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1. Index
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• Index
• Requirements
• Mod Rationale
• Recommended Mods
• Features
• To Do
• Installation
• Uninstallation
  

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2. Requirements
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• A non-pirated copy of Valheim updated to version 0.148.7 or higher
• BepInExPack Valheim version 5.4.9 or higher
  

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3. Recommended Mods
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While I haven't personally played with all of the mods listed below yet, I am sure they are compatible and should go well with my changes:

• Terraheim by DasSaueurkraut
• Better Archery by Ishid4
  

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4. Mod Rationale
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The purpose of this mod is to balance various combat options provided to the player in Valheim without straying too far from developers' original intent and vision of the game.
All of the changes are meant to remedy problems identified by me (or pointed out in discussions) while playing the game as normal. Changes themselves are a result of well thought out (or so I would like to believe) decisions made after extensive testing, research (inside and outside of the game), and comparisons of found key balancing factors between available strategies.

TL;DR
Why use tower shields if regular ones are objectively better - and why consider either in the first place, if bows solve problems both faster and safer?
So these are the first two issues addressed by the mod.

While adjusting game's difficulty is not one of the mod's goals, it may inadvertently cause combat to be slightly more difficult than in the
base game.

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5. Features
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5. 1. General

• Allow for negative stamina values (by default capped at -50)
• Rotate character in the direction that player is aiming while wielding any weapon
• Allow character rotation (at reduced speed) during weapons' special attacks
• Lock character's movement/rotation during recovery frames of any melee attack
• Introduce new flanking damage bonus for all weapons (by default enabled only for knives)
• Introduce new counter damage bonus for all piercing damage (1.2x damage multiplier for piercing damage attacks on enemies in attack animation)
• Increase swords' and knives' critical damage (damage on staggered enemies) bonus - configurable for all weapons
• Adjust stagger damage multiplier values for all weapons
• Change stagger damage reset timer on enemies (3 sec -> 4 sec)
• Change existing armour formula to a new one, that preserves the most important aspects of the original, but also behaves better in "extreme" cases
  (hits with damage values much lower than current armour value are reduced less, and hits with damage values much higher - more)
• Set damage type on all secondary attacks to the one both the weapon and motion performed would suggest (e.g. sword's thrusting attack damage type is now piercing instead of slashing)
  

The first change that allows for negative stamina values provides players with an option to perform actions that require certain amounts of stamina without meeting their stamina cost requirements - at the cost of longer time needed to wait for stamina to recover afterwards, of course. The effect this has on general gameplay however is rather negligible, and serves more as another tool in stamina management during combat rather than a nerf or a penalty. For example, if you have ever found yourself in a situation where you were just a few points of stamina short to follow a parry with an attack... That should happen significantly less often now.

Allowing for zero movement during any weapon's special attack felt like an odd design choice to me, severely limiting those attacks' usability.
Locking character's movement/rotation during recovery frames of attacks provides a slightly better feel while using certain weapons.
As for rotating the character with camera/mouse movement... With vanilla's restrictions on character's rotation during attack animations or block arcs, it felt like a missing feature. While lack of it could be solved by e.g. blocking and forcing the character to rotate in the direction the player's aiming, it felt awkward and resulted in having to fight own character's movements rather than the environment's.

Changes to stagger damage values on weapons (described in more detail in 1.7.0 changelog) make combat less reliant on staggering enemies and make stunlocking enemies significantly more difficult. To make up for the overall lower stagger damage values (at least for most attacks), the timer after which enemy's "stagger bar" recovers has been increased. So while more hits are now needed to stagger an enemy on average, there is also more time available between attacks.

Newly introduced damage modifiers and changes to existing ones are meant to incentivize more varied playstyles depending on weapon type used. In general:

• Swords offer now higher than average critical bonus in exchange for lowered stagger damage. With their secondary attack now also dealing piercing damage, they are more versatile against different enemy types.
• Sledgehammers remain for the most part unchanged, with their stagger damage slightly toned down.
• Battleaxes, on top of the changes listed in a section below, now offer stagger damage on their standard attacks.
• Atgeirs now have slightly less stagger damage on their regular attacks, and significantly less on their special attack, which no longer is almost guaranteed to stagger any enemy. However, they can now make use of the newly introduced counter damage bonuses, which synergizes well with their above average reach.
• Knives offer the highest damage bonuses out of all the weapons in the game, placing more emphasis on exploiting opportunites to deal massive damage.
• Axes and maces remain for the most part unchanged, offering now higher than average stagger damage multipliers on their attacks.
• Spears, similar to Atgeirs, can now make use of the counter damage bonuses.
• Bows deal significantly less stagger damage now, but can now also benefit from the counter mechanic.
  

