🛡️ ODINBET – FORGE OF POTENTIAL

Gamble on your gear. Or lose it.
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_{🔍 Click the pictures to see them bigger — click again to close.}

ODINBET — Forge of Potential

Thunder Night — a lightning storm over the forge

Odin's visit — a cutscene on Thunder Nights

Elemental Infusions — fire, frost, lightning, poison, spirit

In-game settings panel — every option explained, in 15 languages

Shift + E at the Refinement Forge opens it

Statistics — your numbers, your place in the Hall of Fame, your history

Server log — every change to the server's settings, kept for good

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What this mod does

Forge of Potential turns the Refinement Forge into a real gambling table. In vanilla Valheim, refining is a button that sometimes works, and you control almost none of it. With this mod, you set every number: the odds, what happens when you lose, what it costs, how long it takes, how far it can go, and what the whole server gets to hear about it.

Fourteen systems, each one switchable on its own:

System	What it gives you
⚔️ The gamble	Success chance as a percentage, plus separate control over what a failure does: drop levels, destroy the item, or hand it back at level 1.
📜 Recipes	All 16 Idols (Protection and Battle, tier 0 through 7) get craft recipes, each one requiring the boss trophy for that biome. Cost scales with item level.
📢 Notifications	Every refinement becomes a line in every player's chat, and the player who refined gets a clear message on screen. You choose what gets announced (success, failure, destruction) and from which level. Every text is translated in 15 languages.
🏗️ Forge area	Optional exemption that lets you build inside the protected zone around the Refinement Forge.
⛈️ Lightning storm	The show of Thunder Night: on a Thunder Night, lightning and other sky effects fill the sky around the Refinement Forge. Has its own switch, EnableStorm.
👁️ Odin's visit	On a Thunder Night, a short cutscene each time you arrive at the Refinement Forge: Odin waits there with his ravens, calls the storm, and Thor's lightning strikes the forge. Local switch EnableOdinScene.
🚫 Forge disable	One switch that closes the Refinement Forge for everyone — no refining, no repairing. The forge is on by default; set EnableRefinementForge = false to close it.
🔒 Version lock	On a server, players with a different mod version than the server are disconnected, so nobody plays by different rules. On by default, server only.
⛔ Item blacklist	A comma-separated list of items that can never be refined at the Forge, no matter what. Empty by default.
🏆 Hall of Fame	Eight statues around the Refinement Forge, each guarding one server-wide ranking (highest level, most refinements, longest streaks, best item ever made...) with a click-to-open panel. Tracked by Steam ID, translated in all 15 languages. Rankings can be switched off without ever losing the data behind them.
⚙️ Settings panel	New in 1.4.0. Every setting in one in-game panel (Shift + E at the Refinement Forge): each one explained, with live examples and alerts when two settings conflict, in 15 languages. An admin with devcommands changes the server's settings while it runs — saved, applied and sent to every player at once, no restart. Every player can change their own options there too. New in 1.4.2: a Statistics page for every player (their numbers, their place in every Hall of Fame ranking, their full refinement history) and a Server log page for admins (who changed which setting, when, from what to what — kept for good).
💪 Refinement power	New in 1.4.0. Decide how much each forge level really adds: weapon damage, shield Block Power and armour, each as a percentage of what the game itself adds per level.
🧩 Items from other mods	New in 1.4.0. Choose whether items added by other mods can be refined (with a list of exceptions) and whether they can be infused, plus a list of items that are never infused. New in 1.4.3: items added by other mods show up at the forge and can be refined like the game's own — equipment from any mod (Jotunn, ItemManager and the like) and items enchanted by RandyKnapp's Epic Loot — each with a fitting idol, and a settings page lists them all to release, block or give another idol, one by one.
⚡ Thunder Night	Some nights are Thunder Nights. On one, a refinement that has already succeeded may also earn an Elemental Infusion: a fire, frost, lightning, poison or spirit affinity that stays with the item and adds a bonus (weapon damage; shield Block Power and a strike-back on block; armour resistance and an elemental perk). It never changes the refinement odds or a failure. On by default; EnableInfusions = false turns the Infusions off, EnableStorm = false the lightning show.

💡 Out of the box, nothing fails. UpgradeSuccessChance defaults to 100, so refinements always succeed until you lower it. See the ready-made presets near the end for setups that actually gamble.

Multiplayer: with the mod installed on a dedicated server, the server enforces its config values on every client that connects (in memory — nobody's local .cfg is overwritten on disk). The server also makes sure every player who has the mod runs the same version (see Version lock). An admin can change the server's settings while it runs, from the settings panel: the new values reach every connected player at once. Without the mod on the server, every player just uses their own .cfg.

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⚠️ Read this before installing

• A large part of the code was reviewed with AI assistance, including validating every patch target against the metadata and IL of the game's assembly_valheim.dll. That caught real bugs, but it is not a substitute for real testing by real players.
• In other words: there may be bugs. If you hit one, please report it.
• 🐛 Report bugs on Discord: https://discord.gg/aMkN89Cuas
• When reporting, it helps a lot to include your .cfg, the BepInEx LogOutput.log, and what you expected to happen. If you can, turn on VerboseLogging = true (the Debug section) before reproducing it — it writes exactly what the mod did on every refinement.

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Installation

With a mod manager (recommended): install through Thunderstore Mod Manager, r2modman or Gale. BepInEx comes along as a dependency.

Manually:

1. Install BepInExPack Valheim.
2. Copy OdinBet_ForgeOfPotential.dll and the Translations folder (with the ConfigPanel folder inside it) into BepInEx/plugins/ (side by side — the Translations folder is what drives each player's language, see below).
3. Run the game once. BepInEx/config/OdinBet.ForgeOfPotential.cfg is generated with every option commented.
4. Change the settings in the game with the settings panel (Shift + E at the Refinement Forge, see ⚙️ The settings panel) — no restart needed — or edit the .cfg and restart.

Dedicated server: same DLL, same BepInEx/plugins/ folder. Installing on both sides is recommended — that way the server enforces the config and nobody plays with different numbers.

Updating from 1.4.2: just update and play — every setting, the Hall of Fame, the histories and every Infusion stay as they are. Update the server and every player together (the version lock keeps a 1.4.2 player out of a 1.4.3 server). Copy the Translations folder again: the new page's texts are in its ConfigPanel folder. Items from other mods are ready at the forge the first time the game loads; nothing to set up.

Updating from 1.4.0: just update and play — every setting, the Hall of Fame and every Infusion stay as they are, and nothing in the .cfg changes. Update the server and every player together (the version lock keeps a 1.4.0 player out of a 1.4.2 server, see Compatibility). Copy the Translations folder again: the new pages' texts are in its ConfigPanel folder. The Statistics page and the Server log start recording from the moment the server runs 1.4.2.

Updating from 1.3.0 (or older): just update and play. Update the server and every player together (the version lock keeps a 1.3.0 player out of a 1.4.0 server). Keep your .cfg: the new 1.4.0 settings are added with values that change nothing (every multiplier at 100 %, items from other mods allowed), and a .cfg from 1.2.1 still updates itself as described in the changelog. Items keep their Infusions and the Hall of Fame keeps every record. Copy the whole Translations folder again: it has the new ConfigPanel folder.

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How the game resolves a refinement (and where the mod steps in)

Worth understanding, because the settings make far more sense afterwards.

target = item's current level + 1
roll   = random number between 0 and 1

if (idol's upgrade chance >= roll)        -> SUCCESS: item comes back at the target level
else if (idol's break chance >= 1 - roll) -> BROKE:   item is gone, some ingredients come back
else                                       -> FAILED:  item comes back one level LOWER

Note this: losing a level is already what a normal failure does in Valheim. "Destroying the item" is a separate, rarer branch. The mod does not rewrite that logic — it writes your configured numbers into the right fields before the craft and restores them afterwards. That is the safest possible approach: no game code is rewritten.

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⚙️ The settings panel

New in 1.4.0. Every setting of the mod, in the game, in your own language.

_{The settings panel: every setting with its explanation, its default and its .cfg key.}

_{The forge's hover text shows the combination: Shift + E opens the panel, E alone the forge.}

Opening it: stand at the Refinement Forge and press Shift + E (its hover text shows the combination; E alone still opens the forge as usual). Or type odinbet_config in the console (F5), anywhere in the world. Esc or Close closes it; if you have unsaved changes it asks first.

