Shield Golf

ShieldGolf, the disc golf mod for Valheim: throw a round shield like a golf disc, with real disc flight, tilt, wind, skips and baskets.

Equip one of the eight round shields (list) with nothing in your right hand.
Click Secondary attack (middle mouse unless you rebound it) to enter throw mode. Hold Right mouse and move the mouse to tilt the shield.
Hold Left mouse to wind up (1.2 s is full power), then release to throw. Aim with the camera.
Walk to the shield and pick it up like any item. Build baskets from the hammer menu and count your own strokes; the game keeps no score.

Only the thrower needs the mod. The server needs nothing, and players without the mod still see the shield fly and land as an ordinary dropped item. Shields not in the class list behave exactly like vanilla.

This guide lists every control, formula, stat and modifier, with the shipped default numbers. Mod version 1.13.7, game 1.0.20 (shown as l-1.0.20 on Linux). This page ships in the mod's zip as guide.html, matching that version; the latest is at shieldgolf.planetdg.com. Want the real thing? Find a disc golf course near you on Planet DiscGolf.

1. Install

You need Valheim 1.0.20 and a mod manager: Gale, r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager. Without one, see the manual install in the advanced part.

Install ShieldGolf from Thunderstore in Gale, r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager. BepInExPack_Valheim comes along; it is the only dependency.
Or import z3n-ShieldGolf-1.13.7.zip as a local mod into the Valheim profile you play with (Gale: the profile's mod list; r2modman: Settings → Import local mod).
Remove an older z3n-DiscGolf from the profile.
Start the game from the mod manager. The BepInEx log should show ShieldGolf 1.13.7: 10 shields in 4 classes. A warning under it means the game is not the version the throws were measured on (1.0.20; Linux shows it as l-1.0.20).

In game, equip a round shield and click Secondary attack: the shield is held out flat beside you. That is throw mode, and the mod works. Everyone you play with should run the same version (playing together).

A modded game can't earn Steam achievements: BepInEx itself marks the session as modded. ShieldGolf adds nothing to that by default (details).

2. How to play

Equip a round shield with nothing in your right hand, enter throw mode, set your tilt, wind up and let go. Walk to where it landed, pick it up and throw again from there, until it stays in the basket.

Controls

Input	What it does
`Secondary attack` click (middle mouse unless you rebound it)	Enters throw mode, in backhand. Each further click switches forehand ↔ backhand; with a buckler or the Wood shield it steps backhand → putt → forehand. Until you press it, all buttons are vanilla: right click blocks and parries as usual. With a listed shield alone this button never kicks.
`Secondary attack` hold ½ s	Leaves throw mode (back to vanilla blocking).
`Right mouse` hold (in throw mode)	Freezes the camera so the mouse tilts the shield instead.
Mouse left / right, while right is held	Tilt (roll). Left dips the left edge (hyzer, curves left); right dips the right edge (anhyzer, curves right). 1° per degree of mouse movement, max ±45°.
Mouse up / down, while right is held	Nose angle. Up raises the nose (climbs, stalls sooner); down lowers it (flies low and fast). 0.5° per degree of mouse, max ±10°.
`Right mouse` quick tap	Resets tilt and nose to flat: a press under 0.25 s with under 1.5° of mouse movement.
`Left mouse` hold, release	Wind up, then throw. The longer the hold (up to 1.2 s), the harder the throw. At full power the bow's draw sound plays and the shield jolts: let go right then for a clean throw. Hold on and you overpower it: it trembles and turns over (sweet spot). In putt mode look at the chains: about half a second reaches 5 m, a full hold 15–20 m.
Equip a weapon, or unequip the shield	Throw mode turns off too. Tilt and nose reset.
Opening a menu, chat or inventory mid wind-up	Cancels the throw (it never fires into a menu).

Forehand or backhand stays between throws, and resets to backhand each time you enter throw mode.
A forehand spins the other way, so turn and fade swap sides, and it leaves from the right hand.
While armed, right mouse no longer blocks and left mouse no longer attacks.
There is no HUD: the shield in your hand shows your tilt and nose, held out flat beside you (left for a backhand, right for a forehand) and drawn back as you wind up.

Power and the sweet spot

The longer you hold Left mouse, the harder the throw: a tap barely leaves your hand, 0.6 s is about half power, 1.2 s is full power. Half a wind-up throws about half as far.

A full throw has a sweet spot right after it reaches full power. At 1.2 s the bow's draw sound plays and the shield in your hand jolts forward: that is full power.

Release within the clean window (0.15 s at Blocking 0, 0.3 s at Blocking 100) and the throw is clean: no release error at all, the tilt and aim are exactly what you set.
Release earlier and the throw is weaker, with the normal skill error.
A clean throw goes no further than any other full throw.

Hold on past the window and you overpower it. The shield trembles in your hand, and like a real disc thrown harder than it is built for, it turns over:

The release gets anhyzer toward the turn side: right for a backhand, left for a forehand, 15° per second past the window, up to 20°.
An understable shield (low quality or beaten in) takes up to 1.5 times that, an overstable one half. Blocking 100 halves it again: good form keeps a throw flat.
Fully overpowered, a full driver at Blocking 100 lands about 30 m further right; a mid at Blocking 17 about 11 m. The power stays full.
Putts and tap-ins have no sweet spot: their wind-up sets the distance.

Compensating, as in real disc golf: throw something more overstable. Two things in the mod make a shield more overstable, and both hold an overpowered throw on its line:

The shield itself. Higher quality (upgrade it at the forge) makes it more overstable; wear makes it understable, and repairing restores it. The overpowering anhyzer is 1.5 times as large on the most understable shield and half as large on the most overstable one.
The disc class. Each class flies with its own turn and fade, and a strong fade pulls the shield back out of an anhyzer at the end of the flight. The flight model does this by itself.

If you know you rip your throws, a fairway or a driver in a well-kept, upgraded shield keeps the line; a worn, low-quality mid turns over the most.

