Zathabars Guide to the Modded Game

So Valheim thou jewel among Indie games yet still so very far from being complete! What's a fan to do? Well Once you've beaten all the content you may be giving the idea of modding the game a thought?

Well I did so this is less of a guide as my personal How to. I think it may be of help as it contains some general rules of thumb that seem to have stood me in good stead which may help others.

Introduction

So you like Valheim no doubt about it its a great game the numbers its selling prove that, I have over 1300 hours as of this writing so I can safely say I like it I think!

But once you've beaten all the content (and lets face it the latest (Hildrir) update will not take very long with its questionable interest) in any case, whats next? If you have been giving the idea of modding the game a thought I thought I'd share what I did in case it helps a fellow Viking.

So this is my personal How to or if you prefer How I did. I include my config code later on so you can if you follow along see exactly what I am playing with and maybe see the whys of it as well so on with the show!

1.0 Types of Mod

I divide Mods in to two broad categorises from which you can if you choose sub divide further. But basically as I see it there are Mods that add some form of content and those that adjust Quality of Life (Qol hereafter)

How much you want of either is very subjective so at this point lets see what's available and how to get them in to a game that has (as yet) no official Mod support. Its surprisingly easy.

Because there is no official Mod support you will need in every case I have heard of a Mod called “BepInExPack_Valheim”. This Mod “Injects” the others and to a degree monitors them for you. So make a note of that you will need it and need to know what it is and does.

How many Mods you install I sup to you but as you are expanding the game you will need to allow for your hardware's limitations. If your playing below the recommended spec then keep the mod load modest by that I mean how radical will the mods you choose change things? Amount is secondary to this. A ton of small Qol mods may not affect stuff too badly whereas ten mega mods may cause performance issues so I came up with the following rules for my Modded game. Yours will vary depending on how close you are to recommended. My Pc is just a shade under the recommended for reference.

5-6 Large Mods 10 – 20 small to finish at around 15-25 total depending what I could find that caught my eye.

If you plan to use "Texture Packs" then your graphics cards Ram is of paramount importance. I wouldn't unless you have 4Gb+ A texture pack is effectively a third type of Mod and nto really covered here. it involves manually overwrite base game files with new ones so not for the novice and not within the scope of this guide.

I recommend "WilyBachs" packs myself if you must know ;)

2.0 Finding and installing your mods

With no official support for me this came down to reviewing he available Mod Mangers out there. I looked at Nexus but as I already had Thunderstore[valheim.thunderstore.io] installed when a friend had asked me to for his Modded game I went their first.

The Thunderstore mod manger and the R2 Modman manager are virtually the same except the latter is just a bit less user friendly and the former is Ad sponsored though not in an obnoxious way thank Odin!

A lot of mods can be accessed via the Nexus manager as well. But while that gave the impression of being the place for the fresh mods it also wanted me to sign up and spent money in some weird way so Ignored it as I was testing the waters not - diving in head first! But it is very popular so I may revisit it later.

But for now it was Thunderstore I use so the rest of this will be from that perspective. (Apologies if there are mod mangers out their I missed!)

So my wife and I are crafting junkies we like the creating and building side of the game and loved our trophy walls of all our old gear and learning new recipes so I was sure I wanted more things to make.

I also wanted the game expanded as there are two undeveloped Biomes as of this writing - Deep North and Ash lands, the latter possibly out later this year officially: but we'll see this is Iron gate after all!

2.1 So Content Mods first.

After browsing the list I settled on:

• Monstrum by Therzie (Larger Mod)
  
• MonstrumAshlands by Therzie
  
• MonstrumDeepNorth by Therzie
  
• Jewelcrafting by Smoothbrain (Larger Mod)
  
• Birds by coemt

All of these add creatures and content to the game world giving you more enemies to fight and more resources to make things from. Until recently Monstrom was one Mod byt the Author had stated it was getting a bit over large so he recently Subdivided it for ease of maintenance.

Jewlcrafting adds a new resource = Crystals to the game these can be gathered and shaped into Buff items you can add to existing items of equipment if your careful allowing customisation of gear to a degree. Plus as the crystals re-spawn but slowly it increases the benefit of exploration new lands for new crystals types and so on.

Birds was a lucky choice for me as I also added a few other mods initially that also added types of animal all the rest turned out to be be a bit “meh” but this got better and better! The birds had a side effect or causing the local critters in a Biome to chase after them making their Moment less predictable then therefore to me, more challenging.