Who can change what:

	The server's settings, and the Server log	Your options	Statistics
Single player, or the host of the world, with devcommands on	see and change	change	see your own
A player in the dedicated server's adminlist.txt, with devcommands on	see and change	change	see your own
Everybody else — including the host or an admin without devcommands	hidden	change	see your own

Without devcommands, the panel shows only Your options (and Statistics): the odds, the costs and every other server setting stay hidden. The host or an admin gets a notice there: type devcommands in the console (F5) and open the panel again to see the full panel. The server checks every request again itself: the player must be in its admin list, every setting must be one of this mod's, and every value must have the right type and be inside its allowed range — a modified client gets exactly the same answer.

The pages: Overview (the main switches and a status box) · The bet · Cost and time · Refinement power · Idol recipes · Notifications · Thunder Night · Infusions · Infusion effects · Allowed items · Idols of mod items · Server · Server log · Your options · Statistics (the last two for everybody, see 📊 Statistics and 📜 Server log below, and 🧩 Items from other mods at the forge for Idols of mod items). A page with unsaved changes shows their number in the list; a dot marks a page with a warning (orange) or an error (red).

Every setting shows its name and its .cfg key, what it does, its default and its allowed range, and a live example where one helps — computed from what you are typing, for instance:

• The bet: "Out of 100 refinements: 80 succeed, 15 fail and lose 1 level(s), 5 destroy the item."
• Cost and time: a small table with the idol cost and the crafting time for several item levels.
• Refinement power: what a real item of the game gains per forge level with the value you picked.
• Thunder Night: how often one comes, and the exact in-game hours its effects run.
• Infusions: how the bonus grows with the Infusion level; Notifications: a preview of the chat line with your chat name.

Alerts tell you when settings get in each other's way:

• grey No effect now: another setting makes this one irrelevant (the failure settings while the success chance is 100 %, the cost growth while the interval is 0...). It can still be changed.
• orange Warning: allowed, but probably not what you want (Thunder Night hours that contain no night time, a chance of 0, a lowest level after a failure that is not below the level cap, an item in both the blacklist and the exceptions...).
• red Error: blocks saving until it is fixed (a recipe with more than 4 ingredients, a number outside its range).

No item names to type: every setting that takes items — the blacklist, the exceptions for items from other mods, the items that are never infused, and the ingredients of the 16 idol recipes — has a picker: search by the item's name in your language or by its prefab name, filter by category (weapons, shields, armour, tools, materials, trophies, food, other, other mods), click to add, click again to remove. Items come with their icons; items from other mods are marked. A recipe holds up to 4 ingredients, with − / + for the amounts (hold Shift for 10 at a time). The crafting station of the idols is picked from the game's stations, with their icons.

Saving: nothing changes while you edit. Save and apply first shows a summary of every change (old » new). Then:

• the server's settings are applied at once on the server (or on your game, in single player or as the host), written to its .cfg, the idol recipes are rebuilt, and the new values are sent to every connected player — no restart, nobody has to reconnect;
• the change is written to the server's log (LogOutput.log) with the admin's name and every old and new value, and (1.4.2) to the permanent Server log, which survives restarts;
• your own options are written to your own .cfg.

Other buttons: Discard changes, Page defaults (the whole page back to its defaults, as a draft you still have to save), Default and Undo on each setting, and, for admins, Reload .cfg: after editing the .cfg by hand, the server reads it again and applies it to everyone, without a restart.

While the panel is open you cannot move or act, the inventory, the map and the chat stay closed, and the mouse wheel scrolls the panel instead of the camera. The panel's texts are in Translations/ConfigPanel/<Language>.json, 15 languages, apart from the message files.

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📊 Statistics and 📜 Server log

New in 1.4.2. Two more pages in the settings panel (Shift + E at the Refinement Forge). Everything they show is kept on the server and read from there, so it is the same whichever computer you play from.

📊 Statistics — every player

_{The Statistics page: this character's numbers, your place in the Hall of Fame and your history.}

• This character: refinements, success rate, successes, failures, items destroyed (and items sent back to level 1, if the server uses that), the best success streak and the worst failure streak, the highest level reached (and its Infusion), the last refinement, and the idols used, per idol.
• Hall of Fame — your account: your record and your place in each of the eight rankings, even far outside the top 10 the statues show (gold = in that top 10). All your characters together, counted exactly as the statues count them.
• History: every refinement, newest first, one card each: the date and time (in your own time zone and date format), the item and its levels (level 5 → 6), the result (success, fell to level 4, kept level 5, destroyed, back to level 1), the Infusion the item carries after a success, and the idols it used (3 × Silver Battle Idol). 50 at a time: scroll down and the next ones load. Refresh reads it again; opening the panel always shows it fresh.
• Per world and per character: another world, or another character, has its own history — a single-player test world never mixes with the server's. The server keeps the last 500 refinements of each character; the numbers count all of them.
• Private: the server works out who is asking from the connection itself (the Steam ID, like the Hall of Fame, and the character's name). Nobody can read anyone else's history.
• Recorded from 1.4.2 on (the Hall of Fame keeps counting everything, as before). The history is built from the same report the Hall of Fame already gets, so a player whose game is still on 1.4.0 is recorded too when the server runs 1.4.2 (with the version lock off). The idols used are worked out on the server with its own rules — the same numbers the refining game used (none on a world with the no crafting cost modifier, where the game takes none).

📜 Server log — admins with devcommands

_{The Server log page: when, who, which setting, and the value before and after.}

Every change to the server's settings, newest first: when (in your local time), who (the admin's name; the file also has their Steam ID), which setting (its name in your language and its .cfg key) and the value before → after. It catches:

How the setting changed	What the log shows
Save and apply in the settings panel	the admin's name (settings panel)
Reload .cfg after editing the file by hand	the admin who pressed it (Reload .cfg)
The .cfg edited while the server was off	.cfg changed while the server was off — noticed at the next start
Configuration Manager or another mod, while it runs	changed outside the panel (a slider being dragged gives one line, once it settles)

Unlike LogOutput.log, it survives restarts, has no size limit (a change is a few hundred bytes) and cannot be erased or reset from the game. Only admins see the page, and the server checks its admin list again on every request. A player's own options (Your options) are never logged.

Both pages have a Refresh button. A Server log that is already open (and scrolled to the top) shows a change you just saved by itself. If the server does not answer, the page says so and offers Refresh: "The server did not answer" (the server runs an older version), "This server does not run OdinBet 1.4.2 or newer" or "The server is not ready to answer yet" (no world loaded yet — try again in a moment).

The files

All in BepInEx/config/OdinBet_ForgeOfPotential_HallOfFame/, next to the Hall of Fame database, on whichever game is the server:

File	What it holds
History_<world>/<SteamID>_<character>_<code>.json	One per character and world: the totals and the last 500 refinements
ServerSettingsLog.jsonl	The server log: one line per change, only ever added to
ServerSettingsLog_state.json	The last value seen for each setting, to notice what changed while the server was off

Every entry carries its time twice: "utc": "2026-09-26T21:50:30Z" to read by hand, and "time" (a Unix timestamp) that the panel turns into each player's own local time. A line of the log looks like this:

{"n": 12, "utc": "2026-09-26T21:50:30Z", "time": 1790459430, "by": "Ragnar", "byId": "76561198000000000", "source": "panel", "section": "Upgrade Settings", "key": "UpgradeSuccessChance", "old": "85", "new": "75"}

They are saved the same careful way as the Hall of Fame: through a temporary file, with the previous version kept as .bak. A damaged file is kept as .corrupt and the .bak is used; a file that another program is holding open (an antivirus, a backup) is left alone and tried again, with the new refinements waiting in memory until then.

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🧩 Items from other mods at the forge

New in 1.4.3. Equipment added by other mods can be refined at the Refinement Forge just like the game's own:

• Any mod that adds equipment — weapons, shields, armour, capes, tools — through Jotunn, ItemManager and the like.
• RandyKnapp's Epic Loot: an enchanted item from another mod reaches the forge just like an enchanted item of the game.
• Nothing to set up: it works as soon as the game loads. Each item asks for a fitting idol (Protection or Battle, from Wood to Bloodgold) and costs what a comparable item of the game costs, with your own Cost and time rules on top. When the mod is not sure which idol fits, the item is marked to review for an admin to check.
• Only the forge changes: the item's normal crafting recipe stays exactly as its own mod made it.

_{The Idols of mod items page: every item from other mods, released or blocked, with the idol it asks for.}

The page Idols of mod items (settings panel, admins with devcommands): one row per item from another mod, with its icon, type, base stat and the idol it asks for.

