The Great Hall

A server-authoritative character system and leaderboard for Valheim dedicated servers.

The server owns your character. It keeps the authoritative copy, hands it back when you join, and a character levelled somewhere else cannot be walked in. Everyone on the server earned what they are carrying, on that server.

There is also a leaderboard — press F7 — ranking everyone by deaths, power level, or any single skill category.

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⚠ This is a development build

It works, and it has been tested fairly hard by one person. It has not been tested with several people playing at once, which is the next thing on the list. Expect rough edges, expect bugs, and please do not put it on a server whose characters you would be upset to lose.

If something breaks, or you just want to tell me it is bad, find me as Zomax in the Valheim Modding Discord.

Try it without installing a server

There is a live test server running this. Client mod only — install it, join, and see what happens.

srv1936396.hstgr.cloud:2456
password: valheim

It is realm-locked, so you will be asked whether to hand your character over the first time, and you will start there with a brand new character.

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What it does to your character

Nothing, unless you agree. Before anything is applied, the mod stops and tells you in plain words what the server is about to do, and you can disconnect instead. That question is asked once per character, per server.

On a realm server:

• Your first visit starts a brand new character — no gear, no skills. Your name, face, hair and beard come with you; nothing else does.
• The server's copy is the one that counts. Whatever that character did elsewhere is not part of it.
• Your own character file is never read, written or deleted. The realm character is held separately, and nothing touches the character you picked at the menu.
• Everything you earn there is uploaded and given back next time — skills, inventory, food, recipes, appearance, and where you were standing and what you had explored.

Progress is uploaded every few minutes, on death, on logout, and a few seconds after your inventory changes. An unclean exit — a crash or a power cut — can cost the last few seconds. A normal logout costs nothing.

The consent prompt carries one optional extra, off by default: whether to keep your character-select slot updated with your realm progress, so the carousel shows the gear you actually have. Turning it on replaces that local character when you log out. It is the only thing this mod ever writes to your own character files, it cannot be undone, and it never happens unless you tick the box.

On servers that do not run this, it does nothing

The mod greets each dedicated server once and goes inert if it gets no answer. Unknown routed RPCs are silently ignored by vanilla Valheim, so a plain server never notices it is there — no custom version string, no changed network version, nothing making you incompatible with anything. Singleplayer and other people's servers are unaffected.

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Installing the server

The package contains both halves:

File	Goes where	Notes
Deathboard.Client.dll	every player's BepInEx/plugins	the mod manager does this for you
Deathboard.dll	the dedicated server's BepInEx/plugins	copy it there yourself

Both are installed on your own machine by the mod manager, and that is fine — each stands down where it does not belong. The server half does nothing on a client, and the client half does nothing on a headless server. Realm features additionally require a dedicated server, so hosting a play-with-friends world will not realm-lock your own game.

Steps

1. Install BepInEx on the dedicated server if it is not there already.
2. Copy Deathboard.dll into the server's BepInEx/plugins/.
3. Start the server once. It writes BepInEx/config/com.deathboard.valheim.cfg.
4. Restart after any config change.

Check it loaded — the log line is the only honest confirmation:

===== Deathboard v3.0.0 build 36 starting =====
Realm protocol 6 registered (RealmMode=True, ... ). KickUnmodded is ON: ...

⚠ Realm lock is ON by default, and it kicks people

RealmMode and KickUnmodded both default to true, because a server-authoritative character store that ships switched off is not what anyone installs this for.

That means every player must have the client mod installed. Anyone without it is disconnected about fifteen seconds after connecting, and Valheim only lets a server show one of thirteen built-in reasons, so what they actually see is "Incompatible version". There is no way to send them a custom message — tell people out of band before you turn this on.

If that is not what you want, set RealmMode = false for a plain leaderboard server: no character data moves at all.

Settings worth knowing

BepInEx/config/com.deathboard.valheim.cfg

Setting	Default	Purpose
RealmMode	true	The server owns characters. Off = leaderboard only.
KickUnmodded	true	Disconnect players without the client mod.
KickUnmoddedGraceSeconds	15	How long they get to complete the handshake.
BackupCount	3	Previous character generations kept per player.
BackupIntervalMinutes	10	How far apart those backups are spaced.
SnapshotDir	(empty)	Where characters are stored. Empty = <config>/Deathboard/characters.
BoardTitle	The Great Hall	Leaderboard heading.
SkillJumpWarnPoints	15	Log a warning when one skill leaps this far. Advisory only.

Where the data lives

BepInEx/config/Deathboard/deaths.json              the ledger
BepInEx/config/Deathboard/characters/<steamId>/    every stored character
    <name>.fch            the character
    <name>.fch.bak1..N    previous generations
    <name>.world          position, spawn points, explored map
    <name>.meta.json      generation and checksum

Back that folder up. It is the characters.

The config file and folders say deathboard — that was the working name, and renaming them would orphan every stored character. They were left alone on purpose.

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Requirements

• BepInEx for Valheim, on both the client and the server.
• Both halves must be the same build. The wire protocol has a version byte, and a mismatched client goes inert rather than half-working — which, on a realm-locked server, means it gets kicked.

Privacy

On a realm server this uploads your character — skills, inventory, food, recipes, appearance, position and explored map — to that server, which is what lets it hand the character back. Nothing is sent anywhere else, and nothing at all is sent to servers not running this mod.