CaptainValheim
Turns shields into active weapons. All you need is one shield. Shield strikes, throws, charges, projectile reflection, and block charges all follow real shield stats and blocking skill.
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About this mod Author’s original text
CaptainValheim
Turns shields into active weapons. All you need is one shield. Shield strikes, throws, charges, projectile reflection, and block charges all follow real shield stats and blocking skill.
Shield Primary Attack
CaptainValheim lets a shield act as a real close-range weapon instead of only a defensive item. A primary shield strike uses the equipped shield's own block power, deflection force, stamina profile, and durability cost as the base, then applies the values from CaptainValheim.yml. That means a buckler, tower shield, and round shield can all feel different without needing separate hardcoded behavior.
Shield Throw
Throw your shield forward as a returning weapon. The throw can hit multiple targets, lose power through damage decay, search for nearby targets, and return after its lifetime expires. Damage, push force, target count, damage decay, ricochet search radius, flight lifetime, stamina cost, and durability cost can all be tuned, while the final result still scales from the shield you actually equipped.
With FearNoSpear, dropped thrown shields can only be auto-picked up by the thrower. Other players can still pick them up manually. Use the updated versions on participating clients. FearNoSpear is optional; without it, pickup behavior is unchanged. FearNoSpear does not change CaptainValheim's shield-return handling.
Thrown shields retain the equipped visual prefab and style, including appearances applied by Armoire, through ricochets and the return flight. This only changes presentation; the original shield's stats and returned item are preserved. Peers without the cosmetic prefab display the original shield instead.
Shield Charge
Shield Charge turns your block into a forward burst that drives into enemies with shield-based damage and push force. It is useful for closing distance, interrupting enemies, or opening space in a crowd. Charge distance, speed, hit radius, cooldown, stamina cost, durability cost, damage factor, and push factor are configurable, and WarfareTweaks can read the shield-hit context when both mods are installed.
Block Charge
Valheim already contains a block-charge style counterattack, but it is effectively locked away for normal shield gameplay. CaptainValheim exposes and tunes that vanilla behavior so shields can use it intentionally. The mod can also provide fallback charge visuals for shields that do not have their own charge setup, making the feature usable across a wider range of shield prefabs.
Projectile Reflection
Projectile Reflection rewards accurate blocking by letting guarded projectile hits bounce back instead of simply being absorbed. Reflection behavior scales with shield deflection and can be tuned separately from attacks, throws, and charges, so servers can decide how strong defensive projectile play should be without changing the rest of the shield kit.
Highlights
- Gives every shield a configurable active combat kit through one synced YAML file.
- Scales damage, push, stamina, and durability from the shield's actual stats instead of using one flat value for every shield.
- Provides a global fallback so unlisted shields work immediately, while individual prefab overrides can tune special cases.
- Syncs config through ServerSync for dedicated servers.
- Lets servers independently allow Shield Charge, Block Charge, and Projectile Reflection with a one-handed melee weapon and a shield.
- Adds a WarfareTweaks bridge so Warfare effects can recognize CaptainValheim shield hit contexts.
- Keeps the mod focused on shields only, with no ranged, melee, or Blood Magic preset schema mixed in.
Shield Features
- primaryAttack: turns shield use into a direct shield strike with configurable damage, push, stamina, and durability factors.
- throw: throws the shield, supports multiple targets, damage decay, search radius, lifetime scaling, and return behavior.
- charge: sends the player forward with shield-based damage, push, hit radius, distance, speed, cooldown, and stamina tun
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.
Install these first, or the mod will not work: