Valheim Combat Overhaul

This mod is a set of customizable balancing adjustments and features designed to bring a variety to the game's style and make the fight more responsive and realistic.

1. index.

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Index.

Requirements

Mods justification

Featured Fashions

Features

What needs to be done

Install

Delete

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2. requirements

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Non-pirated copy of Valheim updated to version 0.148.7 or higher

BepInExPack Valheim version 5.4.9 or later

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3. recommended mods

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The following mods are not all personally played, but they need to be compatible and work well with my changes:

Terraheim by DasSaueurkraut

Best archery by Ishid4

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4. reasons for modifications

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The aim of this fashion is to balance the various combat options offered to players in Valheim without deviating too far from the developers' original idea and vision of the game.

All the changes are aimed at solving the problems that I have identified (or that have been raised during the discussions), playing in the normal mode. The changes themselves are the result of a measured (or so I want to believe) decision made after extensive testing, research (in and out of the game), and comparisons of key balance factors between available strategies.

TL; DR.

Why use tower shields when conventional shields are objectively better? And why use tower shields at all if onions are a faster and safer solution?

So, these are the first two problems that fashion solves.

While the game's difficulty setting is not one of the fashion goals, it can accidentally make combat a little more difficult than in the base game.

This can make combat a little more difficult than in the base game.

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5. features

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5. 1. general features.

The endurance value can be set to a negative value (default is -50).

Turns the character in the direction of the player's sight when using any weapon.

Allows the character to rotate (at reduced speed) during special weapon attacks.

Lock character movement/spin during melee attack recovery frames.

Enter a flank damage bonus for all weapons (defaults to knives only).

A counterstrike bonus is added to all piercing damage (attacks with piercing damage to enemies during an attack animation have a damage multiplier of 1.2).

Increase Critical Damage Bonus (Damage to Stunned Enemies) for Swords and Knives - set for all weapons.

Staggering damage multiplier changed for all weapons

Changed enemy staggering damage reset timer (3 seconds -> 4 seconds)

Changed the existing formula of armor to a new one that works better in "extreme" cases, while retaining the most important aspects of the original.

(Smaller reduction for impacts with much lower damage scores than current armor scores, larger reduction for impacts with much higher damage scores.)

Set the damage type of all secondary attacks to match the damage type of your weapon and movement (for example, Sword Strike is now piercing rather than cutting).

The first change - negative endurance values - allows you to perform actions that require endurance without spending it. However, the effect of this change on overall gameplay is minor, and instead of being a disadvantage or a penalty, it serves as another tool for controlling endurance during combat. For example, you may find yourself in a situation where you lack several endurance points to strike after parrying. This should happen much less often.

Zero movement during a special attack of any weapon seems to me a strange idea and strongly limits the usability of these attacks.

Capturing the movement/rotation of the character during the recovery frame of the attack would make the character feel slightly better when using certain weapons.

As for turning the character by camera or mouse movement. The vanilla game lacked this due to the character's limited rotation during the attack and block arc animations. The flaw could be solved by, for example, blocking and forcing the character to turn in the direction the player was aiming, but this was uncomfortable and resulted in fighting the character's movement rather than the environment's movement.

Changes in damage values from Stagger Weapons (see Change Log 1.7.0 for details) made combat less dependent on stunning enemies and made it much harder to stun them. To compensate for the overall reduction in Stunning damage (at least for most attacks), the enemy's Stunning Bar cooldown timer has been increased. This means that it now takes on average more blows to stunn an opponent, but it also increases the amount of time that can be spent between attacks.

New damage modifiers and changes to existing damage modifiers are designed to allow for a greater variety of gameplay styles depending on the type of weapon used. General.

Swords give a higher than average critical bonus instead of lower stagger damage. Secondary sword attacks now also deal piercing damage, making them more versatile against different types of enemies.

The sledgehammer remained virtually unchanged, only slightly reduced the damage from the stagger.

Battle axes now deal stagger damage during normal attacks, in addition to the changes listed in the section below.

Atgueir now has slightly less stagger damage in normal attacks and much less in special attacks. However, he can now take advantage of a newly introduced counterstrike damage bonus, which synergistically combines with his above-average range.

The Knife offers the highest damage bonus of any weapon in the game and is more focused on taking advantage of opportunities to deal heavy damage.

Axes and maces are almost identical, and they give attacks with a higher than average damage multiplier.

