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.
• Free Practice fights at every star level, with no item drops or trophies.
• Loot rewards fights use regenerating reserve tokens, with discounts for older biomes.
• 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 and star level, 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. 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.

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

0.1.14

• Added default-on environmental protection for arena creatures and inherited offspring, controlled by Encounter.PreventEnvironmentalDamage.
• Blocked arena hits against buildings, ships, trees/logs, rocks/ore, and native destructible scenery at both damage entry points and target RPCs.
• Protected projectiles, area attacks, lingering and chained effects, plus attack-driven terrain operations, without blocking character combat. Effects use their own marker rather than consuming encounter slots.
• Saved the per-encounter setting and synchronized the server default for older creatures; preserved normal player attacks, wild creatures, tools, and weather wear.

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.