Environmental Awareness: The Trials of Toil

The creatures of Valheim don't want your blood - the world itself does too!

This mod is a survival expansion to Valheim and is designed to add new survival challenges that are currently missing from the base game. As such the experiences you face may be punishing if you don't prepare properly. This is by design, but every value can be configured to your taste to make the experience more or less forgiving.

New Status Effects and Mechanics

This mod currently adds three new mechanics: Vitality, Energy, and Capability. They are all persistent status effects applied to your player character and will update in realtime depending on different factors. They can be separated and moved away from the status effects UI if you want them to display on a different part of your screen, and can be resized if you want them to take up less screen real estate.

Vitality

Vitality is a measure of how well you are surviving in your environment and will go up or down based on what situations you put your character through. As you continue to expose yourself to adverse conditions, your Resistance skill will level up.

Vitality starts at 100% and will go up or down depending on the following factors:

• Being scorched, hot, wet, cold or frozen will decrease your vitality as you spend longer in unfavourable weather. If you're both wet AND cold, watch out!
• Getting hurt by enemies or the environment will lower your vitality with each hit sustained, depending on how much damage was dealt to you.
• Staying in extreme biomes like Ashlands and Deep North will slowly sap you of your vitality due to their extreme temperatures.
• Being hungry with no food will greatly lower your vitality if you go too long without eating. Don't starve to death!
• Having lowered health will drain your vitality, increasing in severity as you get closer to death. Be careful in combat!
• Getting poisoned will severely lower your vitality until it wears off.
• Getting set on fire, being frozen, or getting zapped will severely lower your vitality until it wears off.
• Standing near a fire anywhere will raise your vitality, as long as the environment is not freezing and you're not on fire.
• Staying sheltered will raise your vitality, as long as the environment is not freezing. If it's freezing, you need a fire too.
• Being warm and sheltered will raise your vitality in freezing environments, and more if the environment is not freezing.
• Resting or having the rested status will raise your vitality, or slow down the rate which it lowers if in an unfavourable environment.
• If the player is not hungry, at full health, not in an unfavourable biome, and the weather is not raining or cold, the player will slowly recover vitality.

As your vitality drops, you will notice some additional debuffs get applied, which worsen as it gets lower.

• Stamina will regen slower as your vitality gets lower.
• You will take more damage from physical or elemental hits, developing a Weak status effect for each damage type apart from Spirit.
• You will start to move more slowly as your vitality gets lower.
• Duration and stats of food will get lower if your vitality gets too low.
• Eventually you will start sustaining damage, seek shelter and a fire immediately before it's too late!

You have several ways to resist vitality loss.

• Having resistant or very resistant to frost will slow down vitality drain from being cold or frozen, or in the Deep North.
• Having resistant or very resistant to poison will greatly slow down vitality drain from the Poisoned status.
• Having resistant or very resistant to fire will slow down vitality drain from being set on fire, hot, scorched, or in the Ashlands.
• Having resistant or very resistant to lightning will slow down vitality loss from taking shock damage.
• Wearing armor will slow down all vitality drain as your armor rating gets higher.
• Eating food will slow down your vitality drain depending on how many hit points are granted.
• Health meads will grant a vitality boost over their cooldown duration.
• Being under the effects of the Staff of Protection will slow down your vitality loss from environmental effects. This should help mage builds that have lower armor values from losing vitality too fast in endgame biomes.
• Being in harsh conditions will slowly raise your Resistance skill. The higher it is, the more resistant you are to vitality loss.
• In Forsaken fights, your vitality drain from the environment will be halted. You can add other environments for modded environments in the config file. Currently supports all Forsaken bosses from the base game.

Energy

Energy is a measure of your overall short-term physical and mental capabilities and will go up or down based on your activities. As you expend energy, your Fitness skill will level up.

Energy starts at 100% and will go up or down depending on the following factors:

• Being scorched, hot, wet, cold or freezing will slowly sap your energy.
• Expending stamina will lower your energy the more you use.
• Carrying heavy loads will have an increasing effect on your energy drain. By default this effect starts as your weight goes over 60% of its maximum.
• Being hungry will slowly lower your energy.
• Eating food will raise your energy proportional to its stamina value.
• Sitting down will raise your energy slowly as long as you're not wet, cold, freezing or hungry.
• Resting will quickly raise your energy.
• Sleeping will restore a good chunk of your energy.

As your energy drops, you will notice some additional debuffs get applied, which worsen as it gets lower.

• You will start to move slower as your energy drops.
• Stamina regen will slow down the more energy you lose.
• Stamina regen delay will increase as you get more tired.
• If you're extremely tired, you will suffer a temporary loss to your maximum available stamina.
• If you're extremely tired, your skills level up slower.
• If you're extremely tired, the Rested status will automatically be removed even if there is time left.

There are several ways to resist energy loss:

• While under the effect of a stamina mead, you will slowly recover energy and have a resistance to energy loss for the duration.
• Being rested will provide a large resistance to energy loss.
• Using energy will slowly raise your Fitness skill, making it take longer for your energy to drain.

