Alfar
Light-bodied casters of Alfheim, tall, grey and thin. Food becomes eitr and eitr is your shield: every blow lands on it first, and the cost of dying is a long wait, not a lost life.
The Alfar arrived in v1.6.0 as the mod's eleventh race. They have one resource: everything you eat feeds the eitr pool, and that pool is your armour, your fall protection and the fuel for every power you cast. Spending eitr to attack leaves less of it to stand behind. Away from the fighting they build a base that runs itself, around a crystal core called the Ljoskjarne.
An Alfr is 5% taller and 8% thinner than a Viking, with ash-grey skin, no hair or beard, and two
matte black eyes. All of that is under Alfar - Look in Configuration Manager and stays local
to you.
Base kit (tier 1)
- Eitr Shield. Blows land on the eitr pool before your health, one eitr per point of damage. Lightning and spirit cost twice as much eitr. A blow larger than the pool is split: the eitr takes what it can and your health takes the rest. Drowning and the edge of the world skip the shield. There is no cooldown: it absorbs for as long as one point of eitr is left.
- Diet of Light. Every food adds its own eitr plus the smaller of its health and stamina to your maximum eitr. A cooked meat (40 health, 30 stamina) is worth +30, so balanced food beats lopsided food.
- Soft Fall. With eitr in the pool, falls cost nothing and you drift down at feather-cape speed. At zero eitr you fall and get hurt like anyone else.
- Levitation. Hold Jump (or the pad's jump button) in the air and you rise slowly, burning 2 eitr a second. No forward speed is added: it gets you up a ledge or out of a pit, it is not flight. Let go and the soft fall takes over.
- Heimkall. A blow that would kill you sends you home instead: you wake at your bed with one health and 5 seconds where nothing can hurt you. No tombstone, no skill loss. After that it waits 20 minutes (15 after Yagluth, 10 after Fader), and inside that wait a lethal blow kills you normally. The wait shows on screen and survives a logout.
Only a bed you have set, by sleeping in it or interacting with it. With no bed set, Heimkall takes you to the world's starting point.
Progression
| Boss | Unlock |
|---|---|
| Base | Eitr Shield · Diet of Light · Soft Fall · Levitation · Heimkall (20 min) · the Ljoskjarne and drones |
| Eikthyr | Skrid (G) · Grafvaettir (H) |
| The Elder | Utsog, 15% of the damage you deal comes back as eitr |
| Bonemass | Kall (J) |
| Moder | Ljosstorm (K) |
| Yagluth | Geisli (O, hold; pad: secondary attack, empty hands) · Heimkall drops to 15 minutes · constructs at the Ljoskjarne |
| The Queen | Kyrr (U) |
| Fader | Sameining (I), the archon · Heimkall drops to 10 minutes |
Controls
| Key | Power | Eitr | Wait | Available from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| G | Skrid, blink 8 m where you look | 10 | 3 s | Eikthyr |
| H | Grafvaettir, throw mining drones | 25, plus 10 stone and 5 flint | 5 min | Eikthyr |
| J | Kall, pull dropped items | 5 | 2 s | Bonemass |
| K | Ljosstorm, psionic storm | 40 | 20 s | Moder |
| O (hold) | Geisli, beam from the hand | 8 a second | 2 s after release | Yagluth |
| U | Kyrr, stasis | 50 | 45 s | The Queen |
| I | Sameining, the archon | 75% of your eitr, all spent | Heimkall | Fader |
Each power's wait shows on screen as a countdown, next to the Heimkall timer. The keys reuse
letters other races use, which is safe because a character has one race. All of them can be
rebound under Alfar - Keybinds.
Powers
Skrid (G, Eikthyr)
A blink of 8 metres in the direction you look.
Grafvaettir (H, Eikthyr)
Throws a grenade of five mining drones up to 25 m. Where it lands they dig every precious ore
deposit within 12 m for two minutes, then vanish. The ore falls where the deposit stood. By
default they go after copper, tin, iron (crypt scrap piles included), silver and the Mistlands'
giant brains; the list is Mining Targets under Alfar - Drones, and an edit counts without
restarting the game. Since v1.6.5 they fly low over the deposit and clear a whole copper vein,
broken pieces included; before, they hovered out of reach and their blows did not land.
Utsog (passive, The Elder)
15% of the damage you deal to a creature comes back to you as eitr, from any attack. Tamed creatures give nothing.
Utsog runs where the struck creature is owned. A monster another client controls feeds you no eitr. In singleplayer and for the host this rarely matters.
Kall (J, Bonemass)
Every dropped item within 15 metres flies toward you.
Ljosstorm (K, Moder)
A storm 6 m across, placed up to 30 m away, that deals 20 lightning damage a second to every enemy inside for 6 seconds.
Geisli (O, Yagluth)
Hold the key for a beam from your right hand: 35 lightning damage a second to what it touches, up to 30 m. It burns 8 eitr a second and cuts off after 8 seconds held. On a gamepad, hold the secondary attack with empty hands (or at any time in the archon form); see Gamepad.
Kyrr (U, The Queen)
Holds what you look at, up to 25 m away, in stasis: 4 seconds for an ordinary enemy, 1.5 for a boss.
Sameining (I, Fader)
The archon. It needs 75% of your maximum eitr and a ready Heimkall, and it spends all your eitr. Each point spent becomes three points of a protection pool that takes every blow, drowning included.
For up to three minutes you are 1.5 times your size, 20% faster and glowing. You fly: Jump climbs, Crouch sinks, and you hover when you hold neither. You cannot use weapons. Instead a psionic pulse hits everything hostile within 4 m for 60 lightning damage once a second. Ljosstorm and Geisli cost no eitr in the form and wait 5 seconds between uses.