• Released / Blocked — uses the same lists as Allowed items (BlacklistedItems, RefinableModdedItems), so both pages always agree. Items from other mods can be refined decides how items start: released, or blocked (the ones you release go to the exceptions list). A blocked item does not show up at the forge.
• The idol — click it to pick another one (every idol of the game, Protection and Battle, each tier with its colour) or go back to Automatic; Default undoes a hand-picked one. Only the choices that differ from the automatic idol are saved, in ModdedItemIdols.
• Search and filters — released, blocked, chosen by hand, to review, and by type of item — and actions on everything shown at once: release, block, back to automatic.
• Items not found — at the bottom, folded away: choices saved for items that are not in the game any more (a mod removed). They are kept (if the mod comes back, the item returns with the same choices) until you Forget them. On a dedicated server, the server says which items it no longer has.

Which items show up: the same rules as the game's own items — the item is in your inventory and your character knows how to craft it. Items that cannot be crafted at all (ones that only drop from monsters, for example) and items the game never upgrades (a maximum quality of 1) are not listed.

The log shows one line at every start (how many items from other mods were found and how many can be refined); with VerboseLogging, one line per item with its idol.

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📖 Every setting

File: BepInEx/config/OdinBet.ForgeOfPotential.cfg

Everything is server-synced except the settings marked local (VerboseLogging, EnableInfusionEffects, EnableThunderNightMessage, EnableThor, EnableOdinScene) and the two server-only Multiplayer options.

The file only holds switches and numbers. Every text the mod shows (messages, chat lines, tooltip lines) lives in the Translations/ folder, in 15 languages — see 🌍 Multi-language messages.

Every setting below can also be changed in the game, with explanations and examples, in the settings panel (see ⚙️ The settings panel).

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🔌 Feature Toggles section

Master switches. Turn a whole system off here if you only want the others.

Setting	Default	What it does
EnableRefinementForge	true	Turns the Refinement Forge on or off as a whole. With false, nobody can open it, refine gear, or repair anything there, and the craft buttons are greyed out. See 🚫 Turning the forge off, further down.
EnableHallOfFame	true	Turns the eight Hall of Fame statues on or off. With false, they stop responding — no hover text, no panel. The database behind the rankings keeps recording every refinement regardless; nothing is ever lost while this is false. See 🏆 Hall of Fame, further down.
EnableCustomRecipes	true	Adds the craft recipes for all 16 Idols. With false, the mod touches no recipes at all — use this if you only want the gambling, or only the announcements.
EnableUpgradeChanceAndCostTweaks	true	Master switch for the entire Upgrade Settings section (chance, failure, cost, cap). With false, the mod touches none of it and the game's own prefab values are used.
EnableCraftDurationTweaks	true	With false, UpgradeBaseDuration and UpgradeDurationIncreasePerLevel are ignored and the game's own duration is used.

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🎲 Upgrade Settings section — the gamble

This whole section only applies while EnableUpgradeChanceAndCostTweaks = true.

The odds

Setting	Default	Range	What it does
UpgradeSuccessChance	100	0–100 or -1	Chance, in percent, that a refinement succeeds. 100 = never fails. 0 = always fails. 65 = succeeds roughly 65 out of 100 attempts. -1 = leave the idol's own chance untouched.
FailureBreaksItemChance	0	0–100 or -1	When an attempt fails, what percentage of those failures destroys the item instead of only lowering its level. 0 = never destroys. 100 = every failure destroys. -1 = use the game's own value.

⚠️ FailureBreaksItemChance is a share of the failures, not of all attempts. With UpgradeSuccessChance = 80 and FailureBreaksItemChance = 50, the real outcome is: 80% success, 10% destroyed, 10% level lost.

What a failure does

Setting	Default	Range	What it does
LevelsLostOnFailure	1	0–20	How many levels the item drops on a failure that does not destroy it. 1 = vanilla (level 5 becomes level 4). 0 = the item keeps its level and the attempt only costs the ingredients. 2 or more = a harsher penalty.
MinimumLevelOnFailure	1	1–20	Floor the item can never drop below through failure. Leave this at 1. Without this guard, the game hands back a level 0 item when a level 1 item fails — a bug in Valheim itself.
FailureAtMinimumLevelBreaksItem	false	—	What to do when a failure would take the item below the floor, i.e. it has no levels left to lose (with LevelsLostOnFailure = 1 that is an item already at the floor; with 2 or more it also covers items a little above it). false = it survives at the lowest level it is allowed to have and the attempt only costs the ingredients. true = the failure is promoted to a break, and then BreakReturnsItemAtLevel1 / BreakReturnIngredientsPercent decide what the player gets. Ignored while LevelsLostOnFailure = 0.

What happens when an item is destroyed

Setting	Default	Range	What it does
BreakReturnsItemAtLevel1	false	—	false = vanilla: the item is destroyed and part of the ingredients is refunded. true = the item is not destroyed; the player gets the same item back at level 1 and no materials.
BreakReturnIngredientsPercent	-1	0–100 or -1	How much of the recipe's recoverable ingredients comes back when the item IS destroyed. 0 = nothing, 100 = everything. -1 = use the game's own value. Only matters if something actually breaks.

💡 Why you probably want BreakReturnsItemAtLevel1 = true: refunded materials are metals and ores, and those cannot go through a portal. A player who fails a refinement far from home is stranded with a pile of metal and no way back. Handing the finished item back at level 1 keeps the loss real while letting them portal home.

📝 Useful combination: FailureAtMinimumLevelBreaksItem = true + BreakReturnsItemAtLevel1 = true → a level 1 item can never be lost outright; it just comes back at level 1 and the idol is gone.

Level cap

Setting	Default	Range	What it does
MaxUpgradeLevel	0	0–100	Highest level an item can be refined to. 0 = no limit. The player who tries to go past it gets a warning in the middle of the screen (only them, never broadcast).

Valheim deliberately skips its own max-quality check when the station is an upgrader, so without this mod there is no ceiling at all at the Refinement Forge.

⚠️ Honest caveat: the craft button in the UI stays enabled. The block happens on the click — nothing is consumed, but the button is not greyed out. Greying it out would mean patching the game's crafting UI, which breaks far more easily on a game update.

Ingredient cost scaling

The idol cost can grow as the item gets higher.

Setting	Default	Range	What it does
CostStart	1	0–1000	Base idol cost per refinement. 0 = free. (Game default: 1)
CostIncreasePerInterval	1	0–1000	How much the cost goes up each time the interval is reached.
CostIncreaseInterval	2	0–100	Number of levels between each cost increase. 0 disables scaling.
CostScalingLevelStart	6	1–100	Level at which scaling starts. (A lower value in an older config is corrected to 1.)

The cost can never go below 0, whatever is in the config.

Example with the defaults (starts at 6, +1 every 2 levels): levels 1–5 cost 1 · levels 6–7 cost 2 · levels 8–9 cost 3 · and so on.

Craft duration

Setting	Default	Range	What it does
UpgradeBaseDuration	2	0–600	Base refinement duration, in seconds. (Game default: 8)
UpgradeDurationIncreasePerLevel	1	0–600	Extra seconds per item level. (Game default: 1)

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💪 Refinement Power section

New in 1.4.0. How much each Refinement Forge level really adds to an item.

Setting	Default	Range	What it does
RefinementStatMultiplierWeapons	100	0–500	What each forge level adds to a weapon's combat damage, in percent of what the game itself adds per level. 100 = the game's own, 200 = twice as much, 0 = forge levels add no damage.
RefinementStatMultiplierShields	100	0–500	The same for shields: their Block Power and their parry force (deflection).
RefinementStatMultiplierArmor	100	0–500	The same for the Armor of helmets, chest and leg pieces, gloves and capes.

How it works:

• The game adds a fixed amount for every quality level of an item. Only the levels above the item's normal maximum quality — the ones only the Refinement Forge can give — are scaled. The workbench levels stay exactly as in the game.
• Example: a sword that gains 6 damage per level in the game gains 9 per forge level at 150, and nothing at 0. After 10 forge levels: +60 in the game, +90 at 150.
• Weapons: only combat damage (blunt, slash, pierce, the elements, spirit). Chop and pickaxe damage are not scaled, so tools do not turn into super-axes.
• Durability never changes. The item's Tier (which decides who can reach immunity with an Infusion) is based on its base stat and does not change either.
• An Infusion adds its percentage on top of the scaled value.
• Nothing is stored on the items: the value is applied live, so lowering it also lowers items that were refined before. The tooltip shows the real numbers.
• Items from other mods are scaled the same way.

