Utangard

Biomes nobody in your group has earned starve you: food burns away, buffs are refused, and the land leaves you sapped.

Features
How the group gate works
Earning a foothold
Biome table
Installation
Multiplayer
Configuration
Troubleshooting
For mod authors
Status
Design notes
Bug reports
Bugs and ideas
Discord
Server
Part of Longhouse

Utangard gates Valheim's biomes on boss progress. Nothing stops you walking into the Swamp on day two, but until your group has earned that biome your food burns away five times faster, you cannot eat or drink, your wounds do not close, and you leave with a stamina penalty that follows you out. Your own character can win some of that back by fighting and exploring there: eating first, then healing (see Earning a foothold).

A biome counts as earned when every character on the group's roster was personally present when that boss died, not when the boss has died in the world. Kill Moder yourself and the Plains stays shut until the friend who was offline that night has killed it too. You can switch that off and gate on the world's own defeat keys instead.

Features

Everything here is a default and everything is configurable.

Food burns 5x faster in a gated biome. Nothing is deleted, it just runs out fast.
Eating and drinking are refused, with a message on screen. The item is never consumed or destroyed. Food is refused by Food.BlockEating; potions and meads are refused by Buffs.BlockNewBuffs, at the moment you drink them rather than after the effect is wasted. Eating comes back once you have fought enough in that biome (see Earning a foothold).
Health regeneration is set to zero. Food is Valheim's only passive healing, so damage taken in a gated biome is damage you carry home, until you have a full foothold there.
Buffs already running burn 5x faster, and new ones are refused. Guardian powers are refused before the cooldown is spent, so yours is still there when you leave.
Rested and Resting count as buffs, so a fire and a roof buy you nothing inside. This is the harshest rule in the mod and it has its own switch (Buffs.BlockRested).
Harmful effects are never touched. Wet, Cold, Freezing, Burning, Poison and the rest run as normal; speeding those up would be a mercy rather than a penalty.
Leaving a gated biome leaves you Sapped: 75% less stamina regeneration. One second inside banks one second of it, up to 30 seconds, and it only spends itself once you are out. It stacks with food and Rested rather than replacing them.
The gate reaches 5 m past the edge of a gated biome, so stepping over the line to eat and stepping back does not work.
Two HUD icons, a message on entering and leaving that names who the biome is still waiting on, and a message when a biome opens, wherever you are standing.
A Utangard page in the compendium (the texts screen, beside Logs and Active Effects). Every player seen in the last 14 days is listed down the left, you first, with two small bars each. Two rows of biome buttons sit beside it, green when open and red when locked. Pick a biome to see who it is still waiting on and how long until the deadline opens it anyway. For a locked biome it also shows your two foothold bars and the rules of the lock as your server has set them. Pick another player to see their bars and what each has earned back, read-only.

Dungeons take the biome above them, so a Swamp crypt withers you exactly like the Swamp.

How the group gate works

Credit comes from being at the kill. When a boss dies, every player within 100 m of the body is credited. You do not need the killing blow and you do not need to be the host.
Only characters at the frontier count. A character counts towards a boss once it has the boss before it in the table. Somebody who has killed nothing does not hold the Swamp shut for a group that cleared Eikthyr and is waiting on The Elder: they count for Eikthyr and nothing beyond it. They still get every biome the group has already earned.
Joining late does not undo anything. Once the group clears a boss, that biome is open permanently. A friend arriving with a fresh character gates only what the group has not yet cleared.
A deadline opens the biome anyway. Once the first person clears a boss, the rest of the group has a set number of days before it opens regardless: one day for Eikthyr, one more for each boss after. This is what stops one person who stops logging in from holding a biome shut.
The roster forgets people who stop playing. A character stops counting for a boss after 14 real days without logging in, so a friend who visited for one evening or an alt made once cannot hold the gate forever. No admin command and no list to maintain.
Existing worlds keep their progress. A character is credited for a boss its own save file says it attended, as long as that boss has already died in this world, so installing on a long-running save does not re-lock everything.
An empty roster falls back to the world key. Before anyone has published progress, which is the first spawn after installing, the gate answers from the world's own defeat keys.
The gate is one answer about the group. If the roster has not all cleared Moder, the Plains withers you too, even if you landed the kill.

Earning a foothold

Pidgey put the problem with the lock plainly while playing on Longhouse: a locked biome was a wall, not a challenge, and the inability to eat was the problem. You could not stay long enough to do anything there, so there was no reason to go. A character can now earn part of it back, one biome at a time.

Every locked biome has two bars for each character.

Fighting fills from kills of that biome's creatures. Each kind is worth a set number of points, 1 or 2 for the common ones up to 5 for the biggest threat, and the bar is full at 150. One kind of creature can put in half of that at most, 75 points, so you cannot fill it on trolls alone. Helping with a kill counts the same as landing the last blow.
Discovery fills from the part of that biome's map you uncovered yourself. It is full at 1 km², the same in every biome. What a map table shares with you does not count. Each piece of the map counts once, so walking back and forth over the same ground earns nothing.

At 50% Fighting you can eat in that biome again. With both bars full your wounds heal there at the normal rate. The rest of the lock stays as it is: meads, powers and Rested are still refused, food and buffs still burn faster, and you still leave Sapped.

The bars are yours alone. They only lift the rules in the biome they were earned for, so a full bar in the Swamp does nothing for you in the Mountains. Where two locked biomes meet you need the unlock in both: within 5 m of the other one, its rules reach you too. They never open a biome for the group either. That still takes the boss, or the catch-up deadline.

Only kills Utangard saw happen count, and only in the world they happened in. Utangard keeps its own count in your character, one for each world. Everybody's bars started at zero with this version, so kills from before it do not count. Kills made in another world never count here either, and a singleplayer world is another world. Some kills never count:

A tame animal, or one bred from tame parents. Lox, wolves and asksvin are on the lists, but slaughtering your own herd earns nothing.
Your kill while you have devcommands on, or are in god mode, ghost mode or debug flight, or hold a weapon spawned with devcommands. The game ignores a player's devcommands on a dedicated server, and so does this.
A creature spawned with devcommands, or wiped out with killall or killenemies. Those count for nobody, not even the players who had already hit them.
A kill that lands after you have left. The kill is counted on the machine that had the creature and sent to everyone who hit it, so if you log out before it dies, you miss it.

One gap is left. If somebody in god mode helps you with a kill, the game only notices when their own machine had the creature. When any other machine had it, their share is still refused on their side, but yours counts, because no machine can see god mode on anybody else's character.

The map lifts the fog in a wide circle around you, about 100 m, not just under your feet. Walking along a border or sailing along a coast uncovers some of the biome on the other side, and that counts too. The map does not remember where you stood, so you could fill the whole bar from outside. That is why Discovery asks for a whole square kilometre: at half of that, five kilometres of coastline did it, and now it takes about ten.

The Utangard page in the compendium shows both bars for whichever biome you pick, and it opens on the first biome your group has not earned. Click another biome to see it, or use left and right on the d-pad with a controller. A refused meal tells you how far your Fighting bar has got. utangard foothold in the console (F5) shows both bars for every biome, how many of each creature Utangard has counted for you, and what each kind has added. What each creature is worth is in the config, one line per biome, under Foothold.

Seeing the others

The list down the left of the page has everyone seen playing in the last 14 days (Gate.RosterDays, or the longest per-boss window in RosterDaysPerBoss, the same rule the group gate counts a character by), with you first and then whoever is online. Each tab shows the average of that player's Fighting and Discovery over the biomes that are still locked, as two small bars. Click one and the page shows that player's two bars in the biome you have selected, what each has earned back, and whether they have the boss that opens it. It reads like your own page and changes nothing.

Percentages only. What leaves your machine is two whole percents per locked biome. No position, no map, no kill list.
A player on a build from before this one, or whose game could not read a bar, shows as unknown, not as zero. A tab with no data says "Older build, no data".
Numbers are a little behind. Your client writes them when a bar has moved, and at most once in 30 seconds, so a friend's tab can lag by about that long and then catches up. Another player's numbers are exact percents, published in steps of 1 (Foothold.PublishStep), and their age is to the nearest ten minutes. See the cost below for what the step costs and how to raise it.
Your own tab says it is reading your map for the few seconds the map count runs after you join, and nothing is published for Discovery until it is done, so a joining player never shows a false 0%.
A player who has not been seen for the roster window drops off the list by themselves. With more than seven players the tabs close up to fit, and past nine the rest are counted in the caption.
It needs the group gate (Gate.GateOnGroup) and footholds on. Without them there is nothing to list or nothing published, and the page looks as it did before. A controller cannot choose a player yet, only a biome.
utangard players in the console prints every tab as one line with the numbers it holds.

