Goo's Combat Overhaul

Goo's Combat Overhaul (GCO) makes Valheim combat more aggressive and gives weapons clearer roles. Running and jump attacks help you close distance; heavy weapons trade stamina for stagger and protection; tower shields hold their guard until a blocked hit empties your stamina. PvP has its own balance settings.

Use the default Goo ruleset, customize individual systems or weapons, or reset them to Vanilla.

Getting started

1. Install GCO and its dependencies, then launch your modded game once. Fresh configs are ready to play. Full installation instructions are below.
2. Use normal Valheim controls. Sprint into a primary attack for a Running attack, or jump and press primary while airborne for a Jump attack. Availability depends on the weapon.
3. Open Configuration Manager with F1 and use Config View to choose a weapon and system. The config file and console also work without the menu.
4. Updates preserve your saved tuning. Apply Goo replaces it with the current preset. Optional weapon YAML is Off on fresh installs; enable it for custom profiles and the bundled, manually fitted sword/spear reach profiles.

Default Combat Identity

This describes fresh installs and the Goo preset. Saved settings, host rules and enabled weapon profiles may differ. Primary is the normal attack; Secondary is the alternate attack; P1/P2/P3 are successive combo hits. Free movement means movement from your input; lunge is forward movement built into an attack animation.

What changes across combat

• Attacks turn more readily, but most melee swings stop turning after their hit. Many attacks restrict free movement while lunging forward. Most can transition into a block after the hit.
• Most sword, axe, club, knife and atgeir combos grow stronger with each hit, without placing so much damage in the finisher. Fists and native paired axes/knives retain their existing damage progression.
• A smaller base stamina pool comes with faster recovery and limited stamina debt. Running and jumping attacks provide new approaches, while conditional bonuses reward positioning and timing.
• Large incoming PvE hits are softened. PvP damage is more consistent, with separate stagger, knockback and defensive tuning.
• Heavy armor offers more resistance to being interrupted or pushed around, without its usual movement penalty. Weapons and shields still have their own equipment penalties.

Melee weapons

• Two-Handed Swords: gain base damage and stagger at a higher stamina cost. Planted primaries lunge strongly and cleave without losing damage across targets. Secondary trades damage for stagger, Counter and faster recovery. Running uses the second swing with a long lunge; Jump uses the finisher with extra stagger. Ordinary impact pauses are shorter.

• Two-Handed Axes: also trade more stamina for base damage and stagger. Planted primaries gain lunge, broader contact and penalty-free cleave; Secondary retains limited free movement and its own cleave rules. Running uses the second swing without lunge. The finisher and Jump have deliberately long impact pauses. Primary chopping is weaker, and the equipped axe slows movement more.

  Both heavy families reduce damage and stagger taken during primaries and Running. Ordinary attacks also resist knockback completely; Running does not. Their secondaries protect only at the instant their hit is being resolved, leaving wind-up and recovery exposed. That brief protection prevents PvE stagger and knockback; PvP instead gives strong stagger resistance. Jump attacks have no default hyperarmor.

• Sledges: keep their area damage and radius, swing faster, cost more stamina and inflict much more stagger with slightly less knockback. Primaries gain lunge. Protection lasts through the hit, reducing damage and preventing stagger/knockback; recovery is exposed. They have a heavier equipment penalty and no added normal Running or Jump attack. The optional [Beta] alternate moveset, Off by default, adds axe-inspired swings and Running, keeps the area finisher and borrows the two-handed axe Secondary. Sledges receive no extra Flank damage.

• Atgeirs: retain free movement and gain broader contact, lunge, stagger and primary Counter damage. The spinning Secondary cleaves without multi-target damage loss. Hyperarmor reduces damage; primaries and Running also reduce stagger buildup, while Secondary takes normal stagger and all attacks take normal knockback. Running adds movement and lunge; Jump uses the finisher without protection. Himmin Afl gains chain-lightning chances.

• One-Handed Swords: planted primaries gain lunge and penalty-free cleave. Secondary deals less damage but more stagger, swings faster, recovers more slowly and can Counter. It prevents knockback while taking normal damage and stagger. Running and Jump borrow the finisher; Running adds movement and Jump adds stagger. Equipped swords impose a modest movement penalty. Optional YAML contains reach fitted to each supported vanilla sword's visible blade length.

• One-Handed Axes: retain free movement, gain strong primary lunge and penalty-free cleave, swing faster and build more stagger. Primaries recover more slowly. Secondary gains more reliable contact and knockback protection, but no damage/stagger protection. Running triggers at a lower speed and uses the finisher with more movement and lunge; Jump uses a faster Secondary. Both have slower recovery. Ordinary chopping damage is reduced.

• Clubs and Maces: planted primaries gain lunge and stagger while pushing enemies less, keeping them in reach. Primaries retain multi-target damage loss. Secondary removes that penalty, deals less damage, swings faster and recovers more slowly, with knockback-only protection. Running and Jump use the finisher; Jump adds stagger. Equipped clubs impose a modest movement penalty.

• Knives: retain free movement and gain lunge, broader close contact and faster turning. Stronger Sneak, Flank and Execution bonuses reward openings. They gain no hyperarmor or extra ordinary stagger, and no enabled Running or Jump attack.

• Native Dual Knives: share the knife movement and conditional bonuses while keeping native combo damage. Primary PvP stagger lasts as long as a knife's but builds more strongly; secondaries stagger longer than primaries. Paired items such as Skoll and Hati are separate from SDW Daggers.

• Native Dual Axes: keep native combo damage and finisher bonuses. Planted primaries gain lunge and broad, penalty-free cleave. Secondary swings faster and builds more stagger, with less lunge and narrower, taller contact. Impact pauses are shorter. Hyperarmor and GCO Running/Jump substitutions are Off. These are separate from SDW Axes.

• Spears: retain a focused, single-target thrust with normal lunge and no free attack movement. Primaries gain a stronger Counter bonus. Throws travel faster, deal more stagger and receive no Flank bonus. Hyperarmor and special Running are Off; no Jump attack is added. Optional Spear Loyalty keeps a thrown spear from being consumed/dropped and is Off by default. Bundled YAML fits supported vanilla spear reach to the visible models; it does not change throws.

• Unarmed / Fists: keep native combo damage, animate faster, gain broader contact and adjusted lunge, and restrict ordinary free movement. Running borrows P2 and requires more speed than most weapons. There is no added Jump attack or hyperarmor. Secondary has extra PvP damage, strong stagger and more knockback. Sneak bonuses are above ordinary weapons but below knives.

• Pickaxes: keep native mining damage and mostly neutral local combat tuning. Shared combat/defense rules still apply. Turning locks after the hit through recovery; no Running or Jump attack is added.

• Other weapons and tools: use their applicable shared rules and exposed tuning. Running support depends on the item's existing attack. Custom weapon YAML can select the intended family or exclude an item from GCO weapon changes.

Smoothbrain DualWield weapons

Both hands still strike. Each hand's damage is modestly reduced; the left uses dual-wield skill and the right its ordinary weapon skill. Primaries, Running and Jump cost substantially more stamina; Secondary keeps its ordinary cost factor. All four families gain Running and Jump using P1, with no default hyperarmor and greatly reduced PvP knockback.

Running increases movement and lunge. Jump uses independently copied one-handed sword tuning, with lower damage, greater stagger and no added lunge, while keeping SDW contact shapes and stamina costs. Ordinary/Running impact pauses stay native; recovery waits for the last hand strike.

• SDW Swords: planted primaries swing faster, recover more slowly and lunge furthest on P2. Secondary restricts movement, deals less damage and can Counter. Running also has faster swings and slower recovery.
• SDW Axes: planted primaries gain strong lunge and faster swings, especially the finisher, with slower recovery. Secondary keeps its damage, recovers faster, allows limited turning before the hit and does no chopping damage. Its contact shape follows P1. Running swings faster.
• SDW Clubs: planted primaries gain lunge with ordinary swing/recovery timing. Secondary deals less damage, swings more slowly and recovers faster, with axe-style contact but club cleave rules. Running has slower recovery.
• SDW Daggers: primaries retain free movement and native lunge while gaining faster turning and stronger Sneak damage. Secondary restricts movement, deals less damage and can Counter. Running lunges less than the other SDW families.

Ranged weapons and utility

• Bows: retain draw speed, projectile speed and accuracy while allowing much freer turning during the draw. PvP damage is reduced, with no PvP stagger or knockback. Existing immobilizing effects have a low ordinary chance and become guaranteed against already-staggered or unaware targets.
• Crossbows: retain reload speed, projectile speed, spread and recoil. PvP damage is reduced, with no PvP stagger or knockback. Existing immobilization has no ordinary chance and becomes guaranteed against already-staggered or unaware targets.
• Harpoons: travel faster while retaining native rope strength. Grappling Hook keeps native hook behavior and has its own settings, separate from bow/crossbow balance.
• Throwables: retain native damage, stamina cost, projectile speed and throwing speed. Neither direct bomb hits nor lingering areas receive Flank damage.

Magic

Most spell damage, costs and casting behavior remain native. Shared damage rules still apply, but magic has no default Flank bonus or lasting PvP stagger. Older staves allow parrying and running while blocking; the four newer staves retain neutral staff-specific defense and spell tuning.

• Staff of Embers and Staff of Fracturing: keep their native spell damage, costs, projectiles and area behavior.
• Staff of Frost: fires a tighter spread and deals less PvP damage.
• Dundr: fires a tighter spread without recoil, builds more direct stagger and deals less PvP damage. Reload speed and pellet count stay native. Pellets gain a small chain-lightning chance, guaranteed against Wet targets.
• Staff of Protection: keeps native bubble strength and casting costs. Blocking with the staff is separate from the bubble's protection.
• Dead Raiser: permits one skeleton at starting quality and one more per upgrade. Other summon attributes and casting costs stay native.
• Staff of the Wild: permits ten active vines per caster, without increasing the cap on upgrades. Other vine attributes stay native.
• Trollstav: retains native casting and summoned-troll behavior; it does not share the skeleton or vine cap.
• Echo Spike and Lightning Strike: retain native spell-specific damage, costs, projectiles and areas.
• Northern Vengeance: retains native shield strength, costs, mitigation and retaliation.
• Spirit Caller: retains native summon limits, attributes and costs. Optional cap tuning covers that caster's phantom variants.

Shields and armor

• Bucklers and Medium Shields: keep their native block armor, parry bonus and timing, including the differences between the two classes. They allow running blocks at reduced movement, impose a modest equipment penalty and no longer push attackers away through block force. Shared PvP guard-break resistance applies.
• Tower Shields: hold until a blocked hit empties stamina. Successful blocks prevent stagger and knockback, cover a wider angle and reduce remaining physical damage. Elemental and untyped damage keep their normal blocked-hit treatment. Towers cannot parry or run while blocking and have a heavier equipment penalty.
• Light Armor: removes its armor movement penalty and adds the smallest per-piece stagger/knockback resistance.
• Medium Armor: removes its armor movement penalty and adds more resistance per piece.
• Heavy Armor: removes its armor movement penalty and adds the most resistance per piece. Armor ratings remain native across all three classes.

Core Combat Features

Running and Jump Attacks

Running: reach the weapon's speed requirement while sprinting, then start a primary attack. Holding sprint while stationary is insufficient. An existing queued combo stays a combo. Running allows brief airtime but is disabled on ice by default.

Jump: jump, then press primary before landing. Deliberate jumps qualify immediately; stepping off terrain requires one second airborne. Jump attacks take priority when eligible and spend attack stamina in addition to the jump cost. Secondary input stays Secondary. Feather Cape disables jump attacks by default.

Use the Running Attacks and Jump Attacks global switches, then the weapon's matching section. The global switch, per-weapon Apply and attack-enable setting must all permit the attack. Changing a primary's tuning does not automatically change a Running/Jump attack that borrows its animation.

Hyperarmor and stagger

Hyperarmor separately controls damage, stagger buildup and knockback taken. Protection against one does not imply protection against the others. It does not erase an existing stagger meter.

PvP hyperarmor replaces PvE hyperarmor, then combines with armor and other applicable mitigation. Armor pieces and hyperarmor multiply their remaining-damage factors: two protections do not simply add their percentages. Zero stagger taken means immunity to new buildup; partial values reduce it. Jump hyperarmor is Off by default.

Outgoing stagger strength, how much buildup a target can withstand, and stagger duration have separate controls. An actual stagger clears the meter and preserves facing.

