Valheim Ascended

0.4.2

New Mage Weapons

• Added craftable one-handed wands and two-handed staffs in fire, frost and lightning variants.
• Added caster weapon progression across the following tiers, with crafting and upgrade recipes:

Staff crafting and upgrade station requirements (all three elements):

• Basic wood staffs can reach quality 4 at a level-5 Workbench. Corewood staffs currently reach quality 3 there; quality 4 requires level 6, beyond the vanilla Workbench maximum.

• Wands retain their existing station requirements: wood and Corewood start at Workbench level 3; later tiers use the stations and levels shown above.

• Ashlands / Ashwood staffs: TBD next patch.

• Wands are main-hand only, with lower weight and a smaller movement penalty. Staffs are two-handed, with 20% more damage at matching tier and quality and stronger caster bonuses.

• Caster weapons provide damage for Mage spells, plus cast-speed, cooldown, spell-critical and elemental-effect bonuses. Fire strengthens burns, frost extends Chill and Freeze, and lightning extends Electrify.

• Quality upgrades increase weapon damage and require additional materials. Each upgrade requires one more station level; staff requirements are listed above.

• Caster weapons do not accept Smithing mods. Selecting one in the Weapon Mods panel displays a clear message and leaves the current selection unchanged.

Equipment Controls

• Hold Alt + right-click on an unequipped weapon, or Alt + its hotbar key, to replace your main-hand weapon instead of equipping it in your offhand.
• When dual wielding compatible one-handed weapons, this keeps your existing offhand: sword + knife becomes axe + knife when you Alt-equip an axe. Spears, bows and two-handed weapons still follow their equipment restrictions and may clear the offhand.
• Alt-equip does nothing for offhand-only items such as torches. Normal equip controls retain their existing behavior.

Weapon Balance

• Increased base blunt damage and blunt damage per quality upgrade for Stagbreaker, Iron Sledge and Demolisher by 25%, rounded down to whole numbers. Quality-1 Stagbreaker now deals 25 blunt damage (up from 20), and Iron Sledge deals 68 (up from 55). Other damage types are unchanged.

Ability Balance

Reworked equipment scaling across the classes, reduced repeated buff application, and aligned ability descriptions with their actual damage and healing. The review covers Black Forest entry and exit, using wood and core-wood focuses for Mage and flint/leather through bronze equipment for melee classes.

The breakdowns below describe raw damage before bonuses and target mitigation unless noted. Entry and exit examples use level 4 and level 11 characters; exact results depend on gear, attributes and how many hits connect. These are scaling formulas, not damage caps. Gameplay validation remains pending.

Warrior

• Whirlwind: Each pulse now uses 0.25 upgraded physical weapon damage + 0.18 STR, without a flat base or damage cap. At STR 30 and quality-three bronze axe damage 50, eleven landed pulses deal 196.9 raw damage over the six-second channel. Removed the extra ability-side War Cry, Blood Frenzy and melee-talent multiplication; the shared outgoing damage system applies them once. Old Whirlwind base/STR/global-multiplier config entries no longer control this formula. Tick timing and set transformation remain intact.

Rogue

• Blade Dance: Five strikes now scale with upgraded melee equipment: 0.77 × combined physical weapon damage + 0.2 × DEX + 0.1 × AGI per strike. Valid dual wielding includes both weapons; shields do not contribute. Approximately 121 total damage at Black Forest entry and 220 at exit before crits and coatings.
• Shadowstrike: Replaced the flat base with full combined upgraded physical weapon damage, retaining configured DEX/AGI scaling (three-times stat contribution) and backstab. Guaranteed critical now goes through the shared crit calculation once instead of pre-multiplying and allowing another crit. Earlier numerical estimates were provisional; final damage follows the shared crit bonuses.
• Blade Barrage: Added full combined upgraded physical weapon damage to the existing 0.4 DEX + 0.2 AGI per wave. Preserved two-handed wave rules, coatings and the Knife Orbit transformation; updated their tooltips. Coating-hand behavior still needs in-game validation.

