Damage over Time Speed¶

A damaging ailment deals its damage faster: burning, poison or bleeding with 25% increased damage over time speed deals 25% more damage per second and ends sooner, so its total damage stays the same. General rows and rows of the ailment add together.

How it works¶

Ailment: each comes from the matching part of your hits' damage, as the enemy takes it after its resistances and armour: bleeding from slash, burning from fire, poison from poison, chill from frost and shock from lightning. Burning and shock roll against layers that recent hits leave on the enemy, bleeding and poison roll a chance on every hit, and chill fills a gauge.

Burning and shock: layers¶

Every fire hit leaves a layer of flammability on the enemy and every lightning hit a layer of conductivity, each for 8 s. The hit then ignites or shocks with a chance equal to all of that kind's layers on the enemy, its own included, at most 100%, plus your flat chance to ignite or shock × (1 + build-up) × more. Base health is the enemy's maximum health without the mod's difficulty scaling.

The layer one hit leaves, by its damage as a share of the enemy's base health:

A tarred enemy counts 30% more flammability (layers and tar together at most 100%); on a wet enemy each flammability layer is × 0.5.

Ground Effects that burn or shock add layers the same way and apply their ailment once the enemy's layers reach 50%.

Bleeding and poison: chance¶

Every hit with slash or poison damage rolls its chance to bleed or poison; how much damage the hit deals doesn't change the chance. There is no base chance: it comes from flat chance to bleed or poison and flat ailment chance, which build-up raises.

A hit bleeds at most once. For poison, every full 100% of chance applies one poison for certain and the rest is the chance of one more, each from the hit's poison damage.

With a stat that lets pierce damage bleed, 50% of the hit's pierce damage counts as slash for bleeding.

Chill: the gauge¶

How much of the gauge one hit fills, by its damage as a share of the enemy's base health:

At 100% chill starts, from the strongest frost hit since the gauge began to fill. The gauge then stays full, so every further frost hit applies chill again from its own damage. 3 s after the last frost hit the gauge drains, 25% per second; chill ends when it is empty (at most 7 s after that hit).

A rune ward on the enemy doesn't lower the damage ailments count: they count the hit as if the ward weren't there (poison damage passes wards anyway). For bleeding, chill and shock, the extra damage the enemy takes from shock doesn't count.

What each ailment does¶

• Bleeding: 20% of the slash damage per second for 4 s (80% in all), × your ailment damage multipliers and damage over time multiplier (physical). Longer duration adds seconds, so more damage. One bleed per player on an enemy: a new one replaces yours only if it deals at least as much per second.

  Melee hits with Gravedigger's Needle bleed for 7 s at base instead. - Burning: 25% of the igniting hit's fire damage per second for 4 s (100% in all), × your ailment damage multipliers and damage over time multiplier (fire); fire damage increases don't apply again. Longer duration adds seconds, so more damage. One burn per player on an enemy: a new one replaces yours only if it deals at least as much per second. A wet enemy burns out 6 times as fast. - Poison: 15% of the poison damage per second for 4 s (60% in all), × your ailment damage multipliers and damage over time multiplier (poison), plus any share of the enemy's base health your stats add, spread over the same 4 s (ailment damage doesn't raise that part). Longer duration adds seconds. Each poison runs on its own timer, and each player can keep 3 on an enemy (more with limit bonuses); past that, a new one replaces your weakest if it would deal more. Skeletons and the Charred take poison damage normally, but their chance to be poisoned is halved; summoned skeletons stay immune. - Chill: Valheim's frost effect, its strength × (1 + your general and chill ailment damage increases); ailment and status duration make it last longer. - Shock: for 3 s the enemy takes 20% increased damage from every source and builds up stagger faster by the same share. Shock effect raises it, at most 50%; the hit's damage doesn't change it. Only the strongest shock on an enemy acts, whoever applied it. Flat ailment damage does nothing for shock.

  shock = 20% × (1 + ailment effect and shock effect increases) × more, at most 50%

  Increases to shock's ailment damage count as shock effect. Ailment and status duration make it last longer.

Ailment damage multipliers for burning, poison and bleeding: × (1 + ailment damage increases, general and that ailment's) × their more multipliers; flat ailment damage adds its amount spread over 4 s. Each player's ailments tick on their own, once a second.

Damage over Time Speed: × (1 + its increases, general and that ailment's) × more, at least × 0.1. Burning, poison and bleeding deal their damage per second × that and end that much sooner, so the total stays the same.

With Deferred Doom, only critical strikes inflict ailments, and the damage over time of the ailments they inflict is × your critical strike multiplier.

With the other mechanics: Combat and building.

Patch history¶

Data from Path of Valheiman 6.0.6, extracted 2026-11-09.