
ClanWars
Rust in Valheim: claim land with Clan Wards, raid your rivals and capture their base. Caravan trade between allies, ten Odin-Sent Relics falling from the sky, and fifteen clan colours worn into battle. Fresh characters only.Clan Wars Field Manual
Everything you need to found a clan, claim a base with a Clan Ward, scout and raid your rivals, run caravans between allied halls and chase the Odin-Sent Relics. Press F6 in game to open the clan panel — everything is done there, on the War Map and in chest windows.
Contents: Before you join · Founding a clan · Clan colours · The clan panel · Who you can fight · Ranks · Alliances · Clan Wards & bases · Finding bases & Scout Ravens · Raids · Breaking in · The War Map · Trade · Odin-Sent Relics · Death & respawning · For server owners
Before you join
What you need installed
| Mod | What it is |
|---|---|
| BepInEx (BepInExPack Valheim) | The mod loader. Nothing else works without it. |
| Valheim Plus (Grantapher) | Optional. An extra balance layer our own server runs. Clan Wars does not need it and works fully without it. |
| Clan Wars | Exactly the server's version — any other is turned away. |
Your game must also be the same Valheim version as the server. The easiest way to get everything right is Thunderstore Mod Manager or r2modman: make a profile, install BepInExPack Valheim and Clan Wars from the mod list - adding Valheim Plus only if your server asks for it - and always start the game with Start modded from that profile.
Checked at the door. The server checks your mods while you connect, before the world loads. A game without Clan Wars, or with a different version, is turned away.
Fresh characters only
Nobody walks in with a head start. The first time a character joins the server it must be fresh:
- nothing in its inventory beyond the starting rag tunic and torch,
- no forsaken power,
- no skill trained above level 1.
From then on the character belongs to that server. The server remembers what it has as you play, and if it comes back with gear, a better piece, a forsaken power or higher skills than it left with — earned in another world — it is turned away.
Nothing is ever taken. A character that is turned away is never changed: you are back on the main menu, with the reason in the error box. Make a new character for the server, and keep the old one for your other worlds.
Founding a clan
Press F6 to open the clan panel. On the Roster tab, fill in a tag — 2 to 5 letters or digits, unique on the server, shown in front of every member's name — and a full name, then press Found clan. You must also pick your clan colour before the button will work — see below.
You are now the clan's Leader. Press Invite and the panel lists every clanless player online — click one to invite them. They see the invitation on their own Roster tab with Join and Decline.
| 4 | players per clan, every rank counted |
| 3+ | Clan Wards per clan, one more for every Ward you capture |
| 3 | trade posts per clan |
| 3 | Scout Ravens per clan |
An invitation does not hold a place: whoever accepts first fills it, and a full clan takes nobody new. The Roster shows Members X / 4 and Clan Full.
Clan colours
Every clan flies one of fifteen colours, and no two clans on a server may fly the same one. The founder picks it on the Roster tab when the clan is made: the whole palette is shown, and a colour another clan already flies is greyed out and cannot be taken.
| Oxblood | Ember | Amber | Moss |
| Pine | Verdigris | Sky | Woad |
| Indigo | Heather | Plum | Rose |
| Bone | Iron | Charcoal |
They are deliberately muted — weathered dyes rather than bright paint — so they sit in Valheim's world instead of on top of it, and they are kept far enough apart to tell one clan from another across a field.
Your colour is how you are known. You wear it on your cape and shield, which carry it outright, and on your armour, helmet and weapons, which carry it while still looking like the metal and leather they are made of. Your Clan Wards fly it over the land you hold, so you can see whose ground you are standing on — capture a base and its Ward turns your colour.
The colour belongs to the player, not the item. Two vikings in the same armour from different clans look nothing alike, and a shield you take from a rival carries none of their colour. Leave your clan and you look like everyone else again.
Changing colour. A Leader can change the clan colour whenever they like with Change on the Roster tab. The old colour is freed for another clan the moment the new one is taken.
Relics keep their own look. An Odin-Sent Relic is never recoloured, whoever carries it. Nor are beards.
Clans made before this update keep working and simply have no colour until their Leader takes one from the Roster tab. Only colours nobody else flies are offered.
