Progression

Races of Valheim does not have its own XP bar, skill tree or unlock currency. It reuses the thing Valheim already tracks: which bosses have been defeated in this world.

The eight tiers

Your race's power level is a single number from 1 to 8.

Tier	Unlocked by	World flag
1	No bosses defeated	—
2	Eikthyr	defeated_eikthyr
3	The Elder	defeated_gdking
4	Bonemass	defeated_bonemass
5	Moder	defeated_dragon
6	Yagluth	defeated_goblinking
7	The Queen	defeated_queen
8	Fader	defeated_fader

Tiers are read highest first. If a world has Yagluth's flag set, you are tier 6 whether or not the earlier flags are present — so there is no way to get stuck by killing bosses out of order, or by joining a world that skipped one.

Every race page on this wiki lists its unlocks against these boss names.

World progression, or your own

By default the tier is computed from the world's global keys. Since 1.3.8 you can switch your character to personal progression instead, at the Race Menu Ward.

	World progression (default)	Personal progression
Tier comes from	Bosses defeated in this world	Your character's own claimed tiers
Stored on	The world	Your character
Travels between servers	No	Yes
Advanced by	Killing bosses	Offering a boss relic to the ward

What world progression means

The default has two consequences worth knowing before you join someone else's server:

• Joining a late-game world hands you everything. A brand new character walking into a world where Yagluth is dead is immediately a tier 6 version of their race, dragon forms and all.
• Starting a fresh world takes it all away again. The same character in a new world drops back to tier 1 until that world's bosses fall. Nothing is lost — the tier is recalculated, not consumed — but your abilities are gated by wherever you are standing.

Your race itself is stored on the character and does travel with you between worlds and servers. Only the tier is world-derived.

The Race Menu Ward

A buildable ward that manages your race without the console.

Cost	2 Wood
Where	Hammer → Misc
Crafting station	None — buildable anywhere, from your first minute

Every new world also gets one placed for you near the sacrificial stones, so you never have to build the first one. The host places it, once per world.

It borrows the Ward's model and build sounds but claims no territory — the area protection is stripped out.

What it does

Hovering it shows your current mode and tier. Interacting (E) opens a panel with:

• Use World Progression — follow whatever this world has killed.
• Use Personal Progression — follow the tiers your character has claimed.
• Reset Race — the same thing resetrace does, without opening the console.
• Reset Progression — the same thing resetprogression does: drops any claimed-tier override and falls back to the world's real boss state, without opening the console.

Claiming a tier

In personal mode, use a boss's secondary drop on the ward to claim that boss's tier:

Offer	Claims
Hard Antler	Eikthyr
Crypt Key	The Elder
Wishbone	Bonemass
Dragon Tear	Moder
Yagluth thing	Yagluth
Majestic carapace	The Queen
Fader relic	Fader

Any tier can be claimed directly — holding a Dragon Tear takes you straight to Moder's tier whether or not you ever claimed the earlier ones. The item is consumed. You cannot go backwards: offering a relic for a tier you already have just tells you so.

Switch modes first

Offering a relic while you are still on world progression does nothing except tell you to "Switch to personal progression first."

Checking your tier in game

Open the console and run:

checkprogression

It prints the current tier (1–8) to the console and flashes it on screen. See Console commands for the debug commands that let you raise or reset the tier while testing.

The in-game compendium

Every race writes a live entry into your character's compendium — the texts/lore menu in your inventory. Open it and you will find an entry such as Skadi Secrets, Aswid Secrets or Trol Secrets.

The entry is regenerated every time you open the menu, and it lists only the abilities you have actually unlocked at your current tier, with the real numbers filled in (current frost bonus, current spell damage, current armour and damage scaling). It is the fastest way to answer "what can I do right now?" without leaving the game.

Switching race replaces the entry: the previous race's text is removed so the compendium never accumulates stale pages.

Two kinds of unlock

Race abilities come in two flavours, and the distinction matters when a tier ticks over:

• Passive scaling — armour, damage, speed, jump, carry weight, lifesteal, frost bonus. These are recomputed continuously from the tier, so they update as soon as the boss dies.
• Gated unlocks — transformations, spells, extra stomach slots, new resistances. These become available at a specific tier and stay available.

Some gated unlocks are only applied when the game next re-evaluates your equipment. If a newly unlocked ability seems inert right after a boss kill, unequipping and re-equipping anything, or relogging, forces the refresh.