Hunter

• Piercing Shot: Increased the maximum charge multiplier from 1.5 to 2.35, retaining bow, ammunition, DEX, and AGI scaling. Full-charge benchmarks are approximately 136 on entry / 220 on exit. Minimum-charge damage, three-second charge time, and cooldown are unchanged; partial charges also gain damage.
• Disengage: Removed the spike field's flat 10 damage and reduced AGI scaling from 0.3 to 0.2, retaining 0.4 DEX per tick. Base damage is 3.6 on entry / 12 on exit per half-second tick, or approximately 58 / 192 if all 16 ticks connect. Duration, snare, and cooldown are unchanged.
• Multishot: Extra arrows now copy the fired shot's damage components, including ammunition, skill, and draw strength, instead of using raw bow damage. All four extras share the shot's damage roll; outgoing effects and mitigation still resolve on impact. Preserved the Running Volley extra-arrow multiplier and updated the tooltip.
• Chain Lightning: Replaced the flat 40% chain fraction with 30% + 0.4 percentage points per AGI + 0.3 percentage points per INT. Each additional target receives that fraction of the triggering hit. Existing talent additions, target count, jump range, and toggle behavior remain. The current free-DEX checkpoints yield 32.4% / 38%; investing in INT supports both Chain Lightning and Tempest Ascent.
• Rain of Arrows: Replaced flat 8 with equipped matching ammunition damage, retaining 0.25 DEX + 0.15 AGI. Falls back to matching inventory ammunition when necessary, with zero equipment contribution if none is available. Wood/Flinthead benchmarks are 24.4/35 per arrow. Hunting Ground shares the formula; normal tooltip now displays the configured 21 arrows, 2.5 seconds and 6m radius. Scattered-arrow totals are not guaranteed single-target damage.
• Tempest Ascent: Replaced flat 25 with upgraded equipped bow damage, retaining 0.5 DEX + 0.5 INT and the 60% lightning / 40% piercing split. Quality-three bow benchmarks are 31/48 per strike (124/192 across four strikes). Grounded Tempest derives its damage from the same base. Ammo is excluded.

Mage

• Mages without Spellblade deal 25% normal damage with direct melee and pickaxe hits against creatures. Spellblade, spells, ranged attacks, and gathering damage to trees and rocks are unaffected.

• Spellblade damage conversion: While Spellblade and a Mage specialization are active, equipped melee weapons combine their combat damage into fire for Pyroclast, frost for Rime Sage, or lightning for Tempest Warden. Conversion preserves combined combat damage before outgoing bonuses; full upgraded weapon damage supplies spells and bolt procs. Chopping and mining damage are excluded.

• Spellblade spell scaling: Upgraded melee weapon damage, including physical Smithing damage mods, supplies W in the reviewed Mage spell formulas. Each spell retains its own damage type. Melee weapons retain Smithing eligibility and do not gain staff cast-speed, cooldown, critical or elemental-effect bonuses.

• Spellblade visuals: Added animated elemental runes orbiting the equipped weapon, matching the active specialization and updating when equipment or specialization changes.

• Spellblade tooltips: The equipped weapon displays its converted melee damage under Fire, Frost or Lightning instead of separate physical and elemental rows, with full weapon damage (W) shown separately for spell and proc scaling. Quality upgrades and Smithing damage mods are included; the old physical skill damage range is removed. Updated the talent description and both normal and Elemental Bolts set tooltips to show weapon-scaled proc calculations using the equipped weapon and current attributes.

• Spellblade on-hit scaling: Replaced flat bolt-proc bases with the reviewed weapon-scaled bolts: Rime uses (0.125 W + 0.25 INT + 0.25 DEX) × 0.335; fire and lightning use (0.15 W + 0.20 INT) × 0.335 at the default proc fraction. Retains the every-third-hit burst at 50% of proc damage, melee-kill Eitr recovery and LMB-slot tradeoff. Legacy Spellblade base/INT settings no longer control these procs.

Replaced flat damage bases with upgraded wand/staff damage across the reviewed spells. Equipment contributes once to the base formula, and each spell retains its own damage type. Below, W means upgraded equipped focus damage, or upgraded melee weapon damage with Spellblade. Arcane Bolt was intentionally skipped; Spellblade procs now share the reviewed bolt formulas.

