Changelog

1.0.2

• Packaging fix. The DLL is back at the root of the zip, beside manifest.json, icon.png and the markdown. 1.0.1 moved it into BepInEx/plugins on the strength of the packaging guide; every Valheim package verified to install correctly uses the flat layout instead, so this matches them rather than the page describing them.
• The shipped manifest now carries only the five documented fields, in the order the reference packages use. author is gone from it — that field exists so the build can name the zip, and the real namespace comes from the team the package is uploaded under.

1.0.1

• Moved the DLL into BepInEx/plugins inside the zip, following the packaging guide's description of folder names deciding where files land. See 1.0.2.
• A proper icon: a bone skull with lit sockets, instead of the placeholder.
• Documentation corrected against what actually shipped. The install section no longer describes a dedicated-server package, because there is not one — the mod disables itself on a headless process, so it is client-only. The config table gained the thirteen settings added since it was written, and a Known issues section now states plainly where lava, flying enemies and vanilla's own pathing still bite.

1.0.0 — first public release

Everything below is what the mod does today. It was built over roughly eighty development versions; that record lives in the repository rather than here, because a changelog on a mod page is for deciding whether to install something, not for reading a diary.

Orders

• Three orders on one key by tap count: attack what you are aimed at (or move there), come back, hold this position.
• A crew menu on F1 for everything else, including both harvest orders.
• F3 picks who orders apply to — everyone, or one summon at a time — and the HUD names the current target so a partial order is never a surprise.
• A summon sent somewhere holds that exact spot until recalled, fighting what comes within the guard radius and returning to its post afterwards.
• Orders that cannot be carried out are refused on screen: no path to the destination, tool tier too low, target in lava.

Classes

• Six classes, chosen per summon before you raise it: Melee, Archer, Defender, Healer, Fire Mage and Ice Mage.
• Group presets — name a composition like 1d,2a,1r and raise the whole crew from one cast. Four are shipped and the list is config. The cast costs one summon's health and Eitr per summon raised, and the group is trimmed to the slots the staff still has free.
• Each carries its own kit, holds its own place in the formation, and has its own health, damage and resistance — all applied on top of the Blood Magic scaling, so investment still decides how strong a crew is and the class decides its shape.
• Defenders lead, see further and keep a short leash. Mages and the healer hold the back line, refuse to open fights, back off when badly hurt, and are skipped by hostile target selection while a defender is close enough to be found instead.
• The healer is a protection unit first. It puts the staff's ward on whoever is actually taking damage — the defender holding the line, or you — rather than on itself, because absorb applied before a blow cannot overheal and cannot arrive too late.
• It heals whoever is most urgent, weighing the damage landing on them rather than how much health they are missing, so a defender under attack outranks an archer standing safely behind with a scratch. One flat heal per cast, scaled up for large health pools, so its work is never confused with the out-of-combat regeneration.
• An ally about to die is healed immediately, outside the staff's ordinary cadence.
• Two menu rows heal without aiming at anything: "Heal me" and "Heal whoever needs it most".
• One healer, one fire mage, one ice mage and two defenders at a time; warriors and archers fill the rest. At a class limit the raise becomes a warrior with a notice rather than costing the Eitr for nothing.
• The specialist classes unlock as you craft the matching staff or shield, and each unlock strengthens the whole crew.
• The crew is as strong as the caster who raised it. Mage armour and staves in your pack give your summons the full skill and progression bonus; leaving the staves at base in iron armour gives you less of it. The BASE strength never changes, so a melee player's summons work as well as they always did — they simply do not get the specialist's multiplier. Measured once, when a summon is raised, and written onto it: dying or changing gear cannot weaken a crew you already paid for, and re-evaluation only ever raises it.

Fighting as a crew

• The crew fights one thing at a time. Whatever is hitting a summon or you becomes everyone's target, so a summon under attack is helped rather than watched.
• A distant fight is opened by ONE summon — the longest reach in the crew, so the archer where there is one — while the rest hold formation and receive the enemy where they stand. If it will not come, they commit anyway rather than waiting forever.
• A summon walks to a target it cannot reach and stops the moment it can, instead of holding a target twenty-five metres away and never closing.
• Self-defence outranks everything except your own orders: a summon being hit fights back even while walking to a post, holding a move order, or serving out a disengage.
• The formation holds while you WALK, not only when you stand still — defender ahead, the line flanking, casters and the healer behind you — and they jog to dress the line rather than sprinting laps around you.
• Anything attacking the crew is never "too far to bother with": a leash exists to stop them chasing a fleeing greydwarf across the map, not to make them stand there being shot at.

Staying alive

• Health, damage, physical and elemental resistance all scale with Blood Magic.
• Regeneration out of combat, so a crew is not lost to attrition between fights.
• Summons follow you through portals, and are rescued when stranded.
• They keep out of lava. Valheim's navmesh has no lava concept at all, so this is real work: the route they will actually walk is checked corner by corner, a way round is taken where one exists, they stop at the last safe spot where none does, and they are never told to STAND somewhere molten — formation slots and patrol points move off it. If something puts them in anyway, they climb out, and are lifted clear if they cannot. You walking in yourself is the one case they will follow.
• The Dead Raiser's cap is raised for a FULLY UPGRADED staff, which then supports six. A partly upgraded one keeps vanilla's cap - its own level - so the extra crew is something the staff earns rather than a flat handout.
• Summoning costs less health and Eitr than vanilla.
• The protection staff's shield absorbs more as Blood Magic rises. Vanilla ships that mechanism and feeds it a hardcoded zero, so stock it never scales.

Harvesting — optional, off by default

• Send the crew to fell a tree, mine a node, or clear an area of either.
• Tool tiers are respected, felled trees are worked into logs, and large nodes are shared while small ones are spread across.
• Your base is protected, including grown crops. Wood is exempt, because a tree in a base is a crop and felling it is the point of a tree farm.

Quality of life

• A crew HUD listing every summon, its health, what it is doing and its class, including summons that have walked out of range.
• An optional light on each of your summons, brighter on the one currently selected.
• Map pins for the crew.
• They walk through you and each other instead of shoving.
• Console diagnostics (skcrew_recon, skcrew_weapons, skcrew_prefabs) for when something needs explaining rather than guessing.