2.2) Recipe Mods.

Related to this set are the recipe Content Mods. These add things you can make but not always from New modded items the one by Therzie being obvious exceptions. His Warfare mod being a required add on to Monstrom.

• Armory by Therzie (Larger Mod)
  
• balrond_shipyard by Balrond
  
• Warfare by Therzie
  
• WarfareFireAndIce by Therzie
  
• Simple_Meads by Allegiant_Games

The Therzie mods as you might guess are needed as they add the additional armour & gear to endure the Biome content he adds. And they are very well done with the progress feeling pretty similar to the Vanilla – unto you get to his end game where obtaining the drops for the gear seemed very hard to me and out of step with the games progression examples.
Fortunately this is tweakable in the Mods config which I did to suit my preferences (see section 3.1 hereafter for the Config tweaks)

The wife and I LOVE Valhiem's sailing so looking at a mod that adjusted that was obvious. We chose Balronds and are very happy with it. You can customise your boats in any way you like including adding everything to one! You may need to invest in a lot of nails to make everything here I warn you!

Simple meads got a try as we knew from research the Therzie built mods would add a buncha recipes as the wife Like the in game cooking aspect. But I added that as I usually do the potion making so though a few more might help!
Some of the exotic potions they allow basically do away with the need for other Mods, as you can brew some potions that mimic those effects. This minimised the Mod list a bit so definitely one you should consider.

2.3) Quality of Life

Next lets look at my QoL choices. In the final cut we have:

• Backpacks by Smoothbrain
  
• VikingsDoSwim by blacks7ar
  
• CrystalLights by OdinPlus
  
• AzuClock by Azumatt
  
• Jotunn by ValheimModding

I reasoned if I was expanding the thing in the game some expanded storage was needed. How right I was and the Simple Backpack mod has done the trick for us. It looks really good as well and can be used in conjunction with other gear/items, as opposed to taking up a slot like say using this instead of the cloak.

The fact you can't dive or swim long distances always bothered me so a Swim mod was a must this works well as does Better diving by Main street gaming. I settled on this one as it seems to update faster than the latter.

Crystallights is a single area Mod that uses Jewlcrafting material to create lights that are massively more efficient than anything in the vanilla game! This will save your frame rate and the annoyance of refilling the damn lamps all the time! Which to me is the real issue with Vanilla lighting. They are all too dim or need refuelling far to fast.

You may or may not like the idea of a clock take this or leave it. This allows for player by player customisation so I have it set to Fuzzy time like “Afternoon” “Night” “Before Dawn” etc. The wife prefers the exact Hour of the day (default for this mod)

2.4) Mod Dependencies

A dependency is a mod that the other mod Needs alongside it to work. You could say that Bepin is a dependency of every Mod the way things currently are.

Nothing wrong with that but can lead to unexpected bloat if you have too many. The Modpacks you see on the store are often specialised lists that draw other mods as dependencies automatically to simply a game set up.

The Jotunn mod was added as a dependency of so many other mods rather than my my choice. Essentially its a library of objects different Mods draw from to create their custom items. Chances are you'll come across it whatever you choose. I made a point of looking for mods with similar dependencies to minimise the amount of Mods needed.

2.5) Last but the most important!

Though in my normal play these are switched off and the Wife doesn't even have them installed are:

• Upgrade_World by JereKuusela
  
• Server_devcommands by JereKuusela

I feel these are REQUIRED mods to every single set up in my opinion. Not because you will use them every time in fact he opposite is true. I have the installed and deactivated almost all the time. So why so important?

Well Valheim is in Early Access, so content does get added or modified and Upgrade world can be activated rune once to add the new content then switched off again time and again! So its essential as it means you wont loose your long progress on a well established world!

Its a little technical to go into a deep dive of their features here but essentially when you have it active open the command console type “upgrade”and cycle to the option you needs like “Hildir” to add that new content to an old world you had set aside. See the Mods own documentation for further details

2.6) Honourable mentions

These are good mods but ones that I found too limiting to make the A list here, which I am deliberately paring back to what I discovered to be the ones that impact the game the most for me while stripping out stuff that sadly only adds secondary benefits at best.

These Are mods I do still occasionally use but for the purpose of this article are not directly relevant, but you may want to take a look.