Spears, like atogers, now have a bonus to counter-damage.

Bows have significantly reduced damage from Staggers, but they can still use counter-punches.

The new armor formula shares some features with the original. For example, reducing damage by 50% requires an armor rating equal to half the damage taken. However, although the armor rating is exactly the same as the damage taken, the damage taken cannot be reduced by 75%, but can be reduced by 66,(6)%. Half the damage of an armor rating reduces damage by 90% instead of 94.7%. And with four times armor damage, the damage reduction will be 33,(6)%. Damage reduction will be 33,(3)% instead of 25%.

In short, damage that is significantly less than the player's Armor score will be reduced more, and damage that is significantly greater will be reduced.

This change makes opponents in the early game a little more dangerous and corrects the difficulty of using mods such as creature level and loot control.

The chances of surviving a 2- or 5-star attack increase, and damage taken from enemies without stars or in an early game becomes a minor threat.

5. 2nd Shield.

Reduced tower block endurance loss (40% less than a normal shield).

When a turret shield blocks, excessive damage reduces stamina rather than residual strength, so as long as the player has stamina after blocking an attack, they no longer stagger when hit.

If the turret is successfully locked by the shield, the roll force applied to the player is now halved, unless the damage from the strike exceeds the effective lock force of the shield.

Removed enemy stunning and recoil while parrying the charge with a projectile.

Reduced regeneration of endurance during blocking (default 20%).

The difference between the normal and turret shields in the base game effectively makes the latter "the worst of the two".

The additional blocking ability of the tower shield does not compensate for the penalty to speed of movement and the lack of parrying, at least at the stage of equipment with a wooden coating. For starters, there are not enough differences to give the tower shield its own personality in the game.

Due to the changes made to the mod, the tower shield changes its parrying ability with a unique mechanism that uses endurance to prevent additional damage beyond the standard blocking force. In addition, the cost of stamina during blocking is reduced, which adds to the opponent's additional "clinginess" in addition to the already existing bonus to the blocking force. In exchange for speed, there is a significant penalty of 20%, which is also present in vanilla.

The result is a new, more defensive style of play that is only available to Tower Shield users.

Negative change of endurance of the player (from section 5.1. Background Information) is designed to prevent players from blocking larger beats at significantly lower endurance costs when their endurance is low. In the worst case, blocking a particularly powerful hit with low endurance can result in the player having to wait about 8 seconds for endurance (up to 4 seconds if the player has a Rest Buff). As long as endurance is negative, the player cannot perform actions that require endurance.

This change allows you to perform actions that require endurance without meeting the endurance consumption requirements. Of course, the restoration of endurance will have to pay in the form of longer cooldowns. However, the overall gameplay is only slightly affected, and instead of being a debaffe or a penalty, this serves as another option to control endurance in combat. For example, you may find yourself in a situation where you lack several endurance points to strike after parrying. Now such situations will occur much less frequently.

The following changes are intended to further differentiate the two types of shields and slightly reduce the effectiveness of a conventional shield:

Reduction of the shield protection angle to 120° (from 180°).

Change of protection angle of tower panels from 180° to 150°.

The parry time window was halved (from 250 ms to 130 ms).

Although subjective, it seems that Valheim is too easy to successfully parry. Compared to other games that have a parry mechanic, there is no initial frame before parry and no recovery frame after parry. In Vanilla, if a player makes a mistake in the timing of the parry, they will almost always block the shot instead of parrying. I believe that this is normal and in keeping with the spirit of Walheim, where players are rarely punished. But even with this change, I believe that parrying is still a viable tactic, and while it is not punished as much, it makes it a little harder to get rewards. For me personally, successful parrying brought more satisfaction than before.

5. 3. Luke.

The player's movement speed is now reduced by drawing the bow (default is 50%).

Changed so that at each level of bow proficiency, the draw time is not reduced, but the pull speed is increased by 1%.

(Formula changed from BaseDrawTime * (1 - BowSkillFactor) to BaseDrawTime / (1 + BowSkillFactor * ConfigSkillFactorMultiplier)).

There are three main problems with the previous release

Closing bursts are extended indefinitely - often simply pulling back during firing prevents most melee enemies from taking damage.

The DPS is too high for high archery skill levels - the damage done by the bow in a given amount of time is comparable to that of a melee weapon, even a wooden arrow.

