HoldGround
Less or no knockback in fights: enemy hits, blocks and parries stop pushing you back, and your blocks, parries and weapon hits stop pushing enemies out of reach. A slider for each; pick the weapons that keep theirs. Client-only.HoldGround
Tired of being shoved around in every fight, and of shoving the enemy out of reach yourself?
In vanilla Valheim, every hit pushes. Enemies knock you back when they hit you and when you block them, and your own blocks, parries and sword swings push them out of reach, so you have to step in again before you can follow up. HoldGround takes the knockback out of fights with creatures, both ways, or turns it down as far as you like, and leaves the weapons you pick their punch. HoldGround is client-only: it works on vanilla dedicated servers.
Features
- Enemy hits don't push you back. Melee, arrows and area attacks you don't block, including hits on your back while you're blocking.
- Blocking and parrying don't push you back. Every hit that lands on your shield from the front, including the one that breaks your guard.
- Enemy shields don't push you back. When a creature blocks your attack with its shield, you stay where you are.
- Your weapon hits don't push enemies back, except the weapon types you pick. By default clubs, maces, sledges and fists keep their vanilla knockback. Tick polearms to keep the atgeir's crowd control, or untick clubs to make sledges stop pushing too.
- Your blocks and parries don't shove the enemy away. It stays right in front of you for the counter, and a parry still staggers it.
- A slider for each. Each one goes from 0 (no push, the default) to 100 (vanilla), so you can keep a little push for feel.
- Only the push changes. Damage, stamina, staggers and guard breaks work as in vanilla: when your stagger bar fills you still stagger.
A hit's weapon type is the skill of the weapon that made it, so arrows count as Bows, bolts as Crossbows, staff blasts as ElementalMagic or BloodMagic, and modded weapons by the skill they use. A hit with none of these skills (a modded weapon with a skill of its own, say) counts as Clubs when blunt is its biggest physical damage, and otherwise follows Your weapon hits.
Settings (F1 → HoldGround)
The sliders are the percent of vanilla's push that's kept: 0 removes it, 100 is vanilla.
| Section | Setting | Default | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Knockback on you | Enemy hits (% kept) | 0 | Hits you don't block. |
| Your blocks and parries (% kept) | 0 | Hits on your shield, including a guard break. | |
| Enemy blocks (% kept) | 0 | A creature's shield blocking your attack. | |
| Knockback on enemies | Your weapon hits (% kept) | 0 | Melee, arrows, bolts, thrown spears and staff blasts, for the weapon types not ticked below. |
| Weapons that keep their knockback | Clubs, Unarmed | Swords, Axes, Knives, Spears, Polearms, Clubs, Unarmed, Pickaxes, Bows, Crossbows, ElementalMagic, BloodMagic. Ticked types keep their full vanilla push. | |
| Your blocks and parries (% kept) | 0 | Your shield's deflection on the attacker. | |
| Debug | Debug log | off | Writes every push on you and every push your hits and blocks would give an enemy to BepInEx/LogOutput.log, with its cause and how much was kept. For bug reports. |
Changes apply right away, whether you make them in F1 or in BepInEx/config/vh.holdground.cfg while the game runs. In the .cfg file, the weapon types are a comma-separated list (None for none).
Updating from 1.1.0? Your on/off choices carry over on the first start: on becomes 0 and off 100.
Compatibility
- Client-only. Install it on your own game; the server stays vanilla. Your game pushes your own character, so changing that changes nothing for anyone else. The push on an enemy travels in the hit your game sends for your attack or block; HoldGround only scales its push, and the game running the creature applies it as usual. It works the same whoever runs the creature. No new network messages, no world data.
- Enemies are creatures that aren't tamed. Hits between players (PvP), from tames, traps and the environment, and your own weapon's recoil keep their knockback. The one exception: the game doesn't say who blocked a hit, so in PvP another player's shield block follows Enemy blocks too.
- An enemy you kill with a hit whose push is removed isn't thrown back as it falls.
- Requires BepInExPack Valheim. Recommended: a Configuration Manager for the F1 settings. Without one, edit the .cfg file.
- Made for Valheim 1.0.21.
- Mods that also change knockback, blocking or deflection (by patching
Character.Damage,Character.ApplyPushback,Humanoid.BlockAttackorItemData.GetDeflectionForce) may clash with it. - Servers that only allow whitelisted client mods may refuse it, like any other unlisted mod.