Arena Combat

Build an Arena Coordinator, choose an opponent, and turn your own arena into a place to practice combat or farm monster resources.

The Coordinator uses Valheim's T.W.I.G. model and stands still. Its searchable opponent menu follows your world's boss progression and offers 0, 1, or 2 stars. Practice is always free; loot fights spend a reserve that replenishes automatically.

Features

• Unlock enemies by world progression: defeating The Queen opens Ashlands opponents. Earlier biomes remain available.
• Bosses and minibosses are excluded, including Lord Reto and Hildir encounter enemies.
• Duplicate enemy variants are consolidated. Dvergr variants appear at their native biome tiers.
• Search and biome filters, trophy icons where available, clear selected options, and fast mousewheel scrolling.
• One encounter per Coordinator, with a five-second overhead countdown.
• Choose 1.0x-3.0x health and damage in 0.1x steps, earning 50%-250% of native loot.
• Free Practice fights at every star level and strength, with no item drops or trophies.
• Loot rewards fights use regenerating reserve tokens, with discounts for older biomes.
• A shared, saved coin allowance limits arena coin farming while leaving other loot unchanged.
• Automatic silent cleanup when players leave, or when an arena enemy kills the last nearby player.
• Arena enemies cannot be tamed, commanded, saddled, or bred.
• Coordinators are invulnerable by default; you can still remove them with the Hammer.

Installation

Install Arena Combat and its dependencies on the server and every client. Use the same Arena Combat version throughout your group.

With Thunderstore Mod Manager or r2modman, install the package and launch the profile modded. The manifest declares the required BepInExPack Valheim and Jötunn packages.

For a manual installation, install those dependencies first, then copy the ZIP's BepInEx folder into your game or server folder. Both ArenaCombat.dll and ArenaCombat.Core.dll must remain together under BepInEx/plugins/ArenaCombat.

Launch once to generate BepInEx/config/cheyenne.valheim.arenacombat.cfg.

Build and use

1. Equip the Hammer and open the Arena category.
2. Build Arena Coordinator with 10 Wood + 5 Stone, near a Workbench.
3. Interact with it, choose an enemy, star level, and strength, and select Practice or Loot rewards.
4. Press Summon enemy and prepare for the countdown.

Only admins or the local host can build Coordinators by default. Multiplayer placement uses the server's admin decision, including native bare/prefixed platform-ID matching; it refreshes with the regular settings poll. Everyone can use them. The default world limit is ten; both restrictions are configurable.

A newly built Coordinator starts with zero tokens. You can use free practice immediately. Loot fights become available as its reserve fills.

Progression

Unlocks come from the world's boss defeat keys, rather than the player's current location.

Earlier unlocked biomes remain available. Unknown modded enemies can be assigned a tier through EnemyTierOverrides; boss and friendly-creature exclusions still apply.

Tokens and loot

Each Coordinator stores up to 200 tokens and regenerates 5 tokens per real minute, including unloaded areas and server downtime.

Practice costs zero tokens, regardless of biome or stars, and produces no item drops or trophies.

With loot rewards enabled, the default base costs are 5 / 15 / 30 tokens for 0 / 1 / 2 stars, plus a 20-token loot surcharge. The total receives a 20-percentage-point discount for each biome tier behind current progression. Discounts stack linearly; five or more tiers behind is free. Fractional final prices round up.

For example, a two-star loot fight costs 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, or 0 tokens at 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 tiers behind.

Failed or abandoned countdowns are refunded. After an enemy successfully spawns, its tokens remain spent even if the encounter later despawns or ends in defeat. Removing and rebuilding a Coordinator starts a new empty reserve.

Strength and loot rewards

The right-hand panel has a Strength selector from 1.0x to 3.0x, in 0.1x increments. Strength multiplies the opponent's health and outgoing damage on top of its native star level and the world's combat settings. Movement speed, attack speed, resistances, and AI behavior remain native.

Each 0.1x strength step adds ten percentage points of loot. The percentage applies to the native loot for the selected stars and world drop settings, including materials, trophies, and Coins. At 1.5x, the result is the original native loot roll. Percentages represent expected yield over repeated fights; fractional item quantities use chance-based rounding, so a one-item reward is not always rounded up or always deleted. Above 100%, additional native item rolls preserve native probabilities instead of simply duplicating every successful rare drop.

Practice is still free and drops no items at any strength. Strength does not change the reserve price of loot fights. The shared coin allowance is applied after the increased coin roll, so stronger enemies cannot bypass it.

The server validates the strength and saves it with the encounter. Split and summoned offspring inherit strength and loot rate; bonus loot never creates extra offspring. Deferred ragdolls deliver their already-scaled loot once. Existing active encounters from older versions keep their prior combat strength and loot when updating; the new defaults apply to new summons.

Shared coin allowance

Arena coin drops use one world-wide allowance, shared by every Coordinator, player, enemy tier, star level, and tagged offspring. The default capacity is 100 coins, replenishing at 100 coins per real hour (one coin every 36 seconds). It starts full once when the world first runs this feature. It refills while areas are unloaded or the server is offline, up to the capacity; it is a rolling allowance rather than an hourly reset.

