MySix Accessibility Shield

For children with special needs who find games hard and need a hand getting started. Once an admin has allowed a player, pressing Z raises a blue shield crackling with lightning around them, and pressing it again lowers it. While it is up nothing can hurt them, and a creature that attacks them is struck by lightning and, unless it is one the game never staggers, staggered. It is not recommended for any other use: it takes the challenge out of the game.

• Off for everyone until an admin turns it on for a player, in single player and in a world you host as on a dedicated server. Press F5 and type mysix set AccessibilityShield.AllowedPlayers Leif, with the player's character name or their Steam ID (Steam_7656..., or just the number). Separate several players with commas; none takes it from everyone. Or, with the game closed, set AllowedPlayers = Leif under [AccessibilityShield] in BepInEx/config/com.mysix.accessibilityshield.cfg. In single player and in a world you host, you are the admin; on a dedicated server, an admin is someone in its adminlist.txt, and needs Accessibility Shield installed too to type the command (or edits the server's own config file instead). A name is easiest; on a public server, where someone else could take the same name, use the Steam ID.
• No damage of any kind while it is up: blows, arrows and spells, falls, drowning, fire, poison, frost, cold and freezing, lava and the Ashlands' boiling sea. The player is not staggered, knocked back or thrown into the air, and burning, poison, frost, lightning, spirit fire and smoke never take hold. What the player spends is still spent: stamina, eitr, and the health a blood-magic weapon costs to use, which never takes their last point.
• A creature that attacks them is struck by lightning, for 10% of its maximum health by default (AccessibilityShield.LightningPercent, 0 to 100), before its own resistance to lightning, and staggered, unless it is one the game never staggers: the bosses other than the Queen and Fader, the aspects some of them call up, and blobs, oozers, growths, pulps, leeches, serpents, Bonemaws, drakes, Deathsquitos, Gjall, roots and the Void. Other players, tamed animals and creatures that are not hostile, such as Dvergr left in peace, are only blocked, never struck. With other players about, an attack that lingers where it lands is only blocked, not struck back, when another player's game runs the creature that made it.
• Kept with the character: once raised, it stays up across logouts and on any computer, wherever the player is allowed, until it is lowered.
• Gentle on the eyes: the shield's own crackle and bolts never flash more than three times a second, with no red and no screen shake. Set AccessibilityShield.Crackle to false for a calm, steady bubble; the game's own option to reduce flashing lights (Settings, Accessibility) does the same on that computer.
• The edge of the world: a player who goes over the edge of the world with the shield up is carried home, to their bed or to where they started.
• The key is Z, which does nothing else in normal play (with cheats and debug mode on, Z is the game's debug fly, and the shield leaves it to that); AccessibilityShield.Key changes it, for each player.
• On a controller or a Steam Deck: give a spare button the keyboard key Z in Steam's controller settings for Valheim. On a Steam Deck, one of the back grip buttons (L4, L5, R4 or R5) is the easiest: the game itself never uses them.

Installing

Install with a mod manager - the Thunderstore Mod Manager, Gale and r2modman all work - and it fetches BepInEx and MySix Core for you. To install by hand, install BepInExPack_Valheim first, then unzip the DLLs of MySix Core and of the MySix Accessibility Shield into BepInEx/plugins.

It needs MySix Core, which adds the in-game mysix command for reading and changing settings. It is not part of the MySix bundle, which never installs it.

Who needs it: the player who uses it, and the computer that hosts the world - the dedicated server, or the player hosting - so that its admin can say who may use it. A server admin who sets that in game with mysix set needs it too, as the console knows only the settings of the mods in its own game (or the admin edits the server's own config file instead). Other players don't: a server with it lets in players who don't have it. On a server without it, it does nothing.

Settings

Changing a setting in game

1. Press F5 to open the console. If nothing opens, add -console to Valheim's launch options (in Steam: right-click Valheim, Properties, Launch Options) and start the game again.
2. Type one of these and press Enter:
   • mysix lists every MySix setting with its current value.
   • mysix get <setting> shows one setting: its value, its choices, its default and what it does.
   • mysix set <setting> <value> changes it.

Setting names and values are not case sensitive, and a change is saved at once and kept.

Who can change what

• Server settings belong to the world. On a dedicated server, a server admin (someone listed in the server's adminlist.txt) types the mysix set command in their own console while connected, and it changes for every player at once; anyone else is told they must be an admin. In a world you host yourself, you change it.
• Player settings are each player's own: type the command in your own game, and it changes only for you.

Both are kept in the world itself (player settings for each player, by character), so a world plays the same on any computer: a single-player world carried by Steam Cloud, or one moved onto a server. A world without them yet (new, or from before) starts from the host's settings, and each player's own from theirs.

This mod's settings

Setting	Who	Values	Default	What it does
AccessibilityShield.AllowedPlayers	Server	character names or Steam IDs separated by commas, or none	(empty)	Who may raise the shield: each player's character name, or their Steam ID (Steam_7656... or just the number). Empty or none: nobody, which is how it starts - the shield is off for everyone until an admin names a player here. The whole list is typed each time. On a server other people can join, use the Steam ID: anyone can give a character the same name. An admin who sets it in game needs Accessibility Shield installed too, as the console knows only the settings of the mods in its own game; or edit the server's own config file instead.
AccessibilityShield.LightningPercent	Server	0 to 100	10	How hard the lightning strikes a creature that attacks a raised shield, in percent of that creature's maximum health, before its own resistance to lightning. 0: no harm, only the stagger, for a creature the game can stagger.
AccessibilityShield.Key	Player	a key name such as Z, X or F7	Z	The key that raises the shield and lowers it again. Z does nothing else in normal play; with cheats and debug mode on, Z is the game's debug fly, and the shield leaves it to that.
AccessibilityShield.Crackle	Player	true or false	true	Lightning crackles over the shield in small arcs, with soft flashes never more than three a second. false: a calm, steady bubble, for anyone sensitive to flashing light. The game's own option to reduce flashing lights (Settings, Accessibility) does the same on that computer.

For example, to change each one:

mysix set AccessibilityShield.AllowedPlayers Leif
mysix set AccessibilityShield.LightningPercent 25
mysix set AccessibilityShield.Key X
mysix set AccessibilityShield.Crackle false

In the config file: BepInEx/config/com.mysix.accessibilityshield.cfg, under [AccessibilityShield]: AllowedPlayers, LightningPercent, Key, Crackle.

mysix set AccessibilityShield.AllowedPlayers none names nobody again, as when AccessibilityShield.AllowedPlayers was empty.

Changing a setting in the config file instead

Every setting is also in a config file, in BepInEx/config/ (your mod manager's Config editor opens the same file). Change it while the game is closed. For a server setting on a dedicated server, edit the server's own copy of the file and restart the server. A change you make to the file this way is taken into the world the next time it loads on that computer; a different value in another computer's file is not a change, and the world keeps its own.

Languages

What it shows you in play - its name and description among the status effects, and its messages on screen - is in the language you play Valheim in, in every language the game offers except Abenaki, which shows English for now as we could not find a translation we trust. The mysix console command and the setting descriptions it prints are in English only. We mainly test in English; if something reads wrong in your language, please let us know.

Version 0.1.0. The Changelog tab lists what changed in each release.