AmmoVariants

Scatter, piercing, energy and explosive ammunition for bows and crossbows. Adds 48 variants across vanilla ammo tiers, from wood and bone to Bloodgold.

What it does

• Scatter arrows. Five projectiles per shot, each dealing 30% of normal shot damage, with a tighter spread than scatter bolts.
• Scatter bolts. Fourteen small pellets per shot, each dealing about 11.43% of normal shot damage, for up to 160% before armor and resistances.
• Piercing. Starts at 110% of normal shot damage and passes through up to four creatures, losing 15% of its remaining damage after each. No distance damage loss. Stops on ground, trees, rocks and structures. Each creature is hit once per projectile.
• Energy. Flies straight through creatures and terrain. Full shot damage becomes 85% lightning and 15% pierce, plus 15% additional fire damage that sets targets burning. All three shares are in the config. Damage falls to 25% at 200 meters, where flight ends. No creature limit or damage loss per creature. Chop and pickaxe damage are excluded from conversion.
• Explosive. A heavier charge that flies slower and drops more. It sticks in what it hits, dealing 30% of a shot as pierce and fire, and blows up 1.25 seconds later. The blast deals 125% of a full draw shot as 75% blunt and 25% fire, with chop and pickaxe damage at the tier's tool level, in full out to the core radius and at 40% out to the outer radius. It never hurts you, other players without PvP or tames, and leaves buildings, trees and rocks alone inside a workbench's range. Shots into water are duds.
• Piercing and energy have an extra 0.35-meter hit radius against enemies. Piercing keeps a thin collision ray against terrain and objects.
• Icons based on vanilla inventory sprites, native elemental flight effects and compact effects at held and dropped tips. Piercing and scatter trails match the material or element, energy keeps blue lightning. Separate bow and crossbow firing sounds retain the original weapon mechanism.
• Optional material-colored trails for existing ballista bolts. Trail size follows the larger bolt. Ballista damage, targeting, flight and ammo use stay unchanged.

Scatter scales the complete weapon and ammo damage, including elemental damage. Bow draw strength and the weapon's original accuracy still apply.

Crafting

Type	Ingredients	Output	Station
Scatter	20 base ammo and a finishing material	10	Base ammo station and level
Piercing	20 base ammo and a reinforcing material	20	Base ammo station and level
Energy	20 Carapace or Bloodgold ammo and 5 refined Eitr	10	Black Forge
Explosive, early	20 fire arrows or bone bolts, 1 Surtling core, 2 Coal, 1 Guck	5	Base ammo station and level
Explosive, plains	20 needle arrows or black metal bolts, 1 Black metal, 1 Surtling core, 2 Coal	5	Base ammo station and level
Explosive, Ashlands	20 Charred arrows or bolts, 3 Sulfur, 2 Coal	5	Black Forge

Scatter and piercing cover thirteen arrow types and six bolt tiers. Extra materials follow the ammo tier, such as resin, coal, flint, metals or carapace. Energy is available for Carapace and Bloodgold arrows and bolts. Recipes unlock through normal ingredient discovery.

Explosive tier	Arrow blast, core and outer	Bolt blast, core and outer	Tool level, axe and pickaxe
Early	2 m and 3 m	2.5 m and 4 m	bronze
Plains	2.25 m and 3.5 m	2.75 m and 4.5 m	iron
Ashlands	2.5 m and 4 m	3 m and 5 m	black metal

Config

The file is BepInEx/config/com.onononoki.ammovariants.cfg. Gameplay and recipe settings are synced from the server. Visual and sound settings are each player's own.

Setting	Default	What it does
Scatter.BowPellets, Pellets	5, 14	Bow and crossbow projectile counts
Scatter.BowConeHalfAngle, ConeHalfAngle	4, 6 degrees	Bow and crossbow spread half-angles
Scatter.BowDamageShare, CrossbowDamageShare	0.30, 0.1142857	Damage per projectile relative to a normal shot
Piercing.DamageShare	1.10	Initial combat damage relative to a normal shot
Piercing.MaxCreatures, LossPerCreature	4, 0.15	Creature limit and damage loss per creature
Piercing.EnemyRadius, Energy.EnemyRadius	0.35 meters	Extra radius against enemies
Energy.Range, DamageAtRange	200 meters, 0.25	End range and remaining damage share
Audio.FiringSoundVolume, NativeReleaseVolume	1, 0.30	Added firing sound and original weapon release volume
Trails.Scatter, Piercing, Energy, Ballista	true	Enable each custom flight trail separately, requires restart
Explosive.FuseSeconds	1.25	Seconds from the hit to the blast
Explosive.BaseProtection	true	No blast damage to buildings, trees and rocks inside a workbench's range
Explosive Early, Explosive Plains, Explosive sections	see the tier table	Blast radii, tool levels and flight per tier
Trails.Explosive	true	Flight flames of explosive ammo, requires restart
Trails.ShaftHeat	true	Red-hot, charred and sooty shaft on early and plains explosive ammo, requires restart
Recipes.UnlockAllRecipes	false	Bypass normal recipe discovery
Debug.LogCounters	false	Troubleshooting logs

Existing configs retain their saved values. For the release balance, set Scatter.Pellets to 14, Scatter.CrossbowDamageShare to 0.1142857 and Piercing.MaxCreatures to 4.

Crafting amounts and materials are configurable. Recipe changes apply during play. Restart after changing prefab visuals or the original weapon release volume.

Trail switches affect custom flight lines and energy flight lightning. Native elemental particles and effects at held or dropped tips remain.

Installation and compatibility

• Use a mod manager, or put AmmoVariants.dll into BepInEx/plugins. Requires BepInExPack Valheim and Jotunn.
• Install the same version on the server and every player.
• BetterArchery is optional. Its drawing, aiming, velocity changes and quivers remain active. Its arrow recovery is disabled for AmmoVariants ammunition. Energy ammo flies without gravity, so aim offsets from BetterArchery or other mods are ignored for it and it flies straight at the crosshair. Ordinary ammo keeps its usual BetterArchery behavior.
• Secondary volleys from BowSecondaryMultishot do not receive AmmoVariants effects. ProjectileTweaks combinations have not been playtested.

Feedback and bug reports

Report problems on GitHub. Include the mod version, ammo type, weapon mods and relevant BepInEx log lines.