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.

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.

Multiplayer

Install Arcane Ward on every client that will use or observe its custom features. Version 1.0.2 also prevents the locally-created Ward barrier VFX from retaining vanilla network components, addressing a case where another player's shield bubble could remain stuck on them after Ward use.

Version 1.0.3 adds focused lifecycle logging to help identify a reported ZNetScene.RemoveObjects exception storm during death respawn. When reporting that problem, include the full BepInEx log so the [ArcaneWard Diagnostic] events immediately before Starting respawn can be compared with the exception sequence.

Version 1.0.4 constructs the Staff Shield-derived barrier while inactive and removes its networking components before the cosmetic clone is ever activated. Arcane Ward no longer patches Player.OnDeath; Valheim owns the complete death and respawn transition.

The Arcane Blade's elemental projectile identity is synchronized so modded peers can reproduce its in-flight Fire/Frost/Lightning VFX. 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

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.

Version 1.0.1

First public release. Includes all three Ward specializations, deterministic Ward Eitr, omnidirectional Ward blocking, elemental blocking, the returning Arcane Blade and its elemental throws, multiplayer projectile VFX synchronization, Frost taunt networking, and the tested respawn lifecycle fix.

Bug reports and feedback

Please report reproducible problems through ArcaneWards GitHub Issues. Include the Arcane Ward version, Valheim version, relevant installed mods, reproduction steps, and the BepInEx log when possible.