Valheim Patch 1.0.20 — Trophy Drop Rates By Star Level, Fairer Rare Drops & Cheated Flags Reset

Valheim Patch 1.0.20 went live on October 15, 2026, and it leads with the fix the community has been asking for: trophies now drop at the rate they should. If you've been killing starred monsters and coming away empty-handed, this is the patch that was worth waiting for — and yes, the bear rugs are back on the table.

Alongside the loot fixes, 1.0.20 quietly cleans up one of the more annoying legacies of the 1.0 launch: it resets the cheated flag on items and build pieces from previous versions, undoing damage done by a bug that marked validly obtained items as cheated.

The full notes come straight from the developers — check out the entire changelog from the developers of Valheim.

🏆 The Headline: Trophies Now Scale With Star Level

• Trophy drop chance is now increased by star level of monsters.
• Pseudo-random drop logic will no longer be reset between player sessions, giving a more fair distribution for rare drops.

Two changes, and together they explain a lot of the frustration people have been reporting. The first is the direct fix: the higher a monster's star level, the better its trophy chance — which is the intuitive behaviour everyone assumed was already in place, and which makes hunting starred spawns actually worth the effort rather than a coin flip you keep losing.

The second is subtler and arguably more important in the long run. Valheim uses pseudo-random distribution for rare drops — the same idea as crit-streak protection in other games, where a long unlucky run gradually increases your odds so that streaks even out over time rather than being left purely to chance. The catch was that this tracking state was being reset between player sessions: every time you logged out and back in, the game forgot how unlucky you'd been and started the accounting over. In practice that meant the safety net rarely had time to kick in, and genuinely unlucky players could stay unlucky for a very long time. No longer resetting it between sessions makes the distribution actually do its job.

⚒️ Forge Of Potential Exploit Fixed

• Fixed a possible exploit to Forge of Potential.

An exploit fix, with no detail attached — which is the right way to ship one. If you run a community world, it's worth knowing this landed so you don't go hunting for a bug report that's already closed, and worth keeping in mind that exploit fixes are usually the strongest argument for updating promptly rather than "eventually".

✅ Cheated Flags Reset On Valid Items And Build Pieces

• Reset the cheated flag on all items and build pieces from previous versions, undoing the damage done by a bug in the initial 1.0 release that marked some validly obtained items as cheated.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Cheat Sword and Cheat Sledge to not be considered cheated in specific cases.

Valheim marks items and build pieces obtained through cheats so they can be distinguished from legitimate ones — a distinction that matters to community servers enforcing their own rules. A bug in the initial 1.0 release flagged some valid items as cheated, which is exactly the kind of thing that turns into an awkward conversation for a server admin: innocent players holding legitimate gear, wearing a cheat label they can't explain.

This patch resets those flags across items and build pieces from previous versions, so the damage is undone retroactively. The second note is the matching correctness fix in the other direction: the Cheat Sword and Cheat Sledge weren't being recognised as cheated in specific cases, so they now are. Between the two, the flag means what it says again — which is the only condition under which it's useful for enforcement.

🖥️ Dedicated Server CPU Fix (V-Sync + Uncapped Frame Rate)

• Fixed a dedicated server running at an uncapped frame rate if v-sync was enabled in a client on the same computer, wasting massive amounts of CPU time.

This one is squarely aimed at a specific and surprisingly common setup: running a dedicated server and a Valheim client on the same machine. With v-sync enabled in the client, the server could end up running at an uncapped frame rate and burning CPU it had no use for — stealing cycles from the very client it was sharing the machine with, and making the whole setup feel worse than either half should. If your world runs on a box you also play on, this patch gives you back performance you didn't know you were losing.

🧷 Smaller Fixes

• Adjusted attachment points for sheathed weapons. Cosmetic, but the kind of thing that's noticeable once you've seen it — weapons sitting properly on the back instead of floating or clipping.
• Xbox One / Xbox Series S|X: fixed settings failing to save between sessions for some users. Console players who had to re-tune their settings every session should be back to normal.

🖥️ What This Means For Your Server

• Update for the trophy fix alone. If your community has been complaining about star-level kills not dropping trophies, this is the patch that resolves it — and it's a fix players can feel within one session rather than a theoretical improvement.
• Rare-drop fairness now survives logging out. Because the pseudo-random state is no longer reset between player sessions, players with bad luck streaks get the evened-out distribution they were promised. Expect fewer "the RNG is broken" threads and more trophies in circulation — which, on an economy-minded community world, is a genuine change worth tracking.
• Community servers enforcing a no-cheats policy gain a working flag again. The cheated flag now cleanly distinguishes legitimately obtained items from cheat-spawned ones, and valid items that 1.0 wrongly flagged are restored. If your rules lean on that flag, this patch is the one that makes it trustworthy.
• Expect more trophies in circulation, not fewer. Higher drop chances at star level plus fairer pseudo-random distribution both push drop rates up. That's the intent — but if your server economy or decoration galleries have ever leaned on trophy scarcity, it's worth a thought.
• Back up before updating, as always. Every 1.0 patch so far has touched save or item handling somewhere, and this one rewrites item flags across existing saves. Take a snapshot with one-click restore available, and keep the old save for a few days.
• Mac App Store crossplay is temporarily broken — say so up front. Mac App Store players won't be able to play with everyone else until that platform's patch arrives. Posting it before players discover it themselves saves a pile of support messages.
• Update clients and server together. Valheim multiplayer expects matching versions, so get the server patched before your evening population arrives rather than mid-session.

Hosting a Valheim world? NolimitHost Valheim server hosting runs on fast high-clock CPUs with NVMe storage, DDoS protection and automated backups with one-click restore, in Frankfurt (EU) and Chicago (US) — and a patch that rewrites item flags across your saves is exactly when that safety net earns its keep.

Conclusion

Patch 1.0.20 is a loot and hygiene patch. Trophy drop chance now increases with monster star level, pseudo-random drop logic no longer resets between player sessions for a fairer rare-drop distribution, a possible Forge of Potential exploit is closed, and the cheated flag is reset on all items and build pieces from previous versions — undoing a 1.0 bug that marked valid items as cheated — plus fixes for the Cheat Sword and Cheat Sledge not registering as cheated in specific cases. On the server side, a dedicated server sharing a machine with a client no longer runs at an uncapped frame rate when client v-sync is on, sheathed weapon attachment points are adjusted, and Xbox settings now save between sessions.

One thing to plan around: the Mac App Store delay, which breaks crossplay with Mac App Store players until that platform catches up.

Read the complete, official patch notes from Iron Gate: Check out the entire changelog from the developers of Valheim. For the previous patch, see our Valheim Patch 1.0.17 breakdown.