Byname

Byname

A byname — Old Norse viðrnefni — is the descriptive nickname a Norse person earned from their deeds. Erik the Red. Ivar the Boneless. Harald Bluetooth.

Byname gives every player one, generated from what they have actually done in Valheim. Nobody picks their title. You get the one your saga earned you, and it changes as you play.

> Sodden Beekeeper · The Bare-Fisted Gravewalker · Helmsman of the Far Shore > Serpent-Touched Great-Catcher · Jarl of the Nine Crowns · The Unproven Stranger

Titles appear on the second line of a player's nameplate, tinted by how rare they are.

Who needs to install this

Every player, and the server.

Valheim keeps player statistics in each player's own local character file — no peer can read anyone else's. So each client works out its own title and publishes it for others to see. A player without Byname installed neither publishes a title nor sees anyone else's.

The server needs it because the server owns the rules: which categories of title are allowed, whether titles are judged on a character's whole life or only on this world, and how often a stale title rerolls. Those settings are admin-synced, so a client cannot quietly switch a category back on.

Byname is declared ClientMustHaveMod. A server running it requires it of everyone who joins. A Byname client can still join a vanilla server — there will simply be no titles.

How titles are built

A title is assembled from a grammar, not picked from a list. Each slot is filled from a different area of your play, so a title describes more than one thing about you:

{epithet} {noun}                   →  Sodden Beekeeper
The {epithet}                      →  The Unflinching
{noun} of the {domain}             →  Angler of the Deep
{epithet} {noun} of the {domain}   →  Quiet Tiller of the Green Hall

400 fragments are drawn from 158 of Valheim's tracked statistics — deaths by cause, which creatures you kill and with what, trees felled by species and by the axe they needed, fish by quality, the largest hall you have ever raised, bees kept, sap drawn, distance sailed, how far out you have pushed the map without a map.

Most deeds have two to four wordings, and each player is given one of them for good. Three friends who raised the same hall become a Hallwright, a Roof-Raiser and a Rafter-Master, not three Hallwrights.

A few rules keep the results honest: rarer deeds win their slot, every extra word has to be worth adding rather than padding the title out, and no two slots may come from the same area of play — so nobody ends up "Slaying Slayer of the Slain".

What killed you

Valheim only records that a monster killed you, not which one or where. Byname keeps its own record of both, so a player who keeps dying in the swamp becomes Mire-Taken or Draugr-Hewn. That record starts when Byname is installed — earlier deaths still count toward the general death titles, but not toward these.

When your title changes

Titles are recomputed on login, waking from sleep, respawning, and felling a boss.

Recomputing is not the same as changing. If nothing notable has happened, the result is identical and nothing is announced — your title does not churn every time you sleep.

The exception is staleness: if a title has stood for 10 in-game days (configurable), it deliberately rerolls among the titles you equally deserve, so a long-settled character still sees their story move. It never demotes you to something you did not earn.

Valheim never draws a nameplate for your own character, so Byname shows you your own title in two other places: a message when it changes, and a line under your name on the inventory screen.

Commands

/byname in chat, or byname in the console, explains your current title:

You are Drowned of the Green Hall  (Rare)

  Drowned            death by drowning: 12 (needed 8)
  Green Hall         harvest crop: 520 (needed 400)

Standing since day 84 — rerolls on day 94 if nothing changes.

It reads your own statistics only, changes nothing, and needs no devcommands.

It deliberately does not tell you what you are close to earning. A byname is a record of how you played, not a list of chores — knowing the next threshold would turn it into one.

Requirements

• BepInExPack Valheim
• Jotunn

Installation

Install with a mod manager, or drop Byname.dll into BepInEx/plugins/.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/com.ragemedia.byname.cfg, generated on first launch.

Rules — server-controlled (admin only)

| Setting | Default | What it does | |---|---|---| | Enabled | true | Master switch | | StatScope | Lifetime | Lifetime judges a character on everything it has ever done, in any world, and titles existing characters retroactively. World counts only deeds done since first joining this server, so everyone starts unproven | | StalenessDays | 10 | In-game days a title may stand before it deliberately rerolls. 0 never rerolls | | MaxTitleLength | 32 | Longest rendered title. Longer combinations are skipped in favour of shorter ones | | Blocklist | empty | Comma-separated fragment ids never to use, for removing one title without disabling its whole category |

Categories — server-controlled (admin only)

One switch each for Combat, Bosses, Building, Death, Harvest, Travel, Exploration, Taming, Fishing, Cooking, Crafting, Misc. All on by default. Turn off the ones that do not suit your server — a serious roleplay server might drop Death; a builder server might drop Combat.

Weights — server-controlled (admin only)