The Mark of Oden

Dynamic Enemy Aggression & Fear Evaluation for Valheim

Ever wonder why a puny Greyling thinks it's a good idea to attack a Viking who has put down Eikthyr, the Elder and Bonemass — and four hundred of that Greyling's own kin? The Mark of Oden restores common sense to the creatures of the Tenth Realm.

What marks you

Not your gear. A veteran who has slain every Forsaken is still a veteran in rags, and a fresh character in borrowed plate is still fresh. Creatures judge you on two things:

• Bosses you personally helped kill. Participation counts, not just the killing blow — Valheim itself tracks everyone who fought a boss, and this mod uses that, so the player who spent the fight healing is marked alongside the one who landed the last hit. Credit is per character, so your friend's Eikthyr kill does not make you frightening.
• How many of that species you have personally killed. Greylings that have watched five hundred of their kin die at your hands will break long before a Greyling that has never met you.

Your existing character already counts. Both come from the kill history Valheim keeps for your character, so everything you have ever killed — bosses included — is there the moment you install this. It is credited by participation, so it does not matter who picked up the trophy. Nothing to set up, no new character needed.

How creatures react

Each creature weighs your mark against its own nerve — its tier, its star level, how many friends are standing next to it, and anything another mod has done to make it deadlier.

Raids still come for you. Creatures spawned by an active raid ignore fear entirely, however fearsome you are, so a raid is still a raid. Anything hunting you specifically is likewise undeterred.

Boss fights stay boss fights. Creatures near an alerted boss ignore fear, so the adds a boss summons keep coming instead of losing their nerve halfway through and handing you the fight.

Pack courage. Creatures in a mob hold their ground. Thin the mob out and the last one standing breaks. Starred creatures are braver than their common kin.

Food animals lose interest but never run. Anything you hunt for meat can stop caring about you, but never breaks and flees however fearsome you are. One that bolts turns hunting into a chase; one that charges a Viking who has killed every boss looks absurd. Standing there ignoring you is the only reading that is neither — and they still defend themselves if you hit them.

Which creatures those are is worked out from their own drop tables — anything weak enough to be prey that drops something edible, or something a cooking station turns into food — so it covers creatures this mod has never heard of rather than relying on a list that goes stale. Juveniles are classed with whatever they grow into, so piglets behave like the boars beside them rather than being judged on their own empty drop table. Wolves, lox and serpents drop meat but are far too dangerous to qualify, so they still lose their nerve. moo dump prints what it found, and Never flee creatures adds to it.

Taming is untouched. Wolves, lox and other hostile tameables do fear you, as they should. But once an animal has eaten your food it is already being tamed, and from that moment it behaves exactly as it does in the base game — so taming works the way you already know, at any mark.

Cornered creatures fight back, and their kind come with them. Hit anything and it defends itself, however frightened it was — so hunting for meat and hides never turns into a chase. Others of its own kind close enough to hear join in, so a pack does not stand and watch you battle one of its members. They stay in the fight for as long as they are actually fighting you, and go back to being afraid once they lose track of you. This is tracked per attacker, so your friend picking a fight does not make them angry at you.

Multiplayer

Fully supported, including dedicated servers. Each player's mark travels with them, so creatures correctly fear the veteran standing next to the newcomer and attack the newcomer — the case most fear mods get wrong. Settings are server-enforced and take effect without a restart.

Install it on every client. Creature AI runs on whichever player's game owns that creature, so the mod has to be there to change it. A dedicated server runs no creature AI and does not need it to work.

Install it on the server too if you can. Then the server owns the settings and everyone plays by the same rules; without it each client uses its own config, and a player could tune their own fear. Settings arrive without a restart.

A server running this mod requires it. Players without it are turned away, and so are players whose version does not match the server's, so everyone updates together. That is deliberate rather than strict for its own sake: fear is decided on whichever machine owns the creature, so on a server where installs differ the same Greydwarf would behave differently depending on who happened to be simulating it at the time.

A server that does not run the mod enforces nothing, and players who have it will still see it work.

Seeing it

A frightened creature's name plate changes: the name is tinted and gains a marker.

Green means it is backing away from you and the more arrows the further; amber means it will still fight. The colour says which of the two situations you are in and the marker says how far along, so there is no combination to decode. Both are config strings if you want different ones, and this stays clear of vanilla's own meanings for red, orange and yellow.

