MOD SPOTLIGHT
Mods to make the game amazing.
The best user-made mods to make Valheim better than ever.
A NUMBER OF MODS ARE AIMED AT TWEAKING THE BUILDING SYSTEM TO BE MORE ROBUST
You’ve probably been hearing a lot about Valheim lately, the co-op Viking survival game that’s attracted millions of players just a few short weeks after it launched into Early Access. It’s a survival sandbox game playable in co-op or solo, taking place in a procedurally generated (and massive) open world. Valheim is a bit Minecraft, a bit Skyrim, and a bit Legend of Zelda, and as scores of players have discovered, it can be hard to stop playing.
Valheim is already suitable for different playstyles. The world has one peaceful biome, perfect for constructing a home and spending hours refining, building, and crafting with only the minor threat of greydwarf raids. But other players will be pushing themselves deeper into the world and thus into more dangerous territory, clashing with trolls in the Black Forest, draugrs in the swamps, goblins on the plains, and battling Valheim’s bosses so they can find new resources. No matter what kind of Viking you are, there are mods to enhance your experience.
FORT NIGHTS
Naturally, since so much of Valheim’s focus is centered around gathering materials and building a fort, a number of mods are aimed at tweaking the building system to be more robust, precise, and user friendly. Valheim’s vanilla building system is already pretty great, even though a quick glance at the build menu shows only a handful of building pieces. But it’s more clever than it first appears, and imaginative players have been able to use the small selection of parts to build massive forts, longhouses, and they’ve even been recreating buildings from other games like Skyrim and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. There may not be all that many pieces to build with at this stage of Early Access, but they’ve still resulted in some really amazing bases.
A few mods make the building system even better. Valheim Plus (among tons of other features) has an advanced building mode that lets you construct your home with almost surgical precision. Instead of just snapping a piece to the grid, Valheim Plus lets you select the placement of each piece by finely rotating, tilting, and even raising and lowering each piece on the X, Y, and Z axis. It’s easy to get the hang of, and the advanced building mode even frees you up to move your character around while building, leaving the object you’re placing stuck in place. It makes it easy to check out your placement from all angles if you’re trying to fit an object into a tight space with clipping through anything.
Even better, there’s an advanced editing mode for building. In Valheim, if you want to move an item you’ve
placed, you’ll need to destroy it and rebuild it. But with the editing system in Valheim Plus, you can now edit each item’s placement even after it’s been built. Is that wooden beam off its mark by a hair? Is one of your stone walls sticking out a tiny bit? Do you want to move some chests without destroying them, picking up all their contents, rebuilding them, and placing everything back inside? It’s all made much simpler, and the ability to adjust everything you’ve built without destroying them first will no doubt have some players spending even more time laboring over the Viking home of their dreams.
Even with these new building systems, there are still restrictions— Valheim’s structural requirements, like having enough supports to hold up your roof or high walls, remain unchanged. But there’s still much more flexibility and choice available with Valheim Plus.
I especially like it when a mod’s name explicitly tells you what it does, and the Craft and Build From Containers mod does exactly that. It’s also a huge convenience for any Viking who loves building—instead of having to visit your stack of storage crates and add the items you need into your inventory, it will just pull resources from any chests within range. No more overloading yourself with tons of metal bars and watching your poor Viking drip sweat while they shuffle slowly back over to the workbench or forge. As long as you’ve got the materials stored somewhere nearby, you’re good to go and can build freely.
I can see there being a downside to this mod, if you’re blissfully building and crafting and aren’t aware that you’re consuming resources you’d earmarked for other purposes. So, don’t get carried away.
But it’s a big timesaver if you’ve got a project that requires lots of resources.
IMPORT DUTY
And if, like me, you’re not a natural builder, no worries. I’ve spent hours working on my home and it’s still, essentially, just a crude box with a bed and a workbench. But another mod will let other people do all the design and construction for you, and you’ll still be able to enjoy the results. The AdvancedBuilding mod means you can import entire structures created by other players right into your own game.
For instance, I was able to import a lovely, tall tower base crafted by another player, which is a big upgrade over my little home. I also borrowed a charming boathouse, a two-story tavern, and even a massive stone replication of the Eye of
Sauron, perfect to intimidate the local greydwarf population. With AdvancedBuilding, importing and placing these buildings is simple with a single command entered into Valheim’s console window, and they can be removed just as easily.
If you’re really looking to change things up, the First Person View mod might be worth a try to give you a whole new perspective. Instead of looking over your Viking’s shoulder, you can peer right through their eyes in first-person. It seems like it shouldn’t quite work, but it actually does, and rather impressively. You think getting crushed by a falling tree or hammered into paste by an angry troll is fun in third-person? It’s way more immersive in first.
I’m not sure how much of Valheim you’d really want to play in firstperson—there’s a lot of running and tree-chopping and crafting that’s much better in third-person. But this is nice for a change, and the mod doesn’t lock you into first-person mode. You can use the mouse wheel to scroll into first-person and back out to third-person, so you can choose whichever view you want at any particular moment. Very nice.
Mods aren’t just for singleplayer, either. If you’ve been playing co-op with friends, you’ve probably noticed that everyone has their own version of the world map. If you go off exploring, your map will show the areas you’ve reached but your friend’s map, if they haven’t been there too, will still be obscured by shadow.
SYNC OR SWIM
Since you’re sharing a world, and most likely a base, it makes sense that you’d be able to share a map, too. There are a few different mods that tackle this. Valheim Plus, which we mentioned earlier, has a feature that will let you share map progress with your co-op friends, but only if you’re online at the same time. Another mod, called Map Sync, does something similar, but it sounds a bit more immersive. With the mod installed, you’ll need to stand close to your friend and press F10. When you do so, your map data will be shared with them. If they press F10, their map data will be shared with you. It’s almost as if you’re meeting up and describing your discoveries with your friend. Pretty cool! And another mod called ServerSideMap does something similar, sharing everyone’s map data with the entire server, so you’ll have an updated map even if you’re offline.
Since Valheim is still in Early Access, and doesn’t officially support mods, before you mod your game you’ll definitely want to back up your world and character save files. It’s also worth keeping in mind that as the game is updated, mods may become disabled or defunct. There’s the possibility that all your hours spent busily working on a modded world may, at some point, be lost or become unavailable at times. We don’t really know at this early stage of things, so mod at your own risk!
YOU CAN IMPORT STRUCTURES CREATED BY OTHER PLAYERS RIGHT INTO YOUR OWN GAME