New armour formula shares some properties with the original, like e.g. needing armour rating equal to half the incoming damage to reduce it by 50%. But it doesn't reduce damage taken by 75% while the armour rating is exactly same as incoming damage, but by 66,(6)% instead. For damage equal to half the armour rating - that's 90% damage reduction, rather than around vanilla's 94,7%. And for damage quadruple the amount of armour... That's now 33,(3)% damage reduction, rather than just 25%.
In short: incoming damage values significantly below player's armour rating value are reduced less, and those significantly above - more.
This change should both turn early game opponents into a slightly bigger threat, and adjust the difficulty for use with mods such as Creature Level and Loot Control.
The likelihood of surviving a 2-star or 5-star enemy hit is higher, and damage received from no-star or early game opponents slightly more threatening.

5. 2. Shields

• Lower stamina drain when blocking with a tower shield (40% less compared to regular shields)
• When blocking with a tower shield, surplus damage now reduces stamina rather than health, and no hit should stagger the player as long as stamina remains after blocking an attack
• Knockback force applied to the player on successfully blocking with a tower shield is now halved, unless the damage from a hit exceeds shield's effective block power.
• Remove enemy stagger and knockback on parrying projectile attacks
• Lower stamina regen while blocking (to 20% by default)
  

The differences between regular and tower shields within the base game serve only to effectively turn the latter into "the worse of the two" at best.
The additional block power of tower shields simply does not make up for their movement speed penalty and inability to parry, at least past the wooden tier of equipment. In the first place, though, there are simply not enough differences to provide tower shields with their own unique identity within the game.

Through changes introduced by the mod tower shields trade their ability to parry for a unique mechanic of blocking additional damage beyond their standard block power, at the cost of additional stamina. Additionally, there is lowered stamina cost when blocking, as well as extra "stickiness" to the opponent on top of the already existing bonus to block power. All of that at the cost of the significant -20% movement speed penalty from vanilla.
The end result is a new, more defensive playstyle available exclusively to tower shield users.

The change that allows the player's stamina to dip into negative values (from the "5. 1. General" section) is to prevent the player from blocking bigger hits for significantly lower stamina costs when at low stamina. In worst case scenario, when blocking a particularly strong hit while at low stamina, player may end up waiting for their stamina up to about 8 seconds (or up to 4 if the player has the Rested buff). Player is unable to perform any actions that require stamina while it's negative.

This change also allows performing actions that require certain amounts of stamina without meeting their stamina cost requirements - at the cost of longer time needed to wait for stamina to recover afterwards, of course. The overall this has on general gameplay however is rather negligible, and serves more as another option in stamina management during combat rather than a nerf or a penalty. For example, if you have ever found yourself in a situation where you were just a few points of stamina short to follow a parry with an attack... That should happen significantly less often now.

Changes below are meant to further differentiate between the two types of shields and to slightly reduce the effectiveness of the regular ones:

• Reduce regular shields' angle of protection to 120° (from 180°)
• Reduce tower shields' angle of protection to 150° (from 180°)
• Halve parry time window (250 ms -> 130 ms)
  

While a subjective matter, in my honest opinion a successful parry in Valheim is slightly too easy to achieve, especially considering it's a reward with no risk attached to it. Compared to other games that offer the parry mechanic, there are no startup frames before the parry nor recovery frames after it, where the player would be left vulnerable. In vanilla, if you time your parry improperly, most of the time you will just end up blocking the hit instead of parrying it. And I believe that's perfectly fine and in the spirit of Valheim, where the player is hardly ever penalized. However, I believe that even after the change parrying still remains a perfectly viable tactic that's not too punishing, but the reward is slightly harder to achieve. For me personally, that makes pulling off parries more satisfying than before.

5. 3. Bows

• Player's movement speed is now reduced while drawing a bow (50% by default)
• Each level in bows skill now increases draw speed by 1%, rather than reducing draw time by the same amount
  (formula changed from BaseDrawTime * (1 - BowSkillFactor) to BaseDrawTime / (1 + BowSkillFactor * ConfigSkillFactorMultiplier))

There are three main issues I have found with bows in their previous state:

• Gap closing times extending to infinity - simply backpedaling while shooting was often enough to avoid all damage from most melee opponents
• Too high DPS at higher levels of the bow skill - damage you could deal with bows in a set span of time was comparable to that of melee weapons, even with wood arrows
• Too high ratio of damage dealt to stamina spent - the main offender; you could deal more than tenfold the amount of damage you would with a melee weapon using the same amount of stamina
  

The first change is obviously meant to address the first issue. You can no longer avoid the enemy's attacks by simply backpedaling while drawing a bow. You will now have to either dodge roll or time your shot with the enemy's attack to knock them back during their animation. I believe that makes for a much more engaging gameplay.

