One-Handed Early Axe

A single axe. Room for a shield.

Turn the Early Axes fighting style into a one-handed option: craft a separate One-handed Early Axe, equip your favourite shield, and use familiar one-handed axe attacks. The original paired Early Axes remain unchanged.

Features

• One native Early Axe model, held in one hand, with shield support.
• Three-hit primary combo and a vertical secondary chop using native one-handed axe animations.
• Configurable attack animation speed: 1.25x by default, adjustable from 1x to 2x.
• Native damage, chopping power, stamina cost fields, durability, tool tier, weight and effects retained. Different timing and combos mean damage per second can differ from the original pair.
• Native crafting recipe, full material costs, ordinary quality upgrades and special upgrader support.
• Works independently of Single Berserkir; no dependency on that mod or Jotunn.

Crafting and upgrades

Find One-handed Early Axe at the normal workbench after discovering the required materials. The recipe follows the game's Early Axes recipe and station requirements; receiving one axe does not halve the cost.

At this release, the initial recipe uses 4 Wood and the two Early Axe heads (AxeHead1 and AxeHead2). Ordinary upgrades use Wood and Leather Scraps: 2 of each for quality 2, 4 of each for quality 3, and 8 of each for quality 4, at the native station levels.

The native special weapon upgrader is supported. Its upgrade resource is not an initial crafting ingredient. The game's success, failure, break and refund rules still apply; this mod does not guarantee a successful special upgrade.

Installation

Requires Valheim with the native Early Axes content and BepInExPack Valheim. Harmony is supplied by BepInEx. No game or framework DLLs are bundled.

With Valheim closed, place OneHandedEarlyAxe.dll in BepInEx/plugins/OneHandedEarlyAxe/, or install through your Thunderstore mod manager. For the Nexus ZIP, extract into your Valheim folder while preserving the BepInEx folder structure.

Launch once to create BepInEx/config/au.tyvalheim.onehandedearlyaxe.cfg. In the Combat section, AttackSpeed defaults to 1.25. Use matching settings across participating peers.

Multiplayer and compatibility

Install the mod on participating clients and on the dedicated server for worlds that must handle this custom item. Keep versions and settings matched.

Modded observers see the Early Axe. An unmodded observer sees a bronze axe in the held/back equipment slot. That fallback covers equipment appearance only: it does not make custom dropped items, pickups, storage, item stands or trading compatible with unmodded clients. Do not pass the custom item to an unmodded player.

The first release retains the original paired-axes inventory icon; the custom item has its own name and description. This affects the inventory icon, not the single-axe model you wield.

Removal and support

Back up your character and world before removing a custom-item mod. Remove the custom axes from inventories, chests, stands and the world while the mod is still installed, then close the game and remove its DLL. Simply storing an axe in a chest does not make it safe for an unmodded installation.

For a bug report, include your game/mod versions, other relevant mods, AttackSpeed setting, whether you play locally or on a server, and the relevant BepInEx log excerpt.

Changelog

0.1.0 — Initial release

Adds the separate one-handed Early Axe, shield support, configurable attack speed, native recipe and upgrade paths, retained native visual effects and equipment appearance fallback. Gameplay tested and approved for publication by Gomisan on 28 October 2026. No DLL changes were made for site packaging.

Credits

Created by Gomisan. Coded with the assistance of ChatGPT 6.0. Thanks to Iron Gate for Valheim and its native models/materials, and the BepInEx and Harmony contributors. Native assets are loaded from the installed game; extracted game models, textures and game assemblies are not distributed.

Cover artwork is AI-generated promotional illustration, not a gameplay screenshot.

Media

AI-generated promotional illustration, not a gameplay screenshot.

Discord and feedback

Comments and bug reports are equally welcome on Nexus or Gomisan's Mods Discord. Use whichever is easier; there is no need to cross-post. A dedicated Discord feedback thread will be linked when available.

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