Skills

*Skills* are a player progression system in Valheim that improve effectiveness with certain actions or weapon types/tools by repeatedly performing matching actions.

Experience is gained independently for each skill with its own trigger for advancement. Effective skill levels are reduced upon Death.

The maximum level for each skill is 100.

## Skills, effects, and experience gain

* Most skill effects scale linearly per level, the exceptions are:
	+ Average weapon damage and knockback increases +1.5% per level until level 75. After that the maximum damage and knockback is capped resulting in only +0.75% average damage and knockback per level.
	+ Sneak stamina usage is exponential.
* At max level, weapons have +240% minimum damage and knockback,+81.82% maximum damage and knockback and +131.25% average damage and knockback.
* Bows have 2.5 seconds of draw time at skill 0. The maximum fire rate of 0.8 seconds is reached at skill 85 (capped by the firing animation) which reduces the duration by 68% (3.1x attack speed).
	+ The max skill increases DPS by +623% (7.23x) due to increased damage and reduced draw time.
	+ The max skill decreases stamina usage by 83% due to reduced stamina cost and reduced draw time (half drain while fully drawn).
* Base jump height is about 1.5 meters, at max level it's about 3.0 meters.

## Experience gain

* Rested Effect increases the total experience gain by 50% (for example parry experience increases from 1 xp to 1.5 xp).
* Weapons get the same experience regardless of the amount of targets, the only exception being axes when hitting a creature and a tree at the same time.
* Weapons get experience when hitting players when PvP is turned on. Blocking gains experience while blocking against PvP damage.
* Birds aren't classified as creatures and won't give experience when hit.
* Pickaxes don't get experience for lowering terrain.
* For skills where experience is gained per second (run, sneak, swim), the experience gain rate is actually every 1.02 seconds. This is likely unintentional by the developers.

## Progression

Once the player has accumulated enough skill experience, they reach the next level. This sets the new, effective level to `current_level + 1` (even if `current_level` is a decimal value) and calculates a new experience requirement to level the skill again.

The amount of skill experience required can be calculated using the following formula:

skill experience to next level =

(
current level
1

)

1.5

2

0.5

{\displaystyle \frac{(\text{current level} + 1)^{1.5}}{2} + 0.5}

If a skill's new level is greater than or equal to 100, it is set to precisely 100 and further experience gain for that skill is disabled.

Experience gain doesn't overflow into the next level: a player's first punch against a creature will gain 1.5 Fists skill experience, leveling it from 0 to 1 (required: 1.0xp), and the remaining 0.5xp gained will be lost.

## Skill loss

Upon Death, if the player is not under the effect of no skill drain as granted by another recent death, the player loses a portion of each skill level according to configured World Modifiers (default: 5%) and also loses all progress towards the next skill level.

Although a skill level will only display its whole number component in the UI, skill loss and new skill levels will reflect fractional values even if they aren't visible.

As an example, consider the impact that a character's very first death with a 5% penalty has on a Run skill with an exact value of 37, almost progressed to 38:

* Run has its effective level set to

37
×
(
1
−
0.05
)

{\displaystyle 37 \times (1 - 0.05)}

 or `35.15`.
	+ This partial value applies the partial effect, e.g. here adding `0.3515 * 25%` (= `8.7875%`) sprint speed vs. 35's `.3500 * 25%` (= `8.75%`)
	+ Despite behaving differently, this value of `35.15`, together with any value beginning at 35 and lower than 36, will display as 35 in the UI
	+ Note that progress to the next level **does not** factor into this calculation
* Skill experience required to level (XPTNL) is recalculated according to the new value, including fractional components
	+ Here, that means

	XPTNL
	=

	(
	35.15
	1

	)

	1.5

	2

	0.5

	{\displaystyle \text{XPTNL} = \frac{(35.15 + 1)^{1.5}}{2} + 0.5}

	, or about `109.18` (versus 35 to 36's requirement of `108.5`)
	+ When this XPTNL value is reached for the skill, a new, fractional level of `36.15` will be set (displayed as 36)
* Progress towards the next level is set to zero, effectively erasing any previous progress towards the next level before death
	+ At lower skill levels and/or for skills that were close to the next level, this can be a significantly more substantial net loss than the listed skill percentage. E.g. A skill that was level 10, but almost level 11, only loses 0.5 in its level value (effectively 50% of the progress between 9 and 10, or 7xp) but up to the full 18.7xp required between 10 and 11
	+ This progress loss component is not impacted by World Modifiers and cannot be adjusted