Valheim World Modifiers Explained: Portals, Raids, Presets, Solo

You've set world modifiers on your Valheim server and nothing changed. Or you've turned one off and it's still on. Or you're staring at a dropdown full of words like "veryhard" and "hammer" and you'd like to know what they do before you commit a world to them. This is the reference for all of that. If what you want is a recommended set of values for a group of mates, that lives in the best Valheim server settings post; this page is what each knob is.

One thing to hold in your head the whole way through. Valheim keeps world modifiers inside the world save, as keys. A start command that carries a preset rebuilds that set on every start. One without a preset only ever adds, and that difference causes most of the tickets we get about this.

Three layers: presets, modifiers, keys

Since patch 0.217.22 a dedicated server takes modifiers from its start command, the same ones single-player gets from the world creation screen. They come in three layers, and the order matters because later ones overwrite earlier ones.

A preset is a bundle. Iron Gate's own server guide lists seven: normal, casual, easy, hard, hardcore, immersive and hammer, and it says plainly that setting a preset "will overwrite any other previous modifiers". So a preset goes first. Anything you want different from it goes after.

A modifier is one of the five sliders, each with a fixed set of words, straight from the guide:

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

Leaving one out means normal. There's no -modifier combat normal.

A key is a checkbox or a raw number written straight into the world. The documented ones for -setkey are nobuildcost, playerevents, passivemobs and nomap. Two more work without being in the guide: fire, which the Ashlands patch added as "a new world modifier that allows fire to spread outside of the Ashlands as well", and NoPortals, which does what it says. Under those sit the percentage keys, covered further down.

What the presets bundle

Iron Gate hasn't published a table of what each preset sets, so treat these as the shape of each one rather than exact figures.

• Normal is the game as shipped. Every modifier at default, no keys.
• Casual softens combat, relaxes the death penalty, bumps resources, drops raids and loosens portals. It's the "I have two hours a week" preset.
• Easy is a lighter touch than casual: gentler combat and death, the rest left near normal.
• Hard turns combat up, makes dying cost more and tightens portals.
• Hardcore is hard with the death penalty at its harshest and portals restricted. Dying here means losing skills for good, so read the death penalty section before you pick it for a shared world.
• Immersive is about exploration, not difficulty: no map, fire spreads everywhere, portals limited, combat around hard. Iron Gate's Ashlands notes confirm the fire key is "part of the immersive preset".
• Hammer is the builder's preset. Free building, easy combat, resources up, portals open.

Want the exact figures on your own world? An admin can run listkeys in the in-game console once the server's up.

The five world modifiers, one at a time

Combat scales four things at once: your damage, enemy damage, enemy speed and size, and how often enemies spawn with stars. veryhard roughly doubles what you take and trims what you deal. veryeasy goes the other way.

DeathPenalty decides what happens to your gear and skills. casual keeps equipped items on you and drops the rest, with a token skill loss. veryeasy and easy drop everything but take less skill than normal. hard deletes what wasn't equipped. hardcore deletes everything you carried and wipes skills entirely. On a shared world with newer players, hardcore is the one setting I'd talk the group out of.

Resources is a straight drop multiplier, from muchless to most. It scales what trees, ore and creatures give, not how fast you swing.

Raids covers the "the forest is moving" style events. none turns them off. The less and more steps change how often the roll succeeds. The playerevents key is separate: raids then depend on which bosses the players present have killed, not the world's global progress. Set it when a veteran joins a fresh group and would otherwise drag Moder's drakes onto their starter base.

Portals gets its own section below, because it's the one people get wrong.

Portal settings: the modifier versus the NoPortals key

Portals is the modifier whose values Iron Gate documents least. The three words are casual, hard and veryhard. casual relaxes the rules so metals and other normally blocked items go through. hard and veryhard tighten them, with the harsher of the two stopping portals working at all. The guide doesn't tie the words to the in-game labels ("no boss portals" and "no portals"), so if you specifically want portals gone, use the NoPortals key instead and you don't have to guess. On our panel the row reads Casual (carry anything), Hard (no metals) and Very hard (no portals), and the No Portals toggle in World Rules is the key.

