Raids on a Valheim Server: Why Your Base Gets Attacked and How to Control It

What a raid is

A raid (or “event” in many guides) is an organised attack on your base: the combat music plays, a message appears on screen and enemies start spawning around you for a while. It isn't an enemy that happened to wander by: the game itself launches it, at random.

The one launching it is the server, not your PC. That's why on a dedicated server they happen even when the host isn't around, and why the rules to turn them off live on the server.

When one triggers

Every 46 minutes the game rolls the dice: with a 20 % chance, a raid starts. On average that's one every four hours or so of play, but it's pure chance: you can get two in a row or none in a whole evening.

Almost all of them need a base: at least 3 base pieces (a workbench, a bed, a campfire, a forge...) within 40 metres of the player whose turn it is. If you're out travelling, far from any building, it won't trigger. That's why it sometimes feels like “they always attack when I get home”.

A camp on the road counts too: a campfire, a bed and a workbench are already three base pieces, and a raid can reach you there as well.

Which raid you get

Not every raid can happen: it depends on which bosses have been defeated. Each boss stops sending its army and unlocks those of the next biome, so raids grow with you.

Before Eikthyr: boars and necks from the Meadows. After Eikthyr: Greydwarfs from the Black Forest. After The Elder: skeletons and Draugr from the Swamp and, if someone has already killed a troll, trolls too. After Bonemass: drakes from the Mountains. After Moder: Fulings from the Plains. And later on, those of the Mistlands and the Ashlands.

In the game, each defeated boss is a world “key”. Raids look at those keys, not at who was standing in front of the boss.

Why on a server the late joiner gets attacked

This is the surprise of playing as a group: if a friend killed Moder, the world has that key for everyone. Whoever joins last and builds a hut in the Meadows can get Fulings with their stone clubs. It isn't a server bug: it's how it works by default.

When a raid triggers, the game launches it next to one of the players who are at a base. With several online, it can land on any of them, including the one alone on the other side of the map.

The fix is the playerevents toggle (in the game, player based raids): with it, what attacks each player depends on how far they have progressed, not on the bosses defeated in the world. The newcomer gets boars and whoever's already in the Plains gets Fulings. It's the best option for groups that don't progress together or servers where new people keep joining.

How a raid ends

Killing what spawns doesn't end it: a raid lasts a fixed time, and while it lasts enemies keep coming. It ends when that time runs out and the message says it's over.

Running away doesn't work either. The timer pauses if no player is left in the attack area (about 100 metres around), and resumes when someone comes back. Same if you log off: the raid waits for you. What you can do is be ready for it: walls or a stakewall around, a ditch in front, the door closed and your valuables stored.

The console tricks to stop one (stopevent) are devcommands, and on a dedicated server without mods they don't work, not even for admins (why).

Reducing or turning them off

Since the world modifiers patch, Valheim has a setting for this: raids, with the values none, muchless, less, more and muchmore. It changes how often they attack, not how strong they are.

none removes the usual raids, but not everything: some night attacks still happen. If what bothers you is the enemy that shows up when you cross into a biome, that isn't a raid and this setting doesn't touch it.

On a dedicated server it's set at startup, with -modifier raids none (and -setkey playerevents for the toggle above). An admin can also change it from the game console without cheats, with setworldmodifier raids none, until the next restart. The rest of the modifiers, and the catch that the world stores them, are in the world modifiers guide.

start valheim_server -nographics -batchmode -name "Vikings" -port 2456 -world "Vikings" -password "mead42" -crossplay -preset normal -modifier raids less -setkey playerevents

With NapNodes

1. Open “Settings”

   On your Valheim server, the “World difficulty and modifiers” block.

2. Choose how many

   In “Raids”: “Normal”, “None”, “Much less”, “Less”, “More” or “Much more”. It saves automatically when you change it.

3. If someone plays at a different pace

   Tick “Player based raids”: each player gets attacked according to their own progress, not the bosses that have fallen on the server.

4. Restart

   With “Restart”. Modifiers are applied at startup, and the server shows the summary in the join menu. To go back, set “Raids” to “Normal”, untick the toggle and restart: the panel always writes a preset first, so the world ends up as you see it.

Frequently asked questions