Positioning and timing bonuses

Sneak and Flank can multiply together. Execution and Counter compete with the other eligible combinations; the stronger result wins. A qualifying Flank still plays its enabled ding when Execution wins, without a second Execution/Counter ding on the same hit.

Movement, timing and impact

Attack Movement changes free movement during a swing; Lunge changes its animation-driven forward travel. Swing speed, recovery speed and turning are separate. Recovery starts after the final hit event, including misses and attacks with multiple strikes. Interrupting an attack releases its timing changes.

Movement settings can apply during wind-up, recovery or the full animation. DuringHitbox covers the interval from the first through final hit event; it is longer than the brief DuringHitRay hyperarmor window. GroundOnly, under Jump Attacks, limits attack-movement changes to grounded movement. Added lunge amplification is neutralized while airborne, gliding or on ice.

Block Canceling: use your normal block input during the permitted part of a swing. Goo permits this after the hit, so you can end recovery by blocking but still commit to the wind-up. Hit-Stop controls the pause on impact. These and attack turning have separate ordinary, Running, Jump and PvP settings. Supported melee attacks also earn more adrenaline by default.

Weapon effects

These settings tune effects a weapon already supplies; they do not give every weapon Root or lightning. Ordinary fire, frost, poison and spirit damage effects are separate.

Root immobilization lasts five seconds by default in every weapon category, including bows. Bow chance is 5% normally; Crossbow chance is zero normally. Both guarantee existing Root effects against already-staggered or unaware targets. Existing lightning chains are guaranteed against Wet targets. The target must meet the condition before the hit; staggering it with that same hit does not qualify.

Under a weapon's Effects, rows are grouped by Unconditional, On Wet, On Staggered and On Unaware, then by effect. The highest matching conditional chance replaces the ordinary chance.

Exact-name -1 inherits native/base chance under Unconditional and disables that conditional override elsewhere. Tooltips show the active chance and duration. Extra lightning visuals and Disable Weapon Particles are independent options in Misc, both Off by default.

PvP Damage

Goo makes PvP damage rolls consistent and reduces the advantage of very large single hits against armor. Smaller hits are raised and larger hits compressed within limits. Incoming PvE damage has a separate curve that softens large hits without increasing small ones.

Secondary and Jump attacks exert greatly increased PvP stagger pressure. Two-handed swords and axes gain it on every attack. This increases buildup, not stagger duration; mitigation and immunity still apply. Bow, Crossbow and Magic default to no lasting PvP stagger.

PvP damage, stagger duration, knockback, impact pauses, hyperarmor and guard breaking can be tuned separately. Disabling PvP hyperarmor overrides lets the corresponding PvE protection apply.

Blocking and Defense

Use normal Valheim block and parry controls. GCO preserves the ordinary parry timing window. Projectile parries stagger the attacker only in PvP by default; area-attack parries do not.

Tower-shield guard costs account for incoming stagger pressure, block strength and guard-break resistance. Its increased PvP resistance counters the increased attack stagger pressure without inflating block armor. Extra physical protection applies only while a block succeeds.

Running blocks use normal run stamina. Blocking movement, running-block movement and equipment penalties are separate settings. Blocking with a staff is also separate from absorbing a hit with a magical bubble; staff and active-shield controls tune those independently.

Stats & Resources

Goo uses 50 base stamina, faster regeneration and a one-second regeneration delay. An action can spend into stamina debt down to −50 only if it starts above zero and its full cost fits within that floor. You must recover that debt before acting again.

Running adds no run-stamina drain during attacks or airtime. Jump costs remain native; crouching costs no stamina. Most health, eitr, healing and carry-weight values remain native.

Two optional [Beta] switches remove run or jump stamina cost outside combat. Both are Off. They require no living, loaded creature to be alerted, including friendly and neutral creatures, with no distance limit. Eligible actions work at zero/negative stamina without restarting regeneration delay; other action costs remain separate.

• Movement: ordinary movement speed, jump force and dodge motion remain native; sprint turning is faster. Weapons, shields and tools can be equipped/unequipped while running, but armor, capes and accessories cannot by default. The two permissions are independent.
• Falls: damage starts after a longer fall. Jump Attacks contains the height, damage and cap controls; native fall protection still applies.
• Food and consumables: distinct foods are still required. Food strength, healing and ordinary consumption stay native. Permanent Food, permanent mead/Rested and free consumables are optional and Off.
• Durability: stays native. Unbreakable gear and durability adjustments are optional.
• HUD: optional health/stamina changes are under UI and Icons, Off by default. Grey-band settings require that master to be enabled.

Smoothbrain DualWield (optional)

Supported integration targets SDW 1.0.10. Equip two separate one-handed weapons of the same supported family through SDW, then use the corresponding [SDW] settings. Native paired axes and knives keep their ordinary categories. Without SDW, its controls are hidden.

The [SDW] Dual Wield section has two independent switches, both On in Goo:

• Use GCO Dual Wield Config Overwrite: applies SDW-family tuning. Off preserves those stored values; shared player/world rules still apply.
• Use GCO Dual Wield Skill Scaling: enables GCO's per-hand skill scaling and dual-wield skill stamina discount while retaining SDW's base costs.

Each hand contributes its ordinary one-handed equipment movement penalty, including its own YAML profile. SDW combat settings otherwise remain independent. Running/Jump use their own stamina rates once; editing ordinary sword Jump settings does not change SDW Jump settings.

Known limitation: cape and armor attack-stamina cost reductions do not currently apply to SDW attacks. Skill discounts and GCO stamina multipliers still apply.

Keep the bundled compatibility patcher in its installation location and fully restart after updating it. SDW settings support the same presets, commands, multiplayer rules and weapon profiles as other families.

Summon Settings

For Dead Raiser, Spirit Caller and Staff of the Wild, Base Summon Cap sets the starting allowance and Summon Cap Per Item Level adds summons per upgrade. For example, a base of two and an increment of one allow four summons at quality three. Caps belong to each caster, not the whole server, and scaling continues beyond quality four.

A supported base of -1 retains the native cap; a final cap of 0 means unlimited. Spirit Caller's custom cap covers its phantom variants. Previously untagged phantoms need recasting.

[Beta] Attack Players In PvP is Off. When enabled, both caster and target must have PvP enabled; the caster is excluded, and summons must still detect and select a target normally.

Hit Detection and Feedback

GCO reshapes creature contact for many attacks. Alternate Environment Hit Ray, On in Goo, keeps terrain, tree and building reach at native shapes through a separate pass. With this split enabled, terrain does not obstruct the creature pass. It does not hit the environment twice. Normal sledge area attacks retain their own handling.

Range changes reach; width/height change contact size; angle changes the sweep; forward offset shifts its starting point. Multi Hit permits damage to multiple targets, while Hit Through Mobs, Hit Through Walls and the multi-target damage penalty separately control penetration and cleave damage. Spear P1 remains a single-target exception.

Individual sword/spear reach has been manually fitted to the models and placed in 19 bundled YAML profiles. Enable Use YAML Configs to load them; it is Off for fresh installs. Shape and thickness still use their family/attack settings. The old individual prefab-range controls have been removed; edit the weapon's YAML for those adjustments.

Enemy Tuning

Enemy damage, stagger, resilience, movement, attack speed, turning, size, projectiles and reach can be adjusted separately. Goo leaves most values native, including damage to buildings. Enemies push players less and stop redirecting attacks after their hit event.

Change Enemies / Enemy damage to buildings multiplier for a more destructive world. Player structure damage is separate and also stays native by default.

Debug Tools

For troubleshooting, enable Debug Logging, then the relevant Log - … channels. They cover combat, movement, equipment, resources, effects, magic, enemies, SDW, config and sync, and default Off. Logging does not enable cheats or require debug mode. Verbose Debug Logging enables all channels; use it briefly when reproducing a problem.

Logs are in BepInEx/LogOutput.log. For multiplayer issues, collect the relevant client and host/server logs. Diagnostic preferences and keybinds stay local and survive presets.

Goo Combat Debug Mode provides god-mode behavior and testing tools. Cheat-capable actions require host/server-admin permission in multiplayer.

Keys are configurable and ignored while typing. The PvP Test Dummy lets you test damage, armor, stagger, Counter and impact pauses without another player. Spawn, remove and reset it through Debug actions or console commands.

Presets and Config Tools

Goo Ruleset and Vanilla Reset

Fresh installs and Apply Goo use the same gameplay defaults. Use General / Set To Goo Ruleset or gco_applypreset goo. This replaces custom tuning in its scope. Back up your settings first and let the operation finish before editing again.

General / Reset To Vanilla or gco_applypreset vanilla restores native/no-op settings, disables added attacks and disables runtime YAML without deleting its files. Running/Jump tuning remains stored while those attacks are disabled.

Per-weapon or per-feature resets affect only their stated scope. An ordinary feature reset restores local values and turns its Apply Off; other weapons and shared settings stay unchanged. Turning Apply back On permits stored tuning—it does not reload Goo defaults.

Both presets preserve the Apply Mod Options master and local viewing, particle and debug preferences. Apply Goo also preserves the YAML On/Off choice, so enabled profiles may still override the preset. For a temporary comparison without resetting tuning, turn General / Apply Mod Options Off and back On; the host controls it in multiplayer.

Console commands

Add -console to Valheim's launch options and open its console. GCO commands do not require devcommands; multiplayer permissions still apply. Use autocomplete and list commands to find exact branch/feature names.

gco_list_<Branch> [FeatureFilter]
gco_get_<Branch> <Feature>
gco_set_<Branch> <Feature> <Value>
gco_reset_<Branch> <Feature>
gco_applypreset <goo|vanilla>
gco_applypreset_<Branch> <Feature>
gco_run_<Branch> <ActionFeature>
gco_sync_status
gco_save

Replace the bracketed placeholders; do not type the brackets. For example:

gco_list_2HSwords destruction
gco_get_2HSwords destruction_Primary1_DamageToBuildings
gco_set_2HSwords destruction_Primary1_DamageToBuildings 0.75
gco_run_Debug pvpDummy_Spawn

That edit changes only 2H Sword P1 building damage. Other branches include 1HSwords, 1HAxes, 2HAxes, Maces, Bows and StatsResources. gco_list_All <filter> searches all settings; actions use gco_run_*. Successful edits save automatically.

Important distinction: gco_reset_<Branch> and gco_applypreset_<Branch> restore an entry's bound default. For a scoped Vanilla reset, run the named reset action with gco_run_*; use gco_applypreset vanilla for the whole mod.

Optional Broadcast Config Changes announces gameplay edits in chat. It defaults Off; turning it Off sends one final notice. Presets announce one summary.

Multiplayer Notes

Use the same 2.1.0 build on every client and the host/dedicated server.

Gameplay settings and active YAML come from the host. Ordinary guests are read-only; authorized host/server admins can edit. Lock Configuration defaults On. Guest config/YAML files are not overwritten.

For a dedicated server, stop it before changing files, then restart. Keep its YAML on the host; clients receive active profiles when connecting. Config View, particle suppression, keybinds and diagnostic preferences remain local. Debug actions require separate host/admin permission.

If a setting is locked or changes when you join, use gco_sync_status and edit the authoritative host settings.

Installation

GCO 2.1.0 targets Valheim 1.0.15. Required dependencies are BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2351 and ConditionalConfigSync 1.0.8 or newer. SDW is optional.

Mod manager: install GCO with its dependencies in your Valheim profile and launch that profile's modded game. For the F1 menu, also install shudnal's Configuration Manager.

Manual: install the dependencies, then copy the compiled release's BepInEx folder into your game/profile root, preserving:

Fully restart after patcher updates. It does nothing without SDW. Keep only one runtime GCO DLL. The source archive requires compilation; use the compiled release for normal play.

First launch creates BepInEx/config/goo.valheim.gooscombatoverhaul.cfg. If it or GCO's menu is missing, check the modded profile and BepInEx/LogOutput.log for dependency/load errors.

Updating: back up config/YAML, close the game/server, replace release files and restart. Keep your config to preserve tuning. Removing: close the game/server and remove both GCO DLLs; config/YAML can remain as backups. Also remove or update SDW if it still needs GCO's compatibility patcher on your game version.

Configuration

Finding a setting

Open F1 and select GCO, use console commands, or edit BepInEx/config/goo.valheim.gooscombatoverhaul.cfg while the game/server is closed. Numbers use typed fields. Hover labels for descriptions; saved keys may differ from the shorter menu labels.

Config View provides Show Weapon, Show System and Show Context filters. Hidden settings still apply. Search temporarily bypasses these filters; clear it to return to your chosen view. If controls seem missing, clear search and set all filters to All.