The percentage keys

Every combat and resource preset is made of these underneath. Each is a percentage with 100 as default, set as -setkey PlayerDamage 150 on the start command or setkey PlayerDamage 150 from the admin console.

The death-behaviour keys are toggles rather than percentages and they're mutually exclusive: DeathKeepEquip keeps equipped gear on death, DeathDeleteUnequipped destroys the inventory but leaves equipment, DeathDeleteItems destroys the lot. Only reach for them when you want a combination the DeathPenalty words don't offer.

Community wikis quote exact percentages for each combat word. Iron Gate hasn't published those, so I'd trust listkeys over a table someone data-mined two patches ago.

Playing mostly solo

A dedicated server with one regular player is a different game from a full one, and the defaults assume a crew. This is what I'd change, in order of how much difference it makes.

1. Raids. Fighting off a troll raid alone while your base has no walls is the number one reason solo players quit a server. Set Raids to less or muchless. none is fine too, but you lose the event drops.
2. DeathPenalty. With nobody to run a corpse recovery with you, easy or casual saves a lot of evenings. Casual keeps your armour on, which is the bit that matters when you died to a fuling squad that's still standing on your grave.
3. Portals. casual. Ferrying ore by boat is a group activity. Alone, it's a chore.
4. Resources. more is plenty. muchmore if your evenings are short.
5. Passive creatures (passivemobs) only for a building world. Nothing attacks until you hit it, and that's more than most people want.

Leave playerevents off on a solo world. It only matters when players at different progress share a server.

Changing modifiers on a running world

Modifiers set through the start command take effect on the next start, not live. Save, restart, and the new values are in. That part's simple.

The trap is the other direction, and it depends on whether your start command carries a preset. If it does, the world's modifiers are rebuilt from the command on every start: a preset clears every modifier key first, including any -setkey you had before, and the keys listed after it are re-added. Drop a key from the command and it's gone at the next start. Without a preset (or -resetmodifiers), the command only ever adds. Turn nomap on, start once, and the world remembers it until something actively removes it.

Two ways to actually take one off:

• From inside the game, as an admin: press F5, type devcommands, then removekey nomap (or whatever the key is). listkeys shows what's there, resetworldkeys clears all the modifier keys. Don't type resetkeys: that one clears every global key, boss kills included. These arrived in 0.217.22 along with setworldpreset and setworldmodifier, so you can change the whole lot live if you'd rather. The admin commands guide has the rest of that list.
• From the start command: add -resetmodifiers for one start, and the world comes up with defaults. Take it off again afterwards or every start will wipe your modifiers.

Gotcha: resetworldkeys and -resetmodifiers remove only the modifier keys and leave boss progression alone. resetkeys is the dangerous one: it wipes every global key, including which bosses the world has killed.

Where all this lives on a LOW.MS server

On the Manage tab of the panel, the World Modifiers group has a World Preset dropdown (Standard through Hammer; Standard is Iron Gate's normal) and a row for each of the five modifiers: Combat Difficulty, Death Penalty, Resource Drops, Raids and Portals. Each row has a "Use preset" option, which means "don't override this, let the preset decide". Pick a preset, override only the rows you care about, and the panel writes them onto the start command in the right order.

The World Rules group is the keys: Free Building, Player-Triggered Events, Passive Creatures, No Map, Fire Hazard (Ashlands only, or Everywhere) and No Portals. Our start command always carries the preset, so ticking one turns it on at the next start and unticking it takes it off at the next start too. If listkeys says otherwise after a restart, removekey from the in-game console settles it.

The percentage keys are the Custom Modifiers group: Player Damage, Enemy Damage, Enemy Speed & Size, Enemy Level-Up Rate, Resource Rate, Skill Gain Rate, Skill Loss on Death and Items on Death. They're plain -setkey values written after the preset, so "Use preset" drops them at the next start.

Save, then restart, and the Console tab shows the server coming up with the new set. If a modifier looks like it didn't take, run listkeys in game before changing anything else. The configuration guide covers the rest of the Manage tab, the Valheim server hosting page covers the rest of the panel, and if a world's keys have got into a state you can't untangle, open a ticket and tell us which world it is. We'll read them off the save directly.