Dimmer Combat Particle Effects

Fades the particle effects that cover enemies in combat, so their attack animations stay visible.

Elemental weapons and status effects spawn particles on the target. A burning enemy stays wreathed in flame for the whole burn duration, which hides the wind-up animation that tells you which attack is coming. This mod lowers the opacity of those particles rather than removing them, so the effect still reads but no longer blocks the enemy behind it.

Opacity, brightness and size are configurable, each effect source has its own on/off toggle, and changes apply on the next hit with no restart. Client-side only.

What it covers

• Status effect auras on creatures. The flames on a burning enemy, the frost shell, the poison cloud, and the burst those re-spawn on every damage tick. These last for the whole duration, so they are by far the worst offender.
• Weapon impact bursts. What your weapon throws off at the point of contact, including the elemental bursts from fire, frost, lightning, poison and spirit weapons.
• The creature's own hit burst. Blood, impact sparks, and the extra crit and backstab bursts.
• Projectile and area-of-effect impacts. Arrows, bolts, staff projectiles, atgeir sweeps, bombs.

Each of these is a separate toggle, so you can dial back the burning aura and leave everything else at full strength if that is all that bothers you.

Settings

Everything lives under Dimmer Combat Particle Effects in Configuration Manager, and changes apply on the very next hit with no reload or restart.

Start with Opacity alone. On the setup this was built against, 0.35 with everything else left at default was enough.

Notes

• Client-side. It changes nothing but what your own machine draws, needs no server support, and will not desync you. It is safe to use on a server where other players do not have it.
• Lights are never touched. The mod only changes particle colour and size, so any effect that casts real light on the world still lights it. Be aware that most Valheim hit effects turn out not to use light sources at all - their glow comes from the particles themselves, so fading the particles does dim that glow.
• Particles only. An effect that draws its flash with a mesh renderer rather than a particle system is not affected. None encountered so far do, but if you find one, turn on Log every effect and it will name itself in the log as skipped.
• Ground fire from fire arrows is not covered. That patch is spawned through a different path that does not pass through the game's effect system.

Troubleshooting

If the mod appears to do nothing, check Status effect visuals on creatures is on - the lingering aura is most of what you see in a fire fight. Failing that, turn on Log every effect in the General section, hit something, and the BepInEx log will list every effect spawned marked dampened or skipped. Whatever is still bothering you shows up as skipped, named.

Changelog

1.1.0

Fixed: the mod did nothing for most players in multiplayer. Effects are now dampened for everyone, not only for whoever happens to own the creature being hit. Previously, if another player or the server owned your target, you saw the untouched vanilla effects no matter what your settings said — so the mod looked broken on a server while working perfectly in single player.

New: Force server sync. Server admins can set the values once and have them apply to everyone connected. Off by default, so each player keeps their own settings unless an admin turns it on. Found under 4 - Server in the config.

Also reworded the listing description.

1.0.0

Initial release.

• Fades the particle bursts spawned when a creature is struck: the creature's own blood and impact effects, the attacking weapon's impact burst, projectile impacts, and area-of-effect impacts.
• Fades the lingering status effect aura on creatures - burning, frost, poison - along with the burst it re-spawns on every damage tick.
• Separate toggle per effect source, plus opacity, brightness and size multipliers.
• Client-side only; light sources are left untouched.