Weapon sections are flat: 1H Swords — Damage, Motion, Timing, Running, Jump, Effects, and other supported systems. Motion groups movement/lunge/rotation; Timing groups animation/recovery/block cancel/hit-stop. Sledges (alt) follows Sledges and appears under the same weapon filter. SDW controls sit beneath their one-handed parents. Armor and Shields follow Magic; Tools and Throwables follow Other.

Apply, Reset and attack roles

Each applicable global category groups tuning first, then alphabetical Apply controls, then the whole-function reset and alphabetical per-weapon Resets.

Only supported combinations appear. Apply is permission, not a preset. Explicit native YAML edits are a separate layer.

Primaries, Secondary, Running and Jump have independent settings where supported. Edit Running/Jump directly even when they borrow a primary animation. A fourth-primary setting only matters for an item with that combo step.

Example: change sword lunge. Choose 1H Swords and Attack Movement, then edit the desired primary under Motion. Keep global lunge neutral if other weapons should remain as they are. Use that sword's Running or Jump section for those attacks.

Global and local multipliers usually combine. Exact-weapon YAML replaces the matching config value. Native combo finishers still contribute their own bonus, so a GCO finisher setting below 1x can still produce a stronger hit than P1. Item/status bonuses retain their own rules; the SDW stamina limitation is described above.

Updates preserve compatible saved values. Older-version migration gives new/invalid tuning Vanilla defaults; missing Apply gates stay On to preserve existing behavior. Legacy flags remain in Inherited Options. Explicit new values win, and starting the same version does not rewrite your config. Apply Goo adopts current defaults if you want them.

Weapon YAML

[Beta] Use YAML Configs is Off on fresh installs. Enable it for custom profiles or the bundled sword/spear reach profiles. Files live in BepInEx/config/GooCombatOverhaul/YAML/Weapons/. The first enabled load installs bundled defaults once, preserving existing profiles, later edits and deletions. Saved On/Off choices survive updating and Apply Goo.

1. Under YAML [Beta], set Weapon Prefab To Generate to held, or enter the exact internal prefab name—not its translated display name.
2. Leave Weapon Category To Generate on AutoDetect, or choose the intended family if a custom weapon is not recognized. This selects its GCO category, not its native skill or moveset. For SDW, use the one-handed base category.
3. Activate Generate Weapon YAML. It reports the file path and never overwrites an existing profile or enables YAML automatically.
4. Edit only the values you need, preserving indentation. null inherits; 0, false and an empty string are explicit values. Text after #, including resolved:, is a comment.
5. Enable Use YAML Configs, then run gco_yaml_reload and gco_yaml_validate held. Files also reload after edits. Use gco_yaml_show held to inspect the profile or gco_yaml_diagnose held to investigate it.

gco_yaml_generate help
gco_yaml_generate held OneHandedSwords
gco_yaml_generate MyModHammer ClubsAndMaces
gco_yaml_generate held AutoDetect full

help lists accepted categories; full creates an expanded diagnostic template. Use gco entries for ordinary tuning. native.shared / native.primary / native.secondary set absolute native fields; chains can replace attack sequences. Leave advanced entries inherited and chains disabled unless needed. A matching supported attack/animation must exist; templateChainStep starts at 0.

To exclude one weapon from GCO weapon changes, keep YAML and that profile enabled and set its first line to:

Let GCO ignore this weapon: true

This excludes its weapon modifiers, native overlays and category overrides, including projectile/SDW effects. Player and world rules still apply. Setting the profile to enabled: false also disables the exclusion; set the ignore line back to false to resume its tuning. Weapon YAML cannot re-enable a host-disabled Apply gate.

Undo one override with null, disable a whole profile with enabled: false, or turn Use YAML Configs Off. Full Vanilla Reset disables YAML without deleting files. Malformed edits keep the last valid profile. On servers, edit/reload the host's profiles. YAML covers weapon settings; general player and world settings remain global.

Troubleshooting

For a controlled comparison, temporarily disable the affected feature with Apply. Use a full preset only when you intend to replace its tuning.

Feedback

Bug reports and suggestions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModdedValheim/comments/1toleqf/about_combat/

Include game/GCO/dependency versions, weapon and attack, single-player or host/client role, reproduction steps, relevant config/YAML and BepInEx/LogOutput.log. A short clip helps with movement or animation problems. Check logs for personal/server details before sharing.

2.1.1 - Reliable multiplayer settings

• Fixed incomplete multiplayer configuration sync. Large configs now arrive completely before players spawn. Failed syncs show an error instead of letting local gameplay settings remain active; server YAML follows the same readiness check.
• Admins use and edit the server's settings. Their changes apply to everyone. Guests remain read-only, including when the ordinary configuration lock is Off. Local preferences return after disconnect.
• Added Misc / Cheat Fest, Off by default. Hosts/admins can give everyone GCO debug powers through existing keys, unbreakable weapons, free food/potion/ammo use, duplicate foods and permanent food/mead/Rested buffs. It overrides individual options without changing their saved values; turning it Off restores ordinary behavior and removes guests' debug powers. Guests cannot control the switch, and weapon YAML cannot override it.
• Requires ConditionalConfigSync 1.0.9 or newer. Install official 2.1.1 on every client and server. Saved tuning is preserved, no config reset is needed, and Apply Goo/Reset to Vanilla both turn Cheat Fest Off. Combat balance is unchanged from 2.1.0.

2.1.0 - Dual wielding, combat fixes and clearer configuration

Updated for Valheim 1.0.15, with optional Smoothbrain DualWield 1.0.10 support. Use the same GCO build on every client and server, keep both bundled DLLs in their plugin/patcher locations, and fully restart after updating.

Combat changes

• Hyperarmor now reduces stagger buildup correctly, including partial resistance. It combines with armor, while PvP protection replaces PvE protection instead of multiplying the two together.
• Two-handed sword/axe secondaries protect only during the hit itself. Wind-up and recovery remain vulnerable; Jump attacks still have no default hyperarmor.
• PvP heavy and jump attacks apply much stronger stagger pressure. Two-handed swords and axes gain it on every attack. Buildup increases without lengthening stagger animations.
• Tower shields hold while stamina lasts. Guard costs account for stagger multipliers, successful blocks prevent stagger/knockback, and less physical damage slips through. Strong PvP hits no longer bypass the guard. Bucklers and medium shields keep native parry bonuses.
• Combos build damage more evenly, with less emphasis on the native finisher. Fists and native paired axes/knives keep their existing progression. Spears gain stronger Counter damage.
• Weapon handling is retuned. Two-handed sword Secondary recovers faster; one-handed sword/club secondaries recover more slowly. One-handed axe Running starts at a lower speed, its primary lunge is reduced, and dagger turning/contact is revised.
• Fixed interrupted attacks stretching stagger animations, premature recovery on multi-strike attacks, jump wind-ups interrupted by quick landings, inconsistent lunge and attacks pulling against ice momentum. Flank's ding also plays correctly when Execution wins the damage bonus.
• Running and jumping have clearer controls. Deliberate jumps qualify immediately; stepping off terrain requires a short fall. Feather Cape disables jump attacks by default. Weapons can be equipped while running; armor requires enabling its separate permission.
• Base stamina is lower, with an adjustable recovery delay. Optional free running/jumping outside combat is Off and requires no living, loaded creature to be alerted, including friendly or neutral creatures.
• Pickaxe mining and enemy building damage stay at native strength by default. Both remain configurable.

Dual wielding, effects and magic

• SDW Axes, Swords, Clubs and Daggers have independent tuning, preserving both hand strikes and skill progression. All four gain Running and Jump using the first primary attack, with higher stamina costs for primaries/Running/Jump and strongly reduced PvP knockback.
• Fixed SDW hand-strike and recovery problems. Equipment movement accounts for each hand separately; ordinary/Running impact pauses stay native. The existing cape/armor attack-stamina reduction limitation is documented.
• Immobilization defaults to five seconds, including bows. Bows retain a small ordinary chance; bows/crossbows guarantee their existing Root effect against already-staggered or unaware targets. Wet targets guarantee eligible lightning chains. Lightning has no duration setting, and effect tooltips reflect active tuning.
• Summon limits scale more predictably with upgrades. Improved cap handling for skeletons, vines and Spirit Caller phantoms. Optional summon attacks on players remain Off and require both players' PvP enabled.
• New Valheim 1.0 staves retain native spell-specific defaults. Existing magic tuning remains active. Fixed several food, fall, projectile and effect inconsistencies.

Configuration and updating

• Updated the required BepInExPack Valheim to 5.4.2351, with clearer startup logs and broader Linux server support.
• Find settings by weapon, system and attack context. Short, flat sections group related controls, and numbers use typed fields. Armor/Shields follow Magic; Tools/Throwables follow Other; alternate Sledge follows the same layout as other weapons.
• Apply and Reset controls are consistent and separately alphabetized. Disable or reset a feature for one weapon family without changing everyone else. Apply permits saved tuning; it does not reload the Goo preset.
• Custom weapon YAML can choose a category or exclude a weapon from GCO. YAML is Off on fresh installs. Enabling it loads bundled sword/spear reach profiles fitted to their models; those individual adjustments now live in YAML instead of extra config controls.
• Debug logging has selectable categories, all Off. The player manual explains each weapon once and keeps practical setup/tuning instructions; detailed reference material remains in the development package.
• Saved tuning is preserved. New tuning falls back to Vanilla when upgrading an older config; starting the same version does not rewrite it. Apply Goo adopts the current preset. Valheim's native facing/dodge controls replace GCO's old Better Free Aim and separate roll key.

2.0.2 - Native-lifecycle cleanup, PvP fidelity, split environment hit rays, and ruleset tuning

Multiplayer authority and configuration

• Added General / Lock Configuration, enabled by Goo/fresh and Reset to Vanilla, and registered it as ConditionalConfigSync's locking entry. Ordinary guests are read-only for server-controlled gameplay settings while the host and Valheim server administrators may edit authorized synchronized settings.
• Cheat-capable GCO debug/PvP-dummy actions are now restricted to the host or Valheim server administrators in multiplayer. Apply Mod Options remains server-authoritative and synchronized, so ordinary guests cannot locally opt out of the host combat ruleset; diagnostic logging, keybinds, Better Free Aim, Disable Weapon Particles, and other intentional local preferences remain client-local.
• Raised the required ConditionalConfigSync dependency to 1.0.8.
• Fresh installs are still generated by the canonical Goo Ruleset routine. Older-version migration still preserves compatible values and assigns Reset-to-Vanilla values only to newly added or failed entries; same-version 2.0.2 configs are not rewritten merely by startup.

PvP stagger

• Reworked PvP stagger-duration transfer around Valheim 1.0's actual damage RPC/stagger boundary so the configured duration is associated with the receiver-side hit only when native stagger really triggers after status-effect stagger modification.
• Stagger animation-speed ownership now follows the live native stagger state/clip and cooperatively restores animation speed without overwriting later animation writers.
• Dual Knives normal primary PvP stagger duration is now 0.67 s, matching the existing Knife and Dual Axes normal-primary default. This is a duration-only change; Dual Knives preserve their existing Goo primary stagger-power tier. One-Handed Sword and Club/Mace jump attacks now use a 1.17 s PvP stagger duration without changing their normal-primary stagger duration/power. Bow, Crossbow, and Magic remain 0 s by Goo default.

Attack lifecycle, movement, and animation

• Removed the obsolete per-attack FullAttackAnimationDurationSeconds fallback settings. GCO attack/hyperarmor lifetime now follows Valheim's native Attack.Stop() / m\_attackDone, animation exit/abort, replacement-attack, and character-destruction cleanup rather than an arbitrary attack watchdog timer.
• Attack-movement application supports BeforeHitbox, DuringHitbox, AfterHitbox, and FullAnimation phases through the native attack lifecycle.
• Fixed attack-context startup/recovery handling so movement, lunge, airborne modifiers, and animation-speed ownership do not disappear during Valheim's short transition between a successful Attack.Start() and the animator entering the attack state.

