Runemark

A Diablo-style loot system for Valheim.

Creatures and chests drop equipment with a rarity and randomly rolled bonuses. Magic items on the ground are marked with a pillar of light and a star on your map. Gear you do not want can be broken down at a Runestone and the materials worked into gear you do.

The name refers to the rune marks carved into an object to give it power, which is what the mod does: it writes a rarity and a set of bonuses onto an ordinary piece of equipment.

This is early and the numbers will change. Drop rates, prices and payouts have not been balanced against much real play yet. Items you already have are not affected by those changes, and every number is in a config file you can edit.

Finding Gear

Valheim's drop tables are almost entirely materials, so once you know a recipe the world stops handing you equipment. Runemark gives creatures and chests a chance to drop gear, and everything they drop is rolled.

There are five rarities. Higher ones roll more bonuses, and roll them higher within each bonus's range.

Rarity	Bonuses
Marked	1
Runed	1-2
Hallowed	2-3
Jarl's	3-4
Storied	4-5

Each rarity has its own colour and frame in the inventory grid. On the ground, magic items stand in a pillar of light in their rarity colour, and a chime plays when one lands nearby. Each rarity has its own sound.

The beam can be hidden behind hills or under trees, so magic items also show as a star on your map and minimap in the same colour. The star disappears when you pick the item up.

Bonuses change real stats: damage, armour, carry weight, stamina, and elemental damage that makes a weapon give off matching sparks other players can see.

Gear is sorted into eight tiers, from the Meadows to the Deep North, and a creature drops loot suited to the biome it lives in.

The Runestone

A standing stone you build for 20 Stone and 10 Wood. You learn it the first time you pick up anything Runemark made. Press Use to open it.

It has three ranks. Raising it is paid for in runes, using the Upgrade button under the rank in the panel. The materials come from using the stone, so there is nothing to go and mine for it.

Work	Rank	What it does
Break	I	Magic gear into runes of its own rarity. Trophies into ochre. Asks twice
Fuse	I	Four runes of one tier into one of the next
Recarve	II	Swap one bonus for a different one
Deepen	II	Reroll a bonus's value, keeping the bonus. Costs more each time
Inscribe	III	Cut fresh bonuses into anything, for a flat price
Name	III	Give your finest gear a name of your own

Runecrafting

Working at a Runestone raises a skill called Runecrafting, and the skill improves what Inscribe rolls. Every rarity gets more likely as it rises, the rarest most of all: at 100, a Storied result goes from about one throw in 167 to one in 50.

Inscribing teaches the most, then recarving and deepening. Breaking gear down teaches very little, because it is free and done in bulk. The odds shown on the Inscribe tab are your own, so they improve visibly as the skill does.

Runes and Ochre

There are two currencies, from two different sources.

Runes come from breaking magic gear apart. There are five, one per rarity: Fehu, Uruz, Ansuz, Tiwaz and Sowilo. Four of one make one of the next. Runes pay for Recarve, Deepen and upgrades.

Ochre comes from breaking down trophies. Ochre pays for Inscribe.

Breaking pays fewer runes as the rarity rises, so common gear stays worth collecting. A Marked item gives a handful of Fehu; a Storied one gives a small number of much rarer runes.

Inscribe

A flat 25 Ochre. The stone rolls the rarity and reveals it on a spinning reel. It works on gear that already has bonuses, replacing them, so a poor result can be rerolled. The odds are shown before you commit and are the same ones the world rolls on.

Names

At a rank III stone, Jarl's and Storied gear can be given a name of your own, up to 32 characters. It replaces the rolled name everywhere: the tooltip, your inventory, and the hover text when it is lying on the ground.

The name travels with the item, so anyone who picks it up or finds it in a chest reads the same thing.

One name per item, and it is permanent. Naming is free, but a name cannot be changed or removed once it is cut, so the button asks twice before it commits.

Locks

Every row in the panel has a padlock, and locked items say so in their normal tooltip. Nothing Runemark does will consume a locked item, including runes sitting in a chest.

Nearby Chests

The stone can draw runes and ochre from chests near it, so you do not have to carry your whole stock. The range is a slider in the panel.

Several kinds of chest are never touched: one behind someone else's ward, one set to private, one in use at the time, and one ticked Not For Crafting if you use Andvari. A locked item inside a chest is safe too, the same as one in your pocket.

Installing

Runemark needs BepInEx 5, and it goes on both the client and the server. Drop Runemark.dll into BepInEx\plugins\ on each.

Both are needed. The client handles rolling, stats and the interface. The server owns the loot table and sends it to everyone on connect, so on a server its settings are the ones that apply.

Other Mods

Nine are supported and all of them are optional. Install any of them and their content is included automatically. Install none and nothing changes.

Gear appears in the drop tables: Warfare, Armory, Wizardry, SouthsilArmor, WeaponAdditions, Hugo's Armory.

Creatures drop loot: Monstrum, RenegadeVikings, SeaAnimals and AirAnimals.

Modded gear is sorted by its armour and damage values rather than by its name, so it lands in the tier its stats belong to. Modded creatures are sorted by the biome the game spawns them in.

Settings

BepInEx\config\gbv.valheim.runemark.cfg holds the display and audio options: rarity frames, ground beams, map stars, weapon effects, drop sounds, and the Runestone's reach into chests.

Three of them set a minimum rarity, which is useful if the common tiers get noisy:

• DropSoundMinRarity for the drop chime.
• GroundBeamMinRarity for the pillars of light.
• MapPinMinRarity for the map stars.

The five drop sounds are built in. To replace one, put a .wav named after the rarity (marked.wav, runed.wav, hallowed.wav, jarls.wav, storied.wav) in BepInEx\config\Runemark\sounds. A file there is used instead of the built-in one.

BepInEx\config\gbv.valheim.runemark.loot.json holds the drop rates, the tier weights and every price the Runestone charges. On a server, that server's copy is the one that counts. Every number in it is documented in the file itself.

If you update Runemark and new drops do not appear, it is because a server keeps its existing loot table. Run runemark_reload defaults once to rewrite it. Your old file is kept as a .bak.

Console Commands

These are for server owners and for setting up a loot table. Normal play needs none of them.

Command	What it does
runemark_inspect	Show the Runemark data on everything you are carrying
runemark_affixes	List every bonus, what it does and its range
runemark_sounds / runemark_playsound / runemark_soundcheck	Pick and audition drop sounds
runemark_spawn	Give yourself a magic item. Admin only
runemark_give	Give yourself runes or ochre. Admin only
runemark_station	Set the rank of the nearest Runestone, or unlock it. Admin only
runemark_items	Every item Runemark can mark, with its armour and damage
runemark_spawns	Every creature the world spawns, its biome, and what loot rule covers it
runemark_validate	Check the loot table against the game and report anything that does not exist
runemark_reload	Reload the loot table, and on a server push it to everyone

Uninstalling

Safe at any time. Magic item data is stored on the item rather than in a separate save file, so items keep it while the mod is removed and get it back if you reinstall.

Credits

Runemark is a separate implementation of an idea EpicLoot popularised. It is written from scratch on Valheim's own damage types, status effects and item storage, and uses none of EpicLoot's code, data or assets.

Supported mods are referenced by prefab name only. Nothing is bundled and nothing is required.