The clan panel
F6 opens and closes it, and so does the Open Clan UI button beside your inventory; Esc closes it without opening the game menu. While it is open your Viking holds still. The mouse wheel scrolls a long list. Every button asks the server, which decides — there are no chat commands.
| Tab | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Roster | Members with rank and an online dot. Invite, promote, demote, kick, leave, disband; invitations waiting for you. |
| Diplomacy | Your allies, alliance offers to accept or reject, and every other clan on the server. |
| Trade | Your trade posts, open routes with distance and caravan time, live offers and counter-offers, and every caravan: In transit, Waiting for space or Delivered. |
| Trade Log | Offers, counters, deals, declines, deliveries, returned goods, routes and lost posts, newest first — the clan's last 50 entries. A delivered caravan stays on the Trade tab for 15 minutes, then only here. |
| Raids | The raid under way with its clock and capture, a log of the server's last 50 raids, your named Wards (officers rename them here), and the raid rules. |
| Odin Relics | Every relic's state and protection countdown, each boss's rewards and cooldown, the boss history, and View on War Map. |
Who you can fight
Your clan tag decides who can hurt you. Names above heads and in chat are coloured by where they stand with you: green your clan, blue an ally, red a rival, grey no clan.
| They are… | Your blows | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Same clan | Do nothing | No damage, no stagger, no knockback. Arrows fly straight through them. |
| Allied clan | Do nothing | The same protection, for as long as the alliance stands. |
| Another clan | Land | Nobody needs Valheim's PvP toggle. Different tags means war. |
| No clan | Depend | The vanilla PvP toggle decides: you can hurt each other only if both have it on. |
Hard blows. A blow one player lands on another hits 5× as hard as usual, fire and poison left burning included. Armour and resistances still work first, so good gear still protects you.
The spawn is a sanctuary. Within 50 m of the world spawn nobody can harm anybody, and no blow crosses the edge in either direction — you cannot be shot at from outside it, and you cannot strike out from inside it. A dark metal dome, lit from within by a soft golden light, rises over the stones to show where the peace ends; walk straight through it.
Not covered. Only player-against-player blows are filtered. A clanmate's tamed wolf, a trap or a falling tree can still hurt you.
Ranks
Three ranks, each able to do everything the one below can.
| Rank | Can do |
|---|---|
| Member | See the roster, watch Ravens and raids, leave the clan. |
| Officer | Invite and kick; set trade posts, open routes, make and answer trades; send Scout Ravens; start raids; rename Wards. |
| Leader | Promote and demote, make and break alliances, disband the clan. |
There is only ever one Leader. While a raid is on, nobody in the two clans — or their allies — can leave, kick or disband.
Alliances
An alliance stops your members hurting each other, lets allies help capture a Ward in a raid, and is the only way to open a trade route. Both Leaders must agree: one offers on the Diplomacy tab, the other accepts or rejects it.
Breaking an alliance takes effect at once: protection ends, routes close, and goods in escrow go home as a returning caravan. Two clans in a raid with each other cannot ally until it is over.
Clan Wards & bases
A Clan Ward — a blue Ward, twice the size of the personal one, free to build from the Hammer — claims 150 metres around it for your clan. It is always on and belongs to the clan, not to whoever built it: every clanmate is on its list, and its hover names the clan. An ordinary Ward stays a personal, vanilla Ward.
Where a Ward may stand
| 305 m | from another of your clan's Wards |
| 305 m | from any other clan's Ward, allies too |
| 200 m | from the world spawn |
The server checks every new Clan Ward against every Ward in the world and takes down one that is too close. You are told the rule — never where the other Ward is.
How many Wards
Your clan may hold 3 Clan Wards to begin with. Every Ward you capture in a raid raises that limit by one, and every Ward you lose lowers it by one — never below 3, and with no ceiling. The clan panel shows your Wards against your limit. A Ward past the limit stands but claims no land.
What a claim protects
Inside the claim, anyone outside your clan — allies included — cannot:
- build, take down pieces, dig or level the ground;
- open chests, doors, portals and the like;
- claim a bed (a bed someone already holds stays theirs);
- damage anything — except in a raid on that very Ward.