• Rime Lance: 0.125 W + 0.25 INT + 0.25 DEX.
• Lightning Bolt / Fire Bolt: 0.15 W + 0.20 INT. Lightning retains its movement bonus. Fire Bolt adds 50% damage splash within 1.5 metres, including ground impacts, without hitting its primary target twice.
• Blizzard: Reduced to 0.30 W + 0.25 INT + 0.25 DEX per half-second tick. Entry wand/staff DPS is 18/20.4; level-11 core-wood quality-three exit DPS is 50/56 per enemy. Ice Block Overcharge inherits the shared formula. Area, freeze behavior and Eitr drain are unchanged.
• Frozen Grasp: 0.80 W + 1.20 INT initial damage, bringing its entry hit close to War Stomp. Preserves Freeze and adds a six-second Brittle mark: the caster's next direct frost hit consumes it for a guaranteed normal critical. DoT and secondary AoE do not consume the mark. Marking works independently of freeze immunity, and uses the ability icon with a timer on the replicated debuff display.
• Lightning Storm: 0.80 W + 0.50 INT + 0.25 AGI per strike. Entry damage is 21.25 wand / 24.45 staff; strikes remain distributed among targets over six seconds.
• Arc Flash: 0.75 W + 1.20 INT + 0.90 AGI, tripling the prior entry damage to 28.5 wand / 31.5 staff. Retains dash, stagger, Electrify and its 40% secondary chain.
• Meteor: 4 W + 2 INT + 1.2 END, plus 0.8 INT against burning targets. Accepted entry impact is 101.6 wand / 117.6 staff before bonuses. Preserves outer falloff and direct/outer-hit exclusion.
• Flame Wall: 0.10 W + 0.10 INT per tick, retaining its defensive effect. Entry damage is 2.9 wand / 3.3 staff per half-second, close to the agreed Disengage damage baseline.
• Glacial Spike: W + INT. Chilled and frozen targets take 1.5x damage instead of the old 3x shortcut; frozen targets additionally guarantee one normal critical multiplier. Brittle does not add a second critical multiplier. Preserves the Frostbite transformation and Permafrost/Overcharge interactions.
• Ball Lightning: Arcs use 0.25 W + 0.50 INT; final detonation uses W + 0.50 INT. Entry damage is 9.5 wand / 10.5 staff per arc and 24.5 / 28.5 per explosion target. Timing and utility remain unchanged.
• Eruption: Increased weapon scaling to 1.00 W + 0.80 INT, plus 0.80 INT against burning targets. Entry wand/staff center hits are 27.2/31.2; quality-three core-wood exit hits are 74/84 (98/108 against burning targets). Retains falloff, knockback and its 25-second base cooldown.
• Combustion: 0.50 W + INT base, multiplied by 2.5 against burning targets or 0.5 against others. Entry damage is 47.5 wand / 52.5 staff against burning targets. Retains damage split, burn consumption and other effects.
• Surge: 0.75 W + INT + 0.40 AGI × dash number. Entry damage across all three connected dashes is 79.2 wand / 88.2 staff. Recast behavior, cooldown and Electrify remain unchanged.
• Ice Block Overcharge: Its four-metre mini-Blizzard now shares Blizzard's full damage formula and tick interval. Chill and defensive effects remain unchanged.
• Updated affected normal, Overcharge and relevant set tooltips to use the revised damage calculations. Legacy damage configuration entries replaced by shared formulas no longer control those spell bases.

Full entry calculations, assumptions and decision history are recorded in Documentation/Balance/2026-09-30-mage-focus.md. These are balance benchmarks before bonuses and mitigation, not damage caps or guarantees of in-game results.

Paladin

• Healing Light: Retained accepted healing values; execution now reads configured base healing, INT/END scaling, recent-hit bonus and stack cap, matching tooltip calculations. Tooltips display configured coefficients and tick interval.
• Seal of Light: Removed the flat 10 activation healing from the source default. Self healing is now 0.4 INT + 0.3 END; nearby allies receive half. Entry/exit activation heals are 4.2/14 for self and 2.1/7 for allies, before healing bonuses. Empowered melee healing and other effects are unchanged.
• Sanctified Barrage: Changed source damage to W × (1.1 + 0.035 INT) and included weapon quality upgrades. Entry/exit benchmarks are 26.2/90 per enemy, closely matching Ground Slam before outgoing bonuses. Corrected tooltips to describe the actual single rectangular area hit instead of multiplying damage by cosmetic weapon count; healing and other mechanics unchanged.
• Divine Judgement: Weapon quality upgrades now scale the primary physical hit, fire damage and derived shockwave. Existing coefficients, low-health bonus and primary-target shockwave exclusion are unchanged; tooltip updated.
• Consecration: Removed weapon damage contribution and raised armor scaling to 25%, retaining 25% STR and 25% INT per tick. Updated the formula tooltip.
• Holy Strike: Now scales with weapon quality upgrades. Reduced normal damage to 30% physical weapon damage plus 50% as fire, retaining INT-based spirit damage. Updated normal and Holy Reprisal tooltips; the set retains its normal-swing physical hit.