How it is published, and what it costs. Each client writes one global key for its own character, utangard_f_<character id>, holding one slot per biome: Fighting and Discovery as three-digit percents, --- for a biome that is open and ??? for a bar that could not be read, after a version and the write time in unix minutes, to the nearest ten. Character ids run to 19 digits, so one "key value" string is up to about 96 bytes (30 for the key, 65 for the value). Every global key the server accepts is sent on to all players as part of the whole key list, and GlobalKeyAdd on every client also saves each distinct "key value" it receives into three of the character's m_knownWorldKeys dictionaries, for good and for every writer, not only for the local character. So the budget is the size of the list and the number of distinct strings, times three. Worst case means every one of the 7 locked biomes' two bars passing through each of its steps with every step written on its own:

	Packed key, steps of 1 (default)	Packed key, steps of 5	One key per biome and bar
Keys per character	1	1	14
Characters per string	96	96	about 44
Ten players, added to every broadcast	about 1 KB	about 1 KB	about 7 KB
Distinct strings per character, worst case	1,400	280	1,400
One client's character file, per character	about 424 KB	about 85 KB	about 206 KB
One client's character file, ten players	about 4.2 MB	about 0.85 MB	about 2.1 MB

Where those come from. The key is utangard_f_ and a character id of up to 19 digits (30 characters), then a space and the value: 1., the write time in unix minutes (8 digits today), a dot, and nine slots of six characters, one per entry of GateableBiomes whether it is locked or not (54), which is 96 characters. The game saves each string with a one byte length and 4 bytes for its counter, 101 bytes, in each of three m_knownWorldKeys dictionaries (ZoneSystem.GlobalKeyAdd and PlayerProfile.SavePlayerData were read in the 1.0 assemblies), about 303 bytes a string. The default roster locks 7 biomes, each with two bars of 100 steps: 1,400 strings, 424 KB, and 4.2 MB for ten players. With the Ocean keyed there are 8 locked biomes: 1,600 strings, about 485 KB and 4.9 MB for ten. A few dozen extra strings for ??? and the first write of each biome do not move those figures. Both are under the 5 MB line, the second only just.

The packed key was chosen for the broadcast, which is paid by everyone on every write. The worst case is a limit and not a forecast: the 30 second floor makes every step written on its own very unlikely, and a bar never goes back down. A server that keys the Ocean has one more locked biome and a seventh more of everything. The step is the lever: Foothold.PublishStep is 1, exact percents, which is Robbin's choice of 2026-10-04, and a step of 5 costs a fifth of the file.

A character file that is copied to a second machine, or a client that writes the key on purpose, is two writers for one id. Each client remembers what it wrote last and answers a world that disagrees at most once in five minutes, so the two cannot keep each other writing every 30 seconds. Each new string is still permanent in everyone's file.

Biome table

The defaults are the vanilla progression offset by one: the boss of the previous biome opens the next.

Biome	Opened by	Global key
Meadows	nothing	ungated
Black Forest	Eikthyr	`defeated_eikthyr`
Swamp	The Elder	`defeated_gdking`
Mountain	Bonemass	`defeated_bonemass`
Plains	Moder	`defeated_dragon`
Mistlands	Yagluth	`defeated_goblinking`
Ashlands	The Queen	`defeated_queen`
Deep North	Fader	`defeated_fader`
Ocean	nothing	ungated

This is a config table, not a hardcoded progression. Blank a row and that biome is never gated. Point every row at one key and you have a single-boss gate. Point a row at a key some other mod sets and it gates on that instead.

The Black Forest row is the one to look at first: gating it on Eikthyr walls off the copper run most people do before touching him.

defeated_queen and defeated_fader are not in Valheim's GlobalKeys enum, they come from prefab data, so they can only be read off a running game. Both defaults are confirmed correct. A key name nothing sets fails closed and looks exactly like a working gate, so on spawn the mod walks the world's creature prefabs, collects every key any of them sets on death (vanilla's and any other mod's) and warns if a gate row names a key nothing here can set, listing the ones that exist.

Installation

Install BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2350. It is the only required dependency.
Install Utangard with a mod manager, or drop Utangard.dll into BepInEx/plugins/.
Launch once. The config file is written to BepInEx/config/ezomic.valheim.utangard.cfg.

Install it on every client and on the dedicated server. Each client enforces the gate on itself, so a player without the plugin is not gated by it.

Single DLL, no asset bundle, net462. Built against Valheim 1.0.7, BepInEx 5.4.23.5 and Harmony 2.9. Version 1.3.0 does not run on pre-1.0 Valheim, and the versions before it do not run on 1.0.

Multiplayer

Longhouse Core is an optional soft dependency. With it installed, the server rejects a client whose Utangard version or build id does not match, and the host's rule settings are applied on connected clients in memory without writing their config file. Without it Utangard is fully functional and single player needs nothing else, but a player who simply does not install the mod is not gated at all, so the gate becomes an agreement between players rather than a rule of the server. Footholds lose out too: a creature that dies on the machine of a player without Utangard is counted for nobody. Utangard logs a warning once if it finds the group gate running in a multiplayer session with no Core.

Settings that decide a rule are synced from the host: all of Gate apart from its two messages, including the biome keys and the border margin; the drains and blocks under Food and Buffs, including the healing multiplier; both Sapped values; and all of Foothold, including the points lines. Settings that decide wording stay yours: all four blocked messages, all of Presentation, and all of Diagnostics. That needs Core 1.1.0 or later. On an older Core the host's wording applies too, and the log says so.

Persistence:

Progress is stored in the world's global keys and saved with the world, so it survives players logging out.
Credit is per world, not per character. A character that cleared a solo world does not arrive on your server pre-credited: imported credit is only honoured for a boss this world has already seen die, so it can never open a biome on its own.
Utangard writes one thing to your character file: its foothold kill counts, one entry for each world you play. Everything else in the file is only read.
Food timers and status effects belong to the owning client. Nothing here reaches into another player's character.
A foothold is read from your own character on your own machine: the kills Utangard counted for you in this world, and the map you have explored here. A kill is counted on whichever machine had the creature, which tells each player who hit it. The bars themselves are not saved in the world, but the percentages of the locked biomes are published in one global key per character so the others can see them (see Seeing the others). The key stays in the world after a character stops playing, about 90 bytes each.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/ezomic.valheim.utangard.cfg. Every entry has a comment in the file. BepInEx writes the file on first run and the saved value beats any new default in code, so if a change appears to do nothing, check the cfg first.

Gate

Setting	Default	What it does
`Enabled`	`true`	Master switch. Off leaves the game untouched.
`GateOnGroup`	`true`	Gate on whether every character on the roster has done the boss. Off gates on the world's own key, so one kill opens the biome for everybody.
`GateNeverRegresses`	`true`	Once the group clears a boss, that biome stays open forever. Off makes the gate strictly weakest-link at all times.
`RequirePreviousBoss`	`true`	A character counts towards a boss only once it has the boss before it in the table. Off, every character on the roster counts for every gate.
`RosterDays`	`14`	Real days a character keeps counting after it was last seen.
`RosterDaysPerBoss`	(empty)	Per-boss overrides, as comma-separated `key:days` pairs, e.g. `defeated_eikthyr:7, defeated_fader:60`.
`BackfillFromCharacter`	`true`	Credit a character for a boss its own save file says it attended, for a boss this world has already seen die. The migration path for existing worlds.
`CatchUpDays`	`0`	Fallback deadline in days for any boss not named below. `0` means none.
`CatchUpDaysPerBoss`	`defeated_eikthyr:1, defeated_gdking:2, defeated_bonemass:3, defeated_dragon:4, defeated_goblinking:5, defeated_queen:6, defeated_fader:7`	Days the group has to catch up once the first player clears a boss. The clock starts at the first credit recorded in this world and is never moved.
`CreditRadius`	`100`	Metres from a dying boss to be credited.
`BorderMargin`	`5`	Metres the gate reaches past the edge of a gated biome. `0` puts it exactly on the border.
`BlockBossSummons`	`true`	An altar in a biome the group has not earned will not summon its boss, and the offering is not used up. It also covers the Queen's door, below. Each altar stands in the biome the boss before it opens, so it answers as soon as that biome does.
`BossBlockedMessage`	`The land will not answer an offering here`	Shown when an altar refuses.
`BossDoorKeys`	`DvergrKey`	Doors opened with these keys stay sealed while their biome is locked. The Sealbreaker opens the Queen's door, the one boss not summoned at an altar. The key is not used up, and an open door stays open. Empty turns it off.
`BossDoorBlockedMessage`	`The seal will not break here yet`	Shown when a boss door stays shut.
`ExcludePlayerIds`	(empty)	Comma-separated character IDs that never count towards the gate. IDs, not names; the roster dump on spawn prints both.
`Key_Meadows` … `Key_Ocean`	see the table above	The global key that opens each biome. Blank means never gated.

Food

Setting	Default	What it does
`FoodDrainMultiplier`	`5`	How much faster food burns. `1` disables the drain and leaves only the refusal, which is a much gentler mod.
`BlockEating`	`true`	Refuse to eat food in a gated biome.
`EatBlockedMessage`	`The land will not feed you here`	Shown centre-screen when a bite is refused.
`HealthRegenMultiplier`	`0`	Health regeneration in a gated biome, as a fraction of normal. `1` leaves healing alone.

Buffs

Setting	Default	What it does
`BuffDrainMultiplier`	`5`	How much faster an already-running buff burns.
`BlockNewBuffs`	`true`	Refuse to apply any new buff, which also covers potions and meads at the point of drinking, and guardian powers.
`BlockRested`	`true`	Treat Rested and Resting as buffs. Off, a well-built camp becomes a real answer to the biome.
`AlsoBlock`	(empty)	Extra status effect names to treat as buffs, comma-separated. The mod finds potions and meads by walking ObjectDB for anything an item applies when consumed, and guardian powers by their `GP_` prefix, so this is for the odd one out.
`NeverBlock`	`Puke`	Names to leave alone even if the rules caught them. Wins over `AlsoBlock`.
`BuffBlockedMessage`	`The land turns your power aside`	Shown when a potion or a guardian power is refused. Effects that arrive without the player asking, such as equipment or weather, are refused silently.

Sapped

Setting	Default	What it does
`StaminaRegenMultiplier`	`0.25`	Stamina regeneration while Sapped, as a fraction of normal.
`MaxSeconds`	`30`	Ceiling on how much Sapped you can bank, and so how long you must stand in the biome to reach the full penalty.

Foothold

Setting	Default	What it does
`FootholdEnabled`	`true`	Let a character earn eating and healing back in a locked biome. Off puts the lock back exactly as it was.
`FightingFullPoints`	`150`	Fighting points that make a full bar. Healing needs this bar full, and Discovery too.
`EatAtFightingPercent`	`50`	Where you may eat again, as a percent of a full Fighting bar. Food only; meads and potions stay refused. Above 100 means never.
`DiscoveryFullKm2`	`1`	How much of a biome's map, in km², you have to uncover yourself for a full Discovery bar. `0` means no walking is needed.
`PublishStep`	`1`	The step, in percent, other players' bars are rounded down to before they are published. `1` is exact percents; 5 cuts the growth of everyone's character file to a fifth. Your own page is always exact.
`MaxFromOneKindPercent`	`50`	The most one kind of creature can add to a Fighting bar, as a percent of a full bar.
`Points_Meadows` … `Points_Ocean`	see below	What each kill is worth there, as `Prefab:points` pairs. A creature that is not listed is worth nothing in that biome.

The two percent settings are shares of FightingFullPoints, so if you raise the bar, eating and the limit per kind stay at half of it.

The points lines, as they ship. The Meadows and the Ocean are empty because neither is gated by default.

Biome	Points
Black Forest	`Greydwarf:1, Skeleton:1, Greydwarf_Shaman:2, Greydwarf_Elite:3, Bjorn:4, Troll:5`
Swamp	`Draugr:1, Blob:1, Leech:1, Surtling:1, BlobElite:2, Wraith:2, Draugr_Elite:3, Writhan:3, Abomination:5`
Mountains	`Wolf:1, Ulv:1, Hatchling:2, Fenring_Cultist:2, Fenring:3, StoneGolem:5`
Plains	`Deathsquito:1, Goblin:1, BlobTar:1, GoblinShaman:2, Lox:3, GoblinBrute:4, Unbjorn:5`
Mistlands	`Seeker:1, Tick:1, Dverger:2, DvergerMageSupport:3, DvergerMageFire:3, DvergerMageIce:3, SeekerBrute:4, Gjall:5`
Ashlands	`Charred_Archer:1, Charred_Twitcher:1, Volture:1, BlobLava:1, Charred_Melee:2, Asksvin:2, Charred_Mage:3, BonemawSerpent:4, FallenValkyrie:5, Morgen:5, Morgen_NonSleeping:5, Charred_Melee_Dyrnwyn:5`
Deep North	`GoblinDeepNorth:2, Elaking:2, ElakingLantern:2, ElakingMole:2, DvergerDeepNorth:2, Moose:3, ShadowPerson:3, JotunWitch:4, JotunWarrior:5, JotunWarriorDualWield:5, Barka:5`

Prey is left out on purpose, and so are Swamp skeletons. Some creatures share one name in the game, like the frozen greydwarves of the Deep North and the ones at home, so a name listed in two biomes only counts in the earlier one. The three dvergr mages are one name as well, which is why they are all worth 3. utangard creatures checks every line against the game.

Presentation

Setting	Default	What it does
`ShowStatusEffects`	`true`	Show the two effects on the HUD. The rules still apply when this is off.
`MarkIconFrom`	`Poison`	Vanilla status effect whose icon the in-biome marker borrows.
`SappedIconFrom`	`Encumbered`	Vanilla status effect whose icon Sapped borrows.
`EnterMessage`	`Something here refuses you`	Shown once on entering. Blank to say nothing.
`LeaveMessage`	`The land loosens its grip`	Shown once on leaving. Blank to say nothing.
`NameTheBlockers`	`true`	Name the characters the biome is still waiting on, and how long is left on the deadline.
`BlockedByPrefix`	`Still owed by:`	Prefix for that list.
`EatProgressLine`	`Fighting here {fighting}%. You can eat at {eat}%.`	Added under a refused meal. `{fighting}`, `{eat}` and `{biome}` are filled in. Blank to say nothing.
`AnnounceOpenings`	`true`	Say so, wherever you are, when a biome opens. Covers openings nobody killed anything for, such as a deadline expiring.
`OpenedMessage`	`{biome} opens to you`	That message. `{biome}` becomes the biome's name, or both names when one boss opens two.
`ShowCompendiumPage`	`true`	Add the Utangard page to the compendium's text list.
`CompendiumTopic`	`Utangard`	What that page is called in the list.
`ShowCompendiumPanel`	`true`	Draw that page as the panel with the biome row and the foothold bars. Off shows the plain text page, which also lists the roster.

Diagnostics

Setting	Default	What it does
`Verbose`	`false`	Log every gate transition and blocked effect as it happens.
`LogGlobalKeys`	`true`	Log the world's keys, the roster and the whole gate table on spawn. Worth leaving on: it is how you catch a wrong key name.
`LogBlockedEffects`	`false`	Log the full list of status effects the mod decided are buffs, and the ones it left alone. The list to consult before editing `AlsoBlock`.
`LogDefeatKeys`	`false`	Log every key a creature in this world sets on death, and what sets it.

Troubleshooting

A biome will not open. Open the compendium page, or read the spawn dump in BepInEx\LogOutput.log. Both name who still owes each boss and how long is left on the catch-up deadline, and the spawn dump lists the whole roster. The usual cause is a character on the roster that has not been at that kill; ExcludePlayerIds or RosterDays are the way out if that character is not coming back.

A biome is shut and nobody is named. The log warns when a gate row names a key no creature in this world sets, and lists the keys that do exist. That is either a typo in the table or a key that comes from somewhere else, and it fails closed either way.

A config change did nothing. BepInEx saves the config on first run and the saved value wins. Edit the cfg, not the default.

The log says Utangard is running DEGRADED. A game update has moved one of the methods the mod patches. The line names which feature that cost; everything else is still in force.

The log says Utangard is NOT withering anybody. Neither of the two ways of recording a boss kill survived patching, so a biome that is shut could never open again. The mod stops enforcing anything until it is updated. Setting Gate.GateOnGroup = false gates on the world's own keys instead, which needs none of the mod's patches to open.

Upgrading from Wither. The mod was called Wither before 1.1.0. Keys written under the old name are still read, and are rewritten under the new one as people play, so no progress is lost.

For mod authors

Utangard.UtangardApi.GroupHasKey("defeated_bonemass") answers whether the group has earned a boss, which is not the same question as the world's raw defeated_ key. Take a soft dependency on ezomic.valheim.utangard. Yoke uses it so that stack sizes follow the group's progress rather than a kill nobody else was present for.

