Nornforged

Every craft has a fate. Make the next one yours.

248 perks · Permanent item rolls · Reforge & salvage · Perk-driven equipment VFX

Nornforged gives newly crafted weapons, tools and wearable equipment their own Fateprint: saved perks, strengths and rarity. A modest item can land an exceptional perk. A rare item still has to earn its place in your build.

By RYN · Version 0.5.2 · Early access

What's new · Start playing · Updates · Help

New in 0.5.2

Know your gear at a glance. A small lower-right Gear Score number stays visible on inventory and hotbar equipment icons, using the native font and at most two decimals. Two copper L-shaped corners and a very faint backing fit the number's width, with no GS label or full-width plate. Weapons, shields, armor and tools share the same display. Native rarity backgrounds, hotkeys, quality and durability stay visible; resources and food receive no score badge.

Badge glow starts at 500, strengthens at 750 and reaches maximum intensity at 1000. Transcendent equipment has a separate shimmer tied to its rarity, whose default chance remains 0.10%. High score and rare outcome are separate properties.

Both badge display and animation default to on. Set Interface.ShowGearScoreBadges = false to hide them or Interface.AnimatedGearScoreBadges = false to disable motion. Reduced effects also keeps badges static. The forge socket and drag cursor have no badge; the forge's existing score panel remains.

The 0.5.1 fixes for higher-level equipment and finished Frost Foundry gear remain included. Perks, rolls, Gear Score formulas, gameplay settings and equipment effects stay unchanged. See RELEASE-NOTES-0.5.2.md for scope; earlier verification records apply to their recorded builds.

From 0.5.0

Awaken your arsenal. Strong perks now have twelve visual families, including Gale, Blood, Rune and Tidal. Your strongest two families form one body-and-accent composition, with matching spatial weapon sounds alongside the original strike.

All 217 beneficial perks have explicit visual identities. The catalogue remains 248, and your saved rolls, gameplay settings and rarity odds stay unchanged. Open F9 to adjust or mute the added weapon sounds.

A clearer forge. Reforge and Salvage have separate native tabs. Drop equipment directly from your quickslots, inspect other items without leaving the forge, and use the clearly labelled Reforge item button. Rarity colours the original slot background, while the forge panel displays the selected item's Gear Score.

See VISUALS.md for examples and RELEASE-VERIFICATION-0.5.0.md for completed checks and remaining acceptance limits. The package is prepared locally and has not been publicly uploaded.

Equipment effects

Let your perks show. Elemental effects, runic patterns, tempered metal and other perk themes follow original equipment models, combining surface effects with restrained motion on weapons and supported armor regions.

The effect comes from perk strength, starting at 25.00% primary-amount PQS. An excellent fire perk can awaken a simple axe; high rarity alone never adds a glow. Choose your intensity locally, or use reduced effects. A cosmetic theme never adds damage.

Windows and Linux shader bundles are included. Platform compilation alone does not prove in-game appearance; the verification record identifies the actual visual and multiplayer test scope.

One item. A new fate.

Craft it. Each eligible new craft rolls independently, from penalties to twelve perks. Repairs, upgrades, storage and trading preserve the result. Existing equipment stays Unrated until deliberately reforged.

Reforge it. Open Reforge beside Craft and Upgrade. Drag in an item from your inventory or quickslots; held equipment is automatically unequipped. Review the cost and press the wide Reforge item button at the bottom. Discover perks one at a time as the slot colour and framed Gear Score change together. Show all perks skips the reveal.

Keep the upgrades. Rolling immediately replaces the entire fate and can make the item worse. Quality, crafter and durability percentage stay; the old fate cannot be kept. Drag an idle item back or choose Return item to return it.

Use ordinary materials. Reforge costs 75.00% of quality-1 base materials, combined and rounded up per ingredient. Equipment ingredients become their underlying materials. Optional AzuCraftyBoxes support draws from accessible nearby native chests after your inventory. No extra currency or station.

Salvage carefully. Open the separate Salvage tab, preview the refund, then confirm permanent removal. Changing tabs keeps the selected item. The default return is 20.00% of recoverable base ingredients, rounded down. Upgrades and rarity do not increase it.

Know your equipment

One perk per row. Hover for mechanics, quality and saved odds. Hold Shift to compare equipped gear; press F6 for the full inspector.
Readable equipment icons. Rarity tints the native background with its original transparency. A small Gear Score number with two copper corners stays visible at the lower right of scored equipment; perk-count labels remain absent. Item details remain available on hover, including while Reforge or Salvage is open.
Gear Score with a foundation. Progression, upgrades and practical perk values determine the score. Rarity alone adds nothing. See item scores on icons and hover, and your equipped total with the inventory.
Readable odds. A perk's Drop value means the chance of that quality or better after receiving that perk. Rarity chance is separate.
Useful placement. Sustained bonuses such as carry capacity roll on worn gear. Existing saved perks remain unchanged.
Optional damage ledger. Press F9 for damage and perk contributions. Its HUD meter hides while interactive windows are open.

Start playing

Install through your mod manager with BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2350+ and Jötunn 2.30.0+. Tested with Valheim 1.0.16.
Launch the modded game and craft equipment at an ordinary station, or finish an equipment cast in the Frost Foundry.
Hover your new item to discover its fate. Visit its required usable station when you want to Reforge, then drag it directly into the slot.

For manual installation, place both included DLLs in BepInEx/plugins/Nornforged/. Configuration is created on first launch.

Multiplayer and updates

Close the game/server before updating. Use the same 0.5.2 package and dependencies on the server and every client. Gameplay settings come from the server; visual, sound and interface preferences remain local. Existing 0.4.5 through 0.5.1 gameplay files need no content migration.

Back up saves, BepInEx/NornforgedData/ and BepInEx/NornforgedBackups/, and preserve customized config. From 0.2.9 or earlier, also retain BepInEx/config/Nornforged/authority/ for migration. Follow the included update guide before changing an established world.

Guides and help

The download includes CHANGELOG.md and docs/Nornforged/: FORGE.md, PERKS.md, GEAR-SCORE.md, COMPARISON.md, VISUALS.md and UPDATE-RECOVERY.md. These cover mechanics, settings, compatibility and recovery. Never delete saved authority data to repair an item; include BepInEx/LogOutput.log with bug reports.

Thank you, MrReeD, for reporting the Frost Foundry issue and the earlier Berserkir Axes material and shield-style recipe issues, and everyone helping test Nornforged.

Original mod and artwork: MIT license. Valheim and dependencies retain their respective licenses.