Capability (new for 1.2.0+)

Capability is a measure of how long you can stay alert over extended time periods. Think of it as 'long term energy'. As you stay awake and do activities for longer periods of time, your Capability will slowly drain. You can recover capability by sleeping, or laying in a bed if you are on a MP server that doesn't enforce sleep.

Capability starts at 100% and will go up or down depending on the following factors:

• Being awake will slowly lower your Capability. As more time passes, the more your capability will drop.
• Having low vitality or low energy will increase the speed of your capability drain. Make sure to stay well and rested.
• Sleeping will provide a sharp boost to your capability. This is the main way to recover your capability.

As your Capability drops, it will only provide one main drawback - your maximum Vitality and Energy stats will be capped, preventing them from reaching 100% and thus incurring some of the debuffs from having those stats lower than optimal.

There are several ways to resist Capability loss or restore it:

• Sleeping is the easiest way to restore a large amount of capability.
• Spending a lot of time not sleeping will slowly raise your Perseverence skill, which increases the amount of time you can go without needing to sleep.
• Being well rested, and having high Vitality and Energy will slow down the rate of Capability loss.
• Drinking Tasty Mead will increase your overall Capability - but there is only a certain number of times you can do this in a short time period.

Minor Status Effects

As well as the main three mechanics, there are three more minor effects that have been added that I felt were missing from the base game. These will have less of an impact on your game than the main three, but are nonetheless important to be aware of.

Hunger

This is a small status effect that will appear when your character hasn't eaten food for a certain amount of time after all current foods are digested, and will persist until you eat again. This will cause your vitality to drop if left unattended, which makes it possible for your character to starve to death. Be mindful and make sure to take some extra food with you on longer journeys.

Hot and Scorching

These are a counterpart to the Cold and Freezing status effects from the base game, and apply in places where you would normally expect to find them. They also integrate with any seasons mods you have installed, with some slight changes if one is detected.

The Hot status effect will lower your health, stamina and eitr regeneration, similar to Cold, but with an additional penalty to your movement speed. It can be mitigated with Fire Resistance meads and gear, as long as you are Resistant or Very Resistant. You can also find shade under a roof or shelter to remove the effect, or jump into some water. The Wet status effect will wear off faster than normal when the environment is Hot.

The Scorching status effect will severely cut your health, stamina and eitr regeneration, lower your movement speed more drastically, and give you the Slightly Weak modifier against all physical damage types Blunt, Slash, and Pierce. It cannot be fully mitigated with meads or gear, but having Resistant or Very Resistant to fire, being under a shelter, or being Wet will downgrade it to the Hot status effect. Be warned, this effect will make the Ashlands VERY difficult and I only recommend having this enabled if you're wanting a much greater challenge.

If no season mods are installed:

• Plains is hot during the day, from around mid morning to evening.
• Ashlands is scorching during the day, and hot during the night. You will no longer get the Cold status from the ashlands.

If a season mod is installed and the global keys are set and enabled in the mod:

• Meadows is hot on clear days in summer, usually from midday to around late afternoon.
• Black Forest is hot on clear days in summer, usually around late afternoon.
• Plains is hot during the Spring and Summer on clear days, and scorching on the hottest part of summer days from noon to late afternoon.
• Ashlands is scorching during the day in Spring, Summer and Autumn, and hot during the day in winter. It is always hot at night regardless of the season, as the lava never truly allows the area to cool.

Regardless of whether a season or no season mod is installed, Yagluth and Fader environments will also force Scorching. It is probably best to pack some fire resistance gear or meads for these fights, as the debuffs to your regeneration will be a new factor to consider in these fights.

New Skills

There are three new skills that go along with these new effects, Resistance, Fitness, and Perseverence. These are tied directly into Vitality, Energy and Capability, respectively (that's a lot of words ending in y, seems like this guy planned quite meticulously...) Here's a breakdown of what the skills do as they level up.

Resistance

Resistance is raised whenever your vitality is low. By sustaining yourself in harsh environments you will train this over time.

• As your Resistance levels up, harsh environments will become more tolerable and your Vitality will drain more slowly. At configurable levels of the Resistance skill, the Cold, Freezing, Wet, Hot and Scorching status effects will become less potent, lessening the overall negative effects that these effects apply to the player.
• After Resistance exceeds a configurable level, you will start doing increased damage to enemies as your health drops lower. Think of this as a built in Bloodstone effect on your character. This is to simulate your character not only resisting harsh conditions, but actively fighting harder against them like a true Viking!
• After Resistance exceeds a configurable level, any meads that add exactly one elemental resistance and no physical resistances (such as Poison Resistance Mead) will have increased duration after consumption. This is to simuulate your character not only being able to resist the elements, but more efficiently use consumables that provide them these buffs.
• After Resistance exceeds a configurable level, the effects of Scorching, Hot, Wet, Cold and Freezing will become less potent, to simulate your character becoming more familiar with extreme environments.

Fitness

Fitness is raised whenever you do anything that requires physical strength. By doing lots of fighting or labour, you will train this over time.