Status

Played on a local world and on a dedicated server: refused meals and potions keep their items, both HUD icons render, food and buff timers burn at 5x, Sapped accumulates and follows you out, a guardian power is refused without burning its cooldown, the border margin refuses a player standing three metres outside a gated biome, healing is blocked, gates open and close at borders in both directions, credit is granted at the kill and survives a world reload, a two-character roster names both debtors, the catch-up deadline opens a biome, the compendium page names each boss, the biome-opened announcement fires on the transition, and the defeat-key check verifies all nine rows against the world's own creature prefabs. Running standalone with no Core has been confirmed in game.

Footholds have been run through Devkit scenarios in singleplayer, and all four passed on 2026-09-28 and again on 2026-09-29: Discovery filling from new ground and not from ground already uncovered, eating coming back at half a Fighting bar and only in its own biome, only a kill Utangard saw counting (a tamed wolf, a kill with devcommands on and one in god mode never do), and the compendium panel showing both bars. The panel's layout was adjusted after its last run. The altar refusing a boss in a locked biome and the Queen's door staying sealed have scenarios as well, and both passed on 2026-09-28.

One more thing is untested: attendee credit with more than one player at a boss kill. Solo you own the boss and credit yourself either way. The loop is identical for one player or five; what is unproven is whether other players' objects are instantiated on the owning client at fight range.

Design notes

The long-form reasoning, and the technical notes on how Valheim records boss attendance, are in DESIGN.md.

Bug reports

The Discord is the fastest route, and the right one if you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug. Issues on the repo work too and suit anything long.

Attach BepInEx\LogOutput.log, say whether you were on a server or in single player, and if the gate is doing something you did not expect, turn on Diagnostics.LogGlobalKeys and include the spawn dump: it carries the world's keys, the roster and the verdict on every biome. AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\Player.log is worth adding when a vanilla mechanic broke, since exceptions thrown mid-frame land there rather than in the BepInEx log.

Bugs and ideas

Both go to the site. longhouse.thijssensoftware.nl/bugs is for anything broken, and longhouse.thijssensoftware.nl/ideas is for what a mod should do next. You can vote on other people's ideas there as well.

Signing in takes a Steam or Discord account. I work from that list, so the votes decide what I pick up next.

Discord

discord.gg/hJzAVaZ5wb is used for mod information, updates, support, bug reports and compatibility questions.

Server

There is also a small EU server running the pack if you want somewhere to play: hard combat difficulty, resources at 1x, everything else vanilla, no application and no activity requirements. Connection details are in the Discord.

Part of Longhouse

Utangard is part of Longhouse, the Ezomic modpack, which pins exact versions of its member mods. You do not need the pack to use Utangard, and it behaves the same on its own.

MIT licensed. By Robbin Thijssen (Thijssen Software).

Changelog

1.5.0 8 October 2026 in Longhouse

Built, not yet played: the two-client scenarios have not been run on this build.

Added

See how far everybody else has got. The Utangard page in the compendium now has a list of every player seen in the last 14 days down the left, you first, with two small bars each for Fighting and Discovery averaged over the locked biomes. Click a player and the page shows their two bars in the biome you have selected, what each has earned back and whether they have the boss that opens it, the same way it shows yours, read-only. Online players are marked. A player on an older build shows as "no data", never as zero.
discuss
Each client publishes its character's bars for the locked biomes into one global key, utangard_f_<character id>, as percents only: no position and no map. It is written only when a bar has moved and at most once in 30 seconds. The README works out what that costs the server's key list and the character files.
discuss
Foothold.PublishStep, the step in percent that other players' bars are published in, default 1: other players' numbers are exact. The worst case in the README, ten players with every step written on its own, is about 4.2 MB of character file per client (about 4.9 MB with the Ocean keyed), and a step of 5 cuts it to a fifth.
discuss
utangard players in the console lists every tab with the numbers it holds.
discuss
Two scenarios for two clients, paired-utangard-players-a and -b, that check each client's numbers reach the other, update, and show on the other's page without anything being squeezed.
discuss

Fixed

A second world joined in one session no longer publishes a false 0% Discovery. The previous world's finished count was still read for the first moments of the next, which wrote a 0 and then the real number, two permanent strings per join and a wrong figure on everyone's page. Nothing is published for Discovery while the count runs, your own tab says it is reading your map, and the map count now starts before the first publish.
discuss
Two machines writing one character id (a copied character file, or someone writing on purpose) no longer keep each other rewriting every 30 seconds. A client answers a world that disagrees with what it wrote at most once in five minutes, and the write time is kept to the nearest ten minutes so a rewrite of the same bars is the same string.
discuss
A published time that is not a plain number, is before 1970 or is more than a day ahead is read as no data, and "updated N minutes ago" can no longer overflow.
discuss
A character id of 0 is never listed, a name with a | in it matches the online list again, and two characters with one name are no longer both shown online when only one is.
discuss
The list uses the same per-boss window as the gate, and the page opens on your own tab.
discuss
The tight list keeps the 3 px selected border clear of the mini bars, and a player who has slid past the ninth tab while being viewed takes the last tab's place so something stays highlighted.
discuss
A failure in publishing the heartbeat or the bars is logged once and no longer skips the food drain and the messages after it.
discuss

Changed

The page is laid out as mockup B: the biome buttons are in two rows of four, the page says at the top whose progress it is, and under another player's boxes it says how old their numbers are. Your own page keeps the rules line.
discuss
A thicker border: the panel's own edge is 2 px instead of 1, and the selected player and the selected biome are 3 px instead of 2.
discuss

1.4.0 30 September 2026

Added

You can earn eating and healing back in a locked biome. Pidgey said it on Longhouse: a locked biome was a wall, not a challenge, and the inability to eat was the problem. Each character now has two bars in every locked biome. Fighting fills from kills of that biome's creatures, and at 50% you can eat there again. Discovery fills from the map you uncover there yourself, and once both bars are full your wounds heal at the normal rate. Meads, powers and Rested are still refused, food and buffs still burn faster and you still leave Sapped. The bars are yours, they only count in their own biome, and they never open it for the group.
discuss
Fighting only counts kills Utangard saw happen. It keeps its own count in your character, one for each world, so a kill in one world never counts in another, and a singleplayer world is another world too. Everybody starts at zero with this version, so kills from before it do not count. Helping with a kill counts. A tame or bred animal counts for nothing. So does a creature spawned with devcommands or wiped out with killall, and your own kill while you have devcommands on or are in god mode or ghost mode. A friend who helped somebody in god mode can still be credited when the god-mode player's machine did not have the creature. Each kind of creature is worth 1 to 5 points and the bar is full at 150. No single kind can put in more than half of it.
discuss
Discovery only counts fog you lifted yourself, not what a map table shares. It is full at 1 km² in every biome, and a piece of map counts once. The fog lifts in a wide circle around you, so walking a border or sailing a coast fills some of the biome on the other side as well, and nothing stops that filling the whole bar. At 1 km² it takes about ten kilometres of coastline to do it.
discuss
Where two locked biomes meet, an unlock needs both bars. Within 5 m of the second biome its rules reach you, so stepping a metre into a biome you have fought enough in does not let you eat on the edge of one you have not.
discuss
A new Foothold config section: FootholdEnabled, FightingFullPoints, EatAtFightingPercent, DiscoveryFullKm2, MaxFromOneKindPercent, and a Points_ line per biome saying what each creature is worth there. Eating and the limit per kind are percents of the full bar, so raising the bar keeps them at half. All of it is synced from the host.
discuss
Utangard now writes to your character file, which it never did before: one entry per world holding its foothold kill counts.
discuss
A refused meal now says how far your Fighting bar has got. The wording is Presentation.EatProgressLine.
discuss
utangard foothold in the console shows both bars for every biome, how many of each creature Utangard has counted for you, what each kind put in, where the cap stopped it, and what is unlocked. utangard creatures checks every name on the points lines against the game.
discuss
utangardtest kills <creature> <count> sets your count of one creature in this world, so a test can start a Fighting bar anywhere. It is a cheat command.
discuss
utangard deaths <creature> says whether a creature dies through its animation, how many your machine has seen die this session and whether it had them, how often it ran the boss credit for one, and whose machine has the nearest live one. It was written for a two-player test of who gets the credit for a kill, and it is not a cheat. utangard deaths on its own lists every creature that dies through its animation, and since <notowner> after a creature adds whether your machine ran a death of one it did not own since that count.
discuss
A boss will not come to an altar in a biome the group has not earned. Before, one player could carry an egg into the locked Mountains, kill Moder there, and start the Plains deadline for everybody while the rest were still on Bonemass. A refused offering uses nothing up. Each altar stands in the biome the boss before it opens, so it answers as soon as that biome opens, by kills or by the deadline. BlockBossSummons turns it off.
discuss
The Queen's door stays sealed the same way while the Mistlands are locked, since she is not summoned at an altar. The Sealbreaker is not used up when the door refuses, and a door that is already open stays open. BossDoorKeys lists which keys count.
discuss
utangard biomes, a console command listing each biome's creatures, how many of each Utangard counted for you in this world, and how much of it you have explored. Only creatures a points line pays for are counted, so deer and the rest of the prey always show 0.
discuss

