Universal Wand

One wand. Every staff.

• Switch between Valheim's eight current magic weapons with configurable Numpad hotkeys.
• Keep one Universal Wand equipped while changing spells instantly.
• Unlock each spell by acquiring, crafting, upgrading, or successfully casting its original staff.
• Preserve the highest source-staff level reached for every spell.
• Optionally cycle through all three Staffs of Fracturing variants.
• Original staffs remain unchanged and fully usable.

Important release status

Version 0.1.2 is a compiled and statically validated release candidate. It was compiled against the available publicized Valheim 0.221.4 API plus BepInEx 5.4.23.3 and Jotunn 2.29.2. The intended stable game snapshot is 0.221.12, but no Valheim runtime was available here, so in-game, multiplayer, visual-alignment, and balance-equivalence tests remain required before public release.

Valheim 1.0 / Deep North requires a full rebuild, runtime retest, and magic-roster audit. Future default changes will never overwrite existing custom bindings.

Controls

Key	Spell
Numpad 0	Staff of Protection
Numpad 1	Staff of Frost
Numpad 2	Staff of Embers
Numpad 3	Fracturing family; press repeatedly to cycle
Numpad 4	Dundr
Numpad 5	Staff of the Wild
Numpad 6	Unassigned/reserved
Numpad 7	Unassigned/reserved
Numpad 8	Dead Raiser
Numpad 9	Trollstav

Every shortcut is a local BepInEx KeyboardShortcut and can be changed live through the config file or a compatible configuration manager. Set a shortcut to None to unbind it. If shortcuts conflict, the lowest slot number wins and one warning is logged.

Input is accepted only while the local player has the wand equipped and Valheim allows gameplay input. Typing, menus, inventory/crafting, console, and compatible configuration UI block selection.

Optional Staffs of Fracturing support

When L4zerShark_Team-StaffsOfFracturing-1.0.0 is installed, repeated presses of the Fracturing shortcut cycle in this stable order:

1. Staff of Fracturing
2. Iolite Staff of Fracturing
3. Jade Staff of Fracturing
4. Bloodstone Staff of Fracturing

Unavailable or locked variants are skipped. Each variant unlocks separately when that character acquires, crafts, upgrades, or successfully casts its corresponding original staff. A locked selection still displays only Not yet unlocked.

Staffs of Fracturing is an optional integration, not a hard dependency. If it is absent, Numpad 3 selects normal vanilla Fracturing and every other wand mode continues working. If it is installed, install the same compatible Staffs of Fracturing version on the server and every client as required by that mod.

Unlock progression

A mode permanently unlocks for that character after any of these events:

1. the corresponding source magic weapon is present in the character's inventory,
2. the character crafts or upgrades that weapon, or
3. the original weapon reaches its successful attack trigger.

Inventory ownership is checked every 0.75 seconds, so an already-owned or newly picked-up staff is recognized without requiring another craft. A failed/no-Eitr attempt does not count as a successful cast, but possession still counts. Progression lives in versioned character custom data, not on the wand, so trading a wand never transfers it.

The recorded value for each spell is the highest source-staff quality that character has ever possessed, crafted, upgraded, or successfully used. Acquiring level 3 after level 1 upgrades the wand's matching spell to level 3; later seeing a lower-level copy never downgrades it. Older Boolean unlock records migrate safely as level 1. Pressing a locked key leaves the current mode unchanged and displays only Not yet unlocked. to avoid automatic spoilers.

How casting works

The mod does not swap inventory items and does not reimplement vanilla or Staffs of Fracturing spell logic. Each mode creates a wand-owned shallow casting view from the live registered source weapon. During the exact native attack methods, the physical wand temporarily reports that spell's recorded source-staff quality; it is restored immediately afterward. This carries the source level through immediate attacks and delayed projectile bursts without replacing the wand's own item quality or durability. Valheim's native attack pipeline supplies:

• Eitr or Blood Magic health costs
• attacks, reload/channel timing, skill selection and gain
• quality-scaled damage and item level, projectiles, status effects, targeting, ownership and friendliness
• shields, summons, summon caps, location restrictions and cooldowns

No source SharedData, attack, prefab, model, or recipe is modified. A switch requested during an active attack is queued until the attack ends.

Item and recipe

The wand has qualities 1–4, 200 base durability, and +50 durability per quality. Its held model is a very small, straight, three-sided wooden stick: half the previous dimensions, with the wooden base at the hand attachment point and no permanent orb or strange tip geometry. A brief simple cyan switch flash may appear at the otherwise plain end. It intentionally retains the two-handed staff animation/restriction family and no-shield balance.

Craft at a Galdr table:

Material	Quality 1	Per upgrade level
Yggdrasil wood	20	5
Refined eitr	30	10
Black core	5	2
Red gemstone	2	1

The station requirement starts at level 1 and rises with item quality, making quality 4 require a level-4 Galdr table.

Multiplayer and installation

Install the release ZIP with a Thunderstore-compatible mod manager, or place UniversalWand.dll in BepInEx/plugins/UniversalWand/. Jotunn and BepInEx are required.

The mod declares Jotunn EveryoneMustHaveMod compatibility with Minor version strictness. Install the same compatible version on the dedicated/listen server and every player client. Mixed modded/unmodded play is rejected instead of allowing unknown custom items or half-working casts. Unmodded console/crossplay clients are therefore unsupported on a server running this mod.

Selection/HUD/VFX are local. Actual casts use vanilla projectile, damage, status and summon networking paths. This is consistent with Valheim's normal trusted mod environment; it is not advertised as an anti-cheat system.

Compatibility notes

Source weapons are resolved after vanilla and normal mod item registration. Rebalances already present at that point are inherited. A mod that mutates source attacks later at runtime may need an explicit adapter. Missing/renamed prefabs disable only the affected mode and log once.

The optional Staffs of Fracturing 1.0.0 adapter was verified against plugin GUID com.l4zershark.staffsoffracturing and the three registered item prefabs in the supplied release DLL. Compatibility uses only stable IDs and live source data; Universal Wand does not compile against, bundle, or modify the other mod's assembly.

See TEST_REPORT.md for completed and outstanding verification.