ProgressGuard

ProgressGuard 0.2 replaces ZenBossStone with a two-step boss progression system and protects the least-progressed connected character from advanced ambient roamers and raids.

For each vanilla Forsaken boss:

• a player must damage the boss and witness its death to earn a kill receipt;
• boss death does not set the world-wide defeated_* key;
• a receipt holder must return the matching trophy to its Forsaken altar;
• only nearby receipt holders receive personal boss credit and power access;
• the sacrifice commits the world key and releases withheld boss loot.

The altar remains a normal trophy hook: E/Use selects powers, while using the matching trophy directly on the hook makes the offering. It proceeds immediately when every connected receipt holder still needing credit is in range. A non-consuming warning appears only when someone is outside the radius; a second use within 15 seconds deliberately proceeds without them.

New players receive in-game guidance on their first two login sessions per character/world. Qualified fighters see a kill-receipt confirmation, the trophy carrier is warned to gather the group, connected receipt holders are told who has the trophy, and the altar displays personal receipt/credit status.

Existing progress is preserved additively. ProgressGuard imports every exact legacy guardian-power key, retries until acknowledged, upgrades 0.1 registry records, and never clears existing world keys or character keys. Server admins can verify connected characters with pg audit.

The current server profile's trophy behavior is built in by default: 25-metre sacrifice range, 400 weight (Eikthyr capped at 200), one-per-stack, no auto-pickup, wooden-portal restriction, and altar loot after a 12-second presentation.

The original spawn safety remains: the least-progressed online character limits managed out-of-biome roamers and raids. Event Monuments of Torment are blocked outside the Ashlands and allowed inside it.

Requires the same ProgressGuard version, BepInEx, and Jotunn on the server and every client. Remove ZenBossStone before installing 0.2; the mods are intentionally incompatible. Back up the world, character profiles, and ProgressGuard registry before the upgrade, then reconnect established characters and run pg audit.

Changelog

0.2.2 - 2026-08-09

• Clarify boss-progression wording and simplify the package description.

0.2.1 - 2026-08-09

• Rewrite the package description to focus entirely on ProgressGuard's features and gameplay loop.

0.2.0 - 2026-08-09

• Replace ZenBossStone with an integrated, server-authoritative Forsaken altar progression system.
• Require a player to damage a boss and witness its death before recording that exact boss's kill receipt.
• Delay the matching world-wide defeated_* key until a valid trophy sacrifice.
• Grant personal boss credit only to nearby sacrifice witnesses who hold the matching kill receipt.
• Drive personal boss-stone visibility, activation, and power access from exact server credits.
• Withhold managed boss loot until sacrifice and reproduce the live boss drop table at the altar.
• Apply configurable trophy weight, stack size, auto-pickup, and portal restrictions matching the existing server profile by default.
• Preserve existing world keys, upgrade schema-1 registry tiers, and union exact legacy guardian-power keys without ever lowering progress.
• Retry legacy imports until the server resolves and acknowledges the character, fixing the profile-load/character-replication race.
• Add pg audit for connected-player migration verification and show exact kill/credit flags in registry commands.
• Enable Valheim PlayerEvents automatically by default and synchronize all new settings to required clients.
• Preserve vanilla E/Use power selection and make direct trophy-on-hook use the only sacrifice input.
• Add guidance on the first two character/world login sessions, kill-receipt confirmation, trophy-carrier party announcements, personal altar status, and credit confirmation.
• Query connected pending receipt holders before sacrifice: proceed immediately when everyone is in range, otherwise retain the trophy and show a missing-player warning before deliberate confirmation.
• Removes ZenBossStone dependency

0.1.3 - 2026-08-09

• Replace the package icon with updated ProgressGuard artwork.

0.1.2 - 2026-08-09

• Make client-side ambient spawn validation fail open until an authoritative server snapshot has been received.
• Prevent an owning client from removing existing networked creatures using default enabled settings and progression tier None during the join synchronization window.
• Preserve immediate server enforcement and run the existing loaded-creature sweep after the authoritative snapshot arrives.
• Add regression checks for unsynchronized-client, synchronized-client, and server authority behavior.

0.1.1 - 2026-08-08

• Add an optional least-progressed-online ceiling for managed random raids.
• Stop an active managed raid if a newly connected character lowers the online ceiling below its required trophy tier.
• Block new event Monuments of Torment outside the Ashlands and remove loaded event monuments found there.
• Always allow the Monument-of-Torment raid and its monuments inside the Ashlands.
• Map Hildir's quest raids to conservative boss-progression tiers.
• Fix dedicated-server character identity resolution for legacy progression imports and online safety-tier calculation.
• Let each required client report its own in-range ZenBossStone sacrifice observation to the authoritative server registry.

0.1.0 - 2026-08-07

• Initial ProgressGuard implementation.
• Record per-character progression from in-range ZenBossStone trophy sacrifices.
• Automatically import existing per-character ZenBossStone guardian-power keys on spawn.
• Synchronize the authoritative world registry and gate configuration to required clients.
• Gate post-Yagluth, post-Queen, and post-Fader ambient roamers outside their native biomes.
• Make the least-progressed connected character the default server-wide ambient-spawn safety ceiling.
• Enable early-game boss-key roamer protection by default.
• Fail safe for new ambient entries that use recognized vanilla boss-unlock keys.
• Remove already-loaded managed creatures that exceed the online ceiling outside their native biome, while exempting raids, bosses, tamed creatures, and native-biome enemies.
• Preserve raids, native-biome spawns, dungeons, fixed spawners, and boss summons.
• Add world-scoped atomic persistence and remote administrator commands.
• Add pure behavior tests and installed-API compatibility checks.