CreatureManager

Add 32 combat modifiers and launch live boss hunt events across dungeons and the open world. Clone and configure creatures, attacks, AI, equipment, appearances, and textures; inspect resistances and scale difficulty by biome, distance, or preset.

Showcase

Live Enforcer Hunts

Dungeon-specific candidates bring Enforcer encounters into Black Forest interiors.

Biome-specific rules create a distinct Enforcer hunt in the Swamp.

The same live encounter system selects Mountain-specific Enforcers in the highlands.

Creature Cloning and Customization

Vincent demonstrates a MonsterLabZ NPC clone configured as a custom ranged boss.

Root Witch demonstrates a MonsterLabZ spellcaster clone with a custom appearance, loadout, and attack set.

Bonebeard demonstrates a MonsterLabZ creature clone assembled as a custom melee boss.

Combat Modifiers

Creatures roll modifiers independently and display their active effects directly beneath their nameplates.

Offense and Defense

Spirit adds Spirit damage to the creature's attacks.

Undodgeable attacks ignore dodge invulnerability, while blocking and parrying remain effective.

Deathward cancels a lethal hit and restores part of the creature's maximum health.

Reflection returns part of the creature's actual health loss to a direct melee attacker.

Vortex can negate a projectile hit together with its damage and secondary effects.

Unflinching prevents stagger from normal hits and perfect parries.

Afflictions

Timed Afflictions use distinct icons and counters so their remaining duration stays readable in combat.

Special

Blink teleports the creature near its target to close distance quickly.

Omen can request an Enforcer encounter after the creature kills a player.

Juggernaut turns successful hits into heavy knockback while resisting attack push.

Blamer flees and raises regional Karma after its health threshold is crossed, then expires when its Karma budget is exhausted.

In-game Tools

Creature inspection shows effective resistances, weaknesses, and immunities beneath the target's nameplate.

The in-game Compendium documents defensive modifiers and their exact behavior.

Affliction details are available in the same localized Compendium without leaving the game.

Combat Modifiers specific

CreatureManager provides 32 modifiers in four groups. Natural rolls select at most one modifier from each group, for up to four visible modifiers. The values below are the generated Global defaults; levels.yml and karma.yml can override them for Global, Boss, prefab/group, Enforcer, and individual Enforcer rules.

Offense

Icon	Modifier	Effect with generated Global defaults
	Enraged (enraged)	Deals 15% more damage.
	Fire (fire)	Adds Fire damage equal to 20% of the original hit.
	Frost (frost)	Adds Frost damage equal to 10% of the original hit.
	Lightning (lightning)	Adds Lightning damage equal to 10% of the original hit.
	Spirit (spirit)	Adds Spirit damage equal to 5% of the original hit. Against players, its Spirit damage over time bypasses armor and resistance.
	Armor Piercing (armorPiercing)	Ignores 30% of player body armor.
	Staggering (staggering)	Adds 60% normal-hit and block-stagger buildup.
	Undodgeable (undodgeable)	Ignores player dodge invulnerability but deals 25% less damage. Blocking and parrying still work.

Defense

Icon	Modifier	Effect with generated Global defaults
	Armored (armored)	Takes 30% less damage.
	Deathward (deathward)	Cancels lethal damage and restores 20% of max health. Has a 10s cooldown and up to 3 activations.
	Regenerating (regenerating)	Heals a configurable share of max health per second. Defaults are 1% for Global creatures, 0.2% for bosses, and 0.5% for Enforcers.
	Reflection (reflection)	Has a 50% chance on a direct melee hit to reflect 10% of the health actually lost, bypassing defense and resistance.
	Vortex (vortex)	Has a 50% chance to negate projectile damage, push, stagger, and status effects.
	Adaptive (adaptive)	Remembers the dominant hit type for 5s and reduces matching damage by 50%.
	Unflinching (unflinching)	Immune to normal-hit and perfect-parry stagger.
	Chameleon (chameleon)	While alerted, gains one rotating damage-type immunity and switches it every 10s.