Death Knight

• Frost Reaping: Reduced its frost weapon coefficient from 2 to 1.5. Total damage is W physical + (1.5 W + 0.4 INT) frost; Chilled increases only the frost portion by 25%. Entry/exit totals are 52.4/108, or 60.5/125 against Chilled targets, before other bonuses and mitigation. Retains base weapon damage reads, pull, stagger and cooldown. Corrected its description to reflect the single-target chain.
• shared conversions: Holy Strike, Consecration and Sanctified Barrage inherit their reviewed Paladin formulas while retaining frost conversion and Chill effects. Verified Absolution already shares the accepted base coefficients; its DEX secondary and Chill/Frozen consumption effects remain unchanged. This parity review required no additional numerical changes.

Reviewed Without Changes

• Warrior War Stomp, Ground Slam and Charge retain their existing values.
• Rogue coatings and Envenom retain their existing values. Concealment and Shadow Anchor were outside this damage pass.
• Paladin and Death Knight Absolution retain their accepted formulas, including base weapon damage rather than quality-upgraded damage.
• Ward of Faith, Sanctuary and Radiant Aura retain their existing values. Radiant Aura keeps its healing, movement and stamina effects; Healing Light's configuration fix is listed above.
• Mage Arcane Bolt was skipped.
• This pass does not change mob health, mob damage, star progression or affixes.

Affected ability and set tooltips now reflect the revised calculations. Existing saved settings are not automatically replaced by source defaults; the active Gale test profile has been reconciled with the agreed balance values. Detailed assumptions and review history remain in Documentation/Balance/2026-09-20.md and Documentation/Balance/2026-09-30-mage-focus.md.

Bug Fixes

• Social / Party HUD: Fixed party health bars remaining empty or dimmed after death and respawn. The HUD now restores the health-bar color and prefers the living character when the old and respawned characters briefly overlap.

• Snow Shovel: Now treated as a tool: Warrior stances no longer override its attack, and Mages can shovel with normal left-click without holding Alt or triggering a spell. Mage mouse-ability slots dim while the shovel is equipped.

• Fixed Rogue stealth enter/exit sounds ignoring the sound-effects volume setting. Stealth sounds now respect the SFX volume slider, including stealth granted by Concealment, Blade Dance and Shadow Anchor.

• Mages can chop, mine and use butcher knives with ordinary left-click, without holding Alt or taking Spellblade. These tools temporarily disable the left-click spell slot, and the old Alt reminder is removed.

• Salvage: Fixed salvaging equipment returning Battle Idols and other refinement-only ingredients that were never consumed during ordinary crafting. These ingredients are now excluded from salvage previews, base and upgrade material returns, and weapon mod refunds.

0.4.1

Bug Fixes

• Bombs: Fixed Warrior stances replacing bomb throws with melee attacks. Ooze bombs and other vanilla bombs now bypass both stances and cannot be dual-wielded, like spears. Invalid saved bomb dual-wield loadouts are cleaned up when restored.
• Hotfix — Abyssal Harpoon: Restored the vanilla throwing attack and harpooning/tether behavior when using class attack gates or Warrior stances.

Introduction Quests

• Added introductory quests with guided highlights and explanations to help players learn the mod's features.
• Find Your Bearings introduces classes, equipment slots, weapon sheathing, attributes and detailed stats.
• Tools of the Trade introduces Enchanting research, Smithing set forging, gear mods, salvage and Shipwright.
• Make It Your Own follows with a walkthrough of all six Settings tabs, covering controls, interface customization and loot boxes.
• Added hands-on quests for your first enchantment, weapon modification and refinement, and saved ship blueprint, unlocked as you obtain the relevant items.
• Added an optional Social introduction that can be completed solo.
• Accept quests from the quest journal, pause and resume guides, and earn small supply rewards. Available quests use persistent notifications and a flashing Quests button, with completed and uncompleted filters in the journal.