On the upside, you may also draw your bow during the roll animation. While not intended by me and it's a peculiarity that exists within the base version of the game, I believe it makes for an additional fun mechanic that might find use after this particular change.

The second and third issues are a direct result of how the bows scale with their corresponding skill. In the case of other weapons, each level in their respective skill increases their damage by 1% and lowers their attack stamina cost by 0.5%.
Similarly, in the case of bows, their damage is increased by 1% per level. However, stamina cost remains the same, and it's draw time that is reduced instead. Not by 0.5% per level, but 1%. Leveling the skill leads to 100% draw time reduction at maximum.
This discrepancy leads to superior scaling of bows with their skill compared to that of other weapons. The draw time reduction affects both the bow's ability to deal damage and the cost of shooting with one. And at 100% draw time reduction, since you no longer need to spend time drawing the bow, there is also no stamina cost to speak of whatsoever.

By changing the formula used to calculate bow's draw time both issues are fixed.
In base version, each bows' skill level after the previous one is more of a damage increase (and stamina cost decrease), with the difference between levels 99 and 100 being the most significant. After the change, this progression is linear instead. Bows function similarly at lower levels to how they used to in vanilla. But once you get closer to level 100, they are now more in line with other weapons.

5. 4. Battleaxes

• Adjust movement speed penalty from -20% to -10%
• Increase multiplier for turn speed during attack animation from 0.3 to 0.7 (turning during attack animation is now significantly easier)
• Chain 2nd and 3rd attacks for as long as you continue attacking
  

Battleaxes might be the weapon type that requires the most careful positioning, and might be the most difficult to use properly overall. Reduction in its movement speed penalty to be on par with Atgeirs should help a skillful player in this regard.
But even outside of game balance's viewpoint it didn't make much sense to me for a weapon that weighs as much as an Atgeir and doesn't seem that much more unwieldy to slow down the player twice as much.

The new chain mechanic is to address the issue of weapon's surprisingly low DPS without removing its main drawback that constitutes part of the weapon's uniqueness. And the increased turn speed both partially makes up for that same drawback and turns continuous chaining of attacks into somewhat of a viable strategy in certain scenarios.
Jumping before the first attack for additional mobility, just like with hammers, might still be recommended - even if somewhat silly.

Various other tweaks/new features were considered during development, including increased attack speed of the first attack, introducing "super armor" mechanic that reduces stagger/knockback and possibly damage taken during first or subsequent attacks animation, faster movement during animation, and so on.
In the end, we've decided that the changes implemented make it the most fun to use while retaining its unique aspects, but feel free to offer your insights and further suggestions in the comments section.

5. 5. Sneak

• Scale sneak attack damage with player's sneak level - by default the sneak attack damage value is at half of vanilla's at 0th level, and same as vanilla at maximum
• Award sneak XP on performing a successful sneak attack, amount of XP dependant on weapon's backstab bonus and reduced for projectile attacks
• Display current backstab bonus when hovering over a weapon
  

Issues I've found with sneak in vanilla game:

• Regular enemies (i. e. not wildlife) detect a sneaking player too effectively at lower skill levels
• Since sneaking is leveled exclusively by moving while crouched and isn't an effective strategy early on, leveling it is more painful than it should be - through either grind or trying to sneak up on enemies knowing the futility of the effort
• Despite the two points above, sneak archery playstyle is still highly rewarding at low risk and investment
  

In short, sneaking at lower levels feels futile, but sneaking's effectiveness scales rather well with level. So I've decided to speed up the progression to enable the melee stealth playstyle earlier. The reduction to base value of sneak attack damage is to balance out the additional reward granted on a successful sneak attack, but also to lower the effectiveness of sneak archery at early stages of the game.

Modifying AI's detection formula and putting more emphasis on environmental conditions rather than sneak level was one of the considered solutions, but I have opted not to alter vanilla's system fundamentally yet and playtest more before deciding to make more drastic changes. However, it is highly probable such a change may appear in future updates.

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6. To Do
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Here follows a list of features planned for future updates of the mod:

• Various QoL features (allow auto-pickup of thrown weapons only by their owner etc.)
• Server config support.
• Buff/rework axes weapon type.
• Review weapons' block power and parry bonus values.
• Improve enemy AI.
• Take a look at hitbox verticality.
• Add color-coded visual feedback when stamina is drained on blocking with a tower shield.
• Grant increased rate of HP regeneration to enemies that are out of combat.
  

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7. Installation
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• Vortex Installation
  This mod supports installation through Vortex.
• Manual Installation
  Extract the downloaded archive in a temporary location.
  Then move the contents to your Valheim installation location BepInEx folder.
  

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8. Uninstallation
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• Vortex Uninstallation
  If the mod has been installed using Vortex, you may also use Vortex to uninstall it.
• Manual Uninstallation
  Remove files installed during manual installation.