Hit rays and combat ruleset

• Added Alternate Environment Hit Ray. Goo/fresh default is On; Reset to Vanilla is Off. The configurable GCO melee ray handles character targets while an environment-only pass reuses Valheim's native Attack.DoMeleeAttack() with the attack's pre-GCO ray fields restored, so character-reach tuning does not also extend terrain/building/tree reach or duplicate character hits.
• Atgeir Secondary PvP damage is now 1.0x.
• One-Handed Axe normal primary animation speed is 1.2x, normal P1-P4 lunge is 3.5x, and primary Chop damage is 0.8x. Secondary Chop remains 1.0x.
• Club/Mace P3 now keeps Valheim's multi-target damage penalty enabled, so normal P1-P4 are all penalty-enabled; Secondary remains penalty-free. Running/Jump retain their dedicated rules.
• Corrected Dual Axes jump selection to the native three-stage Primary3 finisher while retaining compatibility for genuine modded four-stage chains.
• Unarmed running-attack movement is 2.5x and its running attack animation speed is 1.0x.
• Pickaxe Primary and Secondary now lock attack rotation from the native hitbox trigger through recovery.

Debug tools and cleanup

• Added host/admin-gated one-shot Kill All Creatures (K) and Remove Loots (L) debug actions using Valheim's maintained/native collections only when invoked; no background scene scan was added.
• Removed dead/stale implementation code that no longer participates in the final 2.0.2 runtime, while retaining explicit older-config/YAML compatibility cleanup where it is still required for migration.

2.0.1 - Animation timing and multiplayer synchronization fixes

Attack animation timing

• Fixed GCO attack/recovery animation-speed composition so configured multipliers apply over Valheim's current clip-authored animation speed instead of recapturing transient Animator.speed values. This prevents nominal multipliers from running faster than intended and prevents recovery, chained attacks, hit-stop, or native animation-speed events from compounding the baseline.
• Added global and per-supported-weapon Animation application toggles. Disabling the applicable toggle makes GCO's attack/recovery animation-speed layer neutral (1.0x) without discarding the stored speed values.
• Goo/fresh One-Handed Axe ordinary primaries use their intended 1.4x attack animation speed with 0.8x primary recovery, the Secondary remains 1.5x, and One-Handed Axe animation changes are enabled.
• Goo/fresh One-Handed Axe running attacks now use 1.0x recovery animation speed and 3.0x movement speed.

Multiplayer config and YAML synchronization

• Replaced GCO's custom multiplayer config/YAML transport with ConditionalConfigSync as a required dependency. Shared gameplay settings and the authoritative YAML profile bundle synchronize through CCS, including late-joining clients.
• Gameplay/balance settings remain server-authoritative while Better Free Aim, Disable Weapon Particles, keybinds, Debug/utility controls, one-shot preset/reset actions, and other intentional local controls remain client-local.
• Removed the obsolete Sync Config in Multiplayer and Limit Guests Authority settings. GCO synchronization is automatic while ConditionalConfigSync is installed.
• Fixed Goo/Vanilla and scoped-reset application so only final persistent config changes are published; temporary preset-calculation states are no longer exposed to multiplayer synchronization.
• Fixed GCO config serialization so an equipped weapon's effective YAML override cannot be written back into the persistent BepInEx config file.

Config lifecycle

• Fresh configs continue to be generated from the canonical Goo ruleset.
• Updating an older config continues to preserve compatible existing values and assigns Reset-to-Vanilla values only to newly added or failed-to-inherit entries. Obsolete native-sync config keys are removed during that version migration.
• Same-version configs are not rewritten or cleaned merely by startup.
• YAML profile schema remains 5.

2.0.0 - Valheim 1.0 compatibility, YAML weapon profiles, rebuilt combat rules, new magic, movement, armor, and runtime architecture

Valheim 1.0 compatibility

• Updated GCO for the Valheim 1.0 code/API line and rebound Harmony targets to the current native method signatures.
• Updated compatibility for Valheim 1.0 EffectList.Create, ItemData.GetTooltip, terminal command construction, attack/projectile/AOE paths, and related changed APIs.
• Updated the Thunderstore dependency to denikson-BepInExPack\_Valheim-5.4.2350 / BepInEx 5.4.23.5.
• Added first-class support for Valheim 1.0's Grappling Hook and the new Echo Spike, Lightning Strike, Northern Vengeance, and Spirit Caller staffs.
• Audited Valheim 1.0 shield-family classification so current shields continue through GCO's buckler/medium/tower/staff defensive systems without display-name grouping.

YAML exact-prefab weapon profiles

• Added optional exact-prefab YAML weapon profiles, allowing individual weapons to override applicable GCO settings without creating separate hard-coded prefab branches.
• Added selected native SharedData and Attack field overrides plus custom primary/secondary chain templates, including template prefab, attack selection, chain-step selection, and per-step native overrides.
• Added compact/full YAML generation for the held or exact ObjectDB prefab. Existing profile files are never overwritten by generation.
• Added watcher-driven hot reload with debounce and main-thread application; no constant directory polling or scene scanning is used.
• YAML reload is atomic: malformed files, duplicate prefab profiles, unsupported paths, conversion failures, or unreadable files keep the previous known-good snapshot rather than partially applying a broken set.
• Added cooperative native-field ownership/restoration so GCO restores only values it owns and does not blindly overwrite later changes made by another mod.
• Added gco\_yaml\_generate, gco\_yaml\_reload, gco\_yaml\_show, and gco\_yaml\_diagnose, plus independent DebugYAMLConfigs diagnostics.
• Added host-authoritative in-memory YAML synchronization when Sync Config is enabled. Guest YAML files are never rewritten; local profiles return after disconnect/unsynced play.
• Decoupled ordinary config and YAML payload generations so a profile reload does not require a full config snapshot and vice versa.
• Current YAML profile schema is 5.

Multiplayer, config lifecycle, commands, and presets

• Expanded host-authoritative multiplayer synchronization to the full 2.0.0 gameplay surface while keeping guest config files and stored local values untouched.
• Better Free Aim and Disable Weapon Particles are explicitly client-local preferences and are excluded from host gameplay synchronization.
• Fresh installations are generated from the same canonical Goo Ruleset routine used by Apply Goo Ruleset, eliminating drift between installation defaults and the preset.
• Older-version migration preserves compatible values from published configs and gives newly added or individually invalid/unreadable entries their Reset-to-Vanilla values. Sync Config is enabled after an older-version migration.
• Same-version configs are not cleaned, rewritten, or saved merely by startup.
• Added one-shot Reset This Function to Vanilla controls for global gameplay functions and Reset This Weapon Type to Vanilla controls for weapon, magic/staff, and shield families. Scoped resets use the canonical Vanilla preset routine rather than separate duplicated defaults.
• Added/expanded flat gco\_\* console coverage for the enlarged config, preset actions, YAML actions, debug actions, and runtime tools, with startup command-coverage audits.
• Reorganized large Configuration Manager surfaces for clearer global/weapon/staff grouping and moved config-change broadcasts to UI and Icons.
• Goo Ruleset no longer forcibly changes Better Free Aim once the user has chosen it; fresh installs still start with Better Free Aim disabled. Reset to Vanilla disables it.

Player movement, airborne control, lunge, and rotation

• Split grounded player-facing rotation into direct Walk, Jog, and Sprint factors. Goo defaults are 1.0x, 1.0x, and 2.0x; Vanilla reset is 1.0x for all three.
• Added dedicated airborne rotation and airborne movement multipliers.
• Added tunable natural airborne horizontal deceleration rate and a horizontal-speed floor/bottleneck for neutral-air momentum decay.
• Split Realistic Jump behavior into independent horizontal-speed-vector locking and airborne rotation/attack-snap locking controls.
• Added an airborne-time threshold so tiny ground gaps do not accidentally trigger jump-attack/airborne bonuses.
• Added Use Vanilla Lunge While Airborne, Use Vanilla Lunge While Gliding, Normalize Lunge on Ice, and Disable Running Attacks on Ice. Goo defaults immediately neutralize GCO's added lunge scaling to vanilla 1.0x animation-authored root motion whenever the player is physically airborne; gliding/ice normalization and ice running-attack suppression remain independently configurable. Valheim's underlying movement state is not replaced.
• Added a physical-airborne running-attack grace/cap. Goo allows running-attack substitution for the first 0.3 s after actual ground contact is lost, then blocks running substitution until the player lands; this uses Valheim's existing ground-contact timer instead of a new polling timer.
• Running and jump attack rotation now uses the native rotation factor of the actual attack template selected for that special attack, with GCO's global attack-rotation multiplier applied on top.
• Reworked attack-rotation settings into true multipliers over native Attack.m\_speedFactorRotation instead of absolute overrides/sentinel values.
• Native-zero rotation attacks can use the same weapon type's actual Primary 1 native rotation as their added GCO baseline, while explicit YAML zero remains an intentional zero and Reset to Vanilla preserves zero-native secondaries.
• Final Goo defaults use 6.0x Global Attack Rotation; normal local attack-rotation factors are generally 1.0x, with Atgeir P1/P2/P3 at 0.8x.
• Increased the Goo Two-Handed Sword running-attack minimum speed gate to 3.5 m/s.
• Set Goo Two-Handed Sword normal Primary1 / Primary2 / Primary3 lunge-distance multipliers to 2.8x / 3.0x / 2.5x.
• Added roll-distance tuning independent of roll animation speed, stamina, invulnerability timing, and recovery.

Running attacks, jump attacks, chains, and heavy-weapon balance

• Expanded and corrected running/jump attack handling so special attacks use native attack templates/validation without replacing legitimate queued primary-chain transitions.
• Fixed failed queued/chained attack starts—most visibly Two-Handed Sword primaries at insufficient stamina—prematurely ending post-hitbox movement and rotation recovery locks. Valheim stops the previous Attack before the replacement validates its resources; GCO now defers its own recovery cleanup in that failed-replacement case and releases it only when the attack animation actually leaves the attack state or is genuinely interrupted, including stagger or death.
• Running and jump attacks now keep independent damage, stagger, stamina, movement, lunge, animation, recovery, hit-stop, PvP, block-cancel, hyperarmor, and rotation surfaces where supported.
• Added/standardized Goo running-attack animation-speed defaults and weapon-specific movement/lunge behavior, including revised Two-Handed Sword, axe, Atgeir, Unarmed, and one-handed axe behavior.
• Rebalanced heavy-weapon base damage, stamina, stagger, jump/running stagger, secondary stagger, hyperarmor, and charge/heavy secondary damage across Two-Handed Swords, Two-Handed Axes, Sledges, Atgeirs, One-Handed Swords, Clubs/Maces, and related attacks.
• Rebalanced jump-finisher behavior so jump attacks borrowing native finishers do not inherit the full vanilla finisher damage spike; jump stagger remains independently tunable.
• Replaced the abrupt native primary-chain damage progression with a smoother Goo ruleset progression for supported melee chains while keeping the last attack as the finisher. Secondary, running, jump, projectile, and standalone custom-YAML attacks remain separate.
• Added/updated per-chain values for one-handed swords/clubs/maces, two-handed swords/axes, Atgeirs, one-handed axes, knives, and dual axes where supported.
• Added \[Beta] labeling/guarding around dual-axe chain surfaces that can interact with the weapon's unusual native chain structure.
• Updated hit-ray application defaults so Goo/fresh enables the hit-ray feature layer broadly, with individual categories/slots still able to remain neutral/no-op.
• Added/updated weapon-specific hit-ray dimensions, including dual axes, knives/dual knives, two-handed axes, unarmed, spear/one-handed range helpers, and special running-attack inheritance.

Sledges and alternate moveset

• Retained the optional \[Beta] alternate sledge moveset, disabled by Goo's Ruleset by default.
• Alternate Primary1/Primary2/Running use dedicated direct hit rays; Primary3 retains the native sledge AOE slam and presentation.
• Alternate Secondary uses the real Two-Handed Axe secondary melee template rather than the sledge AOE route while preserving native startup/resource validation.
• Added/retained independent alternate-sledge damage, stagger, stamina, movement, lunge, animation, recovery, hit-stop, hit-ray, and PvP settings instead of copying live Two-Handed Axe user values.
• Cleaned the alternate-sledge effect/audio path so direct alternate impacts use their intended heavy-melee hit feedback without reintroducing the sledge slam route.

Conditional damage: Sneak, Flank, Counter, and Execution

• Consolidated the former global Sneak/stealth organization and moved Sneak damage skill scaling into the Stealth system.
• Reset-to-Vanilla Sneak/backstab behavior now uses literal native/no-op values; added GCO Sneak skill scaling/XP and Flank behavior are disabled by Vanilla reset.
• Reduced unarmed/fist Sneak damage separately from ordinary weapon Sneak scaling.
• Added/expanded Flank damage eligibility and a separate global/local Flank stagger multiplier. Bomb-style throwable direct/AOE damage and sledges remain excluded from Flank bonuses.
• Fixed Flank/Counter/stagger-critical ding arbitration so the appropriate GCO feedback is not duplicated on the same hit.
• Renamed the staggered-target punish model to Execution and separated global/local Execution values from ordinary Stagger settings.
• Added a unified conditional-damage arbitration model: stackable bonuses form one multiplicative path; each non-stackable active bonus forms a competing single-bonus path; the highest final path wins. Equal results favor the stackable path and equal non-stackable ties use deterministic priority.
• Goo defaults make Sneak and Flank stackable while Execution and Counter Damage are non-stackable.
• Goo Execution defaults use 2.0x global, 1.0x local for most categories, and 1.5x local for Knife/Dual Knives.