New Campfire Login Screen

• Added a custom login and character selection screen with your first four VA adventurers sitting around the campfire, including on the main menu. Hover over a character to make them stand, then select them to choose a world.
• Added Your Adventurers, a scrollable VA character roster. Drag characters to reorder the list and choose who sits at camp. Your order is saved, and the first four entries have highlighted borders.
• Character names use their class color. Overhead labels and roster entries show level and specialization, falling back to the base class when no specialization has been chosen.
• Selecting a character smoothly zooms the camera toward them. Selecting someone outside the first four turns the camera to reveal them on the other side of camp. Returning from world selection brings back the camp and fades the custom menu in.
• Added translucent panels with clear borders, the Ascended logo, and scrollable patch notes that automatically use the latest section of the packaged changelog.
• Added compact Discord, Thunderstore, Hexium and Donate buttons with matching icons and colors.
• Added character creation, deletion through Valheim's confirmation dialog, and access to the vanilla menu and Manage Saves. Tripled mouse wheel scrolling speed in the startup menus.
• Fixed menu preview animation loops, camera blur and shutdown errors. Prevented preview and transitioning player objects from triggering invalid Renown lookups.

Import Legacy Characters

• Added Import Non-VA Character to bring existing characters into VA without starting their progression over. Inventory, equipment, vanilla skills, appearance, map data and other mods' custom data are preserved.
• The import assessment checks previously accessed boss powers, discovered or held trophies, and progression materials to suggest a progression stage. Review the evidence and adjust the stage before confirming; shared powers and gifted items can affect the estimate.
• Each stage credits a defined catch-up bundle: bosses through the selected stage, early gathering, first crafts and workstations, biome exploration, and fixed creature-kill milestones. Assumed catch-up completions and counts are shown in the preview.
• Starting level comes from the credited milestones' normal Renown rewards. Talent points come from the credited bosses' configured rewards. There are no random point grants or arbitrary starting-level bonuses.
• Imports credited with Eikthyr unlock class selection without requiring another kill. Class and talent choices remain unselected, with attribute and talent points available to spend. Choosing a class does not grant imported attribute points a second time.
• Import requires review and explicit confirmation. A verified copy of the original character save is created before saving, and the imported data is read back for verification. Existing VA progression and repeat imports are rejected.
• Original backups are stored in the active profile's BepInEx/config/ValheimAscended/ImportBackups folder. The completion message and log identify the backup file.

0.4.0

Balance

• Reduced all custom Shipwright boat health pools by 50%, across every design and material combination. Existing boats use the reduced maximum when loaded.
• Set the minimum width of Shipwright middle hull sections to 3 metres. Bow and stern sections retain their narrower taper.

Compatibility

• Added Adventure Backpacks compatibility, with Enchanting and Smithing confirmed working.
• Backpacks use the back/cape slot and retain their normal cape conflict.

Bug Fixes

• Warrior Stances: Now require an eligible main-hand weapon. Disabled while unarmed or using spears, bows, or crossbows.
• Titan's Grip: Fixed a loadout-restoration bypass allowing 2H + shield without the talent. Removing Titan's Grip now unequips invalid offhand gear, returning it to inventory or dropping it if full.
• Shipwright: Fixed custom boats failing to return construction materials when destroyed. Materials and chest cargo now go into floating loot barrels.
• Enchanting: Fixed item deletion when replacing an occupied slot. Enchanting, smithing mods, and salvage now keep selected gear safely in the player's inventory.

Gladiator Rework

Replaced Warrior's Gladiator capstone with dual shields. Equip a shield in each hand and attack with unarmed punches.

• Shield strikes alternate between hands and deal base blunt damage equal to 75% of the striking shield's combined block armour and block force, including quality upgrades. Normal unarmed and melee damage modifiers apply afterward.
• Blocking retains normal block armour and parry behavior, but costs twice the normal stamina.
• Removed free dodges and automatic dodge counters. Dodging uses its normal controls and stamina cost.
• Adjusted the mainhand shield's orientation and fixed it unequipping after logging out and back in.
• Updated Gladiator's tooltip with rich-text colors and Shift breakdowns showing each shield's damage calculation.

0.3.9 2026-09-21

• Fixed a Shipwright chest duping bug where items could come back after taking them out.

0.3.8 2026-09-19

Shipwright Hotfixes, polish, and other balancing stuff

Balance

Did a balance pass across all five classes. Pulled back some talent and attribute scaling, toughened up starred mobs and pushed the higher star tiers further into progression. Updated talent and attribute tooltips to match. Still needs testing, let me know what feels off.

New defaults only. Existing configs keep their saved values.

