CrossbowBalancer

A lightweight, server-synchronized rebalance mod for Valheim crossbows. Adjust damage multipliers, skill experience scaling, per-shot experience rewards, stamina costs, and reload times with real-time sliders.

Why Adjust Crossbow Damage and Experience?

1. Why Adjust Damage?

In vanilla Valheim, crossbows have a long reload animation (typically 3.5 seconds or longer) that severely restricts player movement, prevents dodging, and locks stamina regeneration during reloading. Despite this high vulnerability, standard crossbow damage output often fails to justify the downtime when compared to rapid-fire bows or agile melee weapons.

By applying a default 1.35x damage multiplier (configurable via slider), crossbows deliver the high burst damage expected of heavy ranged artillery. Shots become decisive and rewarding, adequately compensating the player for the high commitment and positioning required.

2. Why Adjust Experience (EXP)?

Crossbow skill progression in vanilla Valheim is exceptionally slow and unforgiving:

In the vanilla game, experience is only awarded when a bolt successfully strikes an enemy.
Because crossbows fire at a much lower rate than bows, missing a shot means 100% wasted time with zero skill progression.
Fighting evasive, flying, or star-tier enemies makes leveling up Crossbows far more tedious than leveling any other weapon skill in the game.

CrossbowBalancer addresses this by:

Introducing a global skill experience multiplier (default 1.5x) so landed hits reward meaningful progress.
Providing an EXP Per Shot feature (default 1.0) that grants skill experience whenever a bolt is fired, regardless of whether it hits a target. This ensures target practice, hunting, and high-intensity fights all contribute steadily to leveling your Crossbow skill.

Features

Universal Compatibility: Applies automatically to all vanilla crossbows (Arbalest, Ripper) and any mod-added crossbows (such as those from Valheim Armory, BowPlugin, or other equipment mods).
Real-Time Tooltip Updates: Scaled damage values are calculated directly on item stats, so weapon tooltips in your inventory accurately display the adjusted damage numbers.
Optional Bolt Damage Scaling: Option to scale bolt/ammo damage alongside the weapon multiplier for balanced total burst damage.
Experience Per Shot: Grants skill experience on firing, eliminating the frustration of wasted reloads from near-misses.
Stamina and Reload Tuning: Additional sliders allow fine-tuning of stamina drain per shot and reload animation speed.
ServerSync Integration: Full dedicated server authority. Configuration settings are automatically synchronized from the server to connected clients. Admin locking prevents unauthorized client changes.
In-Game Configuration: Compatible with BepInEx Configuration Manager (press F1 in-game to adjust sliders in real time).

Configuration Settings

The configuration file is located at BepInEx/config/com.aitod.valheim.crossbowbalancer.cfg.

1 - General

Lock Configuration (Default: On): If On, only server administrators can modify synced configuration settings.

2 - Damage Balancing

Damage Multiplier (Default: 1.35, Range: 0.10 - 5.00): Multiplier applied across all crossbows. Scales all damage components (pierce, elemental, physical).
Scale Bolt Damage (Default: On): If On, also scales the bolt/ammo damage portion by the damage multiplier.

3 - Experience Balancing

EXP Multiplier (Default: 1.50, Range: 0.10 - 10.00): Multiplier applied to Crossbows skill experience gains.
EXP Per Shot (Default: 1.00, Range: 0.00 - 5.00): Crossbows skill experience awarded immediately upon firing a crossbow. Set to 0 to retain vanilla hit-only behavior.

4 - Combat and Handling

Stamina Drain Multiplier (Default: 1.00, Range: 0.00 - 3.00): Multiplier for stamina consumed when firing a crossbow.
Reload Time Multiplier (Default: 1.00, Range: 0.20 - 3.00): Multiplier for crossbow reload duration (1.0 = normal, 0.8 = 20% faster reload).

Installation

Manual Installation

Install BepInEx for Valheim.
Extract the CrossbowBalancer folder or place CrossbowBalancer.dll into your Valheim/BepInEx/plugins/ directory.
Launch the game. The config file will be generated automatically.

Dedicated Server

Install CrossbowBalancer.dll into BepInEx/plugins/ on the dedicated server.
The server config will act as the master configuration and push settings to all connecting players.

Source & Support

Developed for smooth multiplayer balance and vanilla-plus gameplay.