The ratio of damage dealt to the amount of stamina expended is too high - with the same amount of stamina, the bow can deal 10 times more damage than a melee weapon.

The first change clearly addresses the first problem. It is now impossible to avoid enemy attacks by retreating while using a bow. In order to throw back the enemy during his animation, one must either roll back to the side or have time to shoot the moment he attacks. This will provide more fun gameplay.

Conversely, you can pull on the bow while animating the throw. It's not what I'm up to, it's a feature of the basic version of the game, but I think it's going to be an extra fun mechanic that can be used after this modification.

The second and third problems are a direct consequence of how bows scale with the appropriate skills. For other weapons, each additional skill level increases damage by 1% and reduces attack endurance costs by 0.5%.

Similarly, bows increase damage by 1% per level. However, the cost of endurance remains the same, and the stretch time decreases. Increasing your skill level reduces pulling time by up to 100%.

This difference allows the bow skill to scale better than other weapons. Reducing the pull time affects both the ability of the bow to inflict damage and the cost of shooting it. In addition, a 100% reduction in stretch time does not require time for onion stretching, and therefore there is no cost of stamina.

Changing the time formula of the onion tension solves both problems.

In the base version, damage increases (and endurance costs decrease) with each additional level of bow proficiency, with the difference between levels 99 and 100 being the largest. The difference between the 99th and 100th levels is the biggest. At low levels, bows work the same way as vanilla bows. However, as they approach level 100, they function as a different weapon.

5.4. Battle Ax.

The penalty to travel speed has been changed from -20% to -10%.

The factor of turn rate during attack animation has been increased from 0.3 to 0.7 (it is now much easier to turn during attack animation).

The chain of the second and third attacks during the execution of the attack is allowed.

A battle ax is a type of weapon that requires the most careful positioning and can generally be the most difficult to use. The fact that the Battle Ax's travel penalty has been lowered to Atgueiras level should help experienced players in this regard.

But even from a balance-of-play perspective, it makes little sense that a weapon that weighs as much as Atogueiras and doesn’t seem too difficult to use should slow players down by twice as much.

The new chain mechanics are designed to solve the problem of the surprisingly low DPS weapons, without eliminating the main drawback, which is part of its uniqueness. The improved spin speed partially compensates for this disadvantage by turning continuous chain attacks into a somewhat effective strategy in certain scenarios. As with hammers, jumping before the first attack to increase mobility is a bit silly, but can still be encouraged.

Other features considered during development included increasing the attack speed of the first attack, introducing a "superarmor" mechanism to reduce stagger and knockback, reducing damage taken during the animation of the first and subsequent attacks, and accelerating movement during animation. The game's design also took into account the game's features.

In the end, we found the changes to be the most enjoyable to use and unique to the game, but feel free to share your opinions and other suggestions in the comments section.

5.5. Stealing.

The damage of sneaking depends on the level of sneaking. By default, sneak damage is half vanilla at 0 and the same as vanilla at maximum.

Gives XP for a successful stealth attack; the amount of XP depends on the weapon's backstroke bonus, which is reduced by projectile attacks.

Move your cursor over the weapon to see the current backstab bonus.

Problems with sneaking in vanilla games:

Normal non-living enemies are too effective at detecting creeping players at low skill levels.

Stealing increases the level by squatting and moving, which is not an effective strategy in the early stages of the game, making the level rise more painstaking than necessary.

Despite the two aforementioned points, the sneaking and shooting style of play is very useful with little risk and investment.

In short, although sneaking seems futile at low levels, sneaking effectiveness increases with the level. So we decided to accelerate the progression so that we could use stealth melee style earlier. The base value of sneak damage has been lowered to balance the additional reward for a successful sneak attack, but to reduce the effectiveness of archery in the early stages.

One solution was to modify the AI detection formula to focus more on environmental conditions rather than theft levels, but it was decided not to change the vanilla system radically yet and to conduct more game tests before deciding on more radical changes. However, it is possible that such changes will appear in future updates.

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6. what to do

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Future fashion updates will include the following

Various QoL features (e.g., the ability to automatically pick up abandoned weapons only by the owner, etc.)

Support for server settings.

Buffy/lumps for ax weapons.

Revised weapon lock and counter bonus values.

Improved enemy AI.

The verticality of the hitboxes is revised.

Added color visual feedback for exhaustion of stamina when blocked by tower shields.

Increased HP recovery speed for enemies disabled in battle.