🏟️ Quad's Arena

The Arena: a stone colosseum in your world where you fight waves of monsters and champions for the crowd, for gold and for glory, or duel your friends (PvP), like the arena in the first Fable.

Source code · Report a bug · Discord

✨ Features

What is in it

• The Arena builds itself: the first time the world runs with the mod, it finds flat ground near the middle of the world, clear of everyone's buildings, levels it, clears the trees and puts up a colosseum made of the game's own stone. It is marked on the map, and it is the same for everyone. It cannot be broken, and nothing of it is saved but the levelled ground.
• Arena Waystones (hammer, Misc) take you to its forecourt and back. There stands the Hall of Fame: a stone statue of the champion of each contest (the best run of the Long Road, the Champion Bout, the Endless Horde and Today's Trial in the world), with their names. The Arena Master takes your name at his desk.
• The Long Road: from the Meadows to the Ashlands, three rounds in each land with its champion in the third, as far as you can get. The Arena Master holds everything you carry while you fight. You start in the plainest Meadows gear from a chest that rises in the ring, with whatever weapon the armourer hands you (a knife, an axe, a club, a spear or a bow), and keep it, building it up piece by piece: between lands a reward chest holds a free upgrade and the Armourer stands in the ring, selling upgrades as far as your coin goes (or another kind of weapon), fresh food and meads in the game's own trader window; the crowd throws you gear too. Fighting is hungry work: food burns faster in the ring, and the kitchen's meals are leftovers. The fighters drop coins (no loot): spend them, or walk out with them. Champions drop their trophy and the land's metal. You get your own things back when you come out, or when you rise again if you fall (then what you picked up is lost).
• Today's Trial: one land picked for the day, with its weapon and rules, in the arena's gear; worth half as much again the first time you win it.
• With your own gear: a Champion Bout (one champion, a head taller, as strong as its land allows) or the Endless Horde (wave after wave until you fall or take your purse), against a land your world has reached.
• Each contest costs an entry fee (your first fight is free). The arena's fighters never drop loot.
• You walk in through the main gate and the tunnel; the grate rises, then shuts behind you. The creatures come out of pens behind the grates round the ring. The floor has mounds and dips, and each land brings its own cover: ruins, pillars or stakes. Between lands a platform rises in the middle, with the reward chest on it.
• The crowd fills the stands, turns to watch you, cheers, boos, waves flags and sends a wave round the stands; the announcer calls every round, combo and champion. Their favour grows with kills, quick kills, parries, flawless rounds and close calls, and raises the prize.
• Play to the crowd: the arena's meals are leftovers (they start part spent), so the crowd's gifts matter. Excited, they throw you fresh food and small meads; roaring, the land's best food, bigger meads, arrows and bombs; ecstatic, strong meads, and now and then an upgrade for the gear you wear. Emotes in the ring please them (more with a foe close by, or just after a kill) and they answer in kind; cower and they laugh. Now and then they chant for something (a flex, a roar, a kill now, a perfect parry, not a scratch): answer in time and they go wild.
• Rules make it harder and worth more: bare fists, no food or potions, hard, and against the clock. Stake coins on yourself in a Champion Bout or a trial and a win pays them double.
• Every round you clear adds to your purse; between rounds you can take it and leave. Win and it is paid with a bonus, plus the champion's trophy. Give up mid-round, run out of time or leave the ring and you get half.
• Win a whole contest and it is a show: the crowd on its feet, fireworks over the stands, your name called, a prize chest rising in the ring, and the gate opening for you to walk out.
• Death is real: fall and the purse and stake are lost. You rise again in the forecourt; with your own gear, your tombstone waits for you there.
• Watch: other players climb the stairs in the arches beside the main gate to the stands (or take the waystone up), see the fight and hear the announcer. The main gate opens only for a fighter, and the Arena Master's guards show anyone else off the fighting floor.
• Duels: challenge another player at the Arena Master's desk, both put up a wager and walk into the ring, each taken to their own end of it; after a countdown PvP comes on for the fight (and goes back as it was after). The first to drop to a fifth of their health loses (nobody dies in a duel); the winner takes the pot less a tenth.
• Your titles (Pit Rat to Legend of the Arena), wins and records are kept on your character.