Native coin rolls are capped by the available whole coins. If a creature rolls 20 coins and only 7 remain, it drops 7. When empty, you can keep fighting and receive materials and trophies at the selected strength's loot rate. Practice remains free and drops no items. Summon prices and older-biome discounts are unchanged.

The balance is saved independently of Coordinator reserves, so rebuilding Coordinators, reconnecting, or restarting cannot reset it. Direct death and delayed ragdoll payouts use the same server allowance. The menu shows the shared balance and refill rate for coin-dropping enemies when Loot rewards is selected.

Configure the server's [CoinDrops] section: Enabled = true, Capacity = 100, and CoinsPerHour = 100. Set Enabled to false for unlimited arena coins, Capacity to zero to prevent arena coins, or CoinsPerHour to zero for a finite allowance. Only the native Coins item from arena creatures is limited; natural enemies, chests, valuables, and merchant sales keep their normal behavior.

Update the server and every client to the same Arena Combat version. Patch versions must now match because each creature-owning client submits coin delivery to the server.

Encounter cleanup

• After spawning, the Coordinator becomes invisible and inactive for five seconds to give the enemy room.
• Once per second, the server checks for a living connected player within 15 meters of each arena creature.
• If nobody remains in range for 20 continuous seconds, that creature silently despawns. Returning players reset the timer.
• When an arena enemy kills a player, the server immediately checks for another living player within 15 meters of the killing enemy. If none remain, it ends the entire encounter without the normal grace period. This defeat radius is separately configurable.
• Split or summoned offspring belong to the same encounter and are included in cleanup.
• Silent cleanup creates no loot, trophies, ragdolls, or death effects.

Configuration

Edit the server's BepInEx/config/cheyenne.valheim.arenacombat.cfg. Stop the game/server before editing and restart afterward. An example configuration is included at the ZIP root for reference.

Set MaximumActivators = 0 for an unlimited world limit, or AdminBuildOnly = false to allow everyone to build.

The Catalogue section also supports ExcludedEnemies and comma-separated EnemyTierOverrides, such as Serpent=0,MyCustomHostile=5. Tier numbers run from 0 (Meadows) to 7 (Deep North).

Compatibility and release status

This release was built against the installed Valheim assemblies with Jötunn 2.30.2 and BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2351. It requires a game version containing the native T.W.I.G. build piece.

Aquatic opponents still require suitable water. Some enemies have no starred visual variant or trophy icon. Arena creatures retain normal combat behavior and can damage other arena structures.

This is a development release. Automated rule tests and installed-game API checks passed; dedicated-server and multiplayer behavior still need live testing. Existing Coordinators and saved reserves retain their original identifiers when updating from earlier development builds.

Changelog

0.1.13

• Fixed multiplayer admins being blocked by the client's strict platform-ID lookup while the server recognizes them as admins. Coordinator placement now uses the server's per-player native admin decision, refreshed with settings polls.
• Server-side placement validation resolves the recorded builder independently of the current network owner and uses native normalized ID checks for saved creator identities.
• Added distinct placement diagnostics for denied admin permission and the world placement limit.
• Preserved admins-only restrictions and local-host access; install this version on the server and all clients.

0.1.12

• Fixed the loot discount explanation using a hardcoded 20% per biome tier. The server now sends its configured DiscountPerTier to clients, and the menu displays that rate with the same linear stacking and 100% cap as pricing.
• Preserved the existing configured summon costs and discount values.

0.1.11

• Added 1.0x-3.0x strength controls in 0.1x steps, scaling health and damage on top of native stars.
• New arena loot fights award 50% native loot at 1.0x, 100% at 1.5x, and 250% at 3.0x. Fractional quantities use chance-based rounding; bonus item rolls preserve native chances without duplicating split enemies.
• Strength and loot rate are validated by the server and inherited by offspring, with saved state and deferred ragdoll handling.
• Practice remains free, reserve prices are unchanged, and boosted Coins still respect the shared allowance.
• Reorganized the right panel to fit the new selector and retain the existing outer margins.

0.1.10

• Fixed corrupted bullets, ellipses, checkmarks, and dashes in the menu and arena interaction text.
• Restored Dvergr heading suffix matching and encoded decorative UI characters as C# Unicode escapes to keep future source rewrites safe.

0.1.9

• Added a saved world-wide arena coin allowance, defaulting to 100 coins of capacity and 100 coins/hour of real-time refill.
• Coin drops receive partial payouts when the allowance is low; other loot, free practice, and encounter costs remain unchanged.
• All Coordinators, tagged offspring, and delayed ragdoll payouts share server-authorized coin delivery. Rebuilding pieces and restarting preserve the allowance.
• Added configurable coin limits and a shared coin-balance readout for coin-dropping opponents.
• Required matching patch versions on the server and all clients for consistent coin handling.

0.1.8

First prepared Thunderstore release, incorporating the earlier development builds.

• Added configurable immediate encounter cleanup when an arena enemy kills a player and no living player remains near the killer.
• Added protection against stale health replication and nearly simultaneous player deaths.
• Includes the Arena Coordinator build piece, progression-gated roster, starred opponents, free practice, reserve-funded loot fights, and older-biome discounts.
• Includes search/biome filtering, native option highlights, creature icons with silhouette fallbacks, and faster scrolling.
• Includes invulnerability, temporary hiding after spawn, taming/breeding prevention, and silent proximity cleanup.