The label is the creature's opinion of you, not a statement that it has noticed you — something that has not seen or heard you yet still shows how it would feel.

Vanilla only draws name plates within 10m, which is late to learn that something is afraid of you. Nameplate distance in the config raises that if you want to read the mood of a forest before walking into it. It is off by default because it widens every name plate, not just frightened ones.

Compatibility

Nothing here is a hard dependency, and every patch is a postfix — this mod never suppresses another mod's work or rewrites a game method's body. A few specifics are worth knowing.

Mods that change creature AI. Anything that rewrites how creatures pick or chase targets overlaps with what this does, and the result depends on which mod acts last. That is not really avoidable for a mod whose whole purpose is changing how creatures treat you.

Creature Level and Loot Control. Supported, with no setup. A creature it has infused with an element or given a special ability is genuinely deadlier than its plain version, so it gets extra courage and holds its nerve longer — see Infusion courage and Special effect courage. It also raises creature levels well past vanilla's three stars, and since stars add courage, Star courage cap stops that outweighing everything else; raise it if you want high levels to make creatures braver.

One thing to set by hand: CLLC also controls the name plate distance, the same field as this mod's Nameplate distance, and whichever applies last wins. Leave this mod's at 0 and use CLLC's own range setting. The log says so if both are set.

Mods that add creatures. These are handled without any work on your part. A creature this mod has never seen is rated from its own data — faction and health for how dangerous it thinks it is, its drop table for whether you hunt it, its breeding and grow-up links for its young — and the table is built after every mod has registered its prefabs, so load order does not matter. Run moo dump to see what was worked out and override anything that looks wrong in Creature tier overrides.

A modded boss grants a mark if its prefab sets a boss order, which is the same value the base game uses to rank its own bosses. One that leaves it unset is treated as an ordinary creature and grants nothing.

BetterUI. Its useCustomAlertedStatus setting (on by default) hides the vanilla alert icons and colours the creature's name by alert state instead. This mod colours the same name by fear, and an inline colour tag wins, so the two would fight over it. Pick one:

• Set BetterUI's useCustomAlertedStatus to false. The vanilla ! and ? icons come back and carry alert state, and the name carries fear. Recommended: two separate signals, neither hidden.
• Or set this mod's Colour names to false. BetterUI keeps the name's colour for alert state and this mod shows only its marker.

Either way you can read both things at once. With both features on you get whichever wins per creature, which is the one combination worth avoiding. The mod checks BetterUI's setting on startup and says so in the log if they actually clash.

Console commands

Type moo in the console for a summary. Useful ones:

• moo status — your mark tier, boss credits and most-killed species
• moo why — the full arithmetic for the nearest creature: threat, courage, pack bonus, verdict
• moo dump — print the resolved creature tier table, including modded and Deep North creatures
• moo bosses — every boss, its rank, and whether this character has killed it
• moo optout — turn your own mark off, so nothing fears you; moo optin turns it back on
• moo reset — work your mark out again from scratch, if it ever looks wrong
• moo tier <0-8> — force a mark tier for testing (moo tier -1 returns to your real one)

None of these are cheats and none of them need devcommands, so using them will not mark your character. moo optout and moo reset are open to everyone: opting out only makes you less frightening, and resetting only recalculates your own mark from what your character has actually done. Neither can raise it. moo tier can, so on a server it is limited to the admin.

Opting out is remembered by the character, so it survives logging out, and your mark is kept for whenever you opt back in. On a shared world it only affects you: other players still get the full mod.

Configuration

Everything is tunable in the config file: the thresholds for each reaction, pack courage, cower behaviour, notoriety milestones, how far a cry for help carries, per-creature tier overrides, and which creatures never flee. Creature tiers are worked out from the prefabs themselves, so modded creatures get a sensible tier automatically — use moo dump to see what was guessed and override anything that looks wrong.

Inherit world progress is off by default. Turn it on if you would rather everyone on the server benefit from the world's boss kills, the way older fear mods worked.

Credits

Inspired by Revel's FleeOnSight and tulivu's FearMe.

Uses ServerSync by blaxxun for server-authoritative config, vendored as a source file; its licence is in third-party/. Everything else is MIT.