Damage curves, PvP, stagger, and combat math

• Restored the damage-curve ordering to GCO's intended pre-armor/raw-damage model. Incoming PvE shaping is applied before Valheim armor; outgoing PvP shaping is GCO's final outgoing multiplier before the victim's normal armor/resistance processing.
• Retained separate incoming PvE and outgoing PvP curve controls with anchor, exponent, minimum, and maximum values.
• Continued per-attack PvP balancing, including reduced heavy/burst, bow, crossbow, and selected special-attack PvP output where required by the Goo ruleset.
• Expanded stagger-power tuning across heavy/polearm/one-handed attacks, including separate normal, secondary, running, and jump identities.
• Added configurable facing preservation when staggered and hardened native stagger-order interactions so GCO does not accidentally multiply Valheim's native staggered-target bonus twice.
• Enemy projectile knockback is now a literal configurable multiplier with Goo and Vanilla defaults at 1.0x.
• Added Enemy Projectile Speed multiplier; Goo and Vanilla defaults remain 1.0x.

Armor and blocking

• Added per-equipped-piece armor knockback resistance: Goo Light/Medium/Heavy defaults 5% / 10% / 15%; Vanilla reset 0%.
• Added matching armor stagger resistance at 5% / 10% / 15% Goo defaults and 0% Vanilla reset.
• Armor tooltips now show GCO knockback and stagger resistance values.
• Added explicit Valheim 1.0 armor-family classification with native movement-modifier fallback for unknown/modded equipment.
• Retained/expanded weapon, shield, staff, buckler, medium-shield, and tower-shield block/parry configuration, including Can Parry, parry-window multipliers, block-break/stagger threshold behavior, blocked-hit damage, movement, stamina regeneration, and running while blocking.
• Hardened tower/buckler/medium shield classification against display-name dependence and audited the new Valheim 1.0 shield families.

Effect Applying, tooltips, and client visuals

• Added the Effect Applying gameplay section with true per-category multipliers over Valheim's native attack status-effect application chance. Goo/fresh defaults are 0.25x; Reset to Vanilla is 1.0x.
• Effect Applying is scoped only around Valheim's native melee, area, and projectile status-effect rolls and does not permanently rewrite the shared weapon chance.
• YAML native status-effect chance can be overridden as an absolute native field; the GCO Effect Applying multiplier stacks on top during the roll.
• Moved optional extra lightning-hit visuals into Effect Applying and made them off by default.
• Added \[Beta] Disable Weapon Particles, a client-local visual preference that suppresses weapon particles, trails, and weapon-owned lights for held and sheathed/back-mounted weapon models while preserving non-visual effects. Native torches are fully excluded.
• Reworked tooltip updates onto completed native tooltip paths so effective stamina, damage, status-effect/chance, armor resistance, chain-lightning, and related GCO information stays current without mutating shared prefab data solely for display.

Valheim 1.0 Grappling Hook

• Added a dedicated Grappling Hook weapon category instead of inheriting Crossbow configuration.
• Added dedicated hook reload speed, projectile speed, range/tether length, fly/pull speed, durability burn, knockback, block/parry, Sneak, and Effect Applying controls.
• Hook range scales both projectile lifetime and attached tether maximum length; fly speed scales the native pull-force components while preserving Valheim's distance-based pull curve.
• Goo/fresh and Vanilla defaults leave the new hook-specific surfaces at native 1.0x behavior unless explicitly tuned.

Magic, staff shields, and summons

• Added Valheim 1.0 Echo Spike support with generic staff controls plus projectile-speed and AOE-radius tuning.
• Added Lightning Strike support with generic staff controls plus projectile-speed and AOE-radius tuning.
• Added Northern Vengeance support for bubble/shield health, health cost/consumption, shield stagger/knockback/PvP behavior, active-parry bonus, player damage taken, and retaliation projectile speed.
• Added Spirit Caller support using the same persistent summon architecture as Dead Raiser, including health cost, summon health/damage, PvP behavior, size, attack speed, level, and native/quality cap handling.
• Retained/expanded Dead Raiser quality/native summon caps, Staff of the Wild per-caster vine caps, staff projectile/AOE tuning, Dundr projectile/reload/recoil/lightning-chain behavior, Himmin Afl chain chance, and staff-shield controls.
• New Valheim 1.0 staff-specific Goo/fresh defaults are neutral/no-op unless explicitly defined by the ruleset, so native new-staff behavior is not silently rebalanced merely by installing GCO.

Player resources, HUD, equipment, and durability

• Rebalanced final Goo player stamina-regeneration and attack/jump stamina defaults across the 2.0.0 ruleset.
• Added optional \[Beta] resource-HUD controls for health/stamina grey increase/decrease bands and bar-gap behavior. The HUD master toggle remains off by default.
• Added direct movement/equipment cache refresh at equipment/config boundaries instead of repeatedly traversing equipment every modifier update.
• Reworked weapon/shield/tool durability modification to exact native durability-consumption sites instead of whole-inventory snapshot/repair passes.
• Reworked food-healing tuning to the native food-regeneration read instead of temporary shared-prefab mutation.
• Reworked negative-stamina HUD handling to the exact native stamina-HUD update scope instead of stack-trace inspection.

Better Free Aim and attack-start correctness

• Better Free Aim remains an optional local setting and no longer depends on the host's synchronized gameplay config.
• Removed the old dependency on Valheim's Attack Towards Look Direction being enabled; GCO's own BFA behavior operates only when selected and yields appropriately to native look-direction behavior.
• Hardened BFA so attack-facing snaps occur only after native Attack.Start succeeds and never occur when stamina/resources reject the attack. BFA now uses the exact native unlocked-melee snap window: it snaps whenever the successfully started attack resolves to native chain level 0; Valheim's 0.2 s chain timer only determines whether progression resets to that level.
• Airborne rotation-lock behavior can suppress BFA/native attack snapping while airborne as part of the Realistic Jump controls.

Runtime architecture and performance

• Replaced broad/per-frame cleanup work with transition/event-driven restoration where possible. Disabled GCO state is now cleaned once on the disable transition instead of repeatedly every frame.
• Moved static Character traits such as size/enemy speed to lifecycle/config refresh boundaries rather than continuously reapplying them.
• Moved static Player traits to lifecycle/config refresh boundaries; only genuinely dynamic systems remain on fixed/update paths.
• Added cooperative original/last-applied ownership tracking for player/native values so GCO does not overwrite changes made later by another system when it restores its own modifier.
• Moved Projectile/AOE context ownership to object-lifetime associations instead of broad searches or transient global state.
• Added targeted runtime refresh domains so changing one config feature does not force unrelated systems to rebuild.
• Made synchronous Harmony mutation scopes exception-safe with finalizers/restoration paths.
• Replaced unnecessary reflection/hot-path member lookup with exact native signatures, cached field references, direct native APIs, and bounded/cached fallback discovery.
• Hardened YAML/config getter overlays against recursion and kept Configuration Manager/local serialization reads separate from synchronized effective values.
• Removed stale/dead beta scaffolding and private-beta migration aliases from the official 2.0.0 source while preserving migration aliases required by published 1.4.0 configs.

Debugging and diagnostics

• Expanded categorized debug logging and throttled runtime state diagnostics.
• Added independent YAML diagnostics and exact-prefab probes through gco\_yaml\_diagnose.
• Updated the default GCO ghost-mode key to P.
• Presets continue to preserve Debug-section settings and debug keybinds.

1.4.0 - Official multiplayer sync, damage-curve, parry, sledge, throwable, and magic expansion

Multiplayer and authority

• Added host-authoritative gameplay-config synchronization for listen servers and dedicated servers. Guests read synchronized host values through an in-memory runtime overlay; guest config files and guest-local stored values are not overwritten.
• Added complete host snapshots on connection, live config deltas after host changes, safe restoration of local values after disconnect/sync disable, and warning-only fallback behavior for invalid payloads or version/protocol mismatches.
• Added forced host/guest version-mismatch notices showing both mod and config versions.
• Added Limit Guests Authority, allowing the host or dedicated server to block non-host guests from using GCO debug/god mode, debug flight, no-cost, ghost mode, debug healing, Rested controls, and PvP test-dummy manipulation.
• Kept diagnostic logging client-local and available even when guest debug authority is restricted.

Damage, stagger, stealth, and hit processing

• Added separately configurable alternate damage curves for incoming PvE damage to players and outgoing PvP damage against players/PvP test dummies. Goo's Ruleset enables both curves; Reset to Vanilla disables them.
• Applied player damage curves after body armor on the authoritative damage path. The curve is evaluated from actual post-armor damage for both real players and PvP test dummies, preventing Valheim's nonlinear armor equation from cancelling the configured compression.
• Added successful Sneak-attack skill XP controls, including base XP, optional scaling from the final Sneak multiplier, and a separate ranged XP multiplier.
• Added separate per-attack Hit Through Mobs and Hit Through Walls controls for ordinary melee, running, and jump attacks.
• Added an enemy projectile knockback multiplier in the Knockback section. It stacks with general enemy knockback; Goo's Ruleset uses 0x, while Reset to Vanilla uses 1x.
• When Multi-Target Damage Penalty is enabled, effective Hit Through Mobs is now disabled. The stored Hit Through Mobs value is preserved and becomes active again if the penalty is disabled.
• Added independent controls for whether player and non-player characters preserve their facing direction when staggered.
• Improved Flank feedback priority so the Flank ding suppresses the same-hit native stagger-critical ding and takes priority over the Counter Damage ding.
• Updated Sneak and Flank tooltip output and added configurable lightning-chain tooltip information where applicable.

Blocking and parry

• Added Can Parry for every weapon/tool blocking category, Unarmed, every shield type, and every staff blocker. Disabling it removes timed-parry resolution while preserving ordinary blocking.
• Added functional tower-shield parrying when Can Parry is explicitly enabled, using Valheim's native timed-block capability gate.
• Added separate PvE/PvP controls for whether parrying direct ranged/projectile attacks or standalone AOE attacks staggers the attacker.
• Added rounded whole-number Guard Boost tooltip output.
• Preserved existing parry bonus, parry-window, stamina, adrenaline, PvP, and block-category multipliers on top of the new capability controls.

Sledges and attack movement

• Added an optional beta alternate sledge moveset, disabled by Goo's Ruleset by default.
• Alternate Primary1, Primary2, and Running attacks use dedicated SledgeAlt settings and direct melee hit rays; Primary3 retains the native sledge AOE slam; Secondary uses the real two-handed-axe secondary melee attack rather than a sledge AOE.
• Set alternate Primary1, Primary2, and Running authored hit-ray range to 2.4 m and angle to 135°, with existing global and per-attack modifiers stacking afterward.
• Added independent SledgeAlt configuration for damage, stagger, resources, animation/recovery, hyperarmor, hit-stop, movement, rotation, lunge, PvP, knockback, noise, hit rays, multi-target behavior, destruction, and staggered-enemy damage.
• Alternate Secondary movement now resolves additively as (native 2H Axe secondary movement + configured SledgeAlt Secondary movement) × global attack-movement multiplier.
• Restored native sledge swing/start sounds for the alternate moveset. Primary3 retains its native slam trigger and visual presentation, while alternate-moveset impacts use a two-handed-axe hit effect.
• Added category-level Sledge slam AOE-radius tuning. It changes the native damage/hit-detection radius without resizing particles or authored visual effects.
• Goo's Ruleset now uses 1.5x normal and alternate Sledge base damage, 1.5x Sledge stamina cost across supported attacks, and 1.0x alternate normal/running PvE hit-stop duration.
• Reworked player attack-movement handling to resolve from Valheim's live Humanoid.GetAttackSpeedFactorMovement() path without mutating player Attack.m\_speedFactor, preventing stale movement values after attacks end.
• Added complete Sledge feature-application coverage for hyperarmor, counter damage, hit-stop, movement/lunge, rotation, hit rays, and multi-target behavior.

