World Modifiers

0:40 World modifiers are Valheim's built-in difficulty settings: a screen of presets, sliders and toggles that change how hard enemies hit, what a death costs, how fast resources drop, how often a base is raided, what may go through a portal, and whether there is a map at all. They were added to the game in Hildir's Request, patch 0.217.14 of Aug 22, 2023, which Iron Gate introduced as "some long awaited server modifiers; select a lower difficulty for a more casual experience, ramp it up for a hardcore playthrough, or come up with a mix of your own" (Iron Gate). They belong to the world, not the character, and can be changed at any time.

Quick facts

Sources: Iron Gate's server guide; 1.0 FAQ; World Modifiers, Valheim Wiki.

How to change world modifiers in Valheim

0:14 From the main menu, pick Start game, choose a character, then select a world and press World Modifiers. A warning appears first, recommending the normal experience; past it sit the presets, the sliders and the toggles. The same screen works on a world that has been played for months, so a group that finds the grind too long or the raids too fierce can change its mind without starting over.

Valheim world modifier presets

0:52 A preset is only a shortcut: clicking one moves the sliders below it, and every slider can then be nudged by hand. The descriptions below are the game's own.

1:19 Casual and Hammer overlap: both switch raids off and make enemies passive, but Casual softens combat and death while Hammer leaves the fighting alone and only removes build costs, which makes it the builders' preset.

1:13 Hardcore is worth reading slider by slider. Combat sits at very hard, the death penalty at hardcore, resource rate at normal and raids at more, so the punishing part is death rather than scarcity.

2:03 Its portal slider is set to No boss portals rather than No portals, so portals work as usual until a boss is alive, at which point they and the boss dungeon's exit close. The map is gone throughout, and an existing character taken into a hardcore world plays by its rules, losing everything permanently on its first death.

What the combat setting changes

5:28 The combat slider moves four values at once. Player damage changes are not shown anywhere in the interface, so a weapon's listed range never changes (World Modifiers, Valheim Wiki).

Hard and Very hard also raise the chance of star-level enemies, which is what makes them bite (Combat).

Death penalty

4:21 The death-penalty slider decides what happens to gear and Skills when a Viking dies. Dropped items go to the tombstone; destroyed items are gone.

1:54 Casual is the single most popular change. Keeping armor and the weapon in hand turns a corpse run from a naked sprint back into an inconvenience, while the tombstone still holds everything else.

Resources, raids and portals

3:56 Resource rate runs from 0.5x to 3x of what mobs and the world drop. It rounds up, so 1.5x behaves like 2x for many drops, and it leaves fish, trophies and boss drops alone. Raid rate runs from none to much more; night attacks still happen even at none (Raids and Events).

5:05 The portal slider is the one that changes the shape of the game. At Portal items everything may be carried through, ores and metals included, which removes the long hauls the game is built around; Normal keeps the usual restrictions; No boss portals shuts portals and boss-dungeon exits while a boss is alive; No portals removes them entirely, and keeps the boss rule as well (Portals).

The toggles

2:36 Four checkboxes sit under the sliders. No build cost makes hammer pieces free. Passive enemies means nothing attacks until it is attacked. Player-based raids tie raids to each player's own progress rather than to the whole world's, which stops a newcomer on a late-game server from being raided by monsters far beyond their gear. No map removes map and minimap together. A fifth toggle, letting fire spread outside the Ashlands, arrived with that update in May 2024 and is part of the Immersive preset (Iron Gate).

Patch 0.219.16 of November 2024 tightened the first of them: No build cost no longer places food for free, because free food moved to a separate No craft cost key (Iron Gate).

Global keys and the hidden settings

5:54 Modifiers are stored as global keys, the same mechanism that records which bosses a world has beaten, so listkeys in the console prints the whole configuration and shows how each preset is built. Some values run backwards: EventRate is 150 on Easy and 60 on Hard, because it is the gap between raids rather than their frequency.

9:25 setkey reaches settings the menu never shows, and beyond the limits the sliders allow: StaminaRate, StaminaRegenRate, MoveStaminaRate, SkillGainRate, SkillReductionRate and DamageTaken all take a percentage, with 100 as the default. Keys set by hand are overwritten every time the world loads with a preset active, so a custom world should sit on Normal (Global keys, Valheim Wiki).

Setting modifiers on a dedicated server

7:18 Dedicated servers take the same settings as launch arguments: -preset for a whole preset, then -modifier for each slider and -setkey for each toggle, in that order, because a preset placed later wipes what came before. Valid values are combat veryeasy|easy|hard|veryhard, deathpenalty casual|veryeasy|easy|hard|hardcore, resources muchless|less|more|muchmore|most, raids none|muchless|less|more|muchmore, portals casual|hard|veryhard, and the keys nobuildcost, playerevents, passivemobs and nomap (Iron Gate). This only became possible in October 2023, with patch 0.217.22, which also gave admins setworldpreset and setworldmodifier in the in-game console and a -resetmodifiers startup flag (Iron Gate).

World modifiers and 1.0 achievements

The Valheim 1.0 Release brought 53 Steam achievements and a system that refuses them to cheated saves, and world modifiers were left out of that system with one exception. Iron Gate's 1.0 FAQ says "some world modifiers such as hammer-mode will also block certain achievements. Hammer-mode counts as a temporary cheat" (Iron Gate 1.0 FAQ). Turning it off restores eligibility, though what was built while it was on does not count. Playing on Casual, with triple resources and unrestricted portals, costs nothing; see Console Commands, Cheats and Mods for what does.

Frequently asked questions

Can you change world modifiers after starting a world? Yes. Select the world, press World Modifiers and change anything, even on a world months old. The settings live with the world.

Does Casual mode stop you dropping your gear? Yes. On the Casual death penalty, equipped armor and the weapon in hand stay with the player; everything else still goes to the tombstone, and skills fall by 1% instead of 5%.

Do world modifiers disable achievements in Valheim 1.0? Only Hammer mode, which Iron Gate treats as a temporary cheat. The other presets and sliders, Hardcore and Casual alike, leave achievements alone.

How do I carry metal through a portal? Set the portal slider to its left-hand position, Portal items. It lifts every restriction except tamed animals, and works on an existing world.

What is the hardest way to play Valheim? The Hardcore preset: very hard combat, all carried items and skills gone on death, more raids and no map. Keys such as EnemyDamage go further still.

Sources

• A Guide to Dedicated Servers and Valheim 1.0 FAQ, Iron Gate Studio
• Patch 0.217.14 – Hildir's Request, Patch 0.217.22, Patch 0.218.15 – Ashlands and Patch 0.219.16, Iron Gate Studio on Steam
• World Modifiers and Developer console, Valheim Wiki (weirdgloop)
• World Modifiers, Valheim Wiki (Fandom)
• Valheim World Modifiers Guide, NickRawcliffe (video)
• Complete Guide To Valheim World Settings, FireSpark81 (video)
• Valheim Hardcore Mode Explained, Kysen (video)
• Everything You Need to Know Before Starting Valheim 1.0, Lucky Ghost (video)
• How to Setup a Valheim 1.0 Dedicated Server with SteamCMD, Rockuzza Gaming (video)