Multiplayer
Races of Valheim is built for co-op play. Everyone can pick a different race in the same world, and transformations are visible to everyone else.
Everyone needs the mod
Races of Valheim is not server-side only. Install it, BepInEx and Jötunn on the server and on every client. A vanilla client connecting to a modded server cannot pick a race and will not see other players' transformations.
What is stored where
| Data | Stored on | Travels between worlds? |
|---|---|---|
| Your chosen race | Your character | Yes |
| Original skin colour | Your character | Yes |
| Fenrir curse flag | Your character | Yes |
| Boss kills (progression tier) | The world | No |
Your race is yours. Your power level belongs to whichever world you are standing in.
This means:
- A Skadi character joining a fresh world is still a Skadi, but back at tier 1.
- The same character joining a server where Yagluth is dead is immediately tier 6, dragon forms and all, with no catching up to do.
- Nothing is ever lost — the tier is recalculated from the world, not spent.
Your race is also broadcast to nearby players separately from your character save, which is what lets everyone else's client render you correctly.
Visual sync
Transformations are synced, so other players see what you have become rather than a normal Viking sliding around:
- Aswid — bat and mist forms
- Skadi — drake, Moder and Skeleton Dragon forms, plus the earlier bear/wolf/hatchling and Fader visuals
- Fenrir — wolf, ulv, fenring and cultist forms
- Skeleton — the poison and fire model tiers, the look chosen at the barber, the burning skull from Moder on, and the Fader size
- Draugh — the drifting miasma and the cloud of flies
- Sverm — the carapace, the dorsal spines, and the Ravager Strain
- Alfar — the grey skin, the black eyes, the body shape, and the archon's size and glow
- Trenta — the crown of branches
- Skin tints — Aswid, Furling, Trol, Draugh and Skadi. Since v1.5.10 each Trol's skin and hair are the colours that player picked
- Body size — every race that resizes itself, the Trol's True Form included, camera height and all
The Draugh's rot, the Skeleton's burning skull and the Fenrir's forms were all built only on the screen of the player wearing them, so everyone else saw an ordinary Viking — or, in the Fenrir's case, a human standing inside their own wolf. Each client now renders them for every player it can see. None of it is networked: your race and tier are already shared, so each client works out the rest for itself.
Since 1.3.9 a remote Skadi's dragon is animated rather than frozen in its idle pose: it beats its wings in the air and runs on the ground, following the state of the player it belongs to. Returning to human form no longer plays the get-up-from-the-ground animation either, for you or for anyone watching.
Forms that other players can actually watch fight
A transformed player used to be a silent mannequin to everyone else: the form was there, it moved, and it never swung. Four releases closed that, one form family at a time.
| Fixed in | What other players now see |
|---|---|
| v1.4.19 | Fenrir's Wolf, Ulv, Fenring and Cultist walk, run, jump and creep instead of sliding in a default pose |
| v1.4.21 | Drake, Moder and Fader at their real size — Moder's shrink included — and their bite, claw and breath animations |
| v1.4.21 | The Sverm's Ravager Strain: the Brute, its attacks, and the hidden human body, networked the way the Skadi and Fenrir forms already were |
| v1.4.22 | Every Fenrir form's attacks, the opening sound of each swing, the howls, and the Cultist's flame breath, roar and fire |
Two things are still deliberately local: the sound of an impact landing and the Fenring's jump. Both belong to the player making them.
Your height is where your head is
Until v1.4.19 a race that resized its body only resized it for everyone else. The Trol stood a head taller and the Dvergar came up short on every screen but their own, because the camera stayed at human eye level. The eye now sits at the height of the body you are wearing, at whatever size it happens to be — the Trol's True Form lifts the view as it grows and lowers it on the way back — and shots start from there. Mobs aim at the same point, so this matters on every client, not only yours.
Configuration comes from the server
Since v1.4.23 every gameplay setting follows the server's value. Join a server and your own numbers are replaced by the host's for as long as you are connected; in Configuration Manager they show as locked unless you are an admin.
| Synced from the server | Stays yours |
|---|---|
| Every gameplay number — damage, durations, cooldowns, costs, caps, radii, faction switches | Keybinds |
| Eye and claw colours, glow, tints | |
| Model rotation and offsets, the dorsal-spine nudge | |
| The Alfar's look: skin brightness, height, width, eye size | |
| The Head Fire VFX and stamina-bar toggles | |
The Skeleton's Body Model Enabled switch | |
| The Trol's skin and hair colours (yours to pick, and everyone sees them) | |
| Debug logging |
The split is deliberate: a number the game computes with has to be the same for everyone in the world, while a colour or a keybind is a preference that syncing would only take away. One exception looks cosmetic and is not — Attack Reach Offset is a real hit-detection distance and is synced.
Progression is shared, whether you like it or not
Because the tier comes from world boss flags, one player killing a boss advances every race on the server at once. There is no per-character gating.
For most groups this is the desired behaviour: the party progresses together. If you want a member to experience the early tiers, they need to play in a world where those bosses are still alive.
Playing mixed parties
Some race combinations are worth knowing about:
- A Fenrir in the party does not stop wolves attacking everyone else — the hostility change only applies to the Fenrir themselves. The same is true of the Aswid's progressive truces.
- A Furling's doubled trophy drops apply to normal enemies dying within 25 m of them, including kills made by other players and their tames. Bring the Furling to the farm.
- A Trol's carry weight makes them the natural hauler for group mining and building.
- Skeleton and Aswid never need the party's cooked food, which changes how much of it you actually have to make.
Known caveats
Both issues listed here as broken in 1.3.8 are resolved in 1.3.9:
- Remote Trols are sized from the Trol's own progression rather than the observer's, and True Form is visible to other players at its full 2× or 2.5×.
- Remote Skadi dragons stay airborne instead of being dragged down to the terrain while the player is actually flying.
- A player who was mid-transformation when they disconnected may need one relog to render correctly for others.
- Race abilities are evaluated on the client that owns the character. Latency can make a transformation appear a moment later for observers than for the player transforming.