Shipwright

• Reorganized Shipwright navigation, boat management and material selection.
• Added sail painting with designs saved to your character.
• Added hull name signs and bow trophies.
• Added distinct sail textiles and worn paint effects.
• Chest materials now determine their model, cost, weight and health.
• Added crew rowing.
• Improved boat models and attachment points.
• Increased small-boat width limits and improved steering stability.
• Simplified hull width controls to use metres.
• Restricted new mast placements to middle-section joins.
• Added distinct vanilla textures for each wood type.
• Added visible ceramic hull plating.
• Improved textures and lighting; reduced flickering.
• Added host compatibility checks before charging construction materials.
• Fixed duplicate boats after refitting and getting stuck beneath the deck on login.
• Fixed boat assembly errors.
• Added a host command to remove all Shipwright boats.

Still early stage. More polish to come.

Weapon Animation Fix

• Fixed hands and arms getting stuck in weapon poses after sheathing.

0.3.7 2026-09-18

Just filling in some of the dead shit thats been in the mod for ages. Set bonuses are here, capstones are bascially completed, and I bit the bullet and actually started building shipwright out. Did some minor tuning, added the missing milestones for 1.0 and changed the amount of renoun/leveling speed. Also, fyi for all the people im expecting to b!tch in the discord, vanilla magic items are now disabled. They are going to be reworked so have some patience or dont, idc.

Shipwright Rebuild (Early Stage)

Started rebuilding Shipwright into a system where you design a boat and keep refitting it throughout your playthrough. This is an early-stage version, with PLACEHOLDER models and plenty of polish and balance work still to do.

• Create, name, save, edit, copy and delete blueprints, then construct multiple independently named boats from them. Customize hull sections, masts, sails, deck/cargo layouts, materials and fittings.
• Boats have individual ownership, steering/cargo permissions, ownership transfers and refitting. Each chest has its own inventory. Boats and cargo are set up to save with the world.
• Sail textiles affect propulsion, rigging affects sail response, and hull/material weight plus actual cargo affect acceleration and turning. The anchor now works as an emergency brake and holds the boat in place.
• Construction consumes the quoted materials; refits charge for added or changed materials. Developer no-cost mode remains available for testing. Materials contribute to shared boat health, and ceramic plates provide Ashlands ocean protection.

Smithing Sets

Finally fleshed out the class sets in Smithing. All 20 are now implemented, four each for Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Mage, and Paladin. The placeholders were sitting there for way too long.

Each set has 2-piece and 4-piece bonuses built around an ability or mechanic. Things like turning Whirlwind into a quick single spin, having Blade Barrage orbit you, turning Rain of Arrows into traps, or changing how each elemental bolt works. The idea is to give you more ways to play your class without making one set feel required.

Vanilla sets are still available. Forging a custom set replaces the original bonus, and you can revert it if you want to go back.

Updated the set and ability tooltips, including damage breakdowns, and added indicators for the new effects. Visuals are wired up for multiplayer, though that still needs more testing.

Utility sets are still on hold. Class sets are ready to play around with, but there's plenty of balance work left. Try them out and let me know what feels good or completely broken.

In a future state, these sets will be locked behind some quest or other feature. I'm just unsure what that will look like but subject to change (similar to capstones).

Magic Weapons

Phase 1: Converted vanilla magic weapons into stat sticks for casters. Their old effects are gone, and each weapon now gives different stats that improve with upgrades. Mage is the only caster using these for now, but more will be added down the road. They were basically useless in the mod, so this at least gives them a reason to exist.

Phase 2 (Pending, TBD): Give them unique passive effects. Stats are the starting point, but I want each one to have more of its own thing going on. Still figuring out what those effects will look like.

Mage Capstone Rework

Replaced Enchanter with Wild Magic. Enchanter always felt sloppy, so scrapped the Resonance stuff and went with something that actually changes how you play.

Your bar becomes two cycling spell slots plus your normal bolt and block. Casting a spell swaps it for another from your spec. No individual cooldowns, just a shared 1 second GCD. Eitr costs are still there, and damage is reduced to 75% since you can now spam the bigger abilities. Works with any Mage spec and uses your existing keybinds.

Paladin Capstone Fixes

Went back through the pally capstones. They were wired up, but a few things weren't doing what they said they did.

