Useful Skills

Gives nearly every skill a bonus worth levelling and a perk that unlocks at level 50, and adds four skills: Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor and Sailing. Main bonuses grow with the skill level (a quarter at 25, all of it at 100); perks start at half strength at 50 and reach full strength at 100. Every value has its own slider. The skills window shows each bonus and perk in the skill's tooltip, with its value at your current level.

Client-only. Install it on your own game; it works on vanilla servers and with players who don't have it.

Skills (values at level 100, default)

Skill	Bonus	Perk (from level 50)
Swords	+25% swing speed	one-handed: riposte, your next hit within 2 s after a parry +30%; greatswords: heal 5% of the damage you deal
Knives	+25% swing speed	flurry: each knife hit in a row +5% damage, up to +25%
Clubs	+25% swing speed	+25% stagger
Polearms	+25% swing speed	whirlwind: the atgeir's spin attack costs 30% less stamina
Axes	+25% swing speed	one-handed and dual axes: +20% damage to staggered enemies; battleaxes: up to +25% more swing speed as you lose health, all of it at half health
Unarmed	+25% swing speed	brawler: 3 stamina back for each unarmed attack that lands
Spears	+25% swing speed	thrown spears +25% speed, +20% damage; armor penetration: ignore 30% of creatures' resistances (and of enemy armor on raised world levels)
Pickaxes	+25% swing speed	+20% ore and scrap from rocks
Bows	30% chance a shot doesn't use the arrow	+20% arrow speed
Crossbows	30% chance a shot doesn't use the bolt	−20% reload time
Elemental Magic	+15% staff damage	10% chance a cast costs no eitr
Blood Magic	+20% staff and summon damage	+1 summon at once
Blocking	+25% parry window (0.25 s → 0.31 s)	+50% adrenaline from parries
Dodge	10% chance a hit misses you completely (not while your shield is up)	+50% adrenaline from perfect dodges
Run	+20% stamina regen	−25% stamina regen delay
Sneak	+50% sneaking speed	unseen: 30% harder to notice while crouched
Swim	+50% swimming speed	−30% swim stamina
Jump	−50% fall damage	−30% jump stamina
Woodcutting	+30% wood from trees, logs and stumps	20% of the swing's stamina back when it hits a tree
Farming	25% chance planting doesn't use the seed	+25 points bonus harvest chance
Fishing	50% chance a cast doesn't use the bait	bite time: fish near your float go for the bait sooner (the wait between their tries halves)
Cooking	food you eat lasts 30% longer	Rested lasts 25% longer
Crafting	−40% durability loss on your equipped gear	thrifty upgrades: 20% of the materials back when you upgrade an item

Armor skills

Skill	Bonus at 100 (default)	Perk (from level 50)
Light Armor	+20% eitr regen	+5% movement speed
Medium Armor	−10% attack stamina, −10% sprint stamina, removes the movement penalty of medium pieces that have one	+40 carry weight
Heavy Armor	removes the movement penalty of your heavy pieces; 25% chance to block a hit while no shield is up, for the base block power of the buckler of your armor's biome	+25% stagger resistance

• An armor skill trains, and gives its bonus, while at least 2 of your helmet, chest and legs are of its class. Capes never count.
• Experience: 0.05 per meter you walk, run or swim, and 2 per hit from a creature or player that hurts you (at most one every 0.3 s). Level 50 takes about 73 km, level 100 about 400 km on foot; hits shorten that.
• Classes: light armor is the mage sets. The lists in the config win (defaults: *Heavy*, *Medium*, and *Mage* as light). Otherwise a piece that slows you is heavy, one with eitr regen is light, cosmetic pieces without armor don't count, and the rest (rags, leather, troll, root, fenris and so on) is medium.
• Each helmet, chest and leg tooltip shows the piece's class, whether its class bonuses are active, its movement penalty after your armor skill and, for heavy pieces, its armor block.
• Heavy armor block: the buckler is found from the armor's recipe. Bronze armor blocks like the bronze buckler, iron like the iron one, carapace like the carapace one; sets from a biome without a buckler (wolf, padded, flametal) use the buckler of the best earlier set. You can override any set in the config.

Sailing

+20% sail and paddle power and +30% turning at 100, for the ship you steer; perk: the ship takes 25% less damage. Experience: 0.08 per meter the ship travels (level 50 after about 46 km, 100 after about 250 km).

Progression

• The skills vanilla levels slowest gain experience faster: Crafting ×6, Cooking ×3, Dodge ×3, Blood Magic ×3, Farming ×2, Swim ×2, Sneak ×2, Ride ×2.
• On death, non-combat skills (Farming, Cooking, Crafting, Fishing, Woodcutting, Pickaxes, Ride, Sailing) lose half of what vanilla takes. Combat skills, including Run, Jump, Swim, Sneak and the armor skills, lose the vanilla amount.
• Checkpoints at 50 and 75: once a skill reaches one, dying can't take it below that level. The skills window shows the checkpoint you've reached and the next one.

Notes

• Type usefulskills in the F5 console to see every armor piece with its class and block value. With devcommands, raiseskill heavyarmor 10 and raiseskill sailing 10 work like for vanilla skills.
• Other players see your faster swings; vanilla syncs your animation speed.
• Extra wood and ore drop when your game runs the tree or rock, which is the usual case (you, unless another player got to the area first and is still near).
• The four new skills are saved in your character, twice: in the skill list and in the character's custom data. If you play the character without the mod, the game drops them from the skill list, but the second copy stays, and the levels come back the next time the character loads with the mod.
• All settings are in BepInEx\config\vh.usefulskills.cfg or the in-game configuration manager (F1), and apply at once.

Compatibility

• Built for Valheim 1.0.21 with BepInExPack 5.4.2351. No server part, no network messages of its own.
• Adds its skills the way Jotunn does, made to sit alongside Jotunn skill mods.
• Made to work alongside mods that add equipment slots (the bonuses read the usual helmet, chest and legs), plant several crops at once (each crop rolls for its seed) or craft from containers (refunds go to your inventory, or drop at your feet when it's full).
• Other mods that change attack animation speed, the parry window or skill gains may stack with it or override it.