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🔨 Crafting section

Setting	Default	What it does
GlobalStation	$piece_forge	Station required to craft all the Idols. Accepts the station's m_name (e.g. $piece_workbench) or its prefab name. Empty = craftable by hand.
BlacklistedItems	(empty)	Comma-separated list of item PrefabNames (same format as the recipes below) that can never be refined at the Refinement Forge — no matter the level, the chance settings, or anything else. Checked before every other rule. Empty = nothing blacklisted.
AllowRefiningModdedItems	true	New in 1.4.0. false = items added by other mods cannot be refined at the Refinement Forge (nothing is consumed, and a message says so — key ModdedItemBlockedMessage), except the ones in RefinableModdedItems. The game's own items are never affected.
RefinableModdedItems	(empty)	New in 1.4.0. Comma-separated prefab names of items from other mods that can still be refined while AllowRefiningModdedItems is false. An item that is also in BlacklistedItems stays blocked.
ModdedItemIdols	(empty)	New in 1.4.3. The items from other mods whose idol an admin changed, as comma-separated ItemPrefab:IdolPrefab entries (for example BloodHelmet:Upgrader3Armor). Every other item from another mod uses the idol worked out automatically (see 🧩 Items from other mods at the forge). Easiest to change on the settings page Idols of mod items.

🚫 How the blacklist works: it is checked first, before MaxUpgradeLevel or any other setting gets a chance to allow the attempt. If an item's prefab name is on the list, the craft is blocked outright and nothing is consumed. The player sees a message in the middle of their screen (key ItemBlacklistedMessage in the Translations/ files). Example:

BlacklistedItems = SwordBronze,ArmorIronChest

🧩 How the mod tells the game's items from other mods' items: when the game builds its item list, the mod records the items that ship with the game, before any other mod adds its own. If that list could not be recorded (another mod adding items in an unusual way), every item counts as a game item, so AllowRefiningModdedItems and InfusionAllowModdedItems block nothing: the log says so once, and the settings panel's overview shows how many game items were recognised. In the settings panel you do not need to know any prefab name: the item picker lists every item with its icon and can show only the items from other mods.

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📜 Recipes section — the 16 Idols

The 16 Idols (Upgrader0Armor … Upgrader7Weapon) already exist in Valheim 1.0. This mod only adds craft recipes for them.

Format for each recipe: PrefabName:Amount, comma-separated.

Tier	Idol	Default recipe	Boss / Biome
0	Wooden Protection / Battle Idol	FineWood:20, Tin:10, GreydwarfEye:10, TrophyEikthyr:1	Eikthyr — Meadows
1	Bronze Protection / Battle Idol	Bronze:10, SurtlingCore:1, TrophyTheElder:1	The Elder — Black Forest
2	Iron Protection / Battle Idol	Iron:10, ElderBark:5, TrophyBonemass:1	Bonemass — Swamp
3	Silver Protection / Battle Idol	Silver:10, FreezeGland:5, Obsidian:5, TrophyDragonQueen:1	Moder — Mountain
4	Black Metal Protection / Battle Idol	BlackMetal:10, Needle:2, Tar:5, TrophyGoblinKing:1	Yagluth — Plains
5	Black Marble Protection / Battle Idol	BlackMarble:20, BugMeat:10, Carapace:10, TrophySeekerQueen:1	The Queen — Mistlands
6	Flametal Protection / Battle Idol	FlametalNew:10, CharredBone:15, TrophyFader:1	Fader — Ashlands
7	Bloodgold Protection / Battle Idol	Gold:10, Coins:40, FrozenKingDrop:1	Kall — Deep North

That is 16 entries in the .cfg, one per idol: Wooden Protection Idol, Wooden Battle Idol, Bronze Protection Idol, and so on through Bloodgold Battle Idol.

🎯 Every tier requires the boss trophy. That is on purpose: refining gear of a given tier should mean you beat the boss of that tier.

⚠️ About tier 7: Valheim 1.0 ships no head trophy for the Deep North boss (Kall). What he drops reliably is FrozenKingDrop (Sacrificial Blood), and that is what went into the recipe. If a future update adds a TrophyFrozenKing, just swap it in the .cfg.

💡 Two practical notes:

• Boss trophies also unlock powers at the Sacrificial Stones. Spending one on an idol consumes it — but bosses can be summoned again and trophies stack to 20.
• If a prefab name does not exist in your build, the mod logs a warning and builds the recipe without that ingredient instead of cancelling the whole recipe. Worth checking the BepInEx log the first time you run it.

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🏗️ Refinement Forge Area section

Setting	Default	Range	What it does
AllowBuildingNearRefinementForge	false	—	Lifts the no-build restriction around the Refinement Forge — the one that answers "a mystical force prevents building".
RefinementForgeBuildRadius	32	1–256	How far the exemption reaches, in metres, from an upgrader crafting station.

How the exemption works, and why it is safe: it is not based on the location's name. The mod checks whether a crafting station flagged as an upgrader exists within the radius of the spot being built on. That is exactly the Refinement Forge and never a boss altar. Altars, crypts and every other protected location keep their protection.

⚠️ Two honest caveats:

• This also allows terrain modification in that area (the game uses the same check for both).
• If the Refinement Forge can be built by players, a large radius turns into a portable "build anywhere" bubble. That is why the default is 32, not 200.

🚫 Turning the forge off

Want to close the Refinement Forge — for an event, for a while, or for good? Set EnableRefinementForge = false (in the Feature Toggles section).

• Nobody can open the forge, refine, or repair there. The craft buttons are greyed out, and a player who tries to use it sees a message in the middle of the screen (key ForgeDisabledMessage in the Translations/ files).
• Changed in-game (for example with Configuration Manager) or received from the server, it applies right away, even for someone who already has the forge window open. If you edit the .cfg file by hand, restart the game to be safe.
• Only the Refinement Forge is affected. Other crafting stations work as usual, and so do the lightning storm, building near the forge, and crafting the Idols.
• On a server with the mod, the server's choice applies to everyone connected.

⚠️ Three honest caveats:

• The lock is applied by each player's own game, so it only works on players who have the mod installed. Anyone without it can still use the forge.
• Players running a different version of the mod are disconnected by the version lock (on by default) — except versions older than 1.1.0, which cannot be detected (see Version lock).
• Hovering over the forge still shows the usual "use" hint. The message appears when the player presses the key.

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⚡ Thunder Night and Elemental Infusions

An optional reward layer on top of the Refinement Forge. It never changes the refinement itself: the success chance, the cost, failures, levels lost, destruction, resets, the blacklist and the messages all work exactly as you configured them. A Thunder Night only looks at a refinement that has already succeeded and, sometimes, adds an Infusion to the item.

_{Thunder over the Refinement Forge. The lightning storm is the show of a Thunder Night.}

⚠️ On by default. A server that updates to this version starts having Thunder Nights with Infusions on its own. Set EnableInfusions = false (Thunder Night section) to opt out of the Infusions. A Thunder Night has two parts, each with its own switch — the Infusions (EnableInfusions) and the lightning storm (EnableStorm) — and with both off, Thunder Nights do nothing at all.

How it works

1. Every night is its own draw. When night falls there is a ThunderNightChance (default 20%) that it is a Thunder Night. Each night is independent — 20% does not mean "one night in five". The answer is the same for everybody in the world, is not stored anywhere, and does not change when the server restarts; a player who joins in the middle of a Thunder Night sees the same night as everyone else. Players in the world get a message when one begins (ThunderNightMessage); EnableThunderNightMessage = false hides it.
2. Refine as usual. The forge decides success or failure with your normal settings — vanilla odds or any configuration of this mod.
3. A failure gets nothing. No Infusion, and the failure is handled exactly as before (levels lost, destroyed, back at level 1…). A Thunder Night can never save an item, undo a level loss or change a failure.
4. A success on a Thunder Night gets a second roll. ThunderNightInfusionChance (default 30%) that the item receives an Infusion. This is a separate roll made after the success; it neither raises nor lowers the chance to succeed.

There is no other hidden chance, luck bonus or pity system.

What an Infusion is

An item can carry one Infusion: an element (Fire, Frost, Lightning, Poison or Spirit) and an Infusion level.

• First Infusion: the element is picked at random from the five (capes: from Fire, Frost and Poison), and the Infusion level is the item's new refinement level. A weapon that already deals an element of its own (Frostner, for one) keeps that element instead of drawing a new one.
• Item already infused: the element never changes and is never joined by a second one. The Infusion level grows: new Infusion level = current Infusion level + the item's new refinement level.

Refinement	Infusion before	Infusion after a successful roll
level 8 → 9	none	(random element) level 9
level 9 → 10	Lightning 9	Lightning 19
level 8 → 9	Lightning 6	Lightning 15

If the roll does not succeed, the item keeps its Infusion exactly as it was (Lightning 9 stays Lightning 9 while the item goes from level 9 to 10). The Infusion level has no cap; it is a progression counter, not the bonus itself.

What an Infusion does

Item	Effect
Weapon (one-handed, two-handed, bow)	Adds damage of the Infusion's element, equal to a small percentage of the weapon's total damage. Vanilla damage — including any elemental damage the weapon already has — is never removed or replaced.
Shield	Raises Block Power by a small percentage, and strikes back with its element when you block (see Element effects below).
Armour (helmet, chest, legs — and gloves, if a mod adds them)	Raises Armor by a small percentage, gives a resistance to its element and a small secondary bonus. Armour never deals damage.
Cape	Raises Armor, gives the same resistance, and a biome bonus instead of the secondary one. Capes only draw Fire, Frost or Poison.

Other item types (tools, torches, capes with no armour…) are never infused.

Element effects on armour, capes and shields

All of this lives in the new [Infusion Effects] config section and is synced by the server. Everything grows with the Infusion level on the same flattening curve as the main bonus (InfusionHalfLevel) and never passes its cap.

Resistance (armour and capes). Fire → fire, Frost → frost, Poison → poison, Spirit → spirit, Lightning → lightning. Resistant below ArmorResistanceLevelForVeryResistant (default 5), Very Resistant from it on. Two pieces with the same element don't add up — the best one counts. A piece that is already weak to that type is never turned resistant by its own Infusion. Immune is off by default: set ImmuneMinInfusionLevel above 0 and a Tier 6 armour piece (base Armor 19 or more) whose Infusion level reaches it makes you immune to its element.

Good to know: in vanilla Valheim any frost resistance removes both Freezing and Cold in the Mountains and the Deep North. So a single Frost-infused piece keeps you warm there, the way wolf armour does.

Secondary bonus (helmet, chest, legs; not capes).

Element	Effect	Cap (default)
Fire	Less heat penalty (Ashlands heat, lava heat, the boiling Ashlands ocean)	35%
Frost	Wet / Frost / Freezing wear off sooner	35%
Poison	Poison on you wears off sooner (fewer ticks)	20%
Lightning	Less stagger build-up when hit	22%
Spirit	Less damage from Undead monsters	15%

Cape biome bonus. Frost: faster in the Mountains and the Deep North. Poison: faster in the Swamp. Fire: faster in the Ashlands and less lava damage (up to FireCapeLavaDamageReductionMaxPercent, default 55%, hard limit 95% — lava always hurts). Speed: walking and running up to CapeBiomeSpeedBonusPercent faster (default 10%). It is pure speed: the stamina cost of running, jumping and dodging is not touched.

Shield procs. When you block, the shield hits the attacker with its element: Fire burns, Frost slows it for 2–4 seconds (3–6 on a parry), Poison poisons, Lightning staggers on the spot, Spirit burns it with spirit fire (Undead only — a Spirit shield also gets its Block Power bonus twice against the Undead). A monster that resists frost is not slowed, as in the base game. A parry with a shield that can parry always triggers it; any other block rolls ShieldBlockProcChance (default 25%, growing towards 50% with the level). Strength = Block Power × the shield's Infusion bonus, with the same small minimums as weapons. The same element can't hit the same attacker again for 5 seconds.

Frost smoke. When a Frost Infusion takes hold on a monster — a hit of your Frost weapon or the strike-back of your Frost shield — a white, icy smoke pours off its body and sinks to the ground for as long as the chill lasts. Only the player who hit sees it, and EnableInfusionEffects = false turns it off with the rest.

Every infused armour piece, cape and shield shows a "Bonus: …" line under the Infusion line in its tooltip (translated; the InfusionSecondaryTooltip_* keys of the Translations/ files).

Infusion Effects section (synced by the server; every setting takes effect immediately):

Setting	Default	Range	What it does
EnableArmorElementalResistance	true	true / false	Resistance to the element on infused armour and capes.
ArmorResistanceLevelForVeryResistant	5	1 – 1000	Infusion level from which the resistance becomes Very Resistant.
ImmuneMinInfusionLevel	0	0 – 100000000	Infusion level at which a Tier 6 piece makes you Immune to its element. 0 = never.
EnableArmorSecondaryEffects	true	true / false	The secondary bonus of helmets, chests and legs.
FireBodyBonusMaxPercent	35	0 – 100	Most the heat penalty can be reduced.
FrostBodyBonusMaxPercent	35	0 – 100	Most Wet / Frost / Freezing can be shortened.
PoisonBodyBonusMaxPercent	20	0 – 100	Most the poison you receive can be shortened.
LightningBodyBonusMaxPercent	22	0 – 100	Most the stagger build-up can be reduced (also while blocking).
SpiritBodyBonusMaxPercent	15	0 – 100	Most the damage from Undead can be reduced.
CapeBiomeSpeedBonusPercent	10	0 – 50	Most walking / running speed a cape adds in its biome. 0 = off.
FireCapeLavaDamageReductionMaxPercent	55	0 – 95	Most lava damage a Fire cape removes. Never 100. 0 = off.
EnableShieldBlockProcs	true	true / false	Shields strike back with their element when you block.
ShieldBlockProcChance	25	0 – 100	Chance on a normal block (grows up to twice this with the level). A parry always triggers.

The thirteen "Bonus: …" texts are not in the .cfg: they live in the Translations/ files (InfusionSecondaryTooltip_* keys).

🔄 Coming from 1.2.1: this section is new and is added to your .cfg with the defaults above. Armour and capes that were infused in 1.2.1 start giving their resistance and bonus right away — worth knowing for your server's balance.

The real bonus is calculated separately from the level:

bonus = item stat × InfusionMaxBonusPercent × level ÷ (level + InfusionHalfLevel)

It rises quickly at first and then flattens out towards InfusionMaxBonusPercent, however high the level goes — so an uncapped level does not become an uncapped bonus. With the defaults (12% and 30):

Infusion level	9	19	30	60	150
Bonus (% of the item's stat)	2.8%	4.7%	6.0%	8.0%	10.0%

The damage, Armor and Block Power numbers in the item's tooltip already include the bonus, and a line at the bottom (key InfusionTooltip in the Translations/ files) names the element and level.

Every item gets the same percentage; a stronger item still gets a larger absolute bonus, because the percentage applies to a larger stat.

Tier. Valheim has no Tier field, so the mod works one out from the item's own base stat before any refinement (estimates for vanilla gear): armour is Tier 6 from 19 base Armor. It only matters for immunity (ImmuneMinInfusionLevel).

Infusion effects

An Infused weapon or shield shows its element's own effect over the whole item — in your hands, put away on your back, and lying on the ground:

Element	Effect
🔥 Fire	Flames licking along the item, vivid embers rising off it, and a warm flickering light that lights up the surroundings.
❄️ Frost	Cold air: a pale-blue vapour breathing off the whole item and sinking, ice glints twinkling on it from grip to tip, and fine frost dust drifting down.
☠️ Poison	A sickly green smoke rising off the whole item, toxic bubbles swelling and popping on it, and the odd drop falling off.
⚡ Lightning	Tiny violet arcs crackling on the item and, every moment or so, a longer bolt running along it with a burst of sparks and a faint violet flash on the surroundings.
👻 Spirit	Pale-gold souls spiralling close around the item from grip to tip, each with a ghostly trail — more on a longer item (about 5 on a sword, 9 on an atgeir).

_{The new Infusion effects.}

• Only the element effect. The item's own material is never recoloured and nothing pulses. Armour and capes have no visual at all — their Infusion shows in the tooltip and works through the element effects above.
• Made by the mod itself from plain particles and lines (plus the game's fire and soft glow), emitted from the item itself, no external assets. If an effect cannot be built on your game version, that item shows flames in its element's colour instead.
• On the ground. An Infused weapon or shield that is dropped (or spills out of a broken container) keeps its effect while you are within 40 m.
• Cheap by design. At most 24 Infused items worn around you (your own always count) and 24 on the ground; other players and ground items farther than 40 m are skipped. The Fire and Lightning lights cast no shadows (at most 8 Fire and 6 Lightning lights at once).
• Other players who have the mod see your effects too. Purely visual: it never changes the bonus.
• One setting in the Infusion section, local (never synced from the server, so each player chooses for themselves):

Setting	Default	Range	What it does
EnableInfusionEffects	true	true / false	Turns every Infusion effect off on your screen. (Called EnableInfusionGlow before 1.3.0; your value is kept.)

It stays with the item

• The Infusion is stored on the item itself, in the per-item data the game already saves. It survives closing the game, restarting the server, chests, dropping and picking the item up, equipping and unequipping. The mod keeps no separate save file or database for Infusions.
• Refining again keeps it: the mod carries it over to the item the game creates. A failed refinement that only costs levels keeps it too.
• It is lost only when the item is destroyed, or when BreakReturnsItemAtLevel1 hands back a new level-1 item.
• Two identical items can carry different Infusions.
• EnableInfusions = false stops new Infusions only. Existing ones keep working.
• Without the mod, the item behaves as a normal vanilla item and the Infusion sits unused on it; with the mod back, it works again.

Settings

Thunder Night section:

Setting	Default	Range	What it does
EnableStorm	true	true / false	The lightning storm show over the Refinement Forge on a Thunder Night. See ⛈️ Lightning storm, below. Has no effect on Infusions.
EnableInfusions	true	true / false	New Infusions on a Thunder Night. false = Thunder Nights with the show but no new Infusions. Existing Infusions are untouched.
ThunderNightChance	20	0 – 100	Chance in percent that a given night is a Thunder Night. Independent draw every night. 0 = never, 100 = every night. Used while at least one of the two switches above is on.
ThunderNightInfusionChance	30	0 – 100	Chance in percent that a refinement that already succeeded, on a Thunder Night, also grants an Infusion. Failures never roll. 0 = never, 100 = always.
ThunderNightStartHour	18	0 – 23	In-game hour from which a Thunder Night's effects (the storm and the Infusion draw) are active.
ThunderNightEndHour	6	0 – 23	In-game hour at which they end. It can be lower than the start hour: with the defaults it runs from 18:00, across midnight, until 06:00, the whole night. Same number for both = the whole night.

With both switches false, Thunder Nights do nothing at all: no show, no Infusions, no message. A Thunder Night only exists at night (18:00 to 06:00), so hours outside the night never take effect; use, for example, 22 and 4 to limit both the show and the Infusion draw to the deep night.

Infusion section:

Setting	Default	Range	What it does
InfusionMaxBonusPercent	12	0 – 100	The most an Infusion can add, as a percentage of the item's own stat. Also sets the strength of a shield's strike-back. 0 = no stat bonus (the element effects have their own settings in Infusion Effects).
InfusionHalfLevel	30	1 – 1000	The Infusion level at which the bonus reaches half of its maximum. Lower = the bonus arrives sooner.
InfusionAllowModdedItems	true	true / false	New in 1.4.0. false = items added by other mods never get a new or stronger Infusion. Infusions they already have keep working.
InfusionBlacklistedItems	(empty)	item list	New in 1.4.0. Comma-separated prefab names of items that never get a new or stronger Infusion. They can still be refined, and an Infusion they already have keeps working.

A new Infusion always draws from all five elements (capes: Fire, Frost or Poison), and a weapon that already deals an element keeps its own. The Thunder Night and Infusion texts live in the Translations/ files (see 🌍 Multi-language messages); their on/off switches are in the Notifications section. Every setting here takes effect immediately and is enforced by the server on every player who has the mod (except the ones marked local).

Known limitations

• The Infusion is decided on the player's own game, like the rest of the refinement, and written on the item there. The server enforces the numbers (chances, bonus formula) but cannot verify an item, so a player running a modified game could give themselves an Infusion — exactly as they could already edit any item. This is how Valheim is built.
• Only players with the mod get the bonus. It is calculated by the mod on each player's own game: weapon damage by the attacker's game, Armor, Block Power, resistances and the other armour / cape / shield effects by the defender's.
• Other mods that also change the damage, Armor or Block Power the game reports for an item can stack with or override an Infusion. The mod only touches its own three OdinBet_* entries in the item's data and no one else's.
• The night is judged when the refinement finishes, not when it starts.
• Nothing to migrate: items refined before this version simply have no Infusion.
• The Lightning storm is the show of Thunder Night and is limited by the same night and hours, but it has its own switch: you can keep either, both or none.

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🏆 Hall of Fame

Turns the eight standing statues around the Refinement Forge into guardians of eight server-wide rankings. Look at one and, if the feature is on, [E] Consult the Hall of Fame appears — press it to open that ranking's panel.

_{One of the eight statues around the Refinement Forge, and the panel it opens.}

#	Statue	Ranking	Tracks
1	Standing alone	The Forge Master	Highest refinement levels reached, one entry per item type and Infusion element — the same player can appear more than once
2	Paired with #3	The Favorite of the Gods	Most successful refinements
3	Paired with #2	The Unlucky One	Most failed refinements
4	Standing alone	The Relic of the Forge	The item with the strongest Infusion ever gained here, and who made it
5	Paired with #6	The Unstoppable	Longest streak of successes in a row
6	Paired with #5	The Cursed	Longest streak of failures in a row
7	Paired with #8	The Tireless Smith	Most refinements in total (successes and failures together)
8	Paired with #7	The Destroyer	Most items destroyed while refining

The panel: the ranking's name, an italic tag line, a boxed description of what it measures, and always ten rows (unclaimed ones show as —). Click a player's name to see their Steam profile link — it's copied to the clipboard right away, and a separate "Open profile" button opens it in the browser (clicking a name never opens anything by itself). One OK button closes the panel; so do Esc, pressing E again, walking away from the statue, or EnableHallOfFame being switched to false while it's open.

The Forge Master and The Relic of the Forge share the same underlying records — one per player and item type, the best level that combination ever reached — but rank them differently, so they no longer show near-identical lists:

• The Forge Master lists every record, highest item level first. This is the ranking of pure refinement skill: it can (and usually does) show the same player more than once, once per item type they refined far.
• The Relic of the Forge only lists records that carry an Infusion, ranked by the strongest Infusion first — not by item level. It is empty until someone's item is infused on a Thunder Night, and stays a normal, unclaimed — row until then, the same as any other ranking with no entries yet.

Both rankings show a line ending with the Infusion the item carried when its record was set, for example Iron Sword - level 20 (Lightning Infusion 45). Only an Infusion this mod gave the item is shown: a Frostner that was refined but never infused stays a plain Frostner - level 13, however much frost damage it has from the game itself, and simply never appears in The Relic of the Forge. If the item later reaches a higher level, or its Infusion grows, the record is replaced, so an older, weaker version never stays in the list. "The same item" means the same item type of the same player (the game gives items no unique id): two different Iron Swords of one player are one record, the best of them. The element name comes from the game's own text, so it appears in each player's language. Records made before 1.2.0 simply have no Infusion, so they can only ever show up in The Forge Master. Players updating from 1.1.0 keep every record they already had — nothing is migrated or reset, only how the two panels sort and filter it.

Tracked by Steam ID, not by character. The same person keeps the same record across characters, and across worlds hosted on the same server. A player on a platform without a Steam ID is still tracked (so they still show up and still get credit), just without a profile link.

The database is never the thing that gets switched off. EnableHallOfFame (Feature Toggles section, on by default) only controls the statues: with false they go silent — no hover text, no panel. Every refinement keeps being recorded underneath regardless, so switching the Hall off for a while (an event, a break from the feature) never loses data; set it back to true and the rankings are complete again immediately.

🔒 Security detail, same principle as the rest of this mod's networking: a client only ever asks the server for the ten rows of the ranking currently open, over the same authenticated per-connection channel the server config uses — never a broadcast. The server checks the request before answering, and refuses outright while the feature is off, so a modified client cannot get rankings that way either. Every name and item that reaches the panel is cleaned first (no formatting tags, capped length). On a single-player game, or the game hosting the world, there is no network round-trip: the database is read directly.

Your own place in every ranking — even outside the top 10 — is on the settings panel's Statistics page (see 📊 Statistics and 📜 Server log).

Fully translated, the same way every other message in this mod is: the panel's text lives in the Translations/*.json files (not the .cfg — around forty strings for wording alone would have meant that many new synced settings) and shows up in each player's own Valheim language automatically.

⚠️ Two honest caveats:

• The panel is built for a mouse. With a gamepad, Esc / B still closes it, but a row's name and the profile-link button cannot be selected.
• Which statue guards which ranking is fixed — matched to the ring around the Forge itself, not to any particular world, so it holds on every save, but it is not currently configurable from the .cfg.

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⛈️ Lightning storm

The show of a Thunder Night. While one is under way, the sky above the Refinement Forge comes alive: lightning strikes again and again, joined by a mix of other effects in the air, all within about 70 metres of the forge.

_{The Lightning storm show over the Refinement Forge on a Thunder Night.}

_{Thor flies by over the Refinement Forge during the show.}

• Purely visual. Everything happens high above the ground, so buildings, players and creatures around the forge are never damaged.
• Nothing to download. It only uses effects that already exist in Valheim.
• Only on a Thunder Night. It plays when the night has been drawn as a Thunder Night (ThunderNightChance) and the clock is inside ThunderNightStartHour – ThunderNightEndHour (the whole night by default).
• Its own switch. EnableStorm (Thunder Night section) turns only the show off; Infusions keep working. Applies right away when changed in-game or by the server; after editing the .cfg by hand, restart the game.
• Starts when you get close. The show plays while you are within about 200 metres of the Refinement Forge.
• Independent of the forge switch. It keeps running whether or not the forge is disabled.

