KindredMastery

Different skills. Shared experience.

Ever spent hours mastering the Bow, only to unlock the Crossbow and realize you're starting from scratch?

KindredMastery makes learning related skills feel more natural. Your experience with one skill helps you progress faster in another, without merging their levels or changing Valheim's core progression system.

The more experienced you are with a related skill, the faster you can catch up. As your new skill improves, that advantage gradually fades.

How It Works

Skills are organized into affinity domains, representing disciplines that share knowledge or techniques.

For example, Bows and Crossbows can belong to the same domain. A skilled archer will learn to use a Crossbow faster than someone with no ranged weapon experience.

Suppose you have:

• Bows: Level 80
• Crossbows: Level 20

With a standard affinity strength, you'll earn 60% additional Crossbows XP.

As your Crossbows skill approaches level 80, that bonus decreases until normal progression resumes.

Your skills remain completely independent. KindredMastery doesn't grant free levels or transfer XP between skills; it simply rewards experience you've already earned.

Features

• Natural catch-up progression — Learn related skills faster without bypassing their progression.
• Customizable skill domains — Choose which skills benefit from one another.
• Adjustable affinity strengths — Give closely related skills stronger bonuses than loosely related ones.
• Global progression modifier — Fine-tune the overall strength of affinity bonuses.
• Native level-up feedback — See when an affinity contributes to your progression, integrated into Valheim's existing notifications.
• In-game console commands — Inspect your active affinities, configuration, and XP multipliers.

When multiple affinities apply to a skill, KindredMastery uses the strongest applicable bonus rather than stacking them.

Configuration

KindredMastery is designed to be flexible without requiring players to change how they play.

By default, related skills benefit from each other's experience. You can customize which skills belong together and how strongly they influence one another.

The configuration offers three levels of control:

Setting	Description
Global Modifier	Increase or decrease the effect of all affinities
Default Affinity Strength	Set the strength used when a domain doesn't specify one
Domain Affinity Strength	Fine-tune the relationship between skills within a particular domain

For example, you might give Bows and Crossbows a strong affinity while allowing a smaller benefit between Bows and Elemental Magic.

Console Commands

Use kindredmastery in Valheim's console to access the available commands.

Command	Description
kindredmastery list	View configured skill domains
kindredmastery status	Check the current configuration
kindredmastery inspect <skill>	View the applicable affinity and experience bonus for a skill
kindredmastery reload	Reload configuration changes

Multiplayer

KindredMastery adjusts skill experience individually. For consistent progression, players should use the same configuration when playing together.

Philosophy

KindredMastery isn't intended to remove the effort of mastering a new skill.

It's built around a simple idea: learning something new should be easier when you've already mastered something similar.

Your experience matters. Your progress is still yours to earn.