Valheim Mastery — Public Beta

20 connected skills. A new combat progression. Slayer contracts. Mastery Capes.

Inspired by Old School RuneScape (OSRS): level-based progression, mastery capes, Slayer contracts and long-term mastery, adapted to Valheim's survival and co-op gameplay. Valheim Mastery is an independent fan-made mod, not affiliated with or endorsed by Jagex.

Build a character through combat, gathering, production and exploration. Every Mastery skill progresses from level 1 to 100, with unlocks, milestones and a dedicated Mastery Cape. The Apex Mastery Cape combines all Mastery Cape bonuses after mastering all twenty skills.

This is an early public beta with German and English gameplay text. Mastery follows Valheim's language setting; other languages currently use English.

What is included?

Area	Skills
Combat	Attack, Strength, Defence, Hitpoints, Ranged, Magic
Gathering and wildlife	Mining, Woodcutting, Foraging, Hunter, Fishing
Production	Smithing, Crafting, Farming, Cooking, Alchemy
Exploration and building	Agility, Sailing, Construction
Contracts	Slayer

• Combat styles, accuracy, max hits and equipment requirements. Accuracy failures become 25% glancing hits; successful parries remain damage-free. Immunities and arrows that physically miss are separate from accuracy rolls.
• Base stamina, health and Eitr progression; movement and swimming through Agility.
• Resource tiers, production milestones, material-saving chances, farming grids, additional cultivatable plants and natural ore/tree regeneration.
• Hunter carcass processing and lethal baited traps. Bait attracts nearby wild boars and hares within 18 metres; the trap springs on contact.
• Slayer contracts, two-player shared tasks, completion and streak tokens, prestige upgrades, reward crates, weapons and unlockable Monsterbane headgear styles.
• A Runebound Staff with four Eitr-powered Barrage spells and area effects.
• Twenty Mastery Capes and eight styles of the animated Apex Mastery Cape.
• Prayer progression with 30 German-named prayers, a buildable altar, offerings, and Prayer Mead. The Prayer panel shows points, levels, availability and active states with relief icons. The mead base uses the existing cauldron and fermenter; no extra brewing station is needed.
• A compact combat-style and five-sense HUD below the minimap with original relief icons, touch buttons, controller navigation, German sense labels, cooldown/readiness text and passive active-effect indicators.
• Freeform Construction, building-area projects, work orders and area repair. Prebuilt village blueprints are temporarily disabled. Saved plans remain dormant; already built pieces are preserved.
• The basic campfire is buildable at Construction 1. With BetterUI installed, enable its customSkillUI setting; Mastery then displays its twenty skills in that renderer. The optional Comfort Pack includes this setting.

Install

1. Use a fresh Valheim profile in a Thunderstore-compatible mod manager.
2. Install this package and its declared BepInEx dependency, then launch modded.
3. For the first beta session, use a new character and test world, or back up your character, world and existing mod configuration before loading them.
4. Open the skill window and click a Mastery skill to inspect its milestones.

Built against Windows / Steam Valheim 1.0.16, using BepInExPack_Valheim 5.4.2350. An isolated 1.0.16 startup loaded Mastery and reported the Prayer callsites ready; full in-game Prayer and co-op coverage is still incomplete. The plugin also accepts 1.0.15. Other operating systems are unverified.

The core mod does not require BetterUI, Jotunn or Equipment and Quick Slots. With Equipment and Quick Slots, the quiver can use additional inventory cells. Without it, equip the quiver by right-clicking it; ammunition stays in the main inventory.

For manual installation, install BepInEx separately and copy this archive's plugins/ValheimMastery/ folder into BepInEx/plugins/.

Progression and configuration

Fresh installations use XP x1. All twenty skills share the same thresholds: level 100 requires 1,439,116 XP. Approximately 10 hours of relevant activity per skill is a balancing target, not a measured completion-time guarantee.

After the first launch, close the game and edit BepInEx/config/org.valheim.mastery.cfg:

[Progression]
CombatXpMultiplier = 1

Despite its historical name, this setting controls all Mastery skills and the integrated native/mod skill XP paths. For faster testing, set it to 5. The host controls the multiplayer multiplier. Existing settings are not replaced by this package. The development XP slider is not included in this release.

Anonymous balancing telemetry is stored locally under BepInEx/ValheimMastery/balancing. It records XP sources, active-time windows, outputs, perk procs and resource/combat samples; multipliers are normalized back to x1 for comparison. It does not transmit data or record player/world names, chat, peer IDs or coordinates. Set Diagnostics.EnableBalanceTelemetry = false to disable future recording.