Aim, loft, tilt and nose

Aim with the camera: the throw goes where you look. Valheim's camera looks down at your character, so looking level already throws 10° upward. Looking level or a little lower carries furthest (6–10° of loft).
Tilt (right mouse held, mouse sideways): hyzer, the left edge down, curves left; anhyzer, the right edge down, curves right. A forehand mirrors that. The disc's own turn and fade come on top (how discs fly).
Nose (right mouse held, mouse up or down): nose up climbs and stalls early, nose down stays low and fast and turns more. Flat is usually best. A quick tap of right mouse resets tilt and nose.
Your Blocking skill adds a small random error to tilt and aim until you train it (skill).

Putts (bucklers and the Wood shield)

With a buckler or the Wood shield in hand, clicks of secondary attack in throw mode step backhand → putt → forehand.

A putt is a push putt: look at the chains, and it arcs up and drops onto the point you look at (up to 60 m away).
The whole wind-up covers putting distances: about half a second reaches 5 m, a full hold 15–20 m.
A putt spins less, so it floats straight, and your skill matters less than on a full throw.
A putt with a shield that is not a buckler goes as a backhand.

Hold needed to reach the chains (1.3 m high) when you look at them:

Distance	Blocking 0	Blocking 100
3 m	0.30 s	0.24 s
5 m	0.47 s	0.38 s
10 m	0.80 s	0.66 s
15 m	1.07 s	0.89 s
20 m	out of reach	1.10 s

From the simulator: putter, flat ground, release 1.5 m, still air. Holding longer than the table sends it over the chains. Not yet checked in game.

Tap-ins

The baskets stand higher than real ones: basket 5's funnel rises from 0.6 m at the pole to 1.6 m at its edge, with a log rim on top. A push putt leaves your hand at about waist height, so from right beside the basket it can't climb over the rim and hits it from the side.

A tap-in solves that: the shield leaves from above your head and drops in from above, the way a tall player reaches up and drops a disc into the chains.

Side view of basket 5, paths from the flight model. From 2.6 m the push putt (red) hits the rim; the tap-in (green) clears it, from 3.5 m too (faint).

Top view. Look into the basket by the pole: from anywhere inside the green circle, 3.5 m around the point you look at, a putt is a tap-in. From further out it is a normal push putt.

How to tap in

Hold a buckler or the Wood shield and arm throw mode.
Click secondary attack until the message says putt. Tap-ins only exist in putt mode: a short backhand or forehand, or any throw with a mid, fairway or driver shield, stays a normal throw.
Look into the basket: the funnel's floor near the pole, or the chains. The point under the crosshair must be within 3.5 m of your feet, measured along the ground.
Tap or hold attack. The wind-up doesn't matter for a tap-in; any hold throws the same lob.

What the mod does

The shield leaves from 2.2 m above your feet, a little toward the target.
It goes up at 45°, or steeper when you look at something above your head: the lob always rises first and comes down on the point.
The speed is worked out through the flight model itself, air included, so the shield comes down within 0.1 m of the point you look at, from half a metre to 3.5 m away. It leaves flat, with no tilt or nose, and spins like a putt.
Your Blocking skill still adds its small aim error to the direction, so a tap-in is very likely but not certain. Wind still pushes it a little.
The mod doesn't look for a basket. A point within range on anything (a hand-built basket, a basket on a rock, the ground) gives a tap-in, and a basket raised high up is still in reach if the point is within 3.5 m sideways.
Aimed further than 3.5 m away, a putt is the normal push putt again.

Distance rings (debug). Set [debug] distance_rings = true, and while throw mode is on, three rings lie on the ground around the point under your crosshair:

green at the tap-in range (3.5 m), yellow at 10 m, orange at 20 m;
look at a basket's pole and you see at once whether you stand inside tap-in range, or how far your putt is;
they follow the terrain, ignore building pieces, and are drawn only on your screen.

Aim at the funnel or the chains, not at the pole below the funnel: the lob would then aim under the basket and most likely hit the funnel or rim on the way down.

Chase camera

After a throw your camera follows the shield from 6 m behind and 2.5 m above it (never less than 1 m above the ground), smoothly.
It stays on the shield through skips and rolls, holds 1.5 s after the shield comes to rest, then hands control back.
Pressing a movement key, arming throw mode again, dying or free-fly cancels it. A movement key held through a run-up throw does not count: let go and press again.
Without any of that it lets go at the latest 20 s after the throw. Other players keep their own view.
[visual] follow_camera = false turns it off.

Playing together

The server needs nothing. The thrown shield is the game's own dropped item, so everyone sees it fly and can pick it up.
On long throws, the game hands the flying shield to another player's game when it flies near them and far from you (about 64–128 m out).
If that player has the mod, their game continues the exact flight; your camera keeps following, and you still get the Blocking XP.
If they don't have the mod, the shield just drops there. Give the mod to everyone in the round.
You see each other aim. While a player with the mod is in throw mode, their shield is held out flat on your screen with their tilt, stance and wind-up (1.5.1 and later on both sides).
When the game hands the airborne shield to nobody, the mod takes it back and continues the flight. Before that fix, long drives "hit an invisible wall" at about 90 m.
All players should run the same mod version (1.13.7; 1.1.0 or later can continue a handed-over flight). The handoff was built from the game's ownership rules but has not been watched with two players yet: tell us what you see.

3. Build a course

A course is a row of holes: a tee to throw from and a basket to finish in. Both are built from ordinary pieces, so a course stays in the world for everyone, and players without the mod see it too.

Baskets

Five designs, from wood only to iron. The wood funnel is the default and needs no iron.

Wood funnel: log pole, thatch funnel, wood crown and twelve wood chains — 5 · Wood funnel (default)

Iron funnel: the same with iron crown and chains — 1 · Iron funnel

Iron tray with rim and crossed crown — 2 · Iron tray

Gallows: tray hanging from a curtain of iron poles — 3 · Gallows

Backboard: thatch funnel with a wooden wall behind it — 4 · Backboard

Schematic renders of exactly what the command places (each piece as its collider box, from the same layout code), with a Flametal shield for scale; the game's own models look rougher and nicer.