Everyone in the world needs it installed (the waystone is a building piece, and everyone needs the arena to see it). Restart after installing.

Crowd sounds from OpenGameArt: "Free Crowd Cheering Sounds" by Gregor Quendel (CC-BY 4.0) and "Crowd Shouting" by StarNinjas (CC0).

📸 Screenshots

The ring: banners, torches and a full house behind the bars

The Hall of Fame: a champion in stone on their plinth

The forecourt and the Arena Master's desk

Between lands: the platform, its braziers and the reward chest

From above: the colosseum, its forecourt and gateway

🎮 How to use

🧩 Other mods

Goes well with

Companion	Bounty Board	Quiver	Dungeons	Parkour

Known clashes: none known.

Found a clash with another mod? Tell us which one and what happened.

👥 Multiplayer

Who needs it: Everyone, and the host above all: a game without the mod deletes the pieces when their area loads. Restart after installing or updating them.

The host's game picks where the Arena stands and saves it with the world: on a dedicated server, the server needs the mod or no Arena is ever placed. Each game draws the colosseum itself, so players without the mod see no Arena. A fight is shared with the players nearby (announcer, crowd, gates), so watchers see the same fight. Duels need the mod on both players' games.

The host decides: rewards, entry fee, whether death is real, respawning at the Arena, tiers, gifts, leftover meals and hunger in the ring. While you play on their world their values replace yours (your file isn't changed); a host without the mod leaves everyone their own.

🌍 Languages

English, Русский (Russian), Deutsch (German), 简体中文 (Chinese), Português do Brasil (Portuguese), Español (Spanish), Français (French), Polski (Polish), Türkçe (Turkish). It follows the game's own language setting.

The translations were made with AI, so a few words may be off. To correct one, or to add your language, put a file in BepInEx/config/translations/com.quad.arena/ named after the game's name for the language (German.json, Italian.json, Japanese.json...) with only the lines you change, copied from English.json (it wins over the built-in one). Or tell us the better words and we'll put them in for everyone.

⚙️ Settings

In BepInEx/config/com.quad.arena.cfg, made the first time the game runs with the mod. r2modman and Thunderstore Mod Manager edit it under Config editor.

Arena

Building

Crowd

🤖 Made with AI

Made with the help of Claude (Anthropic), with Claude Code: designed, written and checked together, and tried in the game.

💬 Join us on Discord

Come hang out with the people who make and play these mods. In the Quads Lab Discord you can:

• 🛠️ Get help and report bugs straight to us
• 👀 See new mods first, and help test them before they're released
• 🗳️ Suggest ideas and vote on what we make next
• 🏰 Share your builds, bases and arena runs
• 🤖 Talk AI coding and vibe coding with people building things with AI, the way these mods are made

Join the Quads Lab Discord →

🧪 About Quads Lab

Quads Lab is where Quad H (HardHeadHackerHead) builds software with AI, of every kind: these Valheim mods are one of its projects. Each mod is designed by a player, written with Claude Code and tested in our own world, with bobisme as our tester.

• 🌐 quadslab.io
• 🧰 All Quads Lab mods on Thunderstore
• 💻 Source code on GitHub
• 💬 Discord
• ☕ Buy me a coffee
• 🐞 Found a bug? Open an issue on GitHub

☕ Support my mods

Every Quads Lab mod is free, and it stays that way. If one of them made your game better and you'd like to say thanks, a coffee helps me make new mods and keep improving the ones you already play. It's 100% optional, and always appreciated!