Affliction

Icon	Modifier	Effect with generated Global defaults
	Exposed (exposed)	Has a 50% chance to make the player take 20% more damage for 5s.
	Weakened (weakened)	Has a 50% chance to make the player deal 20% less damage for 5s.
	Withered (withered)	Has a 50% chance to reduce healing received by 50% for 5s.
	Crippling (crippling)	Has a 50% chance to reduce movement speed and jump force by 50% for 5s.
	Disruptive (disruptive)	Has a 50% chance to reduce stamina and Eitr recovery by 50% for 5s.
	Adrenaline Drain (adrenalineDrain)	Has a 50% chance to remove 50% of current adrenaline and reduce adrenaline gain by 50% for 5s.
	Corrosive (corrosive)	Has a 50% chance to increase durability loss to equipped gear by 50% for 5s.
	Toxic Death (toxicDeath)	On death, poisons players within 4m for 30% of their max health.

Special

Icon	Modifier	Effect with generated Global defaults
	Swift (swift)	Increases movement speed, acceleration, and turning speed by 40%.
	Attack Speed (attackSpeed)	Increases animation speed by 30%; attack intervals become 76.92% of normal.
	Vampiric (vampiric)	Heals for 30% of health removed by direct hits; delayed damage over time is excluded.
	Reaping (reaping)	Nearby kills heal 5% of base max health (up to 20 activations) and grant +10% max health, +1% damage, and +5% size per kill, capped at +200%, +20%, and +50%. No new size is gained in dungeons.
	Blink (blink)	Teleports near its player target within 24m every 6s.
	Omen (omen)	Has a 50% chance on a direct player kill to force an Enforcer check regardless of cooldown.
	Juggernaut (juggernaut)	Player hits have at least 150 push force. An actual push starts a 5s cooldown, and the creature is immune to attack push.
	Blamer (blamer)	Below 75% health, flees and adds 0.5 Karma per second up to 45 lifetime Karma. When exhausted, the modifier, icon, and flee behavior end.

Modifier icons appear on creature and boss HUDs. The Valheim Compendium contains a CreatureManager page with modifier names, icons, and descriptions using the active global values. English and Korean localization are embedded.

Highlights

• Clone or edit vanilla and modded creature prefabs.
• Configure selected Character and Humanoid fields, equipment, appearance, scale, and textures.
• Clone and tune monster attack prefabs, including damage, animation, projectile, AI range, and attack status effects.
• Clone projectile prefabs and override Projectile.m_spawnOnHit or SpawnAbility.m_spawnPrefab without duplicating their remaining component state.
• Build reusable BaseAI and MonsterAI presets, or borrow AI directly from another creature prefab.
• Add and edit factions without mirroring unrelated game systems.
• Define weighted levels for global, boss, biome, group, and individual prefab rules.
• Scale health, damage, modifier chance, and visuals by level or world distance.
• Roll 32 combat modifiers across Offense, Defense, Affliction, and Special groups.
• Add regional Karma progression and configurable Enforcer encounters.
• Inspect loaded creatures, attacks, AI, loadouts, projectiles, textures, and level visuals through generated references.
• Hot-reload YAML and local PNG textures while keeping synchronized gameplay definitions server-authoritative.

Getting Started

1. Open BepInEx/config/CreatureManager after the first launch.
2. Find the target prefab in a generated reference file.
3. Copy the relevant entry or name into the matching active YAML file.
4. Change only the fields you need.
5. Save the file. Most YAML and texture changes reload automatically.

The generated YAML headers are the schema reference. This README intentionally does not duplicate their field-by-field examples.

Configuration Files

The creature, attack, projectile, AI, and level domains load both .yml and .yaml base or split files, such as creatures.yml, creatures.yaml, and creatures_*.yaml. The generated creatures.sample.yml and attacks.sample.yml names do not match those active patterns, so the examples remain inactive. Copy selected entries into the active files, or install MonsterLabZ and rename them to creatures_sample.yml and attacks_sample.yml to activate the complete sample set. Bonebeard, Vincent, and Root Witch require MonsterLabZ. Vitrfell's boar2.png is included in the bundled default texture set and is generated when the client-local Generate Sample Textures option is On. Faction and Karma configuration intentionally accept only the single canonical files factions.yml and karma.yml.

