balrond extra skills
Adds 8 new skills and reworks bonuses from existing vanilla ones, add a cool xp bar. All configurable
About this mod Author’s original text
Balrond Extra Skills
Balrond Extra Skills 0.4.0 expands Valheim's progression system with eight persistent custom skills, upgrades selected vanilla skills, adds a unified Total Level, and provides compatibility layers for several major skill/progression mods.
The goal is not to replace Valheim's skill system with a separate RPG framework. BES keeps the normal use-based Valheim progression model, improves weak or exploitable parts of it, and adds new skills only where there is a clear gameplay role.
Main features
- Eight persistent custom skills with fixed save-safe IDs.
- Total Level / Total Progress calculated across the full active skill set.
- Lightweight movable and scalable Total Level HUD.
- Global and per-skill XP multipliers.
- Optional permanent Skill Floors and Mastery protection.
- Signed skill effects when Balrond Negative Skills is installed.
- Soft integration with SkillsReworked without locking to one specific external-mod version.
- Runeforging skill recognition.
- Small weapon-specific combat identities without replacing vanilla combat-skill effects.
- Pickaxes, Wood Cutting, Farming/Foraging and Sneak extensions.
- Safer Crafting extra-yield behavior.
- Optional Material Mastery.
- Kitchen Mastery for Cooking.
- Configurable Health, Stamina and Eitr regeneration bonuses.
- Taming progression with taming, breeding, tamed-loot and offspring bonuses.
- ServerSync-backed gameplay configuration.
- ConfigurationManager-friendly Basic/Advanced config layout.
- Built-in diagnostic commands for testing and compatibility work.
What's new in 0.4.0
- Added Taming as custom skill 15008.
- Added configurable Health, Stamina and Eitr regeneration scaling to Vitality, Endurance and Arcana.
- Expanded Sailing with optional top-speed scaling, collision/water-impact damage reduction and configurable headwind assistance.
- Expanded Farming with configurable harvest bonuses, Foraging AOE, crop growth information and wild-pickable respawn information.
- Added optional Wood Cutting seed return for sustainable replanting.
- Custom-skill Enabled now means a complete gameplay disable while preserving saved progression for later re-enable.
- Updated SkillsReworked compatibility so SkillsReworked remains authoritative for managed progression while BES keeps its gameplay effects.
Custom BES skills
BES uses fixed numeric IDs so existing character progression can survive updates.
| Skill | ID | Default effect at skill 100 | Main XP sources |
|---|---:|---|---|
| Vitality | 15001 | +10 maximum health, +10% health regeneration | Health food and real sleep/wake cycles |
| Arcana | 15002 | +10 maximum Eitr, +10% Eitr regeneration | Eitr food and Eitr actually spent |
| Endurance | 15003 | +20 maximum stamina, +10% stamina regeneration | Complete exertion cycles |
| Exploration | 15004 | +5 minimap pixel rings | New map pixels, biomes and named locations |
| Fortitude | 15005 | +10 armor | Real post-mitigation HP loss |
| Hauling | 15006 | +50 carry weight | On-foot travel while heavily loaded |
| Sailing | 15007 | +10% steering response, +5% acceleration, ship-safety/headwind bonuses | Real ship travel while controlling the helm |
| Taming | 15008 | Faster taming plus configurable tamed-creature bonuses | Completing taming and successful breeding |
The listed values are the default level-100 effects before changing config multipliers.
Vitality
Vitality increases maximum health.
Default XP sources:
- successful consumption of food with health value,
- completing a real sleep/wake transition.
Default level-100 effects:
+10 maximum health
+10% health regeneration
The regeneration bonus scales linearly from 0% at Vitality 0 to the configured Health Regen Bonus % At 100 value.
Arcana
Arcana represents general Eitr capacity rather than a specific magic school.
Default XP sources:
- Eitr food,
- Eitr that was actually spent by the player.
Free casts or events that do not consume Eitr do not train Arcana.
Default level-100 effects:
Install & use Install: BepInEx plugin
- The archive from playbuff is the mod itself — usually a BepInEx plugin (a .dll or a plugin folder once unzipped).
- Recommended: use a community mod manager (such as r2modman) — pick this game, import the mod, and the manager sets up BepInEx and its dependencies for you.
- Manual route: install the BepInEx loader in the game folder, then drop the unzipped .dll or plugin folder into BepInEx/plugins/.
- Launch the game — the BepInEx console logs every plugin it loads; seeing this mod in the log means it is installed.
Mods with listed dependencies need those installed too, or they will not load. Options are usually changed in-game or in the plugin's config file. In multiplayer, the host and every client need the same mods installed.