• Absolution is now actually free while Ascended. Failed casts no longer eat your Zeal.
• Capstones that say melee hits now require melee hits. No more building stacks with arrows or spell damage.
• Consecrated Arms' guaranteed sword crit now uses your normal crit scaling and includes elemental damage. Polearms now properly root targets for 1 second instead of just slowing them. Bosses are still immune.
• Cleaned up the old capstone descriptions and removed a Zeal damage bonus from the character sheet that wasn't actually doing anything.

Still needs more time testing in combat, especially multiplayer, but the obvious broken stuff is fixed.

Ability Balance

Whirlwind damage reduced by 65%. It was doing way too much for what it takes to use it.

Adjusted Absolution's weapon and attribute scaling. The tooltip now uses the same damage calculation as the ability. Death Knight still gets its extra damage from Chill and Frozen targets.

Casting Fix

• Fixed repeated red errors while casting caused by a game input API change. Cast movement detection now supports both the old and new input methods, including controller movement cancellation.

Milestones

Added 73 milestones, bringing the total to 362. Bear caves, Deep North exploration, new creature kills, materials, crafting, a few missing stations, and the final boss are now included.

New gathering and kill milestones use the same tier system as the older ones. Sleeping bears now count toward bear kills too. Existing milestone progress is kept.

Renown

Increased the default Renown needed per level from 100 to 200. Max level is still 50. You could hit it around Plains without even finishing the higher milestone tiers, which was a bit early.

Leveling should now last into Deep North if you're doing most milestones without grinding out the higher tiers. Going harder on milestones will get you there sooner. Still needs some time playing through it to see how that feels.

If you're keeping an existing config, set RenownPerLevel to 200 to use the new pacing. Your current level and completed milestones aren't reset.

0.3.6 2026-09-13

Valheim 1.0 broke a bunch of things, so this started as getting the mod working again. Ended up expanding enchanting and finishing more of the Mage shields while we were at it. TLDR on mage shields, each spec has its own shield type, honetsly you can figure it out by trying all 3. Still plenty to do with the rest of the 1.0 content, and balance is going to need its own pass. Which will probably come next as I know I've been putting it off for forever. So if I can find the time in the coming weeks to continue this it will likely be the following systems in "Still Needs Work" below

Valheim 1.0

• Updated the mod to compile against the new game files and fixed the patches that broke with the update.
• Fixed the hidden equipment slots showing up in the regular inventory.
• Equipping armor no longer sheathes and then unequips your offhand weapon while dual wielding.
• Fixed equipped items getting unequipped and dropped on the ground when loading back in.
• Equipment slots now work with Hildir's inventory upgrades.
• Fixed empty deathboxes and missing loot. The difficulty system's extra high-star drops are working again too.

Enchanting

• Added 10 trophies to enchanting: Barka, Elaking, Eyeless One, Hexen, Krigen, Lava Blob, Moose, Pulp, Seal, and Writhan.
• Each has its own attribute, offense, and defense pools using the existing trophy matrix. Added them to research and trophy selection, including a new Deep North research group.
• Frostfire Essence and Thunderblood Essence can now be used as Legendary mixing reagents. Still four rarities, and the existing reagents still work. The trophies decide the effects, not which essence you use.
• Blind enchanting now updates the research checkmarks immediately.
• Fixed research tooltips cutting off the second trophy role and part of the first one.
• Enchant previews now show all the effects that can actually roll, with longer descriptions wrapping inside the panel.
• Existing enchants and trophy discoveries are kept. These additions have not had a full balance pass yet.

Mage Shields

• Molten Shield (Pyroclast): hold block to raise it. Blocking a creature burns the attacker. Repeated blocks refresh the burn instead of stacking it.
• Ice Shield (Rime Sage): uses charges and shatters after taking enough blocked hits, dealing piercing damage and applying Chill in front of you. Release and block again to raise another shield. Freezing enemies helps recharge it.
• Static Shield (Tempest Warden): tap block for a short window. Each tap spends a charge, hit or miss. Blocking a creature hits it with lightning, knocks it back, and gives you a short movement-speed buff. Blink restores a charge.
• Added proper tooltips for all three shields, including charges, recharge, damage, scaling, and eitr costs. The old tooltip was still describing all of them as the same held barrier.
• Reworked Static Shield's visuals with a more transparent surface, a jagged lightning rim, branching arcs, and a pulse when it activates or blocks a hit.
• Ice Shield's shatter no longer hits friendly or tamed creatures.
• Fixed Static Shield's movement buff lingering through shield cleanup.
• Patched all three shield visuals for multiplayer, including Ice shatters and Static hit flashes.