Ranged, throwables, magic, and summons

• Added a dedicated Throwables section for native bomb-style projectiles such as Ooze Bombs, with stamina-consumption, damage, projectile-speed, and throw-animation-speed multipliers.
• Excluded throwable direct hits and lingering AOE damage from GCO Flank bonuses and Flank sound-priority processing.
• Added per-staff projectile-speed controls for Staff of Embers, Staff of Frost, Staff of Fracturing, Staff of the Wild, and Dundr.
• Added Staff of Embers fireball impact-AOE radius tuning through the projectile's native impact radius, with spawned-AOE/collider handling retained for compatible alternate projectiles. Particle size is not changed.
• Added Crossbow and Dundr recoil-strength multipliers.
• Added optional extra lightning impact visuals plus separate Himmin Afl and Dundr lightning-chain gameplay chances.
• Reworked Staff of the Wild vine limits into per-caster enforcement without periodic scans; excess vines remove the oldest authoritative vine owned by that caster.
• Simplified Dead Raiser summon-cap handling to use Valheim's native per-owner tameable-cap path instead of redundant GCO runtime cap rewrites.
• Added bow draw rotation-factor tuning and roll-distance tuning.

Balance and weapon defaults

• Set Two-Handed Sword and Two-Handed Axe normal, running, and jump attack stamina-cost multipliers to 1.5x by Goo default.
• Set Two-Handed Axe Primary2 damage to 2.0x by Goo default, matching its heavy primary-chain identity.
• Updated Atgeir running-attack movement to 3.0x and Atgeir ordinary/running/jump hit-ray thickness to 2.0x by Goo default.
• Updated Unarmed running-attack lunge to 2.0x.
• Updated Staff of Frost PvP damage to 0.8x, Dundr recoil to 0x, Dundr stagger to 2.0x, and Crossbow recoil to 1.0x by Goo default.
• Added or corrected independent SledgeAlt defaults so applying the Goo preset no longer copies live Two-Handed Axe user settings.

Config, commands, diagnostics, and migration

• Bumped the Thunderstore manifest to 1.4.0, matching the plugin and config schema.
• Expanded the flat gco\_\* console tree so every bound config entry has a primary compact command path and an exact full-path fallback under All.
• Added a dedicated Resources command branch, removed command-list/autocomplete truncation, bound previously missing debug entries, and added startup audits for command coverage, one-shot action coverage, and gameplay-feature application toggles.
• Fixed branch-level run reachability for Reset to Vanilla and Debug Mode Add Rested, while preventing persistent PvP dummy settings from being misclassified as runnable actions.
• Added targeted alternate-sledge, ranged, multiplayer-sync, movement, attack-lifecycle, and config-migration diagnostics without introducing constant scans or polling.
• Removed startup warning spam from command-name collision handling and inherited-private-field lookup while preserving deterministic command registration and runtime field resolution.
• Fresh config files use Goo's Ruleset.
• When an older config version is detected, every compatible existing value is inherited. Newly added entries and individual entries that cannot be inherited or parsed use Reset to Vanilla values; one failed entry no longer causes the rest of the config to be replaced. Sync Config in Multiplayer is enabled after every older-version migration.
• Same-version config files remain untouched on startup.
• Reset to Vanilla restores ordinary native systems to vanilla/no-op behavior while preserving stored values for mod-added running attacks, jump attacks, alternate movesets, and Debug-section settings; those mod-added attacks/movesets are disabled instead.
• Updated the README for the new multiplayer, migration, damage-curve, Sneak/Flank, stagger, Better Free Aim, parry, sledge, throwable, magic, summon, command, armor, and movement behavior while preserving its existing organization.

1.3.3 Pickaxe hitray fix

• Fixed a bug that made pickaxe's hitrays horizontal.

1.3.2 and 1.3.1 - Thunderstore tagging fix

• Removed "world generation" in the mod's tag. For some reason this website is adding world generation to my mod's tag. Config version is remains "1.3.0". Nothing is changed about the source code.

1.3.0 - Official hit-ray, enemy, stamina, blocking, and combat-tuning patch

• Bumped the mod/config schema and manifest version to 1.3.0.
• Added staggered-PvE-enemy damage controls in the Staggering and per-weapon/tool Stagger sections. The final player damage bonus against staggered PvE enemies resolves as global x local, replacing Valheim's normal staggered-enemy damage result instead of multiplying it again.
• Added stealth tuning coverage, including attack-noise tuning plus global and local backstab damage multipliers for normal attacks, running attacks, and jump attacks. Goo's Ruleset uses a 2x global backstab multiplier, 3x local backstab multipliers for knives, dual knives, and unarmed attacks, and 1x local backstab multipliers for most other supported weapons. Backstab, staggered-enemy, flanking, and counter-damage bonuses also receive stack-control behavior.
• Added flanking damage controls with separate PvE/PvP rear-angle settings and optional feedback effects. Goo's Ruleset uses a narrower 90° PvP flank angle by default.
• Retuned Goo hit-ray defaults while keeping modded/unsupported attack slots at vanilla/no-op hit-ray values by default. Two-handed axes, dual axes, knives, dual knives, unarmed attacks, one-handed axes, and selected heavy/vertical attacks receive curated Goo hit-ray shape values.
• Added prefab-specific hit-ray range multipliers for vanilla one-handed swords and spears. These stack with global and per-attack hit-ray range multipliers and with player size. Existing config migration fills these entries at 1.0x; Goo prefab-length values are applied only by Apply Goo's Ruleset or by fresh config creation.
• Added additive hit-ray thickness in meters for one-handed axe secondary attacks and one-handed axe jump attacks.
• Added player-size and enemy-size hit-ray scaling so melee attack range, size/thickness, height, and offset scale proportionally with configured character size.
• Added enemy attack hit-ray controls for range, size/thickness, height, and offset. Final enemy hit-ray fields resolve as vanilla value × enemy hit-ray multiplier × enemy size multiplier.
• Added a generic enemy speed multiplier that scales enemy movement speed and stacks with enemy attack/movement animation-speed multipliers.
• Added enemy post-hit-ray rotation locking so enemy attacks can stop turning after their hit ray/hitbox event until the attack ends.
• Added negative-stamina action gating. Goo's ruleset now uses RequireCostWithinFloor, preventing players from starting a full-cost action unless the action can fit within NegativeStaminaFloor. The old positive-only behavior remains available as PositiveOnlyLegacy.
• Added optional Souls-like block stamina calculation for weapons, tools, shields, and staffs. Tower shields use it by Goo default, with stamina cost based on stagger damage, effective block armor, configured base rate, and the block-break threshold.
• Replaced generic blocked-hit damage tuning with per-damage-type blocked-hit multipliers for global, weapon/tool, shield, and staff blocking layers.
• Added effective block-angle controls, including Goo's tower-shield default that broadens effective blocking coverage.
• Added Staff of Frost/Dundr projectile-speed tuning, spear projectile-speed tuning, spear loyalty mode, and harpoon rope-strength tuning. Goo's Ruleset sets spear projectile speed to 1.5x, keeps spear loyalty disabled by default, and exposes harpoon rope-strength tuning.
• Added Staff of the Wild and Dead Raiser spawn controls, including spawn caps, size/attack-speed/level controls, and PvP targeting toggles where applicable.
• Added full enemy/weapon debug improvements, including combat-debug-gated Add Rested control with default key O, while preserving debug keybinds during Reset to Vanilla, Apply Goo's Ruleset, and migration.
• Hardened hit-stop behavior so GCO animation-speed reapplication no longer overwrites Valheim's active FreezeFrame hit-stop sentinel.
• Changed root-motion lunge scaling to affect only positive forward movement. Backward, sideways, and vertical root motion are preserved so lunge multipliers do not amplify retreating recovery movement.
• Updated Goo default one-handed axe tuning, including faster primaries, adjusted recovery speeds, jump/running attack tuning, secondary chop damage restored to 1.0x, and Primary1/Primary2/Primary3 hit-ray height tuning.
• Updated Goo default spear lunge so all vanilla spear attack slots use 2.0x lunge.
• Updated Goo default atgeir attack movement so primary and secondary attacks use 1.0x attack movement.
• Improved config ordering and registered previously missing debug/config entries so the config UI, flat gco\_\* console command tree, and config-change broadcast path cover the newly exposed settings.
• Updated config migration behavior for 1.3.0: same-version configs are left untouched; compatible older configs receive safe/no-op gap-fill values for newly added entries unless the feature requires a Goo-specific migration default; configs from 1.0.4 or older are still archived and regenerated.
• Updated the README to document the new hit-ray, enemy, stamina, debug, lunge, and preset behavior without rewriting the full document.

1.2.1 - Official console-command, debug-tool, resource, durability, and destruction patch

• Bumped the mod/config schema and manifest version to 1.2.1.
• Fixed an AAA_Crafting/Auga compatibility crash by restricting non-character destructible reflection patching to Valheim's own IDestructible assembly and safely skipping unloadable types.
• Added flat gco\_\* in-game console commands with list, get, set, reset, applypreset, run, and save support for GCO config and action entries.
• Added vanilla-autocomplete-friendly command names such as gco\_set\_2HSwords, gco\_get\_Debug, and gco\_run\_Debug. Feature paths are compressed into one underscore-separated argument, such as destruction\_Primary1\_DamageToBuildings, so Valheim autocomplete can cover commands and feature keys without inserting long broken chains.
• Added branch-specific list/get/set/reset/applypreset/run commands for general settings, debug tools, player/enemy/PvP systems, magic, blocking, and weapon/tool categories. Preset application intentionally excludes the Debug section.
• Added multiplayer disclosure messages for GCO setting changes, preset applications, and debug-tool toggles.
• Added \[General] Broadcast Config Changes, disabled by Goo's ruleset by default. Turning this setting off still sends one final disclosure message before further broadcast messages are suppressed.
• Added \[General] Roll, a one-button roll keybind. Goo's ruleset defaults it to X; the roll direction follows current movement input, supports diagonals, and rolls backward when no movement input is held. ResetToVanilla disables the keybind.
• Added Goo Combat Debug Mode, which uses Valheim's native god mode for local testing while enabled and forces debug fly, no-placement-cost, and ghost mode off when disabled. GCO debug fly and ghost controls do not enable Valheim's vanilla debugmode flag.
• Added debug-gated hotkeys and one-shot buttons for debug fly, no-placement-cost, ghost mode, and manual debug healing. Default keys are Z, N, G, and H, and the hotkeys use physical-key detection so simultaneous movement input such as W/A/S/D does not block them. Added Debug-section enable/disable switches for the debug-fly, no-placement-cost, and ghost-mode controls; disabling one also forces that GCO-controlled state off.
• Goo/vanilla preset application preserves Debug-section entries, including combat debug mode, debug logging, verbose debug logging, PvP dummy controls, debug-control enable switches, and debug hotkeys.
• Added VerboseDebugLogging in the Debug section. When enabled together with DebugLogging, it enables all categorized debug channels and prints a throttled detailed local-player state snapshot covering resources, movement input, attack runtime state, weapon category, blocking/dodging, and GCO debug toggle states.
• Added NoConsumption for local testing so food, meads/potions, arrows/bolts, ammo, bait-style attack resources, and similar consumables can be used without spending the item/resource.
• Added permanent food, permanent mead, and permanent rested-buff options while preserving their healing/regeneration behavior.
• Added food healing-rate and mead stamina/eitr/health-regeneration bonus multipliers.
• Added global and per-gear unbreakable options, durability consumption-rate controls, base durability multipliers, and final max-durability multipliers for weapons, tools, shields, armor, and other durability-using gear.
• Updated durability tooltips so ordinary nonzero durability multipliers are reflected by Valheim's normal durability line, while explicit unbreakable behavior is shown as Unbreakable.
• Added \[Enemies] EnemyDamageToBuildingsMultiplier; Goo's ruleset defaults enemy damage to Valheim WearNTear buildings/pieces to 0.2x, while ResetToVanilla restores 1.0x.
• Added \[Player] PlayerDamageToBuildingsMultiplier, defaulting to vanilla/no-op 1.0x.
• Added global and per weapon/tool/shield/staff parry-window time multipliers. 1.0x preserves Valheim's normal timed-block window, larger values make parries more forgiving, and 0x can disable timed parries for the affected blocking layer.
• Added per-weapon/tool Destruction sections for normal attack slots, running attacks, and jump attacks to control player damage against Valheim WearNTear buildings/pieces.
• Added config migration gap-fill for new 1.2.1 entries while preserving the existing migration rule: same-version configs do not rewrite, compatible older configs keep existing values except for newly added entries, and configs from 1.0.4 or older are archived and regenerated.
• Fixed 1.2.1 migration so it no longer overwrites the pre-existing DebugLogging setting when upgrading from older compatible configs.
• Reduced Goo's horizontal hit-ray thickness bonus from +0.25x to +0.15x.
• Expanded the README's multiplayer fairness warning to cover local gameplay settings such as damage, animation speed, stamina, durability, resources, building damage, commands, and debug tools.