• HoneyPlus by OhhLoz
  
• ValheimDefenders by Vystyk
  
• BrewBeer by bid
  
• MistBeGone by Azumatt
  
• Fruit_Trees by Horem
  
• GoodestBoy by OdinPlus
  
• OdinHorse by OdinPlus

All these add some content or modify It in the case of MistBeGone. Honey plus we use more often that not, as we're Recipe fiends but unless that's your thing as well you can leave it off.

Defenders are a LOT of fun and thankfully they do 500% better what the advent of the Turret Arbalest tried to do in Valheim Vanilla. The down check is they devastate the local wild life and actually attract things to your base by firing at them so they may be a touch counterproductive. Worth a try though especially for admin Builds. And no, they do not shoot at you or your animals by default...

Brew Beer shoulda been higher on this list but the bottom line is its effect is way too little for the effort to get it. The stuff it adds to the game though is very well executed and downright pretty! I'm hoping the author revisits it and upgrades it as it deserves more recognition then it warrants right now.

MistBeGone was obvious as we wanted to see the difference between classic Mistlands and open at the time. The result was very interesting and makes me wonder how the Devs escaped Psychiatric monitoring for hiding such a well crafted and Beautiful Biome. I can think of half a dozen ways Mist lands coulda been done better than it was without effort and acknowledging its great features. But that's another days rant. Use or loose this kinda Mod at your discretion/play style.

The last two? My wife likes animals need I say more? Odin Horse adds a bunch of craftables as well but the riding animation is... Nah Pass. Monstrum gives you a heap of riding option as it is as well.

3.0 Installing the Modz

Assuming you have Thunderstore as we did then you've set up a new Valheim profile and have browsed the selection and added the ones you like to the profile yes?

Ok then your done that's it. The moment you click start Modded then the list you have selected will be auto loaded via Bepin to Valheim there is no more to it. Well not much, but it could be important.

If you are adding these mods to an existing world then some things to be aware of. Some like Jewelcraftign work best when a world is new as the new Crystal nodes will only appear in unexplored areas! If its a fresh install there's no issue, if its an old world you may need “Upgrade world” to make sure the new stuff gets added.

The Authors of some mods have got custom commands added to Upgrade world. For example; type “Monstrum” with it installed and it'll add the Monstrum features directly though this can take several minutes.

If installing mods to an existing treasured world with many hours of loving play on it I shall assume you have backed up its database already? If not then you have a (very small) amount of my sympathy if something does go pear shaped. Start new when you can, if needed use Admin mode to rebuild treasured bases. Oh yes there is also a Mod for that I believe but as I didn't use it shall not comment on it.

One thing when loading a Modded Valheim game for the first time that could catch you out is the Bepin Monitor window that will open up. This looks like a command prompt window with scrolling lines of text almost to fast to read. Do not worry about it for now its normal but might be useful debugging later if the worst happens?

If you have dual screens as I have why not look at it? If the writing is Red its something bad, white is normal and Amber is a warning that can usually be ignored. If you see Red stuff look at ti to see if you can figure out which Mod its referring to that one is probably in trouble in you specific configuration you may need to disable or uninstall it sadly.

Anyhow allow the load up added time as you are adding content so it has to do more after all. The Monitor screen will be your true guide to progress. If there is not even one line updating after a minute you have probably locked up but as long as their is movement on the monitor panel be patient especially if its first load in, as some stuff is going through one time set up and will be faster another time.

Eventually you will be led to your normal log in screen and character selection from their go forth Viking to great things! You can ignore the warning the Devs put in in the bottom right of a modded games Character selection screen. If you have read this guide attentively you should know this is on your own head but all of the above have been personally tested so do work.

3.1) The Config Files

So your Modded customisation can be personally customised did you know? Most mods have a “Config file” where you can further personalise your experience with that mod.

Do you recall I said I found he material drops a but mean on Monstrums defaults? For my taste at least: your mileage may vary!

On the Thunderstore manager look at the second from bottom option on the side tool bar : "Edit Config". That will show you all the configs for your mods that have some editing ability. In my example go into Monstrum (Or Monstrom Ashlands or North as appropriate) and locate the drops for the monster you want to adjust.

Change the drop type from “Default” to “Custom” then add things or just change the numbers as I did. Basically made it so each creature always had one common drop at 100% chance. On a few I also upped the amounts. But you do you :)

Note: If you don't change it from default then all your hard work tweaking the drop string will be in vain. Be told took me a few days to figure that one out!

4) Conclusion

Well I know this has gone on almost to he point that Tolstoy would be proud – sue me ;) But the idea here was not to tell you what to do just how I did it and hope it gave some of you the confidence to have a go yourselves.

To further illustrate what I have said i'm linking (assuming Steam will allow it) copies of my config files here. For you to study and if desired use as templates as well as links to the Thunderstore. When on the Thunderstore pay attention to if the Mod has a discord link. If you do run into issues that the place to go and report them (after reading any FAQ please!)

The full Mod list I am currently using is: under the Modpack "Zathenheim"

To use go to the profiles tab on Thunderstore make a new profile >> search for then download this Modpack and it will scoop all the dependant mods up for you simple!

The creation of a Mod Pack I shall probably leave till I get around to making another guide on setting up your own home server, which is what I have done (not renting one from a third party)

4.1 What if something goes wrong?

Well you did back up yes? Roll back to that after uninstall any mods you think may be at fault? If unsure use the Thunderstore option to deactivate a Mod but keep it on the list. And try runnign the modded game again.

In hard case like after the Hildir update turn them ALL off then enable one restart see If that works. Rinse repeat till the problem Mod shows up.

In my experience the Modders of Valheim care about their Mods and will jump on such Bugs – IF they are made aware of them pretty fast. I write this a week after Hildir dropped and ALL of my current array of 25 Mods are updated, Initially on the day of release only 19 worked and some of those had added issues but would load. Now its all running OK once more.

4.2 What this I hear about having to pay for a Mod?

Well apparently a few Mod authors hid some or all content behind paywall at some point. Personally I'd Never ever pay for that as; I dunno who they are, have no buyer protection if I pay, and no Guarantees. I think it was a damn silly move by those Modders.

Then the Valheim Devs made a rather bombastic and frankly insulting post that this was a Bad thing! Which while I respect that its their game and these are unofficial add ons and they ought to get the money for their game. The fact is I am an adult and can spend my cash as I wish!

Regardless the majority of Modders rolled back the pay walls. But do in some cases ask that you volunteer donate if you like there work.

I wholeheartedly agree with that! Furthermore I am proud to say I have spent MORE on Valheim Mods in terms of donations for a good job done to some of the mods on the above list than I have on buying Valheim.

Chew on that all game developers (I am not referencing Iron Gate in particular). You need to hire or licence work from these folks and stop messing around. You are loosing money to amateurs who are fixing your problems overnight in some cases!

4.3 Lastword (no really it is!)

Valheim is a great game its well made, with a great depth of detail that the Devs should be proud of. It was an eye opener to me that they have added so many fine details! They should be very proud of what they have made to date and I do salute them for it.

Its pretty well polished but in some case curiously lacking. The modding community humiliates the Dev team with their speed and quality of updates and features. Its mind boggling to me that they cant see this resource for what it is - a bellwether of what the paying public like and want: and may be willing to pay for further!

So once you have beaten it on Vanilla don't set it aside, experiment with a few Mods and you will be amazed at how much additional play time you will find!


Till Valhalla!

[Aunt Keziah]

Awesome! Thanks for the info.

[Zathabar]

Hello Aunt K. Yes the wife and I still play on a server of the same name (Zathenheim) that I host for us and a few friends on a server I built out of an old desktop PC, sitting in my front room.

The Mod pack is available on Thunderstore and I update it weekly to keep pace with Mod releases etc.

100% Multiplayer possible I have updated and expanded it a little since the guide first went up but the core mods listed here still all feature.

The Mods I use are split into two the core once both host and clients need. a few others can be Host only. For example the host PC has a discord link so everyone can see when it comes on line and if somebody snuffs it or similar events :) The players/clients don't need that sort of thing.

[Aunt Keziah]

This is an awesome and HIGHLY underrated guide. Thank you!!! You played this with your wife, so is it true that this works in multiplayer? I may be blind, but I didn't see specific reference to that. If so, does everyone need the mods downloaded or just the host?

[Zathabar]

Your welcome if it helps I am pleased to see it. Lot of misinformation floating about so I figured "This is what I do actually do and why" would let others try and the customise to their preferences.

[Roxanne_inREd]

Thanks for the post. Informative

[Kaya]

That might come in handy, once I try to get back into this game, thanks!