Changed

The Utangard page in the compendium is now a panel. A row across the top has every biome, green when your group has earned it and red when it has not. It opens on the first locked one, and you can click any other, or use left and right on the d-pad. Under the row it says who that biome is waiting on and when it opens anyway. For a locked biome you also see your Fighting and Discovery bars, what each one unlocks, and the rules of the lock as your server has them set, so on Longhouse it says food burns 3x faster and wounds heal at a fifth. Presentation.ShowCompendiumPanel turns it back into the old text page, and the text page is also what you get if the panel fails to draw.
discuss
The tooltip on the in-biome icon lists only the rules that apply to you right now, so it says when you may eat or heal there.
discuss

Fixed

The blocked messages and everything under Presentation and Diagnostics are yours on a server now, as the README always said. They were not. Core hands every client the host's whole config apart from keybinds, so the host's wording and its Verbose flag were applied on every client and put back if you changed them. The two boss messages under Gate count as wording too. This needs Core 1.1.0 or later.
discuss
A boss kill is credited by one machine, the one that had the boss. In Valheim 1.0 a creature with a death animation dies on every machine showing it, and in 1.3.1 each of them could write the group's credit. Nobody got it twice, because a credit already written is not written again.
discuss

1.3.1 12 September 2026

Changed

Rewritten README. Same mod, clearer documentation: what it does and how to install it come first, then configuration, multiplayer behaviour, compatibility and troubleshooting. Every config table was checked against the plugin's own Config.Bind calls, so the settings, sections and defaults listed are the ones actually bound. No code changed in this release.
discuss

1.3.0 9 September 2026

Rebuilt for Valheim 1.0. This version does not run on pre-1.0 Valheim, and the previous one does not run on 1.0.

Fixed

The mod works again. Valheim 1.0 added a trailing parameter to SEMan.AddStatusEffect, so the patch no longer named a method - and an unresolved target throws out of PatchAll, which took all twelve patches in the class with it. Utangard did nothing at all while still registering on Core's gate and still refusing mismatched clients on behalf of a mod that was not running. It was nearly invisible: the log carried one warning and no error, because the exception went to Player.log rather than BepInEx's own log. The tell was the absence of the ready. line.
discuss

1.2.1 25 August 2026

A gate could latch open off a half-loaded world. It did, on the live server: the Swamp opened permanently while seven of the nine characters on the roster had never met the Elder.

The bug

ZoneSystem.RPC_GlobalKeys clears every global key and re-adds them one at a time, and it runs on every client every time anybody sets any key, because SetGlobalKey ends in SendGlobalKeys(Everybody). For the length of that loop the dictionary this mod reads its roster and its credits out of is incomplete.

Vanilla never notices - the refill is synchronous, no frame boundary falls inside it. A Harmony postfix on GlobalKeyAdd does notice, and Yoke has one, hooked there deliberately so it catches the bulk list a server sends on connect. So every key in that list made Yoke ask this mod whether the group had cleared a boss, once per key, while the answer was built from whatever fraction had arrived.

With a partial roster the counted members can be exactly the ones who hold the key - the two who had just killed the Elder, whose credits were already in - and LatchIfGroupCleared then finds a group that has cleared it. The !anyCounted guard only ever caught a completely empty roster; a partial one walked straight through it. The open key is permanent by design, RPC_SetGlobalKey has no permission check, and so one client's half-loaded view became everyone's, for good.

The two-second roster cache is what let one frame of that outlive itself.

Fixed

The latch refuses to run while the world's keys are settling. A prefix and postfix on RPC_GlobalKeys hold a flag across the rebuild; while it is up, nothing latches. This is the irreversible half of the mod, so it is the half that must decline to answer early rather than answer wrongly.
discuss
The roster is never cached from a half-filled key list, and is invalidated on every key that arrives rather than only on a publish. A cache can no longer outlive the world state it was built from.
discuss

1.2.0 19 August 2026

The border is a band, and wounds do not close

Two rules, both configurable, both on by default.

Gate.BorderMargin, 5 metres. The gate now reaches five metres past the edge of a gated biome. On a line, every penalty in the mod is escapable by taking three steps out of the Swamp, eating, and stepping back in - the drain, the refusal and the grudge all end at a boundary you can see and stand behind. That makes it a rule about where you may chew rather than where you may live, and it is worst exactly where it matters most, at the edge of a fight you are already in. A band has to be genuinely cleared. Set it to 0 to put the gate back on the border.

It samples eight compass points at the margin, so it costs eight biome lookups. Those are cached against the player's position and re-taken every quarter of a metre walked; what is cached is which biomes are within reach and never the verdict on them, so a biome that opens while somebody stands at its border opens for them where they stand.

Food.HealthRegenMultiplier, 0. Health regeneration in a gated biome, as a fraction of normal. It sits in the Food section because food is the only passive healing Valheim has - Player.UpdateFood adds up every meal's m_foodRegen every ten seconds and heals you by it - so this multiplies exactly the healing the food you are not allowed to eat would have given. The land that will not feed you does not mend you either.

It rides StatusEffect.ModifyHealthRegen on the marker effect rather than a patch, because that is the seam vanilla already offers and it composes with every other multiplier instead of overriding them. Which meant the marker had to stop being skipped when ShowStatusEffects was off: it was pure signage then and is carrying a rule now, and turning off the HUD would otherwise have quietly turned off the healing block.

Both are host-synced with Core, like every other setting that decides a rule.

Also: the deadline in the entry message is now read from the biome that is actually withering you rather than the one underfoot. With a margin those part company, and a countdown for the wrong boss is worse than no countdown.

You can see the gate, and you are told when it opens

A Utangard page in the compendium, beside Logs and Active Effects: every biome, whether it is open, who still owes it, and how long until the deadline opens it anyway. Until now that report existed only as log lines on spawn, which is the wrong medium for the person who most needs it - somebody mid-raid wondering why their food vanished is not going to read LogOutput.log.

It is a postfix on TextsDialog.UpdateTextsList, so it is vanilla's list with vanilla's skin, font, scrolling, gamepad handling and close behaviour, none of which this mod then owns. The alternative was an IMGUI window: four patches (both TakeInput overloads, PlayerController.InInventoryEtc, GameCamera.UpdateMouseCapture) and a keybind, to arrive at something that looks like a different game.

The log and the page are one function now. They were about to be two copies of "is this biome open, and if not who owes it", and the interesting part is not the wording but the three-way distinction between open-because-latched, open-because-everyone-has-it and shut-with-an-empty- roster. Two copies of that stay right for about a week.

Presentation.AnnounceOpenings. A message when a biome opens, wherever you are. The mod's whole argument is that fetching the friend who is behind is worth doing, and the payoff for doing it used to land silently - you found out by walking to the Mountain and not being refused. It watches the answer rather than the kill, so a catch-up deadline expiring and a roster member ageing out announce themselves too, and it needs no network code at all: global keys are already broadcast to every client.

The gate keys are checked against the game, not assumed

defeated_queen and defeated_fader are set from prefab data rather than named in the GlobalKeys enum, so they were the two shipped defaults that could not be verified from the game's code - and a wrong key fails closed, which looks exactly like a working gate.

Character.m_defeatSetGlobalKey is a public string on every creature prefab and OnDeath hands it straight to SetGlobalKey, so walking ZNetScene's prefab list gives the complete list of keys any death in this world can set, another mod's creatures included. On spawn Utangard now warns about any gate row naming a key nothing here sets, and prints the ones that exist - which is the answer to the question the warning provokes. Diagnostics.LogDefeatKeys prints the whole map.

It checks and never corrects. A row pointed at another mod's key, or at a key a location sets, is a supported thing to want.

It has now been run, and both names are right. The scan on a live world reported defeated_eikthyr, defeated_gdking, defeated_bonemass, defeated_dragon, defeated_goblinking, defeated_queen, defeated_fader, and also defeated_hive and defeated_serpent for the two creatures that set a key without gating anything here.

