
• Ward Number — The energy number above a ward now shows a ⚡ before the value.
• Hover Text — The ward's hover now shows the core's icon, colours the charge and the status by how well the ward protects, and uses the game's own "Use item" hint for installing a core.

1.1.0

Thunder Stone

• One Strike per Attack — Thunder Stone wards now strike once per attack with a single bolt, however many of them cover it.
• Full Retaliation — New setting [Thunderstone] FullRetaliation (on by default): the strike counts what every covering ward absorbed, so normal wards sharing a hit no longer weaken it.
• Tooltip — The Thunder Stone now shows its Ward Power in the item tooltip, and the README describes it.

Bug Fixes

• Ownerless Explosions — Area effects without an owner, such as a lava blob's explosion, now count as one hit. Previously they charged the wards for every piece they reached.

1.0.0

New

• First Release — The first packaged release of Ward Cores.