1.2.0 - Official special-attack, block-cancel, run-blocking, and combat-feel expansion

• Bumped the mod/config schema and manifest version to 1.2.0.
• Added targeted 1.2.0 config migration so configs from 1.1.0 receive Goo defaults only for newly added 1.2.0 entries, while same-version configs do not rewrite, clean, scan, or save on normal startup.
• Optimized startup config handling by evaluating the config version before expensive migration/cleanup work. Same-version startup still binds runtime config entries, but no longer runs orphan cleanup, stale-entry cleanup, version rewrites, or config saves.
• Removed beta/internal release artifacts from the official package; official documentation now records only the net user-visible delta.
• Separated running-attack and jump-attack tuning from the normal primary/secondary attack slots they reuse internally. Special attacks now have their own damage, stagger, stamina, attack speed, recovery speed, movement, lunge, rotation, hyperarmor, counter, hit-stop, utility-damage, PvP, noise, hit-ray, multi-target, adrenaline, and block-cancel settings where applicable.
• Added recovery-animation-speed support for running attacks and jump attacks.
• Added per-attack block canceling for normal melee attacks, running attacks, and jump attacks. Block cancel modes are Disabled, BeforeHitbox, AfterHitbox, and FullAnimation.
• Goo's ruleset now sets melee block canceling to AfterHitbox by default with 1.0x block-cancel animation speed. This allows a defensive transition after the hitbox without automatically speeding attacks up.
• Reworked block cancel input so it uses a fresh block request during the active attack instead of held-block state. Holding block after canceling one attack should no longer accelerate or cancel the next attack automatically.
• Block cancel no longer aborts attacks. It accelerates/finishes the attack flow instead of calling Valheim's attack-abort path, preventing permanent hit-stop/frozen-animation states when canceling during hit-stop.
• Block cancel preserves Valheim's normal combo-chain behavior; it does not forcibly rewrite the next combo step.
• Added hit-stop freeze hardening so block-cancel/recovery-speed logic does not preserve Valheim's frozen hit-stop animator speed as the restore target.
• Added per-attack PvP hyperarmor multipliers for melee weapons, including PvP damage taken, PvP stagger taken, and PvP knockback taken during hyperarmor.
• Added per-attack PvP counter-damage multipliers for melee weapons, including running and jump attacks.
• Added direct running-while-blocking support for weapons, shields, and staffs. When enabled, holding Run while actively blocking allows run-style movement and uses Valheim's normal run stamina cost.
• Goo's ruleset enables running while blocking for weapons, bucklers, medium shields, and staff blocks; tower shields remain excluded by default.
• Goo's ruleset sets running-while-blocking movement speed to 0.7x for enabled weapons, bucklers, medium shields, and staffs. Tower shields keep run-blocking disabled.
• Added per-weapon blocking movement-speed support and fixed blocking movement-speed resolution so the active blocking item/category is used instead of only the currently classified attack weapon.
• Goo's ruleset keeps global blocking movement speed at 1.0x and gives tower shields 0.5x damage taken while blocking.
• Reworked attack movement handling after testing: standard attacks scale Valheim's live attack movement, while 2H axe normal attacks and 2H axe running attacks use the direct movement-factor path needed for that moveset.
• Goo's ruleset sets normal primary attack movement to 0x for melee categories except knives and dual knives, which keep 1.0x primary movement for dagger identity. 2H axe secondary keeps 0.2x direct movement.
• Goo's ruleset sets all melee attack adrenaline multipliers to 2.0x, including configured running/jump attacks.
• Added chain-safe running attack behavior: GCO no longer substitutes a running attack when the player is already inside an attack animation, so queued/chained attacks remain normal chain attacks.
• Goo's ruleset sets all running-attack velocity gates to 5.
• Added and tuned running attacks for supported melee categories while leaving knives and dual knives disabled by Goo default. Knife and dual-knife running-attack metadata remains configurable if manually enabled.
• Goo's ruleset running attack tuning now includes: 2H sword uses Primary3 with 0.7x damage, 1.0x movement, and 2.0x lunge; 2H axe uses Primary2 with 1.0x damage, 0.9x movement, and 0x lunge; 1H axe uses Primary3 with 0.7x damage, 3.0x movement, and 3.0x lunge; 1H sword uses Primary3 with 0.7x damage, 3.0x movement, and 1.3x lunge; clubs/maces use Primary3 with 0.7x damage, 3.0x movement, and 1.3x lunge; atgeirs use Primary2 with 1.0x damage and 3.0x lunge; unarmed running attacks use 2.0x movement and 1.0x lunge.
• Goo's ruleset disables running attacks for one-handed knives and dual knives by default, while keeping their configurable Primary3 running-attack setup available for manual use.
• Added/finalized jump attack tuning. Dual Axes jump attack now uses Primary4 and deals 0.45x damage by Goo default.
• Goo's ruleset gives 2H axe Primary3 5.0x hit-stop duration and gives 2H axe jump attacks 5.0x PvP hit-stop duration.
• Goo's ruleset sets Dual Axes secondary lunge to 0.9x and spear Primary1 lunge to 1.0x.
• Fixed special-attack value leakage so running/jump attack values no longer silently inherit normal Primary2/Primary3 tuning for unrelated features.
• Expanded global scalar controls for attack movement, lunge distance, attack rotation, hit-stop, PvP hit-stop, animation speed, recovery speed, PvP knockback, blocking damage/knockback, hit rays, and AI noise. These global controls stack with per-weapon/per-attack values and default to 1.0x unless Goo's ruleset explicitly changes them.
• Added/expanded per-weapon feature sections so large weapon configs are grouped by gameplay system: damage, staggering, hyperarmor, hit-stop, counter damage, resources, attack movement and lunge, animation, attack rotation, PvP damage, knockback, blocking and parry, hit ray, AI noise, and special attacks.
• Added broader staff and shield block options to match weapon block tuning, including block damage taken, knockback taken, PvP block-break, and run-blocking behavior.
• Preserved ResetToVanilla behavior: vanilla reset restores new 1.2.0 systems to disabled/no-op values where possible, while Goo's ruleset reapplies the curated 1.2.0 defaults.

1.1.0 - Official hit-ray, multi-target, config-readability, and staff-spawn tuning patch

• Bumped the mod/config schema version to 1.1.0.
• Added targeted 1.1.0 config migration so configs older than 1.1.0 receive Goo defaults for newly added 1.1.0 hit-ray, AI-noise, multi-target, and staff-spawn controls without rewriting older user-tuned settings.
• Reworked config option names to use readable spaced labels, with migration from old compact keys where possible.
• Added per-attack AI aggro/noise controls for attack-start noise and attack-hit noise while leaving Goo's defaults at vanilla/no-op 1x.
• Added per-attack melee hit-ray controls for ray-based melee attacks: start height, offset, range, angle, thickness, and horizontal/vertical hitbox type.
• Added hit-ray support for normal melee attacks, running attacks, and jump attacks. Airborne attack bonuses do not independently alter hit-ray settings.
• Excluded sledges from hit-ray tuning because sledges use Valheim's AOE-style attack system rather than ordinary melee hit rays.
• Added per-attack multi-target damage-penalty toggles for supported melee attacks, reduced to simple Enabled / Disabled choices.
• Updated ResetToVanilla multi-target behavior to restore Valheim's vanilla no-penalty family: all sword attacks, 2H axe primary-chain attacks, Dual Axes, and atgeir secondary.
• Updated Goo's ruleset multi-target behavior so swords and axes stay free of multi-target falloff, selected vertical attacks are also falloff-free, and spear primary keeps Valheim's multi-target falloff despite its new vertical hitbox.
• Tuned Goo's melee hit-ray defaults to better match weapon visuals and reduce phantom reach, including updated spear primary range/type, 1H sword and 2H sword vertical attacks, club/mace vertical attacks, 1H axe primary thickness, 2H axe vertical/running/primary attack values, and Dual Axes primary/secondary hit-ray values.
• Added StaffGreenRoots / Staff of the Wild spawned-vine level control.
• Added StaffSkeleton / Dead Raiser spawned-skeleton size, attack-speed, and level controls.
• Cleaned stale hit-ray config keys, obsolete hitbox option names, sledge hit-ray entries, and earlier compact config entries after migration.

1.0.9 - Official staff, PvP, player-size, food-rule, and attack-role cleanup patch

• Finalized Player Size config naming and made player size also scale player-owned melee attack reach/range by applying the size multiplier to cloned attack hitbox/range fields.
• Fixed attack-role modifier leakage for nonstandard movesets such as Dual Axes, Spears, and Unarmed by restoring provisional attack-field tweaks and reapplying the correct values after Valheim confirms the authoritative primary/secondary role.
• Removed Unarmed Primary3 support because unarmed only has two primary-chain attacks.
• Retuned unarmed by Goo's ruleset: Primary1 PvP damage 1.0x, Primary1 animation speed 1.2x, Primary2 PvP damage 0.7x, Primary2 animation speed 1.2x, Primary2 lunge distance 1.5x, Secondary PvP damage 1.3x, and Secondary animation speed 1.3x.
• Goo's ruleset now requires 1.0s minimum airborne time before airborne attack bonuses or special jump attacks trigger.
• Goo's ruleset now sets 2H sword secondary PvP damage to 0.40x, 2H sword running-attack PvP damage to 0.75x, and 2H sword jump-attack PvP damage to 0.60x.
• Added spear throw projectile-speed tuning; Goo's ruleset sets spear throw projectile speed to 1.2x.
• Added StaffSkeleton damage and PvP damage multipliers.
• Finalized Dead Raiser / StaffSkeleton summon-cap config naming and fixed summon-cap control so the cap is resolved from the Dead Raiser item quality instead of the spawned skeleton creature level.
• Added Dead Raiser / StaffSkeleton quality-4 summon-cap support.
• Improved StaffGreenRoots / Staff of the Wild spawned-character logic so root/vine size and speed tweaks only apply to confirmed StaffGreenRoots spawns and cannot stack repeatedly on the same spawned character.
• Replaced the old bounded staff-spawn scene sweep with direct staff-spawn origin propagation through the active SpawnAbility coroutine, Character.Awake, projectiles, and AOEs.
• Added StaffLightning and StaffIceShards projectile-speed tuning.
• Goo's ruleset now sets StaffIceShards spread to 0.5x.
• Added Player.MustEatUniqueFood. Goo's ruleset disables it, allowing duplicate foods in multiple food slots; ResetToVanilla restores Valheim's unique-food requirement.
• Updated the PvP test dummy: default health 250, default armor 150, and full-heal countdown starts only after the dummy has been attacked. PvP dummy hit logging is now disabled by default.
• Improved attack debug logging with attack hashes and authoritative role-correction messages to make modifier-leak issues easier to verify.
• Cleaned stale duplicate config reset lines, obsolete helper methods, old player-size and summon-cap config keys, and stale default wording left from the v1.0.9 development cycle.

1.0.8 - Official balance cleanup and config-history fix

• Bumped the mod/config schema version to 1.0.8.
• Fixed the release changelog packaging mistake by preserving older changelog history instead of replacing the whole changelog file.
• Removed the obsolete standalone \[Magic] movement config surface. Staffs now use staff-specific config sections.
• Removed the obsolete general \[Shields] config surface. Shields now use buckler, medium-shield, and tower-shield sections.
• Goo's ruleset now sets mace/club secondary attack animation speed to 1.3x.
• Goo's ruleset now sets bow projectile speed to 1.1x.
• Bows, crossbows, and direct-attack staffs now use 0x PvP knockback by Goo's ruleset.
• Fireball staff PvP stagger is now 10x by Goo's ruleset.
• Unarmed Primary1 PvP damage is now 1.3x.
• Unarmed Primary2 PvP damage is now 1.4x.
• Clubs/maces now use 0.7x general knockback by Goo's ruleset.
• Bucklers, medium shields, and tower shields now use 1.1x general block-break threshold by Goo's ruleset.
• Dead Raiser / StaffSkeleton now has HealthConsumptionRate, matching the StaffShield-style cast health-cost tuning surface.
• Added MaxVinesSpawned to Staff of the Wild / StaffGreenRoots, defaulting to Valheim's vanilla 10.
• Added Dead Raiser / StaffSkeleton beta spawn-cap config values: BaseSpawnCapLevel1Beta = 1, BaseSpawnCapLevel2Beta = 2, and BaseSpawnCapLevel3Beta = 3. These remain Beta because Valheim still appears to enforce a hard skeleton summon cap of 3.
• Added stale cleanup for removed standalone Magic and general Shields config keys.