Played

All of it, on a live world: the border margin refusing a player standing three metres outside a gated biome, the healing block, the compendium page, the announcement firing on the transition, and the healing block again with ShowStatusEffects = false - where the gate still refused food and held healing at zero with both icons hidden, and regeneration returned on leaving. A presentation toggle does not switch off a rule.

1.1.0 17 August 2026

An API for other mods to ask what the group has earned

UtangardApi.GroupHasKey(bossKey) answers the one question this mod knows and nothing else does: whether the group has earned a boss, rather than whether the world has merely seen it die. Those two answers part company the moment somebody is offline for a kill.

It exists because Hoard scales stack sizes by world progression. Reading the raw defeated_ key there would hand out Plains-era stacks for a biome still fenced off here, which is two mods disagreeing out loud about the same word in a way that reads as a bug in whichever one the player happens to be looking at.

A facade rather than making Progression public: the roster, the latch and the deadline are nobody else's business. Read-only by construction, so a consumer cannot open a biome by asking about it.

The README is half the length

The source-code archaeology moved to DESIGN.md - why Character.OnDeath credits one player rather than all of them, what the global keys are called and why, and the handful of things that were nearly bugs. None of it is needed to play, and it was sitting between a new reader and the part that says what the mod does.

Nothing about the gameplay changed in this release.

1.0.0 16 August 2026

First release. Played, not merely built.

Core is optional

Utangard installs and runs on its own. Core is a soft dependency: present, it is used exactly as before; absent, the mod is fully functional without it.

Nothing about the gameplay needed Core. The drain, the refusal and Sapped are local patches, and the group gate travels over vanilla global keys, which every client replicates already. Singleplayer is unaffected in every respect.

What Core buys is enforcement, and that is the whole of what standalone gives up. Core is what refuses a client that does not have Utangard; without it, a player who skips the mod is not gated at all and walks into the Ashlands on day one while everyone else waits on the roster. The gate becomes an agreement between players rather than a rule of the server.

That is a real trade and it belongs to whoever runs the server, so the mod logs it rather than refusing to run, and it says so loudly, once, on spawn, when it finds the group gate enabled in a multiplayer session with no Core. That combination is the one that looks like it is working and is not, and failing silently there is the worst of the options.

Mechanically: [BepInDependency] is SoftDependency, every Suite call sits behind a Chainloader.PluginInfos check inside a [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoInlining)] method, and the project reference to Core is compile-time only. The no-inlining is load-bearing rather than decorative. The JIT resolves the assemblies a method needs when it first compiles that method, so a Suite call sitting directly in Awake would drag Ezomic.Core in before the check could prevent it, and the missing-assembly exception would land during plugin load.

Core is not listed in manifest.json, so installing Utangard does not install Core with it. Confirmed in game: Utangard loads alone, logs that it is running standalone, and the whole gate works without Core present.

The group gate, finished

Credit is earned at the kill, by everyone present. The owning client credits every player within CreditRadius (100 m) of the corpse. It had to be done that way: Character.OnDeath looks like it runs on every client that had the boss loaded, since it pushes vanilla's key above an IsOwner early-return. But that guard is unreachable, because CheckDeath is its only caller and sits inside if (zDO.IsOwner()). Crediting "the local player" would have credited exactly one member of a group that killed a boss together, and the gate would then have jammed shut while looking like it worked.
discuss
Credit is per world. A character that cleared a solo world no longer arrives pre-credited. BackfillFromCharacter still allows the migration case, and only for a boss this world has already seen die.
discuss
Progress never regresses. Once the group clears a boss the biome latches open, so a newcomer gates only what has not been cleared rather than revoking what has.
discuss
A catch-up deadline, defaulting to a ladder of one day for Eikthyr and one more per boss after. Without it a single person who stops logging in holds a biome shut for everyone until RosterDays finally drops them. A biome the deadline opens latches too.
discuss
Per-boss roster windows via RosterDaysPerBoss, for when one boss deserves a shorter leash than another.
discuss
The blocker line names other people, never you, and shows how long is left.
discuss

Fixed

A refused meal or potion is no longer destroyed. Player.ConsumeItem removes the item regardless of what EatFood returns, so the refusal had to move to CanConsumeItem, the gate that path actually respects.
discuss
Refusing a guardian power no longer burns its cooldown; StartGuardianPower sets the cooldown before applying the effect.
discuss
Rested can no longer be topped up past the drain. SEMan refreshes a running effect through Internal_AddStatusEffect without ever reaching the public overload.
discuss
Puke is no longer treated as a buff. An item applies it on consume, so the potion rule swept up a debuff, which would have made a gated biome the one place bad food cannot hurt you.
discuss

Played, not merely built

On a local world and on a real dedicated server: refused meals and potions keep their items, both HUD icons render, food and buff timers burn at 5×, Sapped accumulates and follows you out and cripples stamina regeneration, a guardian power is refused without burning its cooldown, gates open and close at borders, credit is granted at the kill and survives a reload, the latch fires, a two-character roster names both debtors, and the catch-up deadline opens a biome for a group that had not all earned it. No exceptions in a long session.

Known limits

Attendee credit has never run with more than one player. Solo, you own the boss and credit yourself either way, and two characters taken in turns only credits whoever is logged in. The loop is the same for one player or five; what is unproven is whether other players' objects are instantiated on the owner's client at fight range.
discuss
defeated_queen and defeated_fader are taken from prefab data rather than the game's GlobalKeys enum. A wrong key fails closed, which is indistinguishable from a working gate. LogGlobalKeys prints what your world actually has.
discuss

0.2.0 15 August 2026

Written and building. Never run in game.

The line this sits on

A biome you have not earned will not feed you. It never stops you walking in.

Valheim gates its biomes with damage, which is a soft gate: out-geared, out-run or out-healed, which is why the Plains stops being frightening ten minutes after it starts. The usual mod answer is a hard boss gate that refuses to let you across the border, which fixes the pacing by deleting the thing worth having: the walk into somewhere you should not be.

Utangard sits between them. You can go anywhere, immediately, and nothing stops you at the edge. The land just will not sustain you while you are there.

The three parts

The drain. Food and buffs burn down five times faster in an unearned biome. This sets the clock, and it is the part you feel while things are going well.
discuss
The refusal. You cannot eat or drink anything at all while you are there. Without it the drain is simply beaten by a bigger pack, and the mod becomes an inventory tax rather than a time limit.
discuss
Sapped. Seventy-five percent less stamina regeneration, one second per second spent in the biome up to thirty, and it keeps ticking after you leave. Without it the optimal play is to sprint in, grab and sprint out at no cost, and a penalty you can dodge by being quick is a penalty for slow players only.
discuss

The gate is on the group, not the world

By default a biome opens when every member of the roster has personally killed the boss, not when the boss has died in this world. Kill Moder yourself and the Plains stays shut until the friend who was offline that night has killed it too.

This rides on Character.OnDeath pushing m_defeatSetGlobalKey into Player.m_addUniqueKeyQueue, which is how the game records a boss kill against a character rather than a world.

Known limits

Never played. None of the three parts has been felt in a session, and the numbers are therefore first guesses rather than tuned values.
discuss
The per-character kill record is only refreshed when a player loads in, so a boss killed during the current session is not visible until then unless the kill itself is hooked.
discuss

Every setting · 60

All of it lives in one file, written on first run with each description beside its default. The file is the source of truth; edit it there.

BepInEx/config/ezomic.valheim.utangard.cfg

server On a server, the host's value applies to everyone while they are connected; your own file is left alone and counts again when you leave. yours Keys and personal settings stay as you set them, on any server.