Workbenches and crafting stations work only for the clan whose base they stand in, and its allies. Monsters still attack bases as the game intends. When the claim turns someone away, the Ward's shield flashes across the whole claim.
Each Clan Ward also has a five-slot store that takes only feathers — use the Ward to open it. That is what your Ravens fly on.
Clan Outposts
A Clan Outpost is a camp your clan holds away from home. Its piece is the Clan Outpost Flag — a spear driven into the ground with your clan's banner on it. It is free, needs no crafting station, and every member of a clan knows how to raise one.
An Outpost claims 60 m. Inside it your clan builds and nobody else touches anything, exactly as in a base, over a smaller circle.
Where a camp may stand
Ground away from home is paid for in Wards: your clan may keep 3 Outposts for every Clan Ward it holds. A camp stands at least 350 m from your own clan's Wards and 210 m from another clan's, and no two camps overlap. The same distances hold the other way round, so you cannot raise a Ward on top of a camp either. Put a Flag somewhere it may not stand and it comes down, with a word saying why.
How much a camp holds
200 pieces — every building and every stick of furniture counts the same. When the Flag goes up, the count starts from what already stands inside the circle, so planting a Flag over a place you have already built does not hand you a fresh allowance, and taking a Flag down and raising it again gains you nothing. What the world laid out itself — the chests and walls in ruins and abandoned camps — is scenery, and never counts. Look at the Flag to see where you are up to; the clan panel lists every camp with the same number.
Building means holding ground
A piece goes up on your clan's own land — a Clan Ward or a Clan Outpost — and nowhere else. Off it, the build menu greys out everything except:
- a Campfire, a Workbench, a wooden Cooking Station and a bed of any kind — enough to survive a journey, not enough to settle;
- the Clan Ward and the Clan Outpost Flag, which are how land is claimed in the first place.
Taking a camp
Camps are raided like bases, with a tighter 20 m capture zone, so one is won or lost by who is standing on it. Hold it and the whole camp is yours as it stands — buildings, chests and all. Break the Flag instead and the camp is gone, with everything on it left standing. While a raid is on, neither side can hammer the Flag down.
Chests on ground nobody holds
When the Ward or Flag over a place falls, its buildings stay standing and their chests stay shut — for everyone, the winners included — until some clan holds that ground again. Claim the ruins and they open for you. Beds are not affected, and neither are the chests the world puts down itself.
Finding bases & Scout Ravens
A base must be discovered before it can be raided. Either a clan member comes within 200 m of it, or a Scout Raven finds it. Either way the whole clan learns of it, is told who found it, and it appears on the War Map — the land and anything in it stay hidden in fog.
Sending a Raven
- Pick the spot. On the War Map, click where you want to look.
- Pick the Ward and the circle. Choose which of your Wards it flies from, and how much ground it searches around the spot: 250 m, 500 m or 1 km.
- Pay in feathers. 10 feathers per kilometre from the Ward to the spot, times 1, 1.25 or 1.5 for the three circles, taken from that Ward's feather store. The War Map shows the cost before you send it.
- It flies there and back. At 1 km per 5 minutes each way — a spot 1 km out is a 10-minute round trip. It searches only the circle, not the land it crosses, and brings back every Clan Ward in it.
Ravens find Wards and nothing else — no players, no buildings, no terrain. Each clan has three; one that is out cannot be sent again until it returns.
Raids
A raid starts only from the War Map, never by attacking a base. Select a discovered enemy Ward: it shows its clan, how far it is, and Defenders Present – Raid Available or Raid Unavailable. An officer or the leader presses Initiate Raid.
No offline raiding. A raid can start only while a member of the defending clan itself is online and within 250 m of the Ward. An ally standing there does not count. Neither clan may be in a raid or on cooldown, and they may not be allies.
- The horn sounds. Both clans get a centre-screen raid announcement. Nobody else is told.
- 30 minutes to break in. For the length of the raid the attackers may damage that base — only that one — at the raid damage rates below.
