ValheimBB

Valheim ButBetter is a wide ranging quality-of-life mod for Valheim. It bundles a set of small, practical changes for building, crafting, equipment handling, UI feedback, world exploration, and audio cleanup.

These range from these that just annoy me (Moder wind buff not giving side wind?!) to small SFX/VFX changes like adding a distinct sound when hitting 'bedrock'. Most of the changes do not effect gameplay significantly, though some may speed up progress very slightly depending on your playstyle.

Changes

Building & Crafting

• Signs can be placed directly on chests.
• Sign text defaults to white; custom text colors still work.
• Relaxed crafting-station upgrade placement requirements.
• Clear paths and buildings: laying paths or placing building pieces permanently removes branches and loose stones beneath them, including hidden branch respawn spots. Toggle Clear Branches / Stones When Building in the options menu. Applies to new placement; existing areas can be cleared by laying the path again or replacing the covering piece.
• Custom hoe progression: the vanilla hoe is treated as the Stone Hoe and is unchanged. Flint and Bronze hoes clear eligible brush on the first click (does not yield wood). Bronze hoes can additionally place torches.
• Hømmer: combines hammer building, repair, and removal with the Bronze Hoe’s terrain and brush-clearing options. Right-click once for the build menu, again for hoe tools, and a third time to close. The Hoe tab also opens the terrain tools directly. Craft it at a Forge with 5 wood and 2 iron. Uses a silver-grey hammer icon. Durability starts at 200 and increases by 200 per upgrade level.
• Torch, brazier, and kiln cleanup: torch and brazier fuel lasts longer, standing wood torches can hold more fuel, and kilns can no longer consume Fine Wood.
• Alternate fuel: fireplaces & kilns can use Core Wood & Ancient Bark (will use any regular wood on you first). Toggle Alternate Fire Fuel in the options menu.
• Wood fire colors: wood-burning fires track fuel in insertion order.
• Stone oven doors: stone oven hatches use a tighter proximity trigger and wait briefly before closing, reducing constant open/close chatter in kitchens and busy bases.
• Crafting sort toggle: the crafting panel gets a Sort: Classic / Sort: A-Z toggle so long recipe lists can be sorted alphabetically when desired.

Item Tweaks

• Arrow cost adjustment: Reduced metal/gland cost of metal arrows, metal bolts, and frost arrows by increasing the batch size to 100 and wood/feather cost, but not increasing metal cost. I.e., you get 100 arrows for one ingot instead of 20.
• Headdress of the Bear recipe: removes the Bear Trophy requirement so you actually have a shot at building the full set before it's obsolete.
• Muckshake food tweak: increased Muckshake health regeneration to 2 hp/sec.
• Pulled Bear food tweak: provides 40 health.

Equipment & Combat

• Dverger headlight: the circlet uses the utility slot, allowing it to be worn with a helmet.
• Monster loot delay: the "Monster Loot Delay: Half Time" setting halves the normal wait for monster loot and corpse disappearance.
• Wisplight outside Mistlands behavior: choose between vanilla orbit, off, or locked in place. The default keeps the Wisplight equipped but pins it in front of the player outside Mistlands so it is not constantly flying in front of the camera and generally being annoying (especially indoors).
• Crossbow loaded-state persistence: reload-required weapons stay loaded when you swap away and back.
• Pickaxe stamina tuning: pickaxe stamina costs scale slightly more gently by tier, and dirt-only swings can refund part of the paid stamina cost.
• Mace knockback tuning: Maces have lower primary knockback and stronger secondary knockback, so you can more easily combo with normal attacks, and use secondary when you want to create space.
• Thrown spear pickup protection: thrown spears should not be automatically picked up by others players. (You basically can't throw spears when adventuring with friends without this, unless you want to be constantly asking them for your spears back.)
• Moder power tweak: Moder lasts 10 minutes and changes wind direction to a side wind while active (sail faster for longer).
• Asksvin Cloak tailwind: the cloak's running bonus treats the wind as always at your back, so you get its full speed and stamina bonus whichever way you run. Stronger wind still gives a bigger bonus.
• Sailing range: ships can sail within 30° of directly upwind, giving a 300° sailing range. The wind indicator's dark arc matches the headwind zone.

World & UI

• ValheimBB options menu: settings are available from the main menu and in-game pause menu. Settings marked Change in Main Menu affect prefab setup and should be changed before loading a world.
• Main menu version label: the main menu shows the installed ValheimBB version.
• Night popup: shows a center-screen message when night begins. (for people who want to known exact timing but play with music off)
• Build/craft unlock markers: newly unlocked build pieces and crafting recipes show a ! marker until hovered or selected.
• Plant growth hover states: plants and picked regrowing objects show a general regrowth state ("Recently Planted", "Growing", "Nearly grown").
• No-map biome label: when playing without the map, the current biome label remains visible in the upper right of screen.
• Resting countdown: the Resting status icon shows a countdown, and the delay before Rested is reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Haldor Sense: MY FAVORITE ONE. Adds a 600m radius trigger around potential Haldor locations that alert you of 'a magical presence to the [North, Northeast, etc]'. This works regardless of map mode. Adds a "New Biome" style popup when you reveal Haldor.

Audio and Visual Effects

• Added a brightness slider to ValheimBB Settings.
• Removed random leech-like splashes from ambience while preserving actual creature sounds.
• Target dummy sounds: fade out at 50 metres instead of 100 metres, retaining their custom falloff curve.
• Bedrock pickaxe feedback: pickaxe hits against bedrock get custom audio feedback and the flying rocks particle effect is removed.
• Vegetation pickaxe feedback: pickaxe hits on bushes include the vegetation hit sound instead of only the pickaxe hit sound.
• Creature sound origin cleanup: many creature idle, alerted, attack, and trail sound effects are attached to the creature origin instead of staying at the point where the sound started. (A personal pet peeve of mine. Creature/monster sound effects are NOT tied to their source in Vanilla, they are spawned at a stationary point and play from that point regardless if the creature has moved away from it.)
• Player damage SFX: player fall and fire damage plays a new grunt SFX.
• Player death SFX: player death plays a custom death splat sound.

Chat Commands

These are mainly for no-map playthroughs paired with compass mods. I may end up building my own compass eventually.

In the chat box (NOT the developer console):

• /addpin [index] adds a map pin at your current position.
• Pin indexes: 0 = Campfire, 1 = House, 2 = Anchor, 3 = Dot, 4 = Portal.
• /removepin [radius] removes the nearest pin within the chosen radius. Default radius is 10 meters.
• /cleardeaths removes all death markers from your map.

Configuration

Open ValheimBB Options from the main menu or pause menu for the most commonly changed settings.

The BepInEx config file is also available at:

BepInEx/config/com.valheimbb.cfg

Config coverage includes feature toggles for custom hoes, item tweaks, wisplight behavior, pickaxe stamina, unlock markers, plant hover states, Haldor Sense, resting tweaