Global Keys in Valheim: Why One Player's Kill Makes the World Harder for Everyone

 

    Valheim tracks world progress with hidden flags called global keys, and they are set for the entire world — not for the player who earned them. When someone on your server kills The Elder, the world changes for all ten of you: new events unlock, new things start spawning. It works the same way for trolls, serpents, surtlings and bats. If your server suddenly got harder and nobody changed a setting, a global key is why. Here is the full list, what each one gates, and the console commands to inspect or undo them.

 

    On sourcing. Iron Gate do not document this system. The keys and behaviour below come from the community Valheim wiki, and can change with any patch.

 

The Boss Keys

 

    Global keys "determine which events and spawns are active", and the boss ones are set the moment the boss dies — for the whole world:

 

Key	Set by killing
defeated_eikthyr	Eikthyr
defeated_gdking	The Elder
defeated_bonemass	Bonemass
defeated_dragon	Moder
defeated_goblinking	Yagluth
defeated_queen	The Queen
defeated_fader	Fader

 

    Note the naming. The keys use Valheim's internal names, not the ones on the altars — The Elder is gdking, Moder is dragon, and Yagluth is goblinking. If you are editing keys directly, that is where people go wrong.

 

    And four non-boss kills also set keys:

 

Key	Set by killing
defeated_serpent	A Serpent
KilledTroll	A Troll
killed_surtling	A Surtling
KilledBat	A Bat

 

    That first troll is a bigger moment than it feels. Killing one sets a world-wide flag — which is the mechanism behind the familiar experience of trolls appearing far more often once your group has killed one.

 

    This is the part that matters on a shared server: keys are not per-player. A newcomer joining your world after Yagluth has died walks into a world already carrying every key your veterans earned. They get the difficulty without the gear.

 

What the Keys Actually Change

 

 

    Two systems read the key list: events (raids) and spawns.

 

    Raids are the visible half. The base raid rate is documented precisely: an EventRate of 100 — the default — means a 20% chance of a raid every 46 minutes.

 

    One caveat worth stating plainly: the wiki's worked example for a lower EventRate describes more frequent raids, which reads as inconsistent with the setting's name. We are reporting the documented default (20% every 46 minutes) and not the example, because a number that contradicts its own label is a number to verify in your own world before relying on it.

 

    Which raid you get depends on which keys are set — that is the connection people miss. Raids are not random difficulty; they are your own progression coming back to visit.

 

    A related modifier changes who raids target: PlayerEvents, when set, makes raid events player-based rather than world-based. On a server where people play at different times, that is the difference between the person logging in alone facing the world's raid schedule and facing their own.

 

    Two more keys worth knowing about, because both change how a world behaves at a basic level:

 

• NoBossPortals — portals are disabled while bosses are active. If your group's portals stopped working mid-boss-fight, this is the setting, not a bug.
• Fire — enables fire hazards world-wide, "whereby wood can catch fire and spread throughout the whole world, not just in the Ashlands." On a server full of wooden longhouses, think before enabling that one.

 

    And EnemyLevelUpRate has documented maths that is easy to misread: a value of 200 gives "20% chances of a creature being upgraded to 1 star and then 20% of those being further upgraded to 2 star" — which works out at 16% one-star and 4% two-star in real terms, not 20% and 20%.

 

Inspecting and Undoing Keys

 

 

    Global keys can be read and edited from the console, which makes them one of the few progression systems in Valheim you can genuinely audit:

 

Command	Effect
listkeys	Shows the currently set global keys
setkey [name]	Adds the specified key
removekey [name]	Removes the specified key
resetkeys	Removes all keys

 

    listkeys is the diagnostic. If your world feels harder than your group's progress justifies — a common complaint when several people have played separately — list the keys and find out what has actually been set.

 

    removekey is the surgical fix, and it is far better than resetkeys for the usual problem. If one person killed a troll on day one and your group is not ready for the consequences, remove that one key rather than wiping the world's entire progress record.

 

    resetkeys removes everything, which on a mature world means undoing every boss you have killed as far as events and spawns are concerned. Take a backup first.

 

    Remember the console needs enabling. On Steam that means the -console launch argument; the developer console must then be opened with F5, and most commands additionally require devcommands.

 

    Note that this is cheating in 1.0 terms. From 9 September, Valheim's 1.0 release flags characters and worlds that use cheats, blocking achievements. Editing global keys is a console action — so if achievements matter to your group, decide before touching them.

 

Practical Advice for a Server

 

 

    Four habits that avoid the common problems:

 

1. Agree before a boss goes down. Killing a boss is not a personal achievement on a shared world — it is a world-state change for everyone. A group half-geared for the next tier will feel it.
2. Warn newcomers what world they are joining. Someone starting fresh on a Yagluth-era world has all the difficulty and none of the equipment. Consider a second world for new players rather than explaining why deer are killing them.
3. Run listkeys when something feels off. It is the only way to see what the world actually thinks has happened.
4. Back up before resetkeys. It undoes progression flags wholesale.

 

    And consider PlayerEvents if your group plays at different times — it moves raids from the world's schedule onto each player's, which is usually what an irregular group actually wants.

 

    One thing global keys do not do: they do not touch your gear, your skills or your map. They are a record of what the world has seen, nothing more — which is why removing one is a much smaller intervention than it sounds.

 

Practical tips

• Global keys are world-wide, not per-player. One person's boss kill changes the world for everyone.
• Killing your first troll, serpent, surtling or bat also sets a key.
• Internal names differ: The Elder is gdking, Moder is dragon, Yagluth is goblinking.
• listkeys shows what is set — the first thing to run when a world feels too hard.
• removekey [name] is surgical; resetkeys wipes everything. Back up first.
• Default raid rate is a 20% chance every 46 minutes at EventRate 100.
• PlayerEvents makes raids player-based instead of world-based.
• Console use flags characters and worlds in 1.0, blocking achievements.

 

Running your own Valheim server

 

    Global keys are world state, which means they belong to the world file rather than to any player — and the safe way to experiment with them is on a server you can back up and roll back. A gamever Valheim server gives you one-click backups for exactly that, keeps the world online around the clock for up to 10 players, and updates automatically so client and server versions never drift apart.

 

Conclusion

 

    Global keys are Valheim's hidden record of what a world has seen, and they "determine which events and spawns are active" for everyone on it. Seven boss keys — defeated_eikthyr, defeated_gdking (The Elder), defeated_bonemass, defeated_dragon (Moder), defeated_goblinking (Yagluth), defeated_queen, defeated_fader — sit alongside four ordinary ones for the first serpent, troll, surtling and bat anyone kills. Because they are world-wide, a newcomer joining an advanced server inherits the difficulty without the gear, and a single early troll kill changes what spawns for the whole group. The default raid rate is a 20% chance every 46 minutes at EventRate 100, PlayerEvents moves raids onto each player's schedule rather than the world's, and NoBossPortals disables portals while a boss is active — which explains a failure that looks like a bug. All of it is inspectable: listkeys shows what is set, removekey takes out one, and resetkeys wipes the lot — the last of which deserves a backup first, and all of which count as cheating once 1.0 starts flagging characters and worlds on 9 September.

 

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