⚠️ One caveat: each player's own game draws the show, so only players who have the mod installed see it. On a server with the mod, the server's values apply to everyone connected.

⚠️ Flashing lights: the show has bright, rapid flashes. If you or your players are sensitive to flashing light, set EnableStorm = false — and remember that a server's setting applies to everyone connected, who can't switch it off individually.

Coming from 1.1.0? The old Forge Storm section (Enabled, StartHour, EndHour) no longer exists. If it was Enabled = false (the default), the update keeps EnableStorm off for you too. To get back the old every-night behaviour between 22:00 and 04:00, see the last presets below.

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👁️ Odin's visit

_{Odin and Thor clash over who is worthy of the forge during a Thunder Night.}

On a Thunder Night, the gods come to the forge. Each time you arrive within about 100 metres of the Refinement Forge and no other player is standing at the forge itself, the camera leaves you for about 25 seconds. It starts the moment you arrive — also right after coming through a portal next to the forge:

1. The camera glides to the forge; the HUD hides, black cinema bars slide in, the screen edges darken and the music and wind drop.
2. Odin is already there, standing beside the forge — the game's own Odin, just as you know him, in a soft cold light — and his two ravens land at his sides.
3. Odin calls the storm: a column of light rises from him into the sky, sparks climb it, and the sky answers with flashes and thunder.
4. He vanishes in his smoke, the ravens fly up and away, and in the silence the camera turns to the sky…
5. Thor's chariot rushes over your head, hurling bolts at the ground, and a huge bolt strikes the forge: a blinding flash, thunder, the camera shakes, and the forge smokes and glows.
6. The camera returns to you.

• You are safe while it plays. It uses the game's own cutscene mode (the one of the arrival intro): you cannot act and you cannot be hurt.
• Esc skips it. It also ends by itself if an enemy comes close, and it never starts with enemies around, in a menu, in a dungeon, in bed, on a seat or boat, in the water or in build mode.
• When it plays again. After the scene, it waits until you have been more than 200 metres away from the forge and come back — or until the next Thunder Night.
• Odin and Thor talk. A short, subtitled exchange about who is worthy of the forge, shown in the bottom cinema bar in your language.
• A calm sky. A snowstorm or blizzard would hide everything, so the weather is clear while the scene plays and goes back to what it was afterwards (only on your screen).
• The storm steps aside. While the scene plays, the Thunder Night show pauses, so nothing gets lost among its bolts and only one chariot crosses the sky.
• Everyone sees their own. Each player's own game plays it when that player arrives; players who arrive together, or who are there when a Thunder Night begins, see it at about the same moment. Nothing is sent over the network and nothing in the world changes.
• Light on the game. Outside a Thunder Night the scene and the lightning show are switched off completely; the mod only glances at the clock at nightfall and once per in-game hour to see whether one begins. During a Thunder Night it checks every 2 seconds, and 4 times a second only when you are close to a forge, so the scene starts right as you arrive.
• Outdoors only. The mod looks for a camera spot with a clear view of the forge; if the forge is closed inside a building, the scene simply does not play.
• Its own local switch: EnableOdinScene (Thunder Night section, default true). It also needs EnableStorm, since the scene has bright flashes too.
• Nothing to download. Odin, the ravens, Thor, the smoke and the thunder are the game's own; the column of light, the glow and the bolt are drawn by the mod.

⚠️ Flashing lights: the strike has a bright flash. EnableOdinScene = false turns the scene off for you.

Testing it: with devcommands on, type odinbet_odin in the console (F5) near a Refinement Forge to play it right away, whatever the night.

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🔒 Multiplayer section — version lock

Server and players must run the same version of the mod, or they would play by different rules. On a server that has the mod, the version lock makes sure of it. Both settings only matter on the server, live in the server's own .cfg, and are not synced.

Setting	Default	What it does
KickDifferentModVersion	true	A player who has the mod but a different version than the server is disconnected a moment after joining.
RequireModToJoin	true	Also disconnects anyone who does not answer the version check within 30 seconds. Closes the last gap (see below), but it also keeps out players who do not have the mod at all — on by default, because a player without the mod would play with vanilla refinement odds/costs while everyone else uses this mod's settings. Turn it off only if you're fine with that.

How it works: when a player with the mod joins, their game tells the server which mod version it runs. The server compares it with its own; if they differ, the player is disconnected and the reason (the player and both versions) is written to the server log.

⚠️ Honest limits:

• A disconnected player sees the game's normal disconnect screen, with no text about the mod. Tell your players: disconnected right after joining = the mod version differs from the server's.
• Versions older than 1.1.0 cannot answer the check, so the server cannot tell them apart from players who have no mod. RequireModToJoin keeps them out — and everyone without the mod too. It's on by default for that reason; turn it off only if you're fine with some players playing by different rules.
• Without the mod on the server, nothing is checked.

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📢 Notifications section

Everything the mod tells players: the line in every player's chat, the message in the middle of the screen of the player who refined, and the Thunder Night message. Only switches live here — the texts themselves are in the Translations/ folder, in each player's own language (see 🌍 Multi-language messages).

Setting	Default	What it does
EnableGlobalNotifications	true	Chat announcements for everyone on the server: refinements, plus new and strengthened Infusions. false = the mod never writes in the chat.
EnableLocalNotifications	true	The mod's own centre-screen message for the player who refined (success, lost levels, destroyed, back at level 1) and for a new or strengthened Infusion. It replaces the game's own result text. false = leave the game's text exactly as it is.
EnableThunderNightMessage	true	Local. The message on your screen when a Thunder Night begins. false = no message for you; the storm and the Infusions are not affected.
NotifyOnSuccess	true	Announce successful refinements in the chat.
NotifyOnFailure	true	Announce failures where the item only lost levels.
NotifyOnBreak	true	Announce failures that destroyed the item (or returned it at level 1).
MinimumLevelToNotify	1	(1–100) Only announce in the chat if the attempted level is at least this. 1 announces everything; raise it to 4, say, to keep low-level refinements out of the chat.
NotificationPrefix	OdinBet	The name shown at the start of every chat line (in yellow). Rename it here and every line follows; empty it to show nothing.

NotifyOnSuccess, NotifyOnFailure, NotifyOnBreak and MinimumLevelToNotify only filter the chat. The Infusion announcements follow EnableGlobalNotifications alone. The messages that explain why an attempt was blocked (maximum level reached, blacklisted item, forge disabled) are always shown to the player who tried.

Why EnableLocalNotifications is worth leaving on, even if you like the game's wording:

1. Some Valheim 1.0 builds ship without a translation for those tokens and show a raw [msg_upgrader_failed] on screen instead of a sentence.
2. The game writes its text before the mod has finished deciding the outcome. With BreakReturnsItemAtLevel1 or a LevelsLostOnFailure other than 1, the game's wording no longer matches the item the player actually received. The mod's text does.

💬 Heads-up: each announcement also opens the chat window for every player, so nobody misses it. On a busy server, raise MinimumLevelToNotify or turn EnableGlobalNotifications off if that gets noisy.

🔒 Security detail: what travels over the network is structured data only (player name, item token, levels, outcome) — never a finished sentence. Every client renders the text locally. That means two good things: the text and the item name show up in each player's own language, and nobody can broadcast arbitrary text by editing their own files.

🔄 Coming from 1.2.1 or older: the old Local Messages and Global Notifications sections are merged into this one on the first start, together with EnableThunderNightMessage from Thunder Night. Your switches, MinimumLevelToNotify and the prefix are carried over (ReplaceGameUpgradeMessages → EnableLocalNotifications, EnableGlobalUpgradeNotifications → EnableGlobalNotifications, GlobalNotificationPrefix → NotificationPrefix), and the old text lines are removed from the file. A wording you had customized in the .cfg is not carried over — change it in the Translations/ files instead.

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🌍 Multi-language messages

Every text the mod shows — the centre-screen messages, the chat lines, the tooltip lines, the Hall of Fame panel and the dialogue of Odin's visit — lives in the Translations/ folder and shows up in each player's own language, automatically. None of it is in the .cfg: that file only holds the switches.

How it picks the text, for each message: the file of the player's game language → English.json → the English text built into the mod. A missing key or file never leaves a message blank and never crashes anything.