The form ends when the time is up or the pool is gone. Then Heimkall fires: you are sent home at one health with zero eitr, and the Heimkall wait starts. Other players see the size and the glow.
The Nexus
The Alfar do not raise troops at a station the way other races do. They build one core and the base runs around it.
Ljoskjarne
A riveted steel pyramid, 2 m tall and carved with Valheim's runes, floating above the ground and turning slowly. The cyan seam down each face burns brighter while crystals wait.
Built with the Hammer for 40 bronze and 30 stone, Alfar only. Only one may stand in every 1.6 km². Its radius is 40 m: drones work and towers fire only inside it.
Press E on it for its store. Prices come out of your pack, not in coins, and each row's tooltip lists what it costs and how many you have of how many allowed.
| Product | Price | Cap per Ljoskjarne | Needs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ljosvaettir (drone) | 8 bronze | 6 | — |
| Kristallvigsla (crystal upgrade) | 20 Crystal | once | — |
| Neistvordr (fire construct) | 20 bronze, 3 Crystal, 3 refined eitr | 4 | upgrade and Yagluth |
| Eldingvordr (lightning construct) | 20 iron, 5 Crystal, 4 refined eitr | 4 | upgrade and Yagluth |
| Steinvordr (stone construct) | 20 black metal, 8 Crystal, 6 refined eitr | 1 | upgrade and Yagluth |
| Collect crystals | — | — | upgrade |
After the Kristallvigsla the core grows crystals on its own, each one taking twice as long as a beehive takes for one honey. It stops at 20 until you or a drone collects them.
Drones
A Ljosvaettir is a bronze Deathsquito with blue light and no legs: 25 health, a shield of 25 that returns by itself, and a 1-damage zap every 2 seconds for self-defence. It never goes after anything. Each drone does every job of the Bone Servants, the Smith's and the Cook's together:
- Logistics. Throw everything into the entry chest. Drones feed stations from it, bring the product back to it, and then sort it into whichever chest already holds the same thing.
- The forge and the kitchen. Smelters, kilns, furnaces, hearths, ovens and the rest, inside the radius.
- The farm. They harvest and replant, and never harvest a crop they could not replant. They
also pick wild mushrooms, dandelions, thistle and berries (
Wild Plants Harvested). - Repairs. Anything damaged inside the radius, for free.
Wood is the one thing they burn, and only from the wood chest.
The two chests are built like a normal chest plus 3 Greydwarf eyes, Alfar only, and look like no vanilla chest. The entry chest (Inngangskista) is navy steel with a cyan line in the lid that shines while it holds anything for the drones. The wood chest (Eldividarkista) is a blackened iron crate whose grate glows and sparks while it holds wood they may burn. A plain Wood chest is not the wood chest. Drones read every other chest in the radius too. To keep them out of one, put an Eirinnsigli inside it: a verdigris seal forged from one bronze nail. That is the opposite of the Bone Servants' sigil, which marks the chests they may use.
Drones talk, over their heads and in chat within 40 m: they say when an item in the entry chest has nowhere to go (give them an empty chest, or one already holding it), when they keep an item there because a station works with it, and when a kiln stands idle because its wood sits in a plain chest. An enemy that runs off no longer keeps a drone fighting: once it gets too far the drone lets go and goes back to work.
If the Ljoskjarne is destroyed, its drones wither away 30 seconds later.
Constructs
The Alfar's only troops. They follow and stay on order like other races' tames, wander up to 12 m from the core when left alone, and chase enemies within 25 m. Everything they deal becomes lightning and never touches an ally, a building, a tree or a rock.
| Construct | Built on | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Neistvordr | a Surtling, 60 health and a shield of 60 | throws fire (as lightning) |
| Eldingvordr | a smaller Abomination at half its health | a lightning sphere every 8 s, 80 damage, 30 m range |
| Steinvordr | a Stone Golem, 800 health | the tank, one per core |
Their shield comes back by itself, but their body does not: constructs never heal and cannot be repaired. A destroyed construct gives back its metal, never its crystals or eitr. They wither 60 seconds after their Ljoskjarne falls.
Ljosgard
A garden of light, built inside a Ljoskjarne's radius for 40 bronze, 10 Jotun Puffs and 10 Magecap, one per core. It works like a furnace: one Magecap and one Jotun Puffs become one Sap every 10 minutes, up to 10 stored. Drones feed it and carry the Sap away.
Prismavard
A turret built inside a Ljoskjarne's radius for 25 bronze and 2 Crystal: the Ashlands' charred ballista, smaller, in bronze, and on your side. It fires bolts of 40 lightning damage, needs no ammunition, and has a shield equal to its health that returns by itself. Outside a core's radius it switches off. Repair it with the Hammer, or let the drones do it.
See Stations for every race's chain side by side.
Things to know
- No faction. The Alfar belong to no faction and have no creature that leaves them alone.
- Resetting during the archon drops the form on the spot, with no teleport.
- Every number here is configurable. Each value on this page is an entry under
Alfar - …in Configuration Manager, and on a server the host's values apply.
Playing one
- Eat for eitr. A balanced meal fills the shield and the casting pool at once, and an empty pool makes you the softest race in the game.
- Every power you cast leaves less shield. Space them out, or let Utsog refill you between casts once the Elder is down.
- Heimkall is a second life on a timer, not a free one. Fighting again before it is back is fighting with one life, like everyone else.
- Sameining spends a Heimkall on purpose. Fly in, let the pulse work, and plan to wake up at home.
- Put the entry chest and the wood chest near the core first. Everything the drones do starts from those two.