☕ Buy me a coffee →

📜 Recent changes

• 0.4.3 On a server without Arena, the Arena Waystone is gone from the hammer, and a message says why: the server would delete one built there. Server owners can change what it costs ("Building", WaystoneCost; default 20 wood, 12 stone, 6 flint, 6 leather scraps and 6 resin, as before); in multiplayer the server's costs apply, and a cost with a mistake in it keeps the last good one. Settings: edits to the config file now apply while the game runs (a server owner no longer has to restart), and a server's admins can change the server's settings from their own game with Configuration Manager, where other players see them greyed out. Your config file always keeps your own values while you play on a server (saving it there could write the server's in). Players on an older version still get the server's settings. The waystone no longer snaps by the wooden pole's points it was copied from (1 m above and below the pole's middle), which could leave it hanging 1 m up or sunk 1 m. A mead or other item the crowd gives you to keep no longer joins the stack of ones you were lent, so it isn't taken back after the fight; lent things stay in stacks of their own, and dropping a lent stack onto your own is refused.
• 0.4.2 Its windows no longer fill the log with "The LiberationSans SDF Font Asset was not found": each text is given the game's font before it starts (it looked for TextMeshPro's default font, which the game doesn't have, every time a text was made). Nothing changes on screen.
• 0.4.1 Fix: after reloading the mod at the main menu (the mod manager's reload, or F6), its old build piece stayed in the hammer's list after it was gone, and every change to your bag threw an error half-way: crafting gave the item without taking the cost, and picking things up could go wrong, until the game was restarted. Its piece now comes off the list it was put on, and destroyed pieces left there by any mod are cleared when it registers.

Every change is on the Changelog tab.

0.4.3

• On a server without Arena, the Arena Waystone is gone from the hammer, and a message says why: the server would delete one built there. Server owners can change what it costs ("Building", WaystoneCost; default 20 wood, 12 stone, 6 flint, 6 leather scraps and 6 resin, as before); in multiplayer the server's costs apply, and a cost with a mistake in it keeps the last good one. Settings: edits to the config file now apply while the game runs (a server owner no longer has to restart), and a server's admins can change the server's settings from their own game with Configuration Manager, where other players see them greyed out. Your config file always keeps your own values while you play on a server (saving it there could write the server's in). Players on an older version still get the server's settings. The waystone no longer snaps by the wooden pole's points it was copied from (1 m above and below the pole's middle), which could leave it hanging 1 m up or sunk 1 m. A mead or other item the crowd gives you to keep no longer joins the stack of ones you were lent, so it isn't taken back after the fight; lent things stay in stacks of their own, and dropping a lent stack onto your own is refused.

0.4.2

• Its windows no longer fill the log with "The LiberationSans SDF Font Asset was not found": each text is given the game's font before it starts (it looked for TextMeshPro's default font, which the game doesn't have, every time a text was made). Nothing changes on screen.

0.4.1

• Fix: after reloading the mod at the main menu (the mod manager's reload, or F6), its old build piece stayed in the hammer's list after it was gone, and every change to your bag threw an error half-way: crafting gave the item without taking the cost, and picking things up could go wrong, until the game was restarted. Its piece now comes off the list it was put on, and destroyed pieces left there by any mod are cleared when it registers.

0.4.0

• Now in your language: English, Russian, German, Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, French, Polish and Turkish, following the game's own Language setting. The game's own names are used for its things (items, creatures, lands, stations). The translations were made with AI: to correct a line, or add a language, put a file in BepInEx/config/translations/com.quad.arena/ named after the game's name for the language (German.json...) with only the lines you change, copied from translations/English.json on GitHub. The announcer's calls and the Hall of Champions are now kept as data, so each player reads them in their own language; the hall's old records still show. Players on a server should update together: a player on an older Arena sees no announcer calls from a newer player's fight. Land names are the game's own ("Mountain").

0.3.3

• A clearer page: what it does, who needs it in multiplayer, how it gets on with other mods, and where to report a bug. The game itself is unchanged.

0.3.2

• Its test command for Claude Tools (arena ...) follows the game's cheat rule: anything that changes a contest (favour, clear, start, tp, crowd, gifts...) works only in single player, for the host or with devcommands; status and the checks still work for everyone. New: arena crowd fills the stands and has them cheer (crowd off sends them home), for trying the crowd out.

0.3.1

• A new id, com.quad.arena (it was com.dhack.arena): your settings move over by themselves the first time it starts, and the old settings file is kept as a backup. Restart the game after this update. If an old copy is still installed beside it, this one stands down and says which file to delete, so the two never both run. The DLL now says it was made with AI, as Thunderstore asks.

