BaseDefenseWard
Tower defence for your base: build the ward, survive the wave that comes for it, earn tiered rewards. Mobs hunt exposed players; sheltered ones are ignored.Base Defense Ward
A tower-defence challenge for your Valheim base. Build the Base Defense Ward (Hammer, Misc tab; same model and cost as the vanilla ward, glows red while active) and a countdown starts. When it ends, a wave spawns around your base and comes for the ward. Hold it and you are rewarded; lose it and the challenge is lost.
How it plays
- Countdown starts the moment the ward is built (default 10 minutes). It only runs while the ward is being simulated, so it pauses when you log out or nobody is near it, also on dedicated servers. A panel left of the minimap shows the time to the next wave, the time left to hold during a wave, or the build deadline if one is configured.
- The wave spawns at a distance from the ward (default 55 m, outside the ward's 32 m radius) and grows with every challenge this world has already completed.
- Not stupid: mobs hunt any player within range who is exposed. A player who is roofed and walled in is ignored and the mobs go for the ward and the structures in their way instead.
- Win when every wave mob is dead, or when the ward still stands at the end of the time limit (default 5 min). Rewards drop at the ward: coins plus materials matching your progression, scaled by completed challenges.
- Lose if the ward is destroyed during a wave.
- One ward per player. Build a new one to move it: the previous one disappears and the countdown restarts. You cannot rebuild while your ward has a wave in progress. In multiplayer each player can have one.
Progression
The mob pool is picked from tiers unlocked by boss trophies hung on the sacrificial stones. A fresh world only sees Meadows creatures; hang Eikthyr's trophy and Black Forest creatures join, and so on through Ashlands. Later tiers get heavier as you complete more challenges, but a tier you have not unlocked never appears. Rewards follow the same tiers.
Installation
- Mod manager (r2modman / Thunderstore Mod Manager): install BepInExPack Valheim and this mod.
- Manual: install BepInExPack Valheim,
then unpack this zip and copy
plugins\BaseDefenseWard.dllintoBepInEx\plugins\.
Install on every client. The host or dedicated server runs the wave logic, so it must have the mod too. Requires BepInEx 5.4.23 or newer (Valheim runs on Unity 6).
Options (BepInEx/config/com.night.basedefenseward.cfg)
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| CountdownMinutes | 10 | Build to first wave |
| WaveTimeLimitMinutes | 5 | Hold this long and the wave counts as beaten |
| SpawnRadius | 55 | Spawn distance from the ward |
| BaseMobCount / MobsPerCompletedChallenge / MaxMobCount | 4 / 2 / 30 | Wave size |
| SpawnIntervalSeconds | 1.5 | Delay between individual spawns |
| PlayerHuntRange | 40 | Exposed players within this range of a mob get hunted |
| RewardMultiplier | 1 | Scales reward amounts |
| DeleteWorldOnLoss | false | Destructive. Lose the challenge and the world save is deleted; dedicated servers exit so a wrapper can restart |
| BuildDeadlineMinutes | 0 (off) | A ward must be built this many minutes after world creation or the challenge is lost |
| BossKeys | bdw_hung_* keys | Which global keys unlock each tier (use the defeated_* keys to count kills instead) |
| ExtraMobPools | empty | Override the built-in tier pools, tiers separated by ;, prefabs by , |
Known limitations
- The challenge only ticks while a player is within the ward's active area. If everyone leaves, the wave pauses until someone returns (this is how Valheim simulates the world).
- Rewards and the build cost are a first pass; feedback welcome.
Links
Source, issues and contributions: https://github.com/GustavHenning/base-defense-ward