Existing Mastery progress is retained. Compatible existing vanilla and legacy mod skill levels are imported once where a matching migration exists; genuinely new skills begin at level 1. Loading an existing character can perform that migration, so make the backup before the first Mastery session.

Controls

Key	Action
F1	Cycle combat style
Q	Activate the selected sense
F2	Cycle resource, contract, hunting and fishing senses
Shift + F2	Native connection information
F3	Cycle unlocked Runebound Staff spells
Hold middle mouse	Bow/crossbow zoom
Ctrl + F1	Slayer Mastery Cape berserk
Shift + F1	Contextual Mining, Woodcutting or Sailing power
Alt + F1	Contextual Hunter, Construction or Fishing cape power
Alt + Q	Slayer hunting instinct, when unlocked
Touch the left GEBET tab	Open or close the Prayer list

Controls are configurable. The Apex Mastery Cape keeps the same contextual controls; Q activates only the selected sense. Auto-run is unbound by the mod.

Multiplayer beta

Every player must use the same Mastery release and compatible game version. Internal TEST builds are not interchangeable with public RELEASE builds.

Slayer co-op is explicitly started for two players at the board. Join before the first kill; qualifying nearby participants receive the same Slayer kill XP. Tokens are awarded at completion. Both players must be alive and within the required 70 m completion range to receive the shared completion reward.

Owner changes, reconnects and long sessions still need broader live testing. Dedicated servers are experimental and are not advertised as fully validated.

Slayer's host-side ledger is stored in BepInEx/config/ValheimMastery/slayer-<world-id>.json. Back up this directory along with character and world saves; replacing only the DLL does not reset it.

Compatibility and updates

Do not run the replaced Smoothbrain Mining, Lumberjacking, Blacksmithing, Farming, Foraging, Cooking or Sailing plugins alongside Mastery. Their known plugin IDs are declared incompatible. Back up first, then disable those plugins; Mastery can read supported legacy progress without their DLLs being loaded.

BetterArchery, other combat overhauls, additional skill-replacement plugins and SkillBonusTooltips are outside the supported starting setup. Begin with the core mod and add optional UI/comfort mods only after it works.

Close Valheim before updating. Do not load the same character in a vanilla session as an uninstall test: this mod adds saved progress, items and world objects. Restore a pre-Mastery backup for a clean rollback.

Known limits

• Village blueprint placement and terrain preparation are intentionally paused.
• Bait attracts boars and hares only. Birds can still trigger a baited trap when they land on it, but are not drawn toward it.
• Languages other than German and English currently fall back to English.
• The 10-hour progression target needs real playtime feedback.
• Genuine two-machine long-session, reconnect and dedicated-server coverage is incomplete. Controlled network-handler checks are not equivalent to that.
• Third-party enemy/content mods may need explicit compatibility work.
• An earlier audit identified a conditional incoming status-effect ordering issue; a zero-damage result does not promise removal of pre-existing status effects.

The release includes automated progression checks and isolated in-game checks covering skill windows, equipment sets, recipes and multiplayer-sensitive paths.

Useful beta feedback

Report a bug or balance problem on GitHub Issues. This is the feedback channel for both the standalone mod and Comfort Pack. Public reports are visible to other users, so remove personal information.

Include the Mastery and Valheim versions, XP multiplier, installed mods, whether you were host/client, exact reproduction steps and expected/actual behaviour. For balance feedback, add your skill level, activity and rough duration.

Attach only the relevant log excerpt from BepInEx/LogOutput.log; remove private server details and personal paths first. FEEDBACK.md contains a template.

Deutsch

Öffentliche Beta mit allen 20 Skills, Slayer, Runebound Sorcery und Mastery Capes. Inspiriert von Old School RuneScape (OSRS). Die Spieloberfläche folgt der Valheim-Sprache: Deutsch oder Englisch. Frische Installationen starten mit XP x1; der Host kann den Faktor in der Config ändern. Alle Mitspieler brauchen denselben Release. Dorf-Baupläne sind vorerst deaktiviert, freies Bauen bleibt aktiv. Bitte vor der ersten Nutzung bestehende Charaktere, Welten und die Mastery-Konfiguration sichern. Fehler und Balancing sind weiterhin zu erwarten. Fehler und Balancing-Rückmeldungen bitte über die oben verlinkten GitHub Issues melden.

Unofficial fan-made mod. Not affiliated with Iron Gate, Coffee Stain or Jagex. See NOTICE.md for asset and compatibility attribution.