0.3.0

• Fairer rewards, and safer together. Leaving the game (or the mod unloading) once a fight has begun now counts as giving up: half the purse, the stake lost; only before you walk into the ring is everything given back. Nothing from a land your world has not reached comes home with you: on the Long Road the crowd's gifts and the Armourer's food, meads and arrows from such a land are lent like the arena's gear (the Armourer's window says so), and the crowd's strong meads and bombs are lent until your world has reached their land. Fall on the arena's steel and the coins you picked up are lost as before, but the crowd's gifts and what you bought are no longer deleted: they wait in your tombstone in the forecourt. In multiplayer the server decides the prizes, the entry fee, whether death is real, AllTiers, the crowd's gifts, the leftover meals, ring hunger and rising at the arena. A duel now tells everyone at the arena it is on, so no contest or other duel can start in the ring at the same time; and if your opponent's game vanishes mid-duel you get your own wager back (the pot only when they forfeit or are beaten). Fighters left in the world by a game that closed mid-fight are taken away, the arena's chests can no longer be torn down with the hammer on another player's game, the arena only shows its own effects when another game asks, the Arena Waystone is always registered even if its look cannot be made, and the crowd's sounds are not loaded over and over where they cannot be.

0.2.3

• The arena is dressed for it: a paved border round the fighting floor, shields of old fights flanking every pen's gate, straw, bones and skulls in the pens, torches round the top of the stands and at the stairs for night fights, and a forecourt with a bear rug before the Arena Master's desk, benches, barrels and fires. A champion's entrance comes with a fanfare and a burst of fire at its gate. Duels: walking in, each duellist is taken to their own end of the ring, facing the other, and held there through a five-second countdown; PvP comes on at FIGHT!, stays on (it cannot be switched off mid-fight) and goes back as it was after. Between lands the floor is always the same: a platform in the middle with the reward chest on it, and each land's own cover goes up with its first round. Cover never traps you: put up where you stand, it lifts you onto it or moves you clear. Today's Trial never has the no-food rule (on the arena's gear it left you 25 health), and it and the metals and trophies the arena pays follow the bosses your world has really beaten. The stands over the main gate are whole again.

0.2.2

• The hollow under the Arena Master's box is filled (nobody falls through the stands there), and you can sit on his throne. Champions are as strong as their land's gear can take: their stars now depend on how much health they have and how hard they hit (a boar or a greydwarf gets both stars, a bear, a troll or an abomination none), with two fighters beside them instead of three. Playing together, another player's game no longer takes away the chest standing in the ring for a fighter, and an Armourer is never left standing after the mod reloads.

0.2.1

• The arena looks the part: a third storey with windows and masts of banners round the top, columns before every arch, fires hanging in the arches, banners all round, black marble towers at the gate, a canopy over the Arena Master's box and a lantern-lit forecourt with its own gateway. The main gate is a pair of doors that open only for a fighter (and anyone else found on the fighting floor is shown out). The stairs to the stands start clear of the gate's towers, and the hole at their top is closed.

0.2.0

• The Long Road is a run you build up: start with a random Meadows weapon and the plainest gear, keep it from land to land and build it up piece by piece, from a reward chest and the Armourer (the game's own trader window) between lands, or from the crowd. The fighters drop coins instead of loot; spend them on upgrades, fresh food and meads, or walk out with them. Play to the crowd: food burns faster in the ring and the kitchen's meals are leftovers, so their gifts keep you going, and the more they love you the better they throw; emotes in the ring please them, and they chant for a flex, a kill or a perfect parry. Winning a whole contest is a show (the crowd on its feet, fireworks, your name called, a prize chest). Fall in a contest and you rise again at the arena, with no tombstone in the ring and no death marker on the map. Each land's champion is picked at random from several.

0.1.0

• New: the Arena. A stone colosseum builds itself in your world: travel there by Arena Waystone, see the Hall of Fame, sign up with the Arena Master and walk the Long Road from the Meadows to the Ashlands on the arena's own steel, fight a Champion Bout, the Endless Horde or Today's Trial for a roaring crowd, a purse and the champion's trophy, or duel a friend for a wager. Death is real, but your tombstone waits in the forecourt.