With the hammer (the usual way):

Open the hammer's build menu, Misc tab: "Disc basket: wood funnel", "iron funnel", "iron tray", "gallows" and "backboard". A basket is listed once you have learned all its materials: the wood funnel and the backboard early, the iron ones after you have found iron.
Place it like any piece. You aim its pole (for the gallows the post on your right as you face it) and the preview shows the whole basket: it snaps, rotates with the mouse wheel, turns red where it can't stand, and needs a workbench nearby. The whole basket's materials are taken.
Removing: hit any piece of it with the hammer's remove (middle mouse) and the whole basket comes down, refunded in full. The ward rules apply as for any piece.
The basket is built from ordinary pieces: players without the mod see a normal basket (and remove it piece by piece), and the server needs nothing.

With a command: /discbasket in chat (or discbasket in the F5 console) builds one 4 m ahead of you, facing you.

It takes the same materials from your inventory (and says what is missing); no cheats needed. In a world with the No build cost modifier it costs nothing, as the hammer does there.

Command	Does
/discbasket	Design 5 (the wood funnel; `[basket] design`), 4 m ahead.
/discbasket 3	Design 3, 4 m ahead.
/discbasket 2 8	Design 2, 8 m ahead (3–20 m).
/discbasket remove	Takes down the whole nearest basket (within 8 m) and refunds its pieces.
/discbasket help	The usage.

#	Design	Built from
5	Wood funnel (default)	Design 1 with no iron in it: the same log pole, thatch funnel and log rims, a crown of wood beams and twelve 2 m wood poles as chains (0.4 m thick, the closest two 0.43 m apart centre to centre). Wood and core wood only.
1	Iron funnel and chains	A 4 m log pole and four Thatch Roof Inner Corner 26° pieces: a square funnel 4 m across, from 0.6 m at the pole up to 1.6 m at the edge, which slides a landed shield to the pole. On top: a crown of iron beams (a cross plus a 1.7 m ring) and twelve iron poles hanging as "chains", 1.75–3.75 m up. Two squares of core-wood logs, one on the funnel's rim and one at the crown, 1.9 m apart: you can climb in over the lower one to fetch shields (1.7.1; rebuild an older basket to get it).
2	Iron tray	A flat iron tray 4 m across at 0.8 m (2×2 iron floors), an iron-beam rim (3.4 m clear inside), a 2 m iron pole and a crossed iron crown. No chains.
3	Gallows	Two 4 m log posts and a log crossbeam at the back. Four iron poles hang from it as a curtain (1.65–3.65 m up), and an iron tray with a rim hangs from the curtain at 1.7 m. Hit the curtain and drop into the tray.
4	Backboard	The thatch funnel on a short pole, with a wooden wall 4 m wide and 2 m tall on its far edge between two 4 m posts, and logs on top and along the sides. Bank it off the wall. The most forgiving one.

Every design fits every listed shield, up to the Flametal Shield (1.17 m across).
[basket] free = true is the cheat: baskets cost nothing and refund nothing. It only works with devcommands in a world you host, and the free pieces carry the game's cheated mark, as nocost pieces do (see achievements).
It is refused inside someone else's ward and in no-build zones.
Take a basket down with remove rather than piece by piece: the iron crown and chains hold each other up and can be left floating.
Each design's pieces and heights are fixed in the mod (since 1.10.0), so a basket is the same in every game.

Tees

A tee is any flat spot you agree to throw from. There is no tee piece: build one from what you have.

Four stone floors (2×2) make a good pad; wood floors work too.
Put a sign next to it with the hole number and its par, and the next player knows where to start.
Make it level and clear of trees just in front, so a full throw has room to leave the hand.
A tee on high ground throws further: roughly a metre of extra carry per metre of drop for the long discs.
The hammer needs a workbench nearby, for baskets too. Leave it standing, or bring one back, to change the hole later.

Laying out holes

As a guide to distances (full throws on flat ground, still air, table): a fresh character throws a driver about 70 m and a putter about 47 m; at Blocking 100 a driver goes about 125 m. So for a mixed group:

Par	Tee to basket
3	up to about 70 m
4	about 70–140 m
5	longer, or a dogleg around trees or a hill

Trees, rocks, water and slopes make a hole interesting: a shield glances off trunks and rocks, floats where it lands in water, and rolls downhill on its edge.

Turn on [debug] distance_rings while building to see 3.5, 10 and 20 m rings around the point you look at.

4. Keeping score

The game keeps no score yet: count your own throws and write them down (on paper, in chat, or on a sign at the last hole).

Every throw counts, putts and tap-ins included. Your next throw starts where the shield came to rest.
A hole is done when the shield stays in the basket. The game doesn't judge it: in is in by the players' word.
Lowest total wins. Score each hole against its par: one under is a birdie, one over a bogey.
House rules are yours to agree on before the round, for example: a shield that lands in water or out of bounds costs one extra throw and is played from where it went out; a shield parked right under a high basket counts as in.

5. How the discs fly

Each shield flies like a real golf disc of its class, steered by a physical flight model. What changes a throw: the class, your shield's condition, your skill, the wind, and what it lands on.

Disc classes

Each listed shield belongs to a class with the four numbers printed on real golf discs: speed, glide, turn, fade. Defaults are modelled on an Aviar, Buzzz, Teebird and Wraith.

Class	Shields	Speed	Glide	Turn	Fade	Character
Putter	Bronze Buckler, Iron Buckler, Carapace Buckler, Deep North gold buckler	2	3	0	1	Flies straight, forgiving, short.
Mid	Wood Shield, Banded Shield	5	4	−1	1	Slight turn, gentle fade.
Fairway	Silver Shield	7	5	0	2	Holds its line, fades at the end.
Driver	Black Metal Shield, Flametal Shield, Deep North gold round shield	11	5	−1	3	Longest; needs a full, skilled throw, otherwise it fades early. S-curve when thrown well.