Server Localization

Files directly under localization/ are flat token: text mappings. Both .yml and .yaml are accepted, but keep only one file for each Valheim language name. A token key may have one leading $; CreatureManager removes it while loading, so rootwitch and $rootwitch define the same token. Use $token in creatures.yml or another localized field. English is applied as the fallback before the client's selected language.

localization/English.yml

cm_rootwitch_name: Root Witch

localization/Korean.yml

cm_rootwitch_name: 뿌리 마녀

creatures.yml

character:
  name: $cm_rootwitch_name

Only the server, listen host, or current single-player authority reads these files. Connected clients ignore their local CreatureManager/localization folder and use the synchronized language maps. Existing vanilla or mod tokens can be referenced without redefining them. Redefining an existing token overrides every use of that token, so use a unique cm_... token for clone-specific names.

Generated References

References refresh automatically after Valheim's prefab databases are ready and only rewrite when their generated content changes. Treat them as discovery output rather than active configuration.

Core Systems

Creatures, Attacks, and AI

Creature definitions can modify an existing prefab or clone one with clonedFrom. Clones can use cloned attacks, reusable AI presets, AI borrowed from loaded creature prefabs, custom factions, humanoid equipment, and local texture overrides.

The supported surface is intentionally narrower than a full prefab database dump. It concentrates on fields useful for monsters and customizable NPCs while leaving drops, spawn tables, player prefabs, and large effect graphs to other domains or mods.

Levels and Progression

Level rules can target broad defaults or narrow content: global rules, bosses, biomes, named groups, and individual prefabs. Built-in biome presets provide a starting point, while explicit YAML rules replace only the values you choose.

Levels can control weighted star distribution, health, damage, visual scale, distance scaling, and modifier selection. Vanilla level visual states rotate when a creature exceeds the visual states supplied by its prefab.

CreatureManager is spawn-aware. Natural hostile spawns receive the complete matching rule, while breeding, eggs, grow-up transitions, tamed restores, Blood Magic summons, and explicit console spawns preserve or restrict values according to their lifecycle instead of blindly rerolling every creature initialization.

Karma and Enforcers

Karma is a regional pressure system based on a sliding 3x3 neighborhood of vanilla zones. Kills of untamed, non-player creatures by a player, a tamed creature, or another player-side creature raise local Karma; runtime-summoned creatures, including Enforcers and their minions, do not. Higher thresholds can add levels to future natural spawns, and idle regions decay over time.

Enforcers turn high Karma into encounters. A biome or dungeon table can choose an Enforcer, minions, modifiers, level bonus, bonus loot, and location restrictions. Nearby overlapping player regions are evaluated as one connected check region to avoid duplicate rolls for the same group.

Enforcer behavior can be used together with Karma levels or independently through BepInEx configuration. Current Karma appears near the minimap, and Enforcer events use localized center-screen messages.

Karma is currently stored in server memory and resets when the server process restarts.

Common Workflows

Tune an existing creature

Find it in creatures.reference.yml, copy its identity into creatures.yml, and add only the fields being changed.

Build a customizable humanoid NPC or creature

Generated references compact repeated prefab entries into this weighted notation while preserving their first-occurrence order. The generated usedByAttacks field is informational and is ignored in active configuration. Component blocks already identify their kind, so no type field is generated or accepted.

Install MonsterlabZ and refer to samples in creatures.sample.yml and attacks.sample.yml. Change those files name into creatures_sample.yml and attacks_sample.yml, respectively.

Create world progression

Use levels.yml for biome, group, prefab, boss, distance, and modifier rules. Keep broad defaults near the top and add narrow overrides only where needed.

Create regional encounters

Use karma.yml to tune Karma gain and decay, then assign outdoor or dungeon Enforcer tables by biome and optional location.

Reskin a creature

Inspect textures.reference.txt, place a PNG in the textures directory when needed, and reference it from the creature's texture slots. CreatureManager creates a target-specific ragdoll prefab for configured scale, textures, or appearance instead of changing the shared source ragdoll. Texture entries are also attempted on matching ragdoll renderer names/paths; a ragdoll without a matching renderer logs a warning and leaves that slot unchanged. Existing EffectData scale flags run unchanged during creation, after which CreatureManager restores the exact configured scale on its target-specific ragdoll. Runtime texture property blocks keep configured body textures authoritative when appearance.modelIndex updates the ragdoll model.

Console Commands

The spawn command supports prefab and comma-separated modifier completion. It is intended for testing and does not perform a normal level or modifier roll. cm:spawn and cm:karma are available only to the local listen-server host, not remote administrators or a dedicated-server console.

Git

https://github.com/sighsorry1029/CreatureManager