Still Needs Work

• This isn't the full 1.0 content pass. Smithing, milestones, and the other unfinished systems are still on the list. Below is on my radar in no particular order.

• Smithing Health Check: With the added Idol system, I want to make sure smithing (Gear Mods) still has a healthy spot in the mod. More to come / we will see.

• Set Bonuses: Kind of a continuation of the point above. However, this is intended to be a system period. This will be a huge todo but I want to remove any remaining placeholders VA still has (except Shipwright, we hate Shipwright)

• Remaining Capstones: I've had a few capstones marked as incomplete or for rework. They need to be mordernized to match the value/complexity of other capstones.

• Remaining Class Systems: Bit of a teaser... warriors get stances, pallies will get auras. Similar to archery system for hunters, poisons and stealth for rogues.

• Magic Weapons: This is a 2 parter. Part 1: Reworking 'vanilla' magic weapons, since they don't work for mages and don't really fit into what this mod is trying to accomplish. Part 2: Adding in a few custom weapon types for casters (mages and pallies mainly)... currently thinking scepters, wands, staffs, tomes... etc.

• Milestones Health Check: Just adding / retooling any milestones that should be there with 1.0 and doing a balance patch on leveling speed.

0.3.5 2026-06-20

A big Rogue pass: stealth becomes a real ability (Concealment), the Assassin gains a per-hand Weapon Poisons kit, the Living Shadow capstone is reworked into Ethereal, and Envenom is revamped to detonate your coatings. This was way more effort than i intended it to be as i found massive issues with the custom bleed se's when it came to multiplayer, entire SE zdo had bugs and also needed to figure out the shaders for this one.

New

• New system: Concealment (Rogue stealth). A real stealth system built around a new ability. Vanish into the shadows: nearby mobs lose track of you and you turn near-invisible. Breaks on attacking, taking a hit, or sprinting. Your stealth-breaking strike is a guaranteed crit (the opener) and blasts fear into the mobs around your target. Blade Dance and Shadow Anchor also drop you into a brief stealth as they end, without arming Concealment's cooldown.
• New system: Weapon Poisons (Rogue). Two coating slots on the rogue ability bar, one per hand. Click a slot to coat that hand's weapon (after a short windup); every hit then stacks a poison on the target. Each weapon's coat sticks to that weapon and follows it across hands. Three poisons:
  • Nerve Toxin: slows the target and weakens its attacks.
  • Sanguine Venom: heals you for a share of its damage.
  • Vipersbane: the highest base damage, with no extra effect.

Reworks

• Living Shadow is now Ethereal. The Rogue capstone is reworked. Stealth from any source now phases you Ethereal instead: you stay visible and mobs fight you normally, but you gain attack speed, spend less stamina per attack, and your crits bleed your ability cooldowns. It never breaks and runs its full duration.
• Envenom revamp. Envenom now also consumes your weapon-coat poisons (alongside vanilla poison) as an instant burst, and each coating type detonates on consume: Nerve staggers the target, Sanguine heals you, and Vipersbane adds bonus damage, all scaling with the stacks consumed.

Removed

• Shadow Tether: removed, replaced by Concealment.

Talent Adjustments

• Nerve Toxin is no longer a standalone talent; it now lives in the Weapon Poisons kit as one of the three coatings.
• That freed Assassin node is now Toxic Opener: your opening hit out of Concealment no longer crits. Instead, it lands a damage-over-time poison worth 140% of the crit bonus it would have dealt. (Under Ethereal, the first hit of each window applies it.)

Multiplayer

• Bleeds and weapon poisons now tick down and wear off correctly in multiplayer. Previously a poison or bleed you applied could deal no damage or hang on a target forever, depending on who was hosting the enemy.
• Damage and kill credit from your bleeds and poisons go to you, not whoever is hosting the enemy.
• Allies now see your Concealment fade and your Ethereal shimmer.

Bug Fixes

• Movement abilities (leaps, dashes, blinks) no longer drop you out of bounds, like onto a dungeon-entrance roof above the floor.
• Disengage caltrops now spawn on the ground where you land, not on the roof above.
• Mages can fish again. A fishing rod now disables spell-casting like any tool, so the attack button casts the line and block reels the fish in.

Refinements

• Ability and quick-slot keybinds no longer fire while you are typing in a text field, like naming a sign or a portal.