Included out of the box (15 languages): English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Europe), Russian, Turkish, Dutch, Swedish.

Where it lives: BepInEx/plugins/.../Translations/<LanguageName>.json — one flat file per language. File names match Valheim's own internal language names exactly (Portuguese_Brazilian, Portuguese_European, etc.) — that's how the mod knows which file belongs to a player's game language. The keys:

• Chat: SuccessMessage, FailedMessage, BrokenMessage, ResetMessage, InfusionMessage, InfusionStrengthenedMessage.
• Centre of the screen: LocalSuccessMessage, LocalFailedMessage, LocalBrokenMessage, LocalResetMessage, LocalInfusionMessage, LocalInfusionStrengthenedMessage, MaxLevelReachedMessage, ItemBlacklistedMessage, ModdedItemBlockedMessage, ServerVersionMismatchMessage, ForgeDisabledMessage, ThunderNightMessage.
• Tooltips: InfusionTooltip and the thirteen InfusionSecondaryTooltip_* "Bonus: …" lines.
• Hall of Fame: the Hall_… keys. Odin's visit: the OdinScene_… keys.

Placeholders (they are filled in by the mod; keep them as they are):

• Chat lines: {Prefix} (the NotificationPrefix setting), {PlayerName}, {ItemName}, {Level} (attempted level), {ResultLevel} (final level). The two Infusion lines take {Prefix}, {PlayerName}, {ItemName}, {Element} and {InfusionLevel} instead.
• Centre-screen results: {ItemName}, {Level}, {PreviousLevel}, {ResultLevel}. The two Infusion messages: {ItemName}, {Element}, {InfusionLevel}, {Level} (the item's new refinement level). MaxLevelReachedMessage: {ItemName}, {Level} (current level), {MaxLevel}. ItemBlacklistedMessage and ModdedItemBlockedMessage: {ItemName}.
• InfusionTooltip: {Element}, {InfusionLevel}.

The element names (Fire, Frost, Lightning, Poison, Spirit) and the item names come from the game's own translations, so they always appear in each player's own language.

✏️ Changing a wording: edit that key in the file of your language (and in English.json for players whose language has no file). Each player reads their own files — on a server, share the edited file with everyone (in your modpack, for example) so they all see it.

🙈 Hiding a message: leave its text empty ("InfusionMessage": ""). The mod then shows nothing for it. That works for any message, chat line or tooltip line, in the language files where you empty it.

💡 Adding a language yourself: drop a new <LanguageName>.json in Translations/ with the same keys, matching the exact language name Valheim itself uses internally. No recompiling, no code changes. A key you leave out falls back to English.

⚙️ The settings panel's texts live apart, in Translations/ConfigPanel/<LanguageName>.json (same 15 languages, same rules: the player's language, then English, then the English built into the mod). Only change them if you want to reword the panel itself.

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🐞 Debug section

Setting	Default	What it does
VerboseLogging	false	[Local — not synced by the server] Writes two lines to the BepInEx log per refinement, with the levels before and after, the outcome, and the chances that were applied. The chances are only written in single player, for the host, and for an admin with devcommands on; other players get the levels and the outcome.

Turn this on if a result does not match what your .cfg says. The log shows:

Refine start: 'SwordIron' level 4 -> 5, upgraderResource=True, successChance=50%, ...
Refine result: 'SwordIron' 4 -> 3 (LevelLost) [game text replaced: "..."]

If the Refine result line does not appear, the mod's hooks are not running at all — the problem is the patch, not the config. Those two lines are the most useful thing you can attach to a bug report on Discord.

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🧩 Ready-made config presets

Hardcore (a real gamble):

UpgradeSuccessChance = 50
FailureBreaksItemChance = 25
LevelsLostOnFailure = 1
BreakReturnsItemAtLevel1 = true
FailureAtMinimumLevelBreaksItem = true

Painless (only the cost matters):

UpgradeSuccessChance = 100
FailureBreaksItemChance = 0
LevelsLostOnFailure = 0

Risky, but I never lose the item:

UpgradeSuccessChance = 70
FailureBreaksItemChance = 0
LevelsLostOnFailure = 1
MinimumLevelOnFailure = 1

Forge closed (nobody can refine or repair):

EnableRefinementForge = false

Some items are off-limits, everything else refines normally:

BlacklistedItems = SwordBronze,ArmorIronChest

Thunder Night every night, every success infused (for testing):

ThunderNightChance = 100
ThunderNightInfusionChance = 100

Thunder Nights with the show, but no Infusions:

EnableInfusions = false

Thunder Nights with Infusions, but no lightning show (existing Infusions keep working either way):

EnableStorm = false

No Thunder Nights at all (existing Infusions keep working):

EnableStorm = false
EnableInfusions = false

Thunder Nights only from 22:00 to 04:00:

ThunderNightStartHour = 22
ThunderNightEndHour = 4

The 1.1.0 storm back: every night, 22:00 to 04:00 (this also makes every night a Thunder Night for Infusions, so add EnableInfusions = false if you only want the show):

ThunderNightChance = 100
ThunderNightStartHour = 22
ThunderNightEndHour = 4

Just the Idol recipes, nothing else touched:

EnableUpgradeChanceAndCostTweaks = false
EnableCraftDurationTweaks = false
EnableGlobalNotifications = false
EnableCustomRecipes = true

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Compatibility and known limitations

• Valheim 1.0 with BepInEx 5.
• Client and server need the same mod version. On a server with the mod, the version lock (see Version lock) disconnects players who have a different version. Where it cannot act — the lock switched off, or a version older than 1.1.0 that cannot answer — a mismatched player is not disconnected: their game ignores the server's sync packet (with a log warning). From 1.4.0 on, such a player also cannot refine at the Refinement Forge on that server (a message says so and nothing is consumed), so nobody refines by the odds of their own .cfg on a server that has rules of its own.
• Players always follow the server's settings. On a server with the same version, every setting that affects the game (odds, costs, caps, recipes, Infusions...) comes from the server: changing it on the player's side (in the .cfg, with Configuration Manager or in the settings panel) is refused and put back at once. Only the options on Your options (visual effects, messages, Odin's visit, the log) are each player's own.
• MaxUpgradeLevel does not grey out the craft button; it blocks on the click. The same goes for the game's own items in BlacklistedItems. Items from other mods that are blocked (in BlacklistedItems, or not allowed while AllowRefiningModdedItems is false) are not listed at the forge at all.
• Items from other mods show up at the forge under the same rules as the game's own: in your inventory, with a recipe your character knows. Items that cannot be crafted at all (only dropped by monsters, for example) and items the game never upgrades (a maximum quality of 1) are not listed.
• 1.4.3 needs 1.4.3 on both sides: the sync layout changed (ProtocolVersion 18), so a 1.4.2 player and a 1.4.3 server (or the other way round) are kept apart by the version lock; with KickDifferentModVersion = false, the player's game ignores the server's settings and cannot refine there.
• 1.4.0 and 1.4.2 together: by default the version lock keeps them apart (a 1.4.0 player cannot join a 1.4.2 server, and the other way round), so update the server and every player together. With KickDifferentModVersion = false, a 1.4.0 player on a 1.4.2 server still gets a history (the server builds it), and a 1.4.2 player on a 1.4.0 server sees "The server did not answer" on the Statistics and Server log pages — nothing breaks.
• The settings panel changes a dedicated server's settings only when the server runs this same version of the mod, and only for players in its admin list with devcommands on. It draws with Unity's simple IMGUI (like the Hall of Fame panel), not with the game's own menus.
• EnableRefinementForge = false only stops players who have the mod installed, and the forge's "use" hint still shows on hover — the message appears on the key press.
• The whole refinement is resolved on the client — that is how Valheim is built. Config sync makes the server enforce its values in memory, which covers someone editing their .cfg, but not someone running a modified DLL.
• Infusions (see ⚡ Thunder Night and Elemental Infusions) are decided on the player's own game and only give their bonus to players who have the mod.
• Cost scaling affects any recipe requirement flagged as an upgrader resource. In practice, only refinement recipes carry that flag.
• Without the mod on the server, none of this changes: every client just uses its own .cfg.

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Inspiration

Inspired by ReforgedPotential by akuichi.

This mod adds a global announcement system with multi-language support, full percentage control over outcomes, a level cap, on-screen message replacement, forge-area build exemption, a lightning storm and Elemental Infusions on Thunder Nights, a switch to shut the forge down completely, an in-game settings panel that changes the server's settings live, and its own server-side configuration synchronization.

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Found a bug? Got an idea? Want to show off a refinement that went horribly wrong?
💬 https://discord.gg/aMkN89Cuas