LoadoutBuffs

Give each equipment slot extra effects and stats, picked in an in-game window: Megingjord's carry weight on your chest, +30 spirit damage on your melee weapon, a protection bubble for you and your friends when you parry. Client-side: servers and friends don't need the mod. No items are created or changed, and your saves are never touched.

Quick Start

1. Install with a mod manager (r2modman, Thunderstore Mod Manager, Gale): BepInEx and Jötunn come along automatically.
2. In game, open your inventory and click the BUFFS tab next to CRAFT.
3. Pick a starter buff (Warrior, Hunter, Explorer, Homesteader) or press New, then press Use.

Changes are saved and applied at once. One buff is in use at a time, for every character in your profile.

Features

A buff gives each slot (helmet, chest, legs, cape, melee, ranged, shield) an extra effect and/or custom stats.

• Effects: any set bonus or equipment effect gear has in the game (Vanguard, Megingjord, Feather fall, Wisplight…, including other mods' gear). Point at one in the window to read what it does.
• General: movement speed, carry weight, armor, block armor and block force (added to what you block with: your shield, else your weapon), fall damage.
• Regen and costs: health / stamina / eitr regen; run / jump / attack / block / dodge stamina cost; eitr cost (every spell and staff charge, e.g. −50 % for half the eitr). Even at −100 %, when spells cost nothing, you need eitr to cast: eat at least one eitr food.
• Resistances per damage type.
• Damage (melee and ranged slots):
  • Damage % multiplies what your weapon deals; it scales with your weapon and covers the whole shot of a bow.
  • Added damage adds a fixed amount of any type, e.g. +30 spirit on a club that had none, scaled like the weapon's own damage.
• Skills: + or − levels for any skill.
• On parry (melee, ranged and shield slots): heal and stamina, set separately for you and for other players; heal for tamed creatures; and a bubble (the Staff of Protection's Magic barrier) for you and everyone in reach, with its health and time (1–10 minutes). Friends without the mod get it too.
• Classes (melee and ranged slots): Woodcutter lets that weapon fell any tree (logs and stumps too), Miner break any rock or ore deposit (black marble included). On the melee slot it's your swings; on the ranged slot your arrows, bolts and staff spells. The hit gets the highest tool tier, and chop / pickaxe damage equal to its physical damage (blunt, slash, pierce), so even a club or a bow works. A spell without physical damage (the Staff of Frost's, lightning) does nothing to wood or stone. To make it work, add blunt, slash or other physical damage under Added damage on the Ranged slot (e.g. +10 pierce). Digging the ground stays a pickaxe thing.

The buff in use shows on your HUD with its name ("N stats" under it when it has custom stats). The stats of all slots you fill add up; the Compendium's Active effects page lists the buff's effects and stats, and the bottom of the window shows them for what you wear now.

How Things Behave

• Slots follow your gear. A slot counts while something is equipped there. Melee means swords, knives, clubs, atgeirs, spears, axes and fists; ranged means bows, crossbows and magic staffs; pickaxes, the fishing rod, torches and tools count as neither. Weapon and shield slots count only while that item is in your hands: sheathing turns them off.
• Your gear keeps its own effects. A buff only adds; the same effect from your gear and the buff counts once.
• Parry, not block. On-parry help needs a perfect block (the parry flash). A normal block never triggers it.
• On parry goes on what you parry with. Its stats can only be set on Melee, Ranged or Shield, and count while that item is in your hands: holding a sword and a shield, a parry also uses the sword's on-parry stats. A parry with empty hands, a torch or a pickaxe gives none.
• The bubble (if your buff has one). The bubble is off unless you set Bubble health in a buff. Then a parry gives a bubble to everyone in reach who has none. A bubble that is still up (yours or from a real Staff of Protection) isn't refreshed: it stays until it breaks or runs out, and the next parry after that gives a new one. When a bubble breaks, the player in it gains a little Blood Magic skill, as with the staff.
• Damage and classes are for weapons. Damage %, Added damage, Woodcutter and Miner can only be set on Melee or Ranged, and count only while that weapon is in your hands. A staff blast with Miner breaks every chunk of a deposit it reaches.
• Damage % follows your weapon: it lists the types the weapon in your hand deals. Add a new type under Added damage and its % row appears.

Multiplayer and Fair Play

LoadoutBuffs runs only on your client. Your stats and the damage you deal are computed by your own game, so buffs work on any server, and other players see your gear as usual. Your parry help reaches friends whether they have the mod or not.