1.0.7 - Official PvP, staff, blocking, and attack-context stability patch

• Fixed attack modifier leakage between attacks of the same weapon. Primary, secondary, running, jump, and chain attacks now use stricter attack-role context so one attack's modifiers should not carry into the next attack.

• Fixed the sledge/pickaxe category mixup. Pickaxes now have their own category instead of inheriting sledge behavior through shared moveset logic.

• Fixed one-handed sword secondary/heavy attack animation-speed scaling so small multipliers no longer behave like extreme speed changes.

• Fixed PvP knockback not applying correctly. PvP knockback now uses the same outgoing modifier path as normal knockback and PvP damage.

• Removed the Beta label from PvP knockback config names because the PvP knockback path is now functional.

• Goo's ruleset now sets melee-weapon PvP knockback to 0.1x.

• Reworked Goo's PvP stagger ruleset:

  • Tier 1 PvP stagger power is now 5x.
  • Tier 2 PvP stagger power is now 10x.
  • Tier 3 PvP stagger power is now 20x.
  • Unarmed secondary PvP stagger power is now 999x.

• Added PvP stagger-duration / hitstun tuning for attacks.

• Added PvP block-break threshold tuning for weapons, shields, and staffs.

• Restored PvP block armor defaults to vanilla/no-op 1x.

• Added separate shield-type config sections for bucklers, medium shields, and tower shields.

• Added weapon and shield support for Block Force, Parry Bonus, PvP Parry Bonus, PvP Block Force, and PvP Block Break Threshold tuning.

• Goo's ruleset now sets general Block Force to 0x for weapons, shields, and staffs.

• General Block Force and Parry Bonus now update tooltips. PvP-only block/parry stats do not update tooltips.

• Block Force at 0x is hidden from item tooltips.

• Added staff-specific config sections for direct-attack and utility staffs.

• Added staff block tuning, staff attack movement, and staff attack rotation configuration.

• Added StaffShield active-shield tuning for cast health cost, stagger mitigation, knockback mitigation, and active-shield parry bonus.

• Added staff projectile controls for Dundr / StaffLightning and Staff of Frost / StaffIceShards.

• Added Staff of the Wild vine damage, size, and attack-speed options.

• Added experimental PvP targeting toggles for Staff of the Wild and Dead Raiser spawned entities.

• Added PlayerBaseEitr and PlayerBaseEitrRegenRate.

• Fixed base eitr so added eitr is not repeatedly removed by Valheim's periodic max-eitr refresh.

• Added DoMaxDamage in the Player section. When enabled, player attacks use the maximum skill-scaled damage value, and weapon tooltips show the max effective value instead of a damage range.

• Removed the broken KeepStaminaBarVisible feature and its stale behavior.

• Added a PvP test dummy debug tool based on Valheim's TrainingDummy prefab.

• Config migration now archives configs older than 1.0.5 out of the active config path while preserving/migrating overlapping 1.0.5 and 1.0.6 values.

1.0.6 - Feedback route, removed mod configuration menu dependency

• Removed mod configuration menu from the mod's dependencies.
• Added a reddit page in the README so that users can leave feedbacks for the mod.
• The config version remains unchanged, so old configs will not be overwritten.

1.0.5 - Official running, jump, airborne, utility-damage, sledge, and poise patch

• Added configurable RunningAttackMinimumVelocity speed gates for supported running attacks. Goo's ruleset uses a 3.0 minimum velocity gate for supported running attacks.
• Added RunningAttackUsed, allowing running attacks to use Primary1, Primary2, Primary3, or Secondary when that attack slot exists for the weapon.
• Retuned Goo's running attacks: two-handed swords, one-handed swords, one-handed axes, and clubs/maces use 0.7x running-attack damage; running attacks use BeforeHitbox movement so recovery movement is forced to 0 after the hitbox emerges.
• Expanded special jump-attack support to supported weapon categories, with jump attacks taking priority over running attacks. Goo's ruleset uses 0x jump-attack lunge and requires 0.4s airborne time.
• Added per-attack airborne damage, stagger, and rotation multipliers. Categories without a Goo-enabled special jump attack receive 1.3x airborne damage by Goo's ruleset.
• Added per-attack chop and pickaxe damage multipliers. Goo's ruleset disables airborne chop damage so airborne attacks do not accelerate tree chopping.
• Retuned sledges as a single-primary-attack heavy weapon: 1.5x base damage, 2x stagger, 1.5x animation speed, 0.9x knockback, 0.9x PvP knockback, 1.5x stamina consumption, and an -8% movement penalty by Goo's ruleset.
• Set two-handed swords, two-handed axes, one-handed axes, and clubs/maces to stronger stagger defaults, with one-handed axe secondary attacks retaining 3x stagger.
• Set two-handed axe base damage back to 1.0x by Goo's ruleset while preserving its dedicated Primary1 attack damage modifier.
• Renamed attack movement config keys to AttackMovementModifier and RunningAttackMovementModifier for attack movement multipliers; stale old attack-movement entries are cleared by config cleanup.
• Added player jog-speed, player base-rotation, experimental player size, player/enemy poise, stagger-decay speed, and non-staggering-hit stagger-decay cooldown controls.
• Added enemy controls for stagger dealt, knockback dealt, attack animation speed, movement animation speed, size, generic rotation, and attack rotation.
• BetterFreeAim now also affects blocking: while blocking with movement input, the mod suppresses Valheim's crosshair-facing block rotation and keeps the player facing movement direction without moving the camera/crosshair.
• Replaced ApplyGoosSettings with SetToGooRuleset.
• Configs older than 1.0.5 are refreshed to Goo's current ruleset once and stale entries are cleared.

1.0.4 - Documentation typo fix

• Fixed package/documentation typos; no gameplay changes.

1.0.3 - Official weapon baseline, airborne, armor, shield, and PvP tuning patch

• Added BaseDamageMultiplier for every weapon category. It scales the weapon's full outgoing damage package, including elemental, chop, and pickaxe channels when present, and updates displayed tooltip damage.
• Added final-value BackstabDamageRate by weapon category. Tooltip backstab lines update through this value, with vanilla-style defaults such as 6x for knives.
• Primary and secondary DamageRateMultiplier settings now function as runtime attack/motion-value modifiers instead of directly changing tooltip damage.
• Added per-attack-slot AirborneDamageMultiplier for player-owned combat melee attacks initiated mid-air. Swimming does not count, tools/Other are excluded, and Goo preset uses 1.12x.
• Added non-character destructible damage coverage so configured outgoing player damage modifiers also apply to trees, rocks, pieces, and other destructibles through their HitData damage channels.
• Added two-handed axe jump attack support. When enabled, a two-handed axe primary attack initiated airborne and not swimming uses the finisher-blow chain animation with its own modifier set; jump attack takes priority over running attack.
• Updated two-handed axe running attacks to use the second primary-chain attack. Goo preset gives this running attack 0.8x damage, 0x lunge, and 0.6x PvP damage.
• One-handed axes, one-handed swords, and clubs/maces use 0.7x running-attack damage by Goo preset while remaining user-editable.
• Added PvP-only knockback force multipliers for normal, running, and jump attacks. Goo preset sets PvP knockback to 0 while leaving general/PvE knockback unchanged.
• Added armor base-armor multipliers grouped under \[Armor], classified by vanilla movement penalty: light/no-penalty, medium -2%, and heavy -5%. Armor tooltips update through these values.
• Expanded shield tuning under \[Shields], including block power, deflection force, timed-block/parry bonus, block stamina use, block-break threshold, and movement modifier.
• Made block stamina consumption and block-break threshold configurable by active blocking weapon/shield type.
• Refined BetterFreeAim so chained attacks do not receive repeated direction snaps while a character is already in an attack animation.
• Goo preset updates: two-handed swords and two-handed axes use 1.25x base damage, two-handed axe Primary1 uses 2x attack damage, unarmed Primary1/Primary2/Primary3 use 2x animation speed, fall damage starts at 8m, and combat melee attacks initiated mid-air use 1.12x airborne damage.
• Added config-version handling so configs older than 1.0.3 are refreshed to Goo's current preset once and stale entries are cleared.

1.0.2 - Official weapon-chain, lunge, running-attack, and PvP tuning patch

• Added Primary1 / Primary2 / Primary3 / Secondary attack-slot config support for melee weapon chains, allowing normal primary-chain attacks to be tuned separately.
• Added melee lunge-distance/root-motion multipliers with configurable application modes: BeforeHitbox and FullAnimation. Goo preset uses BeforeHitbox by default.
• Added running attacks for supported melee weapons. Running attacks can use their own damage, stagger, stamina, animation-speed, PvP damage, PvP stagger, knockback, adrenaline, and lunge multipliers.
• Dual Axes running attacks now use Primary1 for stability while still receiving running-attack-specific modifiers.
• Added per-attack knockback-force multipliers and an enemy knockback-force multiplier.
• Added per-attack PvP stagger multipliers. Goo preset uses high melee PvP stagger while keeping ranged/magic PvP stagger neutral.
• Goo preset now sets melee PvP damage to 0.6x and ranged/magic PvP damage to 0.3x.
• Replaced the old equipment movement-penalty toggle model with direct movement modifier overrides. Goo preset removes armor movement penalties, sets two-handed axes to -8%, and sets tower shields to -5%.
• Movement modifier tooltips now hide the movement line when the final configured value is 0.
• Goo preset damage/stagger refinements: two-handed swords and two-handed axes receive updated damage/stagger identity, with two-handed axes keeping hit-stop enabled by default.
• Removed the confusing public ActiveHitboxFrames hyperarmor path and related active-hitbox duration config entries.
• Removed stale ranged/magic configs that did not contribute useful behavior, keeping only functional ranged/magic options.
• Added a run-drain toggle so Goo preset can prevent extra held-run stamina drain during attacks and while airborne.
• README, manifest, and changelog updated for the official 1.0.2 release.

1.0.1 - Official player systems and movement patch

• Added negative stamina support for all stamina-consuming actions: actions are allowed only when current stamina is strictly above 0, and spending clamps to the configured negative floor instead of vanilla 0. Goo preset enables this with a -50 floor.
• Fixed negative stamina so it regenerates upward normally instead of being snapped back to 0 by vanilla max-stamina refreshes.
• HUD-facing stamina reads are clamped to show 0 while internal stamina is negative.
• Added player-system config entries for base health/stamina/armor, max carry weight, jump/run/roll/crouch stamina rates, roll animation speed, stamina recovery, stamina regen curve, healing rate, fall damage tuning, player movement speed multipliers, and jump-force multiplier.
• Goo preset player defaults: max carry weight 450, jump stamina consumption 0.5x, crouch stamina consumption 0x, stamina recovery rate 1.2x, stamina regen curve Vanilla, and fall-damage start height 10m.
• Added stamina regen curve modes: Vanilla, Constant, and Reverted. Constant is a flat 9 stamina/sec before recovery/status/global multipliers.
• Added bow draw/spread and crossbow reload-time configs. Dundr-specific controls are intentionally excluded for now.
• Added block stamina consumption and block-break threshold configs.
• Added player movement multipliers for run speed, walk speed, crouch speed, and jump force.
• Added armor/weapon movement-penalty toggles. Goo preset disables negative movement penalties from armor/capes/utility/trinkets while preserving weapon/shield/tool movement penalties. Positive movement bonuses still apply.
• Movement-penalty tooltips now mirror the gameplay toggle by hiding disabled negative movement-penalty lines for the relevant item category.
• Replaced the old arbitrary Movement.AttackMovementSpeedActiveWindowSeconds timer with Movement.AttackMovementTiming. Default UntilAttackTrigger applies attack movement during windup and restores at Valheim's real OnAttackTrigger, keeping recovery punishable. FullAttackAnimation keeps the movement multiplier until attack cleanup.
• Moved bow configs under \[Bows] and crossbow reload under \[Crossbows].
• Removed the counter-damage ding feature and all ding playback calls for stability. Counter damage itself remains unchanged.
• Improved and throttled categorized debug logging for player systems, negative stamina, ranged tuning, blocking, and movement testing.

1.0.0 - First official release