Epic Loot on a Valheim Server: Magic Loot, Installation and Configuration

Epic Loot brings Diablo-style loot to Valheim: monsters and chests drop magic items in six rarities, and players get an enchanting table, runes and shardstones. It is one of the most popular Valheim mods, but running a Valheim Epic Loot server is not a cosmetic change: the mod reshapes the economy and progression of the whole world, and everyone who joins needs it. Below we cover what the mod actually does, how to install it on a dedicated server, where its settings live and what to do when something breaks.

The author still labels Epic Loot as early access: features are being added and balance shifts from version to version. For a persistent world that means one thing — update deliberately, and always with a backup.

What Epic Loot changes in Valheim

The core of the mod is magic items. Monsters and chests can drop gear of Magic, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Mythic and Ancient rarity. Each item carries a set of magic effects that buff the item itself or your character while it is equipped. The higher the rarity, the more effects and the better the odds of shardstone slots. Hold Shift and the tooltip shows the full details of each effect.

Enchanting table, runes and tempering

Spare items are not wasted: at the enchanting table you break them down into materials, then convert and upgrade those materials. The Augment and Rune tabs let you reroll effects and move them around via Etched Runestones, including whole sets. Since 0.15 the table has a Storage tab for enchanting materials, and its search boxes can find items by their enchantments.

Tempering is a separate service offered by Hildir. It rerolls the value of an enchantment that is already on the item. Each attempt costs a single iron or gold bounty token, and a failed temper only lowers the enchantment if the server turns that option on.

Shardstones

Shardstones arrived in 0.13 and grant small buffs that let you fine-tune a build. You open a socketed item's slots with the Interact key (E by default) right in your inventory and drag the stone in. Every biome and boss has its own stones; you can upgrade them to a higher rarity at the enchanting table or sacrifice them for dust, reagents and essence.

Bounties, the merchant and sets

The mod also adds bounties — hunts for buffed creatures that pay coins and tokens — plus a merchant, treasure maps and item sets where pieces of different rarities count towards the same set. Boss drops are configurable, and creatures from other mods are automatically included in the loot tables. Recent enchantments include Prosperity (a chance of extra loot), Green Thumb for the Cultivator (sown plants grow faster) and Life After Kill (a heal on every kill).

Who needs the mod: server and players

The README is clear here: Epic Loot works in multiplayer and on dedicated servers, and the server and all players should have the mod and its dependencies installed. The mod is built on the Jötunn library, which checks versions when a player connects, so anyone without the mod or on an older version will not get in.

Settings flow from the server. According to the 0.15.0 changelog, an admin can change every Quick Configure setting from their own game, and the server passes the changes on to every player. There is a catch: the rows stored in JSON (rarity tables, drop amounts per biome, merchant and bounty numbers, boss gating of item categories, effect tunables) can only be written in game by the host. For an admin who is not the host they are read-only.

One more point: Xbox and Game Pass players cannot install BepInEx mods, so crossplay with them is not possible on an Epic Loot server.

Version and dependencies

How to install Epic Loot on an Elysium server

1. Take a manual backup of the world in the Backups tab of the panel before touching any mods.
2. Make sure the server was ordered with the BepInEx variant: the mod loader is already installed.
3. Download Epic Loot and its dependencies from the same release. Copy the contents of the archive's plugins folder into a new folder called EpicLoot inside BepInEx/plugins, as the author asks. Put Jötunn and JsonDotNET next to it in BepInEx/plugins. Upload through the panel's file manager or SFTP.
4. Restart the server and check the console: Jötunn and Epic Loot should load without errors.
5. Ask your players to install the same mods in the same versions — manually or through a mod manager — and fully restart the game.

The general workflow for mods, keeping your group on matching versions and tracking down conflicts are covered in detail in our guide to Valheim server mods, so we will not repeat it here.

Configuration: Quick Configure and JSON tables

The easiest way into the settings is the Mod Config button in the bottom right of the main menu and the pause menu. It opens the Quick Configure panel: balance presets and drop mix, features, rarity tables, shardstones, the enchanting table, the merchant, bounties, interface, item colours and effect tuning. Hover a row to see the same description you would read in the config file.

On the first launch the panel opens as a setup wizard. Set Welcome Wizard to ShowNextLaunch to run it again or to Never to keep it closed. Show Quick Configure Button hides the menu button. If you upgraded from an older version and the storage tab is missing at the table, add Storage to Table Features Active.

The loot tables (loottables.json and its neighbours) live in BepInEx/config/EpicLoot/baseconfig/. The mod has a built-in config upgrade system that can update your files automatically or tell you when a new version changes your settings. If you edited the tables by hand, accept that prompt after an update — otherwise new items such as shardstones may never drop.

Server load and choosing a plan

Epic Loot does not add new biomes or fill the world with thousands of objects. Its work is about items: on every drop from a monster or a chest the mod rolls a rarity and effects, items carry extra data, and bounties put buffed creatures into the world. In recent versions the author specifically optimised the item data cache and shard checks, and 0.15.0 removed stutter around chests and when first opening the enchanting table.

So plan memory for Epic Loot together with the rest of your mod list. For a group of up to four with Epic Loot and a couple of mods, Pulse (4 GB, described as up to 4 players and a couple of mods) fits well. If Epic Loot is part of a big RPG pack — for example together with the EpicMMO level system and mods that add new monsters — choose Nexus (8 GB, up to 8 players and up to 10 mods) or higher. How to pick hardware and a plan for Valheim in general is covered in our Valheim server hosting guide.

Common problems and compatibility

• Magic item properties are not shown. A known conflict with BetterUI: set showCustomTooltips = false in its config.
• One feature of the mod is missing. Since 0.15.3, a clash with another mod only switches off the Epic Loot feature involved and logs a warning, instead of stopping the whole mod from loading. Look for that warning in the server console.
• A player cannot connect. Almost always the server and the client run different versions of Epic Loot, Jötunn or JsonDotNET. Compare version numbers across everyone.
• Gamepad glitches. The author acknowledges remaining gamepad issues, especially alongside mods that change the inventory.
• The rune command does not work. The runestone cheat command needs devcommands enabled, and on a dedicated server admins need a separate mod that enables them. The character is marked as cheated afterwards.

If you are building an RPG server out of several mods, start with a short list from our roundup of the best Valheim mods and add mods one at a time. The author's documentation and wiki are on the Epic Loot page on Thunderstore.