A backhand turns right while it is fast and fades left as it slows (a forehand the other way round).
A driver needs a full, skilled throw to get up to speed; thrown softly it fades right away. A putter barely leaves its line.
Shields not in the table fly like vanilla items.

Your shield: quality, wear and weight

Quality: quality 1 is understable (turns right, fades little), 2 flies as the class says, 3 is overstable (holds, then fades hard). It matters about as much as the class.
Wear: every landing costs 1 durability, every hit on a tree, rock, building or creature 3. A worn shield gets understable; repairing it at a workbench restores it.
Weight: a heavier shield (see its tooltip) drifts less in the wind and holds its line better.

Skill (Blocking)

Throwing uses and trains the vanilla Blocking skill.

At Blocking 0 your arm is slower (80%), your throws spin less, and the tilt and aim get a small random error (up to ±4° and ±2°). Less spin also makes turn and fade stronger, so a fresh character throws about two thirds as far.
At Blocking 100 a throw goes exactly as you set it.
Training: every landed throw counts, one block's worth per 20 m of carry, and at least half a block.

Stamina

Every throw costs 10 stamina, whatever the power, and it is charged when the shield leaves your hand.
You cannot start a wind-up with less than 10 stamina. Once you have started, the throw goes through even if stamina drops meanwhile.
Stamina does not change power, speed or accuracy. A tired throw flies like a fresh one.
Holding the wind-up costs nothing extra, and throw mode does not drain stamina the way blocking does.

Wind

The game's own wind pushes your throws; full wind is a moderate breeze, and storms come near it.

A headwind adds lift: the disc climbs and turns over more.
A tailwind takes lift away: it drops and fades sooner.
A crosswind drifts it downwind. Lighter shields drift more.

Landing, skips, rolls and trees

Skip: coming in flat and fast, it bounces on along the ground.
Roll: landing steeply on the edge that spins forward (the right edge for a backhand), fast and shallow, it rolls on its edge and curves toward its low side. A rolling driver can run 100 m.
Stop: anything else, it lands where it comes down.
Trees, rocks and walls: hit at a shallow angle it glances off and flies on (up to three times); head-on it drops.
Water: it floats where it went in.
It flies through cloth, banners, hides and brazier chains. To catch discs, build with poles, beams, walls, floors and roofs.

How far

Class	Full, Blocking 100	Full, Blocking 0	Half power
Putter	66 m	47 m	33 m
Mid	78 m	53 m	35 m
Fairway	90 m	59 m	38 m
Driver	126 m	70 m	40 m

Carry to the first ground contact, flat ground, still air, best loft; checked in game within 2%. Details in measured carries.

Advanced

The formulas, the flight model, the config and the test tools: for the curious and for checking the mod. Nothing here is needed to play.

6. Install without a mod manager (Steam, Windows and Linux)

The mod is one file, ShieldGolf.dll, loaded by BepInEx from the game folder. Steam's game folder is:

Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Valheim
Linux: ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Valheim (or ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Valheim)
Either: Steam → Valheim → Manage → Browse local files opens it.

BepInEx, once. Download BepInExPack_Valheim (by denikson) from Thunderstore and open the zip.
Copy the contents of its BepInExPack_Valheim folder into the game folder, next to valheim.exe / valheim.x86_64: the BepInEx and doorstop_libs folders, winhttp.dll, doorstop_config.ini, start_game_bepinex.sh and start_server_bepinex.sh.
Don't put the BepInExPack_Valheim folder itself in there.
The mod. Open z3n-ShieldGolf-1.13.7.zip and copy ShieldGolf.dll to <game folder>/BepInEx/plugins/ShieldGolf/ (create the folder; any name works, BepInEx loads every DLL under plugins). Updating later is replacing that one file.
Windows: nothing more. Start the game from Steam; winhttp.dll in the game folder makes it load BepInEx.
A console window opening alongside the game is BepInEx's log and is normal (it can be turned off in BepInEx/config/BepInEx.cfg, [Logging.Console] Enabled = false).
Linux, native build: in Steam, right-click Valheim → Properties → General → Launch options, and enter ./start_game_bepinex.sh %command%.
If the log line in the check below never appears, make the script executable once: chmod +x ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Valheim/start_game_bepinex.sh (adjust the path if your library is elsewhere).
Linux with Proton (Windows build forced under Properties → Compatibility): the launch option is WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winhttp=n,b" %command% instead of the script.
Check: after the first start, <game folder>/BepInEx/LogOutput.log contains ShieldGolf 1.13.7: 10 shields in 4 classes, and the config file BepInEx/config/z3n.shieldgolf.cfg exists.

A manual install lives in the game folder. r2modman, Gale and Thunderstore Mod Manager keep their own profiles and ignore it, so a game started from a manager loads the manager's mods only: use one route or the other.

To uninstall the manual way, delete BepInEx/plugins/ShieldGolf/. To remove BepInEx entirely, delete the files from step 1 and clear the launch option.

7. Achievements and the cheated mark

A modded game session can't earn Steam achievements (BepInEx sets the game's modded state, which the game counts like a cheat for as long as it runs). Play golf in a separate profile if that matters to you, or use the game's official bypass command.

Beyond that, the mod marks nothing and flags nobody by default: baskets are paid for, and shields are crafted or found. Two things are cheats, and they only work where the game runs its own cheat commands (devcommands in a world you host):

discshields: its shields carry the game's cheated-item mark, like spawn's items. Carrying one blocks achievements until it is dropped or put in a chest.
[basket] free: its pieces carry the mark, like nocost pieces.

Neither sets the character's own permanent cheat flag (the one confirmcheats warns about), and neither touches the world.

Easy to miss: in a modded session the game skips its confirmcheats warning, because it already counts the session as cheated. So devcommands and then any of its own cheat commands (god, tod, raiseskill, spawn…) would flag that character permanently, at once and without a message.

ShieldGolf puts the warning back ([safety] confirm_cheats, on by default): a cheat command is refused with the game's own message until you run confirmcheats, as in an unmodded game. Still, use dev commands on a throwaway character.

8. Throw formulas

Power (wind-up)

power = 0.05 + 0.95 × min(1, hold_seconds / 1.2)

A tap is power 0.05; a 0.6 s hold is about 0.53; 1.2 s or longer is 1.0.

Sweet spot and overpowering

clean window = 0.15 s + 0.15 s × skill anhyzer = min(20°, 15°/s × seconds past the window) × (1 − stability/2) × (1 − skill/2)

Full throw at Blocking 17, overpowered (+20°)	Clean	Overpowered
Mid (turn −1, fade 1): understable	0.6 m left	10.4 m right
Driver (turn −1, fade 3): strong fade	10.6 m left	1.8 m right

From the simulator, still air, loft 8°, neutral shield. The driver moves as far, but from a hard fade to nearly straight: it fades back out of the anhyzer.

Putt

putt power = putt_max_power × power pitch = line from hand to crosshair + putt_loft_offset_deg spin = putt_spin × normal spin

Clicks of secondary attack with a buckler or the Wood shield step backhand → putt → forehand.
The mod finds the point under the crosshair (up to 60 m away) and throws along the line from your hand to it, 15° higher (putt_loft_offset_deg), so the putt arcs up and drops onto what you look at.
The wind-up maps to 0.35 of a full throw's power at most (putt_max_power), so the whole hold covers putting distances.
Skill counts less: at Blocking 0 a putt leaves at 0.9 of the speed it would at 100 (putt_speed_at_zero_skill; a full throw drops to 0.8).
The disc spins at 0.4 of a normal throw's spin (putt_spin), so it floats straight and fades a little sooner.
A putt released with a shield that is not a buckler goes as a backhand.

Launch speed

speed = 32 m/s × power^0.6 × (0.8 + 0.2 × skill)

skill is your Blocking level / 100. Every disc leaves the hand at the same arm speed; what differs is how well each disc uses it (speed rating). The exponent 0.6 makes carry grow roughly in proportion to power, so half a wind-up throws about half as far.

Power	Blocking 0	Blocking 50	Blocking 100
Tap (0.05)	4.2 m/s	4.8 m/s	5.3 m/s
Half (0.5)	16.9 m/s	19.0 m/s	21.1 m/s
Full (1.0)	25.6 m/s	28.8 m/s	32.0 m/s

Direction and loft

launch pitch = camera pitch + 10° (clamped to ±90°)

Valheim's camera looks down at your character, so a level aim already throws 10° upward. 6–10° of loft carries furthest (driver 6°, mid and fairway 8°, putter 10°). The horizontal direction is where you look, plus the release error from skill.

Tilt (hyzer / anhyzer)

The tilt you set, plus the skill error, clamped to ±45°. It is the disc's starting roll: positive = right edge down. During flight the tilt keeps changing (turn and fade) up to a hard limit of ±80°.

Nose angle and attitude

disc attitude = launch pitch − 2° + nose

The spinning disc holds this attitude for the whole flight.
The angle of attack is the attitude minus the angle the disc is actually moving at. As the disc slows and starts falling, it rises: lift grows, and the disc fades.
Every throw starts 2° nose-down (nose_down_deg), because that flies furthest.
Nose up (+10°) climbs and stalls early; nose down (−10°) stays low, fast and turns more.

Release point

The shield leaves from your left hand on a backhand and your right hand on a forehand (1.4 m above your feet if the hand can't be found), 0.3 m ahead along the throw line. It ignores your own body for the first 0.3 s.

Skill (Blocking)

Throwing uses and trains the vanilla Blocking skill. It changes four things:

Effect	Formula	Blocking 0	Blocking 100
Arm speed	× (0.8 + 0.2·skill)	80%	100%
Spin	× (0.84 + 0.16·skill)	84% (≈ 970 rpm on a full throw)	100% (≈ 1450 rpm)
Tilt error	uniform ±4° × (1 − skill)	±4°	none
Aim error (yaw)	uniform ±2° × (1 − skill)	±2°	none

Why spin matters: the disc's turn and fade come from its pitching moment divided by its spin (precession). Less spin means the same moment rolls the disc faster, so a low-skill throw turns harder early and fades harder late.

Combined with the slower arm, a fresh character throws about two thirds as far.

The spin numbers come from real throwers (Koch et al. 2024: novices about 770 rpm at 20.5 m/s, advanced players about 1120 rpm at 25.5 m/s).

Training

Blocking XP per landed throw = max(0.5, carry_m / 20)

One block's worth of experience per 20 m of carry, and at least half a block for any throw. A 100 m drive is worth 5 blocks.

XP is granted at first ground contact. If another player's game finished the flight (handoff), you still get it when that game reports the landing.

9. Throw calculator

Wind-up hold:

Blocking:

Class

Quality:

Durability left:

Shield weight:

power

launch speed

spin

release error (tilt / aim)

stability (−1 under … +1 over)

disc mass

moment at 0° (≈ turn rating)

rough carry, flat, still air (simulated)

Speed, spin, error, stability and mass are the mod's exact formulas. The carry is only a rough guide: it scales the simulator carries (table) by power and skill, and ignores stability, mass and wind.

10. Discs and shields in the model

What each number does in the model

Rating	Effect	Formula
Speed	Lowers drag (a fast disc keeps its speed) and steepens the pitching-moment slope (drivers fade hard when slow, putters barely).	Cd0 = max(0.02, 0.11 − 0.007·speed) slope = 0.5 × (0.13 + 0.079·speed) per rad
Glide	Scales lift.	lift × (0.7 + 0.06·glide)
Turn	More negative = more nose-down moment when fast = rolls right (backhand).	Cm += 0.0025·turn
Fade	Higher = less nose-down when fast, and the end-of-flight fade comes sooner.	Cm += 0.0015·fade

Class	Lift factor	Base drag Cd0	Moment slope /rad	Moment at 0°
Putter	0.88	0.096	0.144	−0.0145
Mid	0.94	0.075	0.263	−0.0170
Fairway	1.00	0.061	0.342	−0.0130
Driver	1.00	0.033	0.500	−0.0155

The class table is fixed in the mod (since 1.10.0), the same for every player. A shield in no class stays vanilla.

Stability (quality and wear)

stability = clamp( −0.5 + (quality − 1) / (max_quality − 1), ≤ +1 ) − 1 × (lost durability fraction)
result clamped to −1 … +1; Cm += 0.009 × stability

Shield	Stability	Flies
Quality 1, full durability	−0.5	Understable: turns right, fades little.
Quality 2, full	0	As the class numbers say.
Quality 3 (max for all eight), full	+0.5	Overstable: holds, then fades hard.
Above max quality (if anything ever allows it)	up to +1	Even more overstable.
Quality 3 at half durability	0	Beat in back to neutral.
Quality 1 at zero durability	−1 (clamped)	Flippy: turns over hard.

Half a point of stability shifts the moment by 0.0045, about the same as 1.8 points of turn rating, so quality matters as much as the class. Repairing the shield at a workbench restores durability and with it the stability, just as a new disc replaces a beat-in one.

Wear

Event	Durability lost	Config
Landing on the ground (or in water)	1	`[wear] per_landing`
Hitting a tree, rock, building or creature (whether it glances off or stops)	3 each	`[wear] per_hit`

A glance that flies on costs 3, and so does the final stop if it is not the ground. A throw that clips two branches and lands costs 3 + 3 + 1 = 7.
Durability never goes below 0, and throwing a broken shield still works: it is just as beat in as it gets.
The higher a shield's max durability, the less each landing moves its stability.

Weight → mass

mass = 150 g + 30 g × clamp((weight − 3) / 5, 0 … 1)

Shield weight	≤ 3	4	5	6	7	≥ 8
Disc mass	150 g	156 g	162 g	168 g	174 g	180 g

That is the legal golf-disc range. Lift, drag and wind push on a lighter disc harder (acceleration ∝ 1/mass), so heavy shields drift less in wind and hold their line better.

Spin inertia grows with mass too, so a heavier disc's turn and fade build more slowly. Check a shield's weight in its tooltip.

11. How a disc flies

The flight is physical, based on golf-disc wind-tunnel and CFD measurements (Giljarhus et al. 2022; Kamaruddin et al. 2018; Hummel 2003).

The mod simulates a real disc, 21.1 cm across and 150–180 g, and steers the shield with it. The shield is visual only; its size does not matter in the air.

Forces

lift = ½ρv²A × Cl, Cl = (0.11 + 2.64·α) × glide_factor × 0.55
drag = ½ρv²A × Cd, Cd = Cd0 + 3.3·α²
ρ = 1.225 kg/m³, A = π × 0.211² / 4, α = angle of attack (rad)

Stall at 20°. Past it, lift holds until 45° and then falls off like a flat plate; drag climbs to 1.9 at 90° (falling flat).
Gravity is 9.81 m/s². Valheim's own gravity is 20 m/s², so while the shield is airborne the mod pushes it up by 10.19 m/s². After it lands, normal game physics take over.

Turn and fade: the pitching moment and precession

Cm = −0.016 + 0.0025·turn + 0.0015·fade + 0.009·stability + slope·α
roll rate = −(½ρv²A × d × Cm) / (J × ω), J = 0.67 · m · r²

A spinning disc doesn't pitch up or down when the air pushes on its nose; it rolls instead (gyroscopic precession):

Fast and flat (low α): Cm is negative (nose-down), so a backhand rolls right: the turn.
Slow (it needs a higher α to stay up): the α term wins, Cm turns positive, and the disc rolls left: the fade. Every flight ends in a fade.
A forehand has negative spin, which flips the roll direction: turn goes left and fade goes right.
Less spin (low skill, soft throw) means a faster roll for the same moment. Turn and fade both get stronger.
Speed matters twice. A driver thrown softly never reaches the speed where it turns, so it fades right away.
Roll ramp: the roll rate builds up from 0 to full over the first 0.4 s (roll_ramp_sec), so the disc doesn't snap over right out of the hand.
Orientation: the disc's tilt and nose are held against its heading while the path bends up to 15° off the throw line (max_frame_turn_deg), and stay fixed after that, as a spinning disc's do: a long fade then dives instead of curling back toward you.
Falling steeper than 20°, a nose-up disc eases to level by 60° (descent_ease_start_deg, descent_level_deg), so it glides on instead of being braked by its own lift.
Above the stall, the α part of the moment falls back to 0 at 90°.

Limits

The longest flight lasts 20 s; after that the shield is left to normal physics.
The shield turns into a plain item once it moves slower than 0.3 m/s for 0.5 s after landing.
The visible spin is capped at 3.5 rev/s. The real ~18–24 rev/s would show as a slow or backwards wobble at game frame rates. On landing it keeps up to 15 rad/s of spin and twirls as it settles.

Wind

wind velocity = game wind direction × game wind intensity (0 … 1) × 4.5 m/s

Wind is moving air: the disc's lift, drag and moment use its speed relative to the air. A headwind adds airspeed (more lift, more turn, and it can climb); a tailwind takes it away (less lift, earlier fade).
A crosswind drifts the disc downwind and changes its effective angle of attack.
Full game wind is 4.5 m/s here (wind_scale; 6 before 1.5.1), a moderate breeze. Storms are near full intensity.
Lighter shields drift more (mass).

Checked in game (2026-10-19, the game's own wind, every throw within 0.4 m of the simulator's carry; full wind was 6 m/s then):

A full driver throw goes 126 m in still air.
Into a 6 m/s headwind it goes 121 m but turns over, ending 37 m right.
With a 6 m/s tailwind it goes 110 m and fades 8 m further left.
A 6 m/s crosswind drifts it about 15 m; half wind moves a putter 7.5 m.