- Hold the Ward's zone. The Ward is captured by holding the 50 m zone around it. Every living player there counts for their side; clans allied to only one side count for it. More attackers than defenders push the capture up; more defenders wind it back at the same rate; equal numbers freeze it (contested), and an empty zone pauses it. A full capture is 5 minutes of control however many hold the zone.
- Captured — the attackers win. The Ward, its land and everything in it become theirs. The old owners are outsiders there, their trade posts inside are lost, and every bed claim within the base is cleared. The winners may hold one more Clan Ward from then on, the losers one fewer.
- Time runs out — the defenders win. Even at 99%. Raid damage stops at once and the base is protected again.
Both clans then wait 2 hours before raiding or being raided again. During a raid the raided Ward cannot be taken down with the hammer and its owners cannot break it — but the attackers can destroy it, which ends the raid in their favour and leaves the land unclaimed.
Players at the Ward see the capture, the head count on each side and the raid clock at the top of the screen; the War Map shows the zone filling like a stopwatch.
Breaking in
In a raid every weapon works, as a share of its normal damage against the base's structures, depending on the attack and what the piece is made of:
| Attack | Wood | Ashwood | Stone | Black marble | Grausten / iron |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ordinary weapons | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% |
| Fire arrows | 100% | 25% | 5% | 5% | 5% |
| War hammers (two-handed clubs, the sledges) | 100% | 100% | 100% | 75% | 50% |
| Battering ram | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Catapult | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
Furniture takes half of that again.
Fire arrows
A fire arrow that hits a wooden wall, fortification or piece of furniture sets it alight with the game's own fire, burning it down. Leave a fire long enough and it eats into a wooden wall. Rain puts it out. The fire stays on the piece that was hit — it does not spread to the pieces around it. Inside someone's claim, fire burns only during a raid on that base.
The War Map
The map gains a [Normal Map] [War Map] switch at the top. The Normal Map is the game's own. The War Map shows only Clan Wars: your Wards and territory, enemy and allied Wards you have found, your clanmates, Ravens in flight, trade posts and caravans, raids under way, and every Odin-Sent Relic. A key in the corner explains the pins.
Who sees you. Your position is always shared — but only with your own clan. Enemies, allies and clanless players never see you on any map, raids included, and you never see them. Map pings (middle click) reach only your clan too.
- Click an enemy or allied Ward to see whose it is and how far it is.
- Click any relic pin — even one of several carried by a player, shown in a row above their arrow — to see it in the panel.
- The HUD minimap shows the live events: relics, your clan's raids, Ravens in flight and caravans on the road.
Trade
Allied clans trade real goods between chests that may be a continent apart. Each clan registers up to three trade posts. Open a chest you built and press Set trade post in its window, then give it a name; press it again to release it.
Which chests. Only a chest a player built can be a trade post — not a grave, and not a chest found in a dungeon or crypt. A post whose chest is destroyed is dropped, and the clan is told. Post names are unique on the server.
Once two allies have trade posts, either can open a route. The Trade tab then shows the distance and how long a caravan takes: 5 minutes per kilometre.
Making a trade
- Start from a post. Open one of your posts and press Initiate trade (or use the button on its row in the Trade tab), then choose the ally.
- Pick from both chests. Choose what you send from your chest's grid and what you want from theirs — their grid shows what they really hold. Up to five kinds of goods each way, and up to 500 of each. You can trade from anywhere; nobody needs to stand at a post.
- Your goods are loaded. They leave your chest at once and are held in escrow. If the chest does not hold enough, nothing is taken.
- They answer. An officer of the other clan accepts, declines or counters with different terms. A counter moves nothing until the terms are agreed.
- Two caravans set off. One each way, timed by the real distance between the two posts. Both sides watch the countdown.
- They unload themselves. When a caravan arrives, its goods go straight into the destination chest. Nobody has to be there.
Nothing is lost. A cancelled, declined or called-off offer — or a broken alliance — sends the goods home as a returning caravan. A caravan only unloads whole: if the chest is too full it shows Waiting for space and tries again until there is room. A post in use by an offer or caravan cannot be removed until it is settled.