• As your Fitness levels up, you will have more Energy to expend. It also drains slower as well, since your body becomes more efficient at energy management the fitter you are.
• After Fitness exceeds a configurable level, equipment that would normally slow you down feels easier to wield, and you will suffer less of the movement penalties. This simulates your character being able to move easier when wielding heavy equipment. Note that this doesn't affect equipment that gives you speed buffs, so you're not suddenly faster than the Flash when wearing Fenris armor.
• After Fitness exceeds a configurable level, consumed food will last longer. This is to simulate your character's body becoming more efficient at processing foods as they become fitter.

Perseverence

Perseverence is raised whenever your Capability is low and your character is pushing to stay awake longer. This skill will not raise very easily and require more rigorous training than the others to get to a higher level.

• As your Perseverence levels up, you will be able to go for much longer periods without needing to sleep, and your Capability will drain slower.
• After Perseverence exceeds a configurable level, the amount of comfort you get when resting will increase, even when you're not at a base. This is to simulate your character finding comfort through persevering in the harsh world of Valheim as they get used to their environments.
• After Perseverence exceeds a configurable level, you will need less overall adrenaline to trigger the beneficial buffs. This is to simulate your character's increased adrenal response to threats from the environment and its denizens, making it easier to reach those helpful buffs in combat.

Compatibility

FULL COMPATIBILITY

Seasonality & Seasons (Built in, see extra notes for Seasons)

• Each season will apply a multiplier to your vitality and energy loss.
• During spring and summer, your vitality and energy will go down more slowly.
• During autumn, your vitality and energy will go down at a normal rate.
• During winter, your vitality and energy will go down much quicker if you're out too long in the cold.

Important! For any users of Seasons:

• Be sure to turn on Seasonal Global Keys for the seasonal effects to work, else the multipliers and other effects will not apply.
• Seasons introduces a 'Hot' status effect that will conflict with the one from Environmental Awareness and there will be times where you get both of these effects together. This will compound any overlapping debuffs and will probably make your life miserable in Summer. To fix ths, disable the hot effect from either Environmenal Awareness or Seasons.

PARTIAL COMPATIBILITY

Hydration mods like You'reThirsty, Enhanced Survival (Compatibility for You'reThirsty in development for 1.3.0)

While there is no built-in compatibility for mods introducing hydration mechanics, there is no overlap from these mods' status effects. This mod will work fine alongside them, but the mechanics from those mods won't affect stats from this one. In the future I plan to bridge these so that thirst affects stats from this mod to add an extra layer of challenge.

Hunger mods like Starvation, Enhanced Survival (Compatibility not planned, but can be solved through configs)

Since this mod already introduces a hunger mechanic, it will probably conflict with mods that do the same. To fix this, you can disable hunger from this mod, or not use the mod introducing hunger mechanics, or tweak config values for those mods if you want to use them together. I don't plan to add compatibility since config edits can solve this quite reliably and this gives the player the most freedom to choose the features they want.

INCOMPATIBLE MODS

BalrondAmazingNature (Compatibility in development for 1.3.0)

BalrondAmazingNature changes the way that some status effects work and completely overrides some vanilla status effects entirely (cold and wet in particular). Balrond's Cold1, Cold2, and Soaked statuses will not be detected and thus Vitality / Energy effects will not be calculated properly.

Configuration

All values are configurable in the config file. You can turn individual features of this mod on and off to adjust the difficulty. All options are fully documented.

Bugs

This mod may have quite a few bugs and so I'd advise using this on a new save, or backup your old saves if you want to add it to your current world.

For the Future

I'm always looking to improve the quality of the mods I work on and so for the future I'd like to simply concentrate of adding more features while keeping things fun and stable. If you have suggestions, feel free to let me know.

Credits

• ProbablyKory: For inspiration for this mod with their StormExposure mod.
• Azumatt: For instructing me on where to go to get a working copy of Valheim's assets in Unity.
• OrianaVenture: For assistance with figuring out whether this type of mod was even possible.
• GsiX: Help with sprite sizes.
• HugoTheDwarf: Help with sprite sizes.
• Blaxxun: ServerSync, SkillManager and LocalizationManager.
• Blacks7ar: Help with extracting skill levels from a custom-added skill.
• Soloredis: Help with extensive testing and reporting compatibility bugs with other mods.

Translations

Some of the new status effects and texts (1.2.4) have been translated by me using Google to the best of my ability, so they may not be the best (or if you're lucky, I managed to swear at everybody in a language I have never spoken). Feel free to let me know if any of them need a better translation (Hey, this line is complete gibberish, you moron!) and I'll update any weird descriptions in the supported languages. Currently supported languages are English, Russian, and Korean. If you would like to translate the mod into your own language, let me know and I can provide the YML with all localization keys.

Thank you to these amazing people for translating:

• Love5225: Korean
• Blace: Russian

Contact Me (Bug Reports & Suggestions)

If you have any suggestions, or experience bugs / problems using this mod please get in touch with me on my Discord.

Installation (Manual Download)

Move the 'plugins' folder from the archive to your BepInEx folder.