Landing rules

The first ground contact decides what happens:

Outcome	When	What happens
Roll	Tilted ≥ 60° onto the edge the spin drives forward (right edge for a backhand, left for a forehand), ≥ 4 m/s along the ground, coming in at ≤ 35°.	It rolls on its edge, slowing by 1.5 m/s², curving toward its low side at 0.5 rad/s, for up to 6 s or until under 1 m/s. It stops at the first thing that isn't terrain.
Skip	Comes in at ≤ 25°, at ≥ 8 m/s.	It bounces on, keeping 60% of its speed along the ground, bouncing up at 35% of the impact speed, and kicking sideways toward its low edge.
Stop	Anything else: steep, slow, or on the wrong edge.	Normal game physics (it may still slide or tumble).

Checked in game (2026-10-19): skips and rolls happen as the rules above say, and the shield really leaves the ground with the speed they set.

A skip hops less than 0.8 m and stops 2–6 m further on.
A rolling driver ran 101 m and a forehand roller 75 m, curving far toward their low edge.
A shield glancing off a wall at 20° kept 75% of its speed and flew on 13 m along the wall's line.
An ordinary landing stops within 0–6 m.
Ground slope counts: a disc coming in just under the 25° skip limit onto a slope rising toward it digs in instead.

Trees, rocks, walls (in flight)

Hit at up to 45° off the surface at ≥ 5 m/s, it glances: it keeps 80% of its speed along the surface, bounces 30% of the impact speed back, and flies on. That can happen up to 3 times per throw, and each glance costs 3 durability.
Head-on, slower, or the 4th hit: it stops there and drops (also 3 durability).

Water

Dropping below the water surface counts as the landing. The shield then floats like any dropped item.

What stops a disc

A thrown shield is a dropped item. It collides with terrain, solid building pieces, rocks, trees and other items.

It passes through anything on the game's non-solid layer: hanging cloth, banners, fenrir hides and the chains of hanging braziers. To catch discs, build with poles, beams, walls, floors and roofs.

12. Measured carries checked in game

From the mod's simulator: flat ground, still air, best loft, release 1.5 m up, neutral stability. Carry is the distance to the first ground contact.

Checked in game on 2026-10-19: an automatic test run threw 21 cases (every class at full and half power and at Blocking 0 and 100, tilt, nose, forehand, quality, loft).

Every carry came within 2% of the simulator, sideways within 0.8 m, and no flight path more than 1.1 m off.
Measured full-power carries at Blocking 100: putter 64 m, mid 80 m, fairway 93 m, driver 126 m.

Class	Best loft	Full, Blocking 100	Hang time	Max height	Full, Blocking 0	Half power	Tap	Max right / landing	From a 30 m hill
Putter	10°	66 m	3.9 s	5 m	47 m	33 m	3.5 m	0.7 / −3.9 m	74 m
Mid	8°	78 m	4.2 s	4 m	53 m	35 m	3.5 m	2.3 / −1.1 m	89 m
Fairway	8°	90 m	4.8 s	5 m	59 m	38 m	3.5 m	1.9 / −5.1 m	110 m
Driver	6°	126 m	5.8 s	4 m	70 m	40 m	3.4 m	6.9 / 1.2 m	153 m

"Max right / landing" is the sideways offset: + is right of the throw line (backhand). The driver's S-curve turns 6.9 m right and then fades back; the putter barely leaves the line.
Flights end tilted 50–60° into the fade, steeper at low skill.
Since 1.4.1 a throw from high ground gains distance, roughly a metre per metre of drop for the long discs: the falling disc levels out and glides on, and a long fade can no longer curl back toward you (the disc's tilt stops following the path once it has bent 15° off the throw line).

13. Config reference

File: BepInEx/config/z3n.shieldgolf.cfg in your mod manager's profile (Gale, r2modman), or in the game folder for a manual install. It is written on the first start, and every entry carries its own description there.

A z3n.discgolf.cfg beside it is from versions before 1.2.0 and is ignored.

Since 1.10.0 everything that changes a throw or a basket is fixed in the mod. Every game flies its own throws, so a value in the config would let each player tune their own; fixed, everyone throws with the same shields.

Fixed: the disc classes, the flight constants and wind, skill, wear, the basket designs' pieces and shapes, and the controls that shape a throw (tilt and nose limits, wind-up time, stamina, loft, putt and tap-in numbers). The tables below list them for reference, marked fixed.
In the config: how the controls feel (mouse sensitivity for tilt and nose, the tap and exit timings), the visuals, debug, safety, the test run and the /discbasket defaults.
Lines of the fixed settings written by an older version are removed from the file on the first start (the log lists them).

[discs] fixed

Key	Default
putter	ShieldBronzeBuckler,ShieldIronBuckler,ShieldCarapaceBuckler,ShieldGoldBuckler: 2, 3, 0, 1
mid	ShieldWood,ShieldBanded: 5, 4, -1, 1
fairway	ShieldSilver: 7, 5, 0, 2
driver	ShieldBlackmetal,ShieldFlametal,ShieldGold: 11, 5, -1, 3
putt_also	ShieldWood

[physics] fixed

Key	Default	Meaning
arm_speed	32	Launch speed in m/s at full power, Blocking 100.
speed_at_zero_skill	0.8	Fraction of the arm speed at Blocking 0.
lift_scale	0.55	Scales the CFD lift curve.
drag0	0.11	Zero-lift drag of a speed-0 disc.
drag_per_speed	0.007	Drag taken off per point of speed rating.
drag_aoa	3.3	Extra drag per rad² of angle of attack.
moment_aoa	0.5	Pitching-moment slope (driver), scaled down for slower discs.
nose_down_deg	2	How far the disc's nose sits below the launch direction.
stall_deg	20	Stall angle.
advance_ratio	0.5	Rim speed ÷ flight speed at release: sets the spin.
wind_scale	4.5	Wind in m/s at the game's full wind intensity.
spin_at_zero_skill	0.84	Spin fraction at Blocking 0.
stability_moment	0.009	Moment shift per point of stability.
wear_stability	1	Stability lost from full durability to none.
roll_ramp_sec	0.4	Seconds for the roll rate to build up after release.
max_frame_turn_deg	15	How far the path may bend off the throw line before the disc's tilt stops following it (a long fade then dives instead of curling back).
descent_ease_start_deg	20	Descent angle where a nose-up disc starts easing level.
descent_level_deg	60	Descent angle where it is level, so a falling disc glides forward.
wind	true	Wind affects throws.