LoadoutBuffs is a power mod that can make you a lot stronger, so some servers and players probably won't welcome it.

The Buffs File

Everything can be set in the Buffs window of the in-game UI. The file (BepInEx/config/LoadoutBuffs.buffs.yaml) is only useful to share or back up your buffs, or for values beyond the window's limits and raw fields:. Effects can be written as code names or in-game names. After editing, run lb_reload (or edit while the game is closed): the window saves what it has loaded, so edits it hasn't loaded are overwritten the next time you change something in it. Comments and lines it can't read are never kept.

active: Warrior
buffs:
  Warrior:
    chest: SetEffect_DeepNorthMediumArmor   # Vanguard
    cape: Feather fall
    legs:
      effect: Sneaky
      stats: { movementSpeed: 10, armor: 15, resist: { Fire: Resistant }, skills: { Bows: 15 } }
    melee:
      stats: { addDamage: { spirit: 30 }, shieldOnParry: 500, shieldMinutes: 2 }

Key	Value
movementSpeed, fallDamage	percent (10 = +10 %)
healthRegen, staminaRegen, eitrRegen	percent
runStamina, jumpStamina, attackStamina, blockStamina, dodgeStamina, eitrCost	percent of the cost (negative = cheaper)
carryWeight, armor, blockArmor, blockForce	flat amount
resist	{ Fire: Resistant }: Normal, SlightlyResistant, Resistant, VeryResistant, Immune, SlightlyWeak, Weak, VeryWeak
damage	percent per type: { slash: 10 } (melee or ranged slot only)
addDamage	flat per type: { spirit: 30 } (blunt, slash, pierce, fire, frost, lightning, poison, spirit; melee or ranged slot only)
skills	levels per skill: { Bows: 15 }
healOnParry, staminaOnParry	for you, on every parry (melee, ranged or shield slot only, like all on-parry keys)
healAlliesOnParry, staminaAlliesOnParry, healTamedOnParry	for other players / tamed creatures in reach
shieldOnParry, shieldMinutes	bubble health, and its time in minutes (default 1)
parryRadius	reach in metres (default 10)
woodcutter, miner	true (melee or ranged slot only)
fields	any other SE_Stats field by its code name, raw game value

Within a buff, the stats of all filled slots add up; reach and bubble time take the largest, resistances the most protective. A bad entry is skipped with a warning in the window and in BepInEx/LogOutput.log; the rest still applies.

Console Commands

In the F5 console. Not cheats, so no devcommands needed.

• lb_buffs: open the Buffs window
• lb_reload: re-read the buffs file and apply it
• lb_stats: your current totals: armor, movement and run speed, stamina modifiers, resistances, weapon and what you block with, buff, active effects

Troubleshooting

• There's no BUFFS tab. Jötunn is missing or failed to load. Look for [LoadoutBuffs] lines in BepInEx/LogOutput.log.
• My stats don't apply. Is the buff in use (the window says "in use" next to it)? Is something equipped in that slot, and for weapons, in your hands?
• No bubble when I parry. Was it a parry, not a block? Is a bubble still up from an earlier parry?
• A Damage % row is missing. Your weapon doesn't deal that type; add it under Added damage first.
• My staff doesn't chop or mine with Woodcutter / Miner. Its spell has no physical damage (Staff of Frost, lightning). Add some blunt, slash or pierce under Added damage on the Ranged slot.
• A class, damage or on-parry stat is gone from a slot after updating. Since 1.1.0 Woodcutter, Miner, Damage % and Added damage go on Melee or Ranged only; since 1.2.0 on-parry stats go on Melee, Ranged or Shield only. On other slots they're skipped with a warning, and when that's the only problem in your buffs file, the mod removes them from it (the log says which). Set them on one of those slots again.

Compatibility

• Built and tested for Valheim 1.0 (Deep North). Tested on Linux; it should work on Windows and macOS (no OS-specific code), but hasn't been tested there yet. Reports welcome.
• If another mod changes the same game functions and one of LoadoutBuffs' hooks can't install, that feature turns off with a message in the log and the window; the rest keeps working.
• English only.

Uninstalling

Nothing is stored in your characters or items: remove the mod and your gear is vanilla again. Delete BepInEx/config/LoadoutBuffs.buffs.yaml if you don't want to keep your buffs.

Links

• Source, bug reports and ideas: https://github.com/algo7/LoadoutBuffs (issues welcome)
• Changes: the Changelog tab
• Made with AI assistance.
• Built with BepInEx and Jötunn. MIT license.