Odin-Sent Relics
Ten unique trinkets — five Military and five Economic — each tied to a god. When one of the first five bosses falls, the whole server is told and Odin sends that boss's two relics into the next land of the journey.
| Boss | Military | Economic | Lands in | From the centre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eikthyr | Ullr | Víðarr | Black Forest | 1–2 km |
| The Elder | Loki | Gefjon | Swamp | 2–3 km |
| Bonemass | Týr | Jörð | Mountains | 3–4 km |
| Moder | Thor | Njörðr | Plains | 4–5 km |
| Yagluth | Freyja | Frigg | Mistlands | 5–6 km |
Only one of each relic exists. A boss sends again only once its relic is gone, and not within 3 hours of its last gift.
It falls from the sky
A relic arrives as a meteor, seen from far away, and strikes with a flash, a shockwave and a boom. Everything within 10 m is flattened — trees, rocks, buildings — but never people, creatures, dropped items, graves, ships, carts, portals or Clan Wards. It leaves a shallow scorched crater.
Odin guards it
A new relic hangs in Odin's light inside a dark, solid bubble for 6 hours (Military) or 3 hours (Economic) after it lands. Nobody can pass through, take or break it. The bubble fades over the last five minutes; then the relic is free and everyone is told. The War Map shows only an area around a guarded relic, not the spot.
When it is first claimed, Odin speaks where it happened, for everyone nearby to hear.
Loose relics hover
A relic lying loose — dropped, left behind, set free — never lies on the ground: it hovers above the ground or water in Odin's light, glowing and humming. Pick it up where it hovers.
Wearing one
- A relic goes in the trinket slot and works only while worn. You wear one at a time; putting on another swaps the first out.
- You can carry two, the worn one included. A third cannot be picked up or taken from a chest.
- Worn, it hangs round your neck on a leather cord for everyone to see.
- Every relic is on everyone's War Map from the moment it lands — carried, worn, in a chest or a grave, it can always be found.
| Relic | What it gives |
|---|---|
| Ullr (Military) | +25% bow damage, 50% chance to keep an arrow, +15% speed in light armour |
| Loki (Military) | +25% knife damage, +20% speed unless in heavy armour, −30% sneak stamina |
| Týr (Military) | +20% sword damage, +20% block power, −25% block and parry stamina |
| Thor (Military) | +25% blunt damage, +20% stagger, +15% physical resistance in heavy armour |
| Freyja (Military) | +20% magic damage, −20% eitr cost, +20% eitr regeneration |
| Víðarr (Economic) | +30% wood yield, +25% axe damage to trees, −25% axe wear |
| Gefjon (Economic) | +25% cultivated crop yield, 50% chance to keep the seed, −25% cultivator stamina |
| Jörð (Economic) | +25% pickaxe damage to rocks and ore, +20% mining yield, −20% pickaxe stamina |
| Njörðr (Economic) | 15% off at traders, +25% on sales, +20% sailing speed while steering |
| Frigg (Economic) | 20% of building materials saved, +25% building reach, 15% of crafting materials saved |
Armour counts as heavy when helmet, chest, legs and cape together weigh 20 kg or more; under that it is light.
A relic stays in the world. Log out with a relic and it is left where you stood. Die with one and it goes into your grave. It is never taken home with a character, and only the real one can be worn — copies are taken back. A relic found nowhere in the world for 24 hours counts as destroyed, and its boss can send it again.
Death & respawning
When you die the map opens where you fell, with every bed you have claimed marked on it. Pick a bed, or the world spawn, which is always there. The server checks the bed as you choose it — it must still stand and still be yours — so a bed lost when a base was captured can never put you back inside.
For server owners
Install Clan Wars on the server and on every player's game. Clan data is kept by the server for
each world, in BepInEx/ClanWars/<world>.clans.json, and is saved together with the world.
Every number in this manual is a setting in BepInEx/config/ClanWarsConfig.cfg, and each setting in
the file carries its own description. The server's copy is the one that counts: it is sent to every
player, so everyone plays by the server's numbers. This manual shows the settings the Clan Wars server
runs; out of the box, Wards of different clans stand 505 m apart and player blows hit at their normal
strength (OtherClanWardMinimumDistance, PvpDamageMultiplier).