Buffs 6

Setting	What it does	Default	Whose
BuffDrainMultiplier	How much faster an already-running buff burns down in a gated biome. Only applies to the effects this mod considers buffs - see the Buffs section below. Harmful effects are never touched, because speeding up Poison or Freezing would be a mercy, not a penalty.	5	server
BlockNewBuffs	Refuse to apply any new buff in a gated biome.	true	server
BlockRested	Treat Rested and Resting as buffs, so a fire and a roof buy you nothing inside a gated biome. This is the single harshest switch in the mod: it means a forward base in the Plains gives shelter and warmth but no regeneration. Turn it off and a well-built camp becomes a real answer.	true	server
AlsoBlock	Extra status effect names to treat as buffs, comma-separated. The mod finds potions and meads by walking ObjectDB for anything an item applies when consumed, and guardian powers by their GP_ prefix, so this list is only for the odd one out. Turn on Diagnostics.LogBlockedEffects to see names.	(empty)	server
NeverBlock	Status effect names to leave alone even if the rules above caught them, comma-separated. Wins over AlsoBlock. Puke is here because the first run in a real world found it: something applies it on consume, so the potion rule catches it, and it is a debuff. Blocking it would have handed the player an immunity to bad food in the one biome meant to be punishing them, and the drain would have made it wear off faster there than anywhere else. This is the exact failure the harmful-allowlist design was meant to avoid, arriving from the other direction - worth remembering if a future update adds another debuff that an item hands you.	Puke	server
BuffBlockedMessage	Shown centre-screen when a potion or a guardian power is refused. Effects that arrive without the player asking - equipment, weather, another player's buff - are refused silently, because a message for each of those would be a wall of text nobody reads.	The land turns your power aside	yours

Diagnostics 4

Setting	What it does	Default	Whose
Verbose	Log every gate transition and every blocked effect as it happens.	false	yours
LogGlobalKeys	Log the world's global keys once when a world loads. This is how you check that the key names in the Gate table match what your world actually records - a typo there fails open and gates nothing, silently.	true	yours
LogDefeatKeys	Log every global key any creature in this world sets when it dies, and what sets it. This is where the real name of a boss key comes from - the Queen and Fader carry theirs in prefab data rather than in the game's GlobalKeys enum, so it can only be read off a running game. The mismatch warning is printed whether or not this is on; this is the full listing behind it.	false	yours
LogBlockedEffects	Log the full list of status effects the mod decided are buffs, once, when ObjectDB is built. The list to consult before editing AlsoBlock.	false	yours

Food 4

Setting	What it does	Default	Whose
FoodDrainMultiplier	How much faster food burns down in a gated biome. 5 turns a 1600-second meal into a 320-second one. 1 disables the drain and leaves only the refusal to eat, which is a much gentler mod - you keep what you brought.	5	server
BlockEating	Refuse to eat anything at all in a gated biome. This is the 'force' half: the drain alone can be beaten by carrying more food, and the block is what makes the timer real. A character who has fought enough in that biome may eat there again. See the Foothold section.	true	server
EatBlockedMessage	Shown centre-screen when a bite is refused.	The land will not feed you here	yours
HealthRegenMultiplier	Health regeneration in a gated biome, as a fraction of normal. 0 is 'wounds do not close here'. It belongs in this section because food is the only passive healing Valheim has - Player.UpdateFood adds up m_foodRegen every ten seconds and heals you by it - so this multiplies exactly the healing the food you are not allowed to eat would have given. Healing that comes from an effect you were carrying is drained by the Buffs section instead. 1 leaves healing alone, which makes a gated biome survivable in a way resting off a bad fight makes it liveable. A character with both foothold bars full in that biome heals at the normal rate there. See the Foothold section.	0	server

Foothold 6

Setting	What it does	Default	Whose
FootholdEnabled	Let a character earn eating and healing back in a biome the group has not opened yet, by fighting there and by exploring it. Without this a locked biome is a wall. You cannot eat there, so you cannot stay long enough to do anything. A player on Longhouse put it plainly: the inability to eat is the problem. Each character gets two bars per locked biome. Fighting fills from kills of that biome's creatures, using the points lines below. Discovery fills from the map you uncover there yourself. Eating comes back at EatAtFightingPercent of a full Fighting bar, and healing goes back to normal when both bars are full. The bars belong to your character and only lift the rules in the biome they were earned for. Within BorderMargin of a second locked biome you need the unlock in that one as well. The rest of the lock stays. Meads, powers and Rested are still refused, food and buffs still burn faster, you still leave Sapped, and the biome does not open for the group. Off puts the lock back exactly as it was.	true	server
FightingFullPoints	Fighting points that make a full bar. Every kill adds its creature's points from the Points_ lines below. Healing needs this bar full, and the Discovery bar as well. The two percent settings in this section are shares of this number. Raise it and eating and the per-kind limit move with it, so the bar asks for more fighting and keeps the same shape.	150	server
EatAtFightingPercent	Where eating comes back in a locked biome, as a percent of a full Fighting bar. 50 is half, which is 75 points at the default FightingFullPoints of 150. It is a percent so that it stays half however big the bar is, and because the refused meal and the compendium show the bar in percent as well. Only food comes back. Meads and potions are still refused. Above 100 means eating never comes back this way.	50	server
DiscoveryFullKm2	How much of a biome's map you have to uncover yourself before its Discovery bar is full, in square kilometres. The same for every biome, so a small Swamp asks as much walking as a wide Plains. Only fog you lifted yourself counts. What a map table shares with you does not, and a piece of map counts once, so walking back and forth over the same ground earns nothing. Each map pixel is filed under the biome at its centre. The fog lifts in a wide circle around you, about 100 m, so walking along a border or sailing along a coast uncovers some of the biome on the other side, about 0.1 km2 for every kilometre, and that counts. The map does not remember where you stood, so nothing stops a whole bar coming from outside. That is why the default is 1 and not 0.5: at 0.5 five kilometres of coastline filled a bar without setting foot inside, and at 1 it takes ten. 0 means no walking is needed, and healing then waits on the Fighting bar alone.	1	server
MaxFromOneKindPercent	The most one kind of creature can put into a Fighting bar, as a percent of a full bar. 50 is 75 points at the default. Killing trolls alone then gets you eating but never healing, so the other half has to come from something else that lives there. A percent for the same reason as EatAtFightingPercent. A kind is one creature name as the game writes it, which is why the three dvergr mages count as one.	50	server
PublishStep	The step, in percent, that the bars other players see are rounded down to. At 1 other players' tabs show exact percents, which is what Robbin chose. At 5 your client would publish 40, 45, 50 and never 47, and only write when a bar crosses a step. Your own page always shows your exact numbers. Every write is a new string in every connected player's character file, for good, and a broadcast of the whole key list. The worst case at 1, with ten players, every one of 7 locked biomes' two bars passing through all 100 steps with every step written on its own: one string is about 96 characters (key 30, value 65 with the 54 character slots), saved as 101 bytes in each of three dictionaries, about 303 bytes, so 1,400 strings is about 424 KB per character and about 4.2 MB for ten players. With the Ocean keyed too (8 locked biomes) it is about 485 KB and 4.9 MB. The 30 second floor and bars that only rise keep real use far under that. A step of 5 is a fifth of it; raise the step if a character file ever grows too large. The README works out the sums. Values below 1 count as 1 and above 100 as 100.	1	server