[controls]

In the config: tilt_per_mouse_deg, nose_per_mouse_deg, tap_max_sec, tap_max_mouse_deg, exit_hold_sec. Every other row is fixed.

Key	Default	Meaning
max_tilt_deg	45	Largest tilt you can set.
tilt_per_mouse_deg	1	Tilt per degree of sideways mouse movement.
nose_per_mouse_deg	0.5	Nose angle per degree of vertical mouse movement.
max_nose_deg	10	Largest nose angle.
full_windup_sec	1.2	Hold time for full power.
stamina_cost	10	Stamina per throw (and needed to start a wind-up).
tap_max_sec	0.25	A right-click this short …
tap_max_mouse_deg	1.5	… with less mouse movement than this resets tilt and nose.
loft_offset_deg	10	Added to the camera pitch.
exit_hold_sec	0.5	Holding secondary attack this long leaves throw mode.
putt_max_power	0.35	Putt mode: the power a full wind-up reaches (chains at 15–20 m).
putt_loft_offset_deg	15	Putt mode: degrees above the line from your hand to the crosshair.
tap_in_range	3.5	Putt mode: a putt aimed closer than this (m, on the ground) is a tap-in from overhead.
tap_in_release_height	2.2	Tap-in: release height above your feet (m).
sweet_window_sec	0.15	Sweet spot: the clean window after full power at Blocking 0 (s).
sweet_window_skill_sec	0.15	Sweet spot: what the window grows by at Blocking 100 (s).
overhold_deg_per_sec	15	Overpowering: anhyzer toward the turn side per second past the window.
overhold_max_deg	20	Overpowering: the most anhyzer, before stability (×1.5 to ×0.5) and skill (×1 to ×0.5).
tap_in_min_loft_deg	45	Tap-in: the lob's lowest launch angle.
putt_speed_at_zero_skill	0.9	Putt mode: launch speed at Blocking 0 as a share of Blocking 100's.
putt_spin	0.4	Putt mode: spin as a share of a normal throw's (push putt).

[skill], [wear], [visual], [safety], [debug], [basket]

Key	Default	Meaning
skill.max_tilt_wobble fixed	4	Tilt error (±°) at Blocking 0.
skill.max_yaw_wobble fixed	2	Aim error (±°) at Blocking 0.
skill.metres_per_block fixed	20	Carry per block's worth of Blocking XP.
wear.per_landing fixed	1	Durability per landing.
wear.per_hit fixed	3	Durability per hit on a tree, rock or building.
visual.follow_camera	true	Chase camera.
visual.flight_offset_x	0	Pitch that lays the flying shield face up (180 flips it).
visual.held_offset_x	180	Same for the shield in your hand.
safety.confirm_cheats	true	Refuse a cheat command with the game's confirmcheats warning until `confirmcheats` has run (vanilla skips the warning in modded sessions; see Achievements).
debug.distance_rings	false	In throw mode, rings on the ground around the point under the crosshair at 3.5 m (tap-in range), 10 m and 20 m. Only on your screen.
debug.tuning_log	false	One `[shieldgolf]` line per throw in the BepInEx log.
(command) discshields	—	Not a setting: `discshields` in the console or `/discshields` in chat gives one shield per class, marked as cheated items like `spawn` does. Only with `devcommands` in a world you host; never flags the character.
basket.distance	4	Default build distance in m.
basket.design	5	Design `/discbasket` builds with no number.
basket.free	false	Cheat: baskets cost and refund nothing; needs devcommands in a world you host; the pieces get the cheated mark.
basket1 … basket5.* fixed	—	Prefab and height of each part of each design.

14. Tuning and testing

Tuning log

Set tuning_log = true and every throw writes a line like this:

[shieldgolf] class=mid backhand power=1.00 tilt=-12.0 loft=12.3 nose=0.0 quality=3 stability=0.50 mass=168g skill=0.47 wind=0.0 wind_across=0.0 wind_along=0.0 end_tilt=-55 time=3.42 carry=61.8 rest=64.0 lateral=-3.1 durability=97

carry is the distance to first ground contact, rest where the shield stopped, and lateral the sideways offset (+ right).
wind is the strongest wind during the flight; wind_across is the mean wind across the throw line (+ blowing to the right) and wind_along along it (+ a tailwind), both in m/s.
Glances, skips, rolls and handoffs are logged too.

Automatic test run

For checking the mod itself, not for play. With [testrun] run = true, loading the throwaway character and local world named below throws every test case through the real release and compares each flight with the simulator (34 throws, about ten minutes).

It finds a lane near where you stand, clears it of trees, rocks and creatures, gives itself god mode and shields, and sets Blocking, so it refuses any other character or world.
Results go to the BepInEx log and to BepInEx/config/shieldgolf/testrun.json; the measured numbers in sections 11–12 come from it.
Set run = false afterwards.

Key	Default	Meaning
run	false	Run the test on the next load of the character and world below.
character	z3nlabs	Character name the run requires.
world	z3nlabs	World name the run requires (hosted by this game, not a server).
repeats	1	Throws per case. Without wind gusts or release error every throw is the same, so 1 is enough.
only	(empty)	Comma-separated words: only the cases whose name contains one, e.g. `glance, roller`.