Arcane Ward

Arcane Ward adds three Eitr-powered magical off-hand wards and the Arcane Blade to Valheim. It is designed as a compact magic-combat expansion: the wards still use Valheim's native blocking and parry mechanics, but each one turns defense into a different elemental playstyle.

The wards and Arcane Blade are deliberately skill-scaled and progression-minded in an attempt to remain useful without simply overpowering vanilla equipment throughout a playthrough. Ward capacity and elemental effects grow with the relevant skills, while the Arcane Blade begins around Bronze Sword strength for an inexperienced swordsman and grows toward Nord Sword strength at Swords 100. The goal is for the equipment to grow with the character rather than arrive at full late-game power immediately.

This is my first Valheim mod. It was built entirely from vanilla Valheim assets and mechanics wherever practical, both to keep the visual style at home in Valheim and to make a good-faith attempt at compatibility with other mods. Arcane Ward does not require a custom asset bundle.

The three wards are Fire for retaliation and damage, Frost for tanking and crowd control, and Lightning for area damage and weakening enemies.

The three Wards

Fire	Frost	Lightning
Offensive retaliation	Tank / crowd control	Support / debuff
Parries ignite nearby enemies	Blocks can slow and taunt enemies	Parries release an AoE lightning burst
Strong direct retaliation against melee attackers	No parry specialization	Temporarily weakens affected enemies

Arcane Fire Ward

The offensive Ward. Successful parries can ignite enemies around you, while a melee attacker can also receive a stronger direct fire retaliation. Its elemental effects scale with Elemental Magic.

Arcane Frost Ward

The defensive/control Ward. Funded melee blocks can slow the attacker and taunt nearby hostile monsters, drawing attention toward the Ward user. Unlike Fire and Lightning, Frost deliberately does not specialize in parrying.

Arcane Lightning Ward

The support/debuff Ward. Successful timed parries release a lightning burst around the player, damaging nearby enemies and temporarily weakening them. The burst is paid for per affected enemy, so available Eitr determines how many targets can be caught.

Eitr-powered defense

All three Wards provide their own small Ward Eitr reserve while equipped. Blocking spends Eitr instead of behaving like a conventional stamina-only shield, and the reserve regenerates using Valheim's Eitr-regeneration modifiers. Its capacity also grows slightly with Blocking skill.

When actively blocking with an Arcane Ward, elemental attacks can consume Eitr to negate the configured Fire, Frost, and Lightning portions of the incoming hit. Poison and Spirit are left alone.

The wards are omnidirectional for blocking while still using Valheim's underlying block calculations.

Queen's Jam

Arcane Ward also gives vanilla Queen's Jam 15 Eitr. This is an existing stable-branch behavior retained in 1.1.15 and documented here so the vanilla-food adjustment is not hidden from players.

Arcane Blade

The Arcane Blade grows with its wielder: its physical slash damage starts around Bronze Sword strength at low Swords skill and scales up to Nord Sword strength at Swords 100. Normal swings use and train Swords, while successful thrown attacks train Spears.

The Arcane Blade is a Nord-style sword in melee and uses normal sword attacks. Its secondary attack transforms it into a magical spear throw. After impact—or after a sufficiently long miss—the weapon magically returns to its wielder.

With an Arcane Ward equipped, the thrown Blade inherits that Ward's Fire, Frost, or Lightning identity and gains the corresponding elemental effect. Empowered throws cost Eitr. The default throw cooldown is 5 seconds, making the Blade a strong periodic ranged option without replacing bows as sustained ranged weapons.

Magical lumbering and durability

While an Arcane Ward is equipped, melee strikes from the Arcane Blade can spend 6 Eitr per successful tree/log hit to deal 45 chop damage and bypass normal axe tool-tier restrictions. The thrown Blade does not chop trees. This is intended as magical utility rather than a replacement for sustained axe use; for comparison, current vanilla axe primary attacks range from roughly 8 stamina for a Bronze Axe to 16 stamina for late-game Berserkir Axes.

The Arcane Blade uses Valheim's normal durability system. When held together with an Arcane Ward, the Ward can passively restore 1 durability for 2 Eitr, once per second by default. Repair stops at full durability and pauses while actively blocking so it does not compete with immediate defensive Eitr use.

Arcane Knife

The Arcane Knife is a one-handed battlemage weapon designed to keep an Arcane Ward equipped while adding a faster melee and ranged-magic option. Normal knife attacks retain vanilla knife handling and train Knives; crouching secondary attack retains the vanilla knife leap. Its physical damage scales with Knives skill, while an equipped Ward adds that Ward's elemental identity to melee hits.

Standing secondary attack changes with the equipped Ward:

• Fire Ward — a short committed draw launches a Staff of Embers-style fireball. Damage scales with Elemental Magic.
• Frost Ward — hold secondary attack to channel Staff of Frost-style shards; releasing the button ends the channel.
• Lightning Ward — a short committed draw releases a close-range Dundr-style lightning blast. Damage scales with Elemental Magic.

Ranged knife magic consumes Eitr and will not begin its casting animation when there is not enough Eitr to perform the attack.

Multiplayer

Install Arcane Ward on every client that will use or observe its custom features. Only the Ward user's blocking state and Ward element are stored on the existing player network object; each observing client constructs its own inactive, sanitized, network-free cosmetic bubble. The remote bubble is removed when blocking stops, the Ward changes, the player dies, or the player leaves range. No Staff Shield VFX object is network-spawned.

The Arcane Blade's elemental identity is synchronized so modded peers can reproduce its traveling Fire/Frost visuals and Lightning impact effect. Frost taunt uses Valheim's ownership and AI synchronization so monster targeting and movement can replicate between peers.

Requirements

• Valheim 1.0.x
• BepInExPack Valheim
• Jotunn

Installation

The easiest installation is through a Thunderstore-compatible mod manager. For manual installation, install BepInEx and Jotunn, then place ArcaneWard.dll in BepInEx/plugins/ArcaneWard/.

Spawn IDs

For testing with devcommands:

• ArcaneWard — Arcane Fire Ward (legacy internal ID retained for save compatibility)
• ArcaneFrostWard
• ArcaneLightningWard
• ArcaneBlade
• ArcaneKnife

Configuration

Gameplay values such as Ward block strength, Eitr costs, regeneration, elemental effects, and Arcane Blade throw behavior are configurable through the generated BepInEx configuration file.

Patch notes — 1.1.15

• Backported the full experimental cast-direction guard so zero/invalid aim vectors cannot reach Quaternion.LookRotation or projectile setup.
• Fixed the Frost chill vfx_Frost ZDO lifecycle issue by stripping network/gameplay components before the local cosmetic is ever activated.
• Applied the same ZDO-safe construction rule to the hand orb and replayed vanilla audio-effect clones.
• Registered Arcane projectiles now use network-aware cleanup when the mod must destroy them directly.
• Corrected the Thunderstore builder output name and documented the existing Queen's Jam +15 Eitr behavior.
• No intended balance values or stable gameplay mechanics changed.

See CHANGELOG.md for the complete release history.

Bug reports and feedback

Use Report an Arcane Ward bug to open an issue. Please include the Arcane Ward version, Valheim version, whether the problem occurred in single-player or multiplayer, relevant installed mods, exact reproduction steps, and the complete BepInEx log when possible.