Gate 25

Setting	What it does	Default	Whose
Key_Meadows	Ungated by default. This is where you start. Global key that must be set before this biome stops withering you. Blank means the biome is never gated.	(empty)	server
Key_BlackForest	Eikthyr. Global key that must be set before this biome stops withering you. Blank means the biome is never gated.	defeated_eikthyr	server
Key_Swamp	The Elder. 'gdking' really is the game's name for him. Global key that must be set before this biome stops withering you. Blank means the biome is never gated.	defeated_gdking	server
Key_Mountain	Bonemass. Global key that must be set before this biome stops withering you. Blank means the biome is never gated.	defeated_bonemass	server
Key_Plains	Moder. Global key that must be set before this biome stops withering you. Blank means the biome is never gated.	defeated_dragon	server
Key_Mistlands	Yagluth. Global key that must be set before this biome stops withering you. Blank means the biome is never gated.	defeated_goblinking	server
Key_AshLands	The Queen. Not in the GlobalKeys enum - verify against LogGlobalKeys. Global key that must be set before this biome stops withering you. Blank means the biome is never gated.	defeated_queen	server
Key_DeepNorth	Fader. Not in the GlobalKeys enum - verify against LogGlobalKeys. Global key that must be set before this biome stops withering you. Blank means the biome is never gated.	defeated_fader	server
Key_Ocean	Ungated by default. Gating the ocean gates every crossing to every biome, including the ones you are allowed into. Global key that must be set before this biome stops withering you. Blank means the biome is never gated.	(empty)	server
Enabled	Master switch. Off leaves the game completely untouched - the patches stay installed but every one of them returns immediately.	true	server
GateOnGroup	Gate on whether everyone in the group has done the boss, rather than on whether the boss is dead in this world. The difference is the whole point. A world key is set once, by whoever landed the kill, and credits everybody - including someone who joined afterwards and has never seen the fight. On, the biome stays shut until every character on the roster was personally present at that boss's death, so carrying a friend through means actually bringing them. The point is to keep a group together. Valheim groups come apart along progression: one person plays more, gets ahead, and the rest arrive to find the interesting content already cleared - so nobody wants to redo it and the person ahead has no reason to go back. This makes helping the people behind you the way you move forward yourself, rather than a favour. If your friend has not killed The Elder, the Swamp is shut for you too, so going back is the next thing on your own list. Off restores the original behaviour: one kill opens the biome for all.	true	server
GateNeverRegresses	Once the whole group has cleared a boss, that biome stays open forever, even if someone new joins later who has not done it. Without this the gate runs backwards: a friend arriving with a fresh character decides nobody has done Eikthyr and shuts the Black Forest for the people who killed him - retroactively, and for as long as that friend keeps logging in. Progress the group paid for should not be revocable by somebody else's arrival. What a newcomer still gates is everything the group has NOT yet cleared, which is where the 'bring your friend' pressure belongs anyway. Off makes the gate strictly weakest-link at all times.	true	server
RosterDays	How many days a character counts for after it was last seen. Real days, not in-game ones. This is the answer to the obvious problem with a group gate: an alt made once, or a friend who visited for one evening, would otherwise hold every biome shut forever. Leaving is automatic and needs no admin command - stop logging in and you stop counting. The cost is that someone on a long holiday silently drops out and the gate may open without them, so set this comfortably longer than your group's normal gap between sessions.	14	server
BackfillFromCharacter	Credit a character for a boss its own file says it has attended, as long as that boss has already died in this world. This is the migration path and nothing else: nobody's past kills were recorded before this mod existed, so without it, installing on a long-running world gates every biome until every boss is killed again. It is also the one hole in the 'you had to be there' rule. The record it reads lives on the client and is not world-specific, so a player who was never at the fight is credited the moment somebody else kills that boss here. Requiring the world to have seen the boss die bounds that - imported credit cannot open a biome on its own - but it does not close it. Off makes the rule exact: credit comes only from kills this mod watched happen. Correct for a world that started with the mod installed, and punishing for one that did not.	true	server
RosterDaysPerBoss	Per-boss overrides for RosterDays, as 'key:days' pairs separated by commas. For example: defeated_eikthyr:7, defeated_fader:60 A short window for an early boss says 'keep up or stop counting'; a long one for a late boss keeps somebody on holiday from being written out of a fight the group has been building towards for weeks. Anything not listed uses RosterDays. Written as one line rather than nine config entries because the interesting case is overriding one or two of them, not filling in a table.	(empty)	server
CatchUpDays	Fallback deadline, in days, for any boss not named in CatchUpDaysPerBoss. 0 means no deadline for those. Without a deadline of some kind, one person who stops logging in holds a biome shut for everybody until RosterDays finally drops them, which can be weeks.	0	server
CatchUpDaysPerBoss	Days the rest of the group has to catch up once the first player has done a boss, after which the biome opens whether they did or not. The clock starts the first time this mod records anyone as having that boss in this world, and is written once and never moved. The default is a ladder: one day for Eikthyr and one more for each boss after. Early bosses are short trips somebody can be brought along on the same evening, so a day is enough pressure; a late boss is a whole evening's expedition that has to be organised, and holding the group to one day there would just mean the deadline always wins and the gate never does.	"defeated_eikthyr:1, defeated_gdking:2, defeated_bonemass:3, " + "defeated_dragon:4, defeated_goblinking:5, defeated_queen:6, defeated_fader:7"	server
CreditRadius	How close to a dying boss a character has to be to be credited for it, in metres. Deliberately generous. Only one machine sees a boss die - the client that owns it - so it credits everyone standing nearby on the group's behalf, and the two ways of getting that wrong are not symmetric. Too tight and somebody who fought the whole battle is not credited, which holds the gate shut for the entire group with no way to fix it short of killing the boss again. Too loose and a bystander is credited, which costs one person's sense of having earned it. Prefer too loose.	100	server
ExcludePlayerIds	Character IDs that never count towards the group gate, comma-separated. The manual override for a character that has to keep playing but should not hold the gate. IDs rather than names, because global keys are lowercased and two characters can share a name. The roster dump on spawn prints both.	(empty)	server
RequirePreviousBoss	A character only counts towards a boss's gate once it has the boss before it in this table. Without it, somebody who has killed nothing at all holds the Swamp shut for a group that has cleared Eikthyr and is waiting on The Elder - a person two steps behind the frontier deciding when the people at it may move. They still count for the boss they are actually next in line for, so the gate that holds a group together is the one nearest them, and biomes the group has already earned stay open regardless. Off restores 'every living character counts for every gate'.	true	server
BorderMargin	How far the gate reaches past the edge of a gated biome, in metres. Without it the border is a line you can stand a step behind: walk out of the Swamp, eat, walk back, and the drain is a mild inconvenience rather than a reason to leave. With it the edge is a band you have to actually clear, and the biome you can see from is still the biome you are in. Costs eight biome lookups a step, cached, so it is not free but it is close. 0 turns it off and puts the gate exactly on the border.	5	server
BlockBossSummons	Refuse to summon a boss at an altar standing in a biome the group has not earned, and keep the Queen's door sealed while the Mistlands are. Without it one player can carry an egg into the locked Mountains, kill Moder there, and start the Plains deadline for everybody while the rest are still on Bonemass. Nothing is used up by a refused offering. It can never lock a boss away for good: each altar stands in the biome the boss before it opens, so it answers as soon as that biome does, by kills or by the deadline.	true	server
BossBlockedMessage	Shown centre-screen when an altar refuses.	The land will not answer an offering here	yours
BossDoorKeys	Doors that open with one of these keys (item prefab names, comma-separated) stay sealed while the biome they stand in is locked, under BlockBossSummons. The default is the Sealbreaker, which opens the Queen's door - she is not summoned at an altar, so the altar rule alone cannot reach her. The key is not used up by a refusal, and a door that is already open stays open. Empty turns this off.	DvergrKey	server
BossDoorBlockedMessage	Shown centre-screen when a boss door stays shut.	The seal will not break here yet	yours

Presentation 13

Setting	What it does	Default	Whose
ShowStatusEffects	Show the two effects on the HUD. Off makes the mod invisible, which is atmospheric and also completely baffling to a new player.	true	yours
MarkIconFrom	Name of the vanilla status effect whose icon the in-biome marker borrows.	Poison	yours
SappedIconFrom	Name of the vanilla status effect whose icon Sapped borrows. Encumbered's weight reads as 'heavy and slow', which is what the effect does.	Encumbered	yours
EnterMessage	Shown once on entering a gated biome. Blank to say nothing.	Something here refuses you	yours
LeaveMessage	Shown once on leaving a gated biome. Blank to say nothing.	The land loosens its grip	yours
NameTheBlockers	Under a group gate, name the characters the biome is still waiting on. Worth leaving on: the honest question a player asks is 'why is this still shut when I killed it myself', and without an answer the only way to find one is to read a log file. Off if you would rather it stayed mysterious.	true	yours
BlockedByPrefix	Prefix for that list of names.	Still owed by:	yours
EatProgressLine	Added under the refused-meal message, so a player learns there is a way back at the moment they need one. {fighting} is your Fighting bar in the biome refusing you, {eat} is where eating comes back, both in percent, and {biome} is the biome's name. Blank to say nothing.	Fighting here {fighting}%. You can eat at {eat}%.	yours
AnnounceOpenings	Say so, wherever you are, when a biome opens. Without it the only way to learn that the group has finally cleared Bonemass is to walk to the Mountain and not be refused - which lands the payoff for fetching your friend silently, and usually to the person who was not at the fight.	true	yours
OpenedMessage	Shown when a biome opens. {biome} is replaced with the biome's name in your own language, and with both names when one boss opens two.	{biome} opens to you	yours
ShowCompendiumPage	Add a Utangard page to the compendium's text list, beside Logs and Active Effects. It is the only place in the game that can answer 'which biomes are shut, who is still owed, and how long until it opens anyway' without walking there or reading a log file.	true	yours
CompendiumTopic	What that page is called in the list.	Utangard	yours
ShowCompendiumPanel	Draw the Utangard page as a panel: a strip of every biome, open ones in green and locked ones in red, and for a locked biome your Fighting and Discovery bars there and what each one unlocks. Click a biome to see it. Off shows the plain text page instead, which says less about footholds but also lists the group's roster. The text page is also what shows if the panel ever fails to draw.	true	yours

Sapped 2

Setting	What it does	Default	Whose
StaminaRegenMultiplier	Stamina regeneration while Sapped, as a fraction of normal. 0.25 is the 75% penalty. This is a multiplier applied alongside every other one the game has, so it stacks with food and with Rested rather than replacing them.	0.25	server
MaxSeconds	Ceiling on how much Sapped you can accumulate. One second in a gated biome buys one second of it, so this is also 'how long you must stand in the biome before the penalty is at full length'. It keeps ticking down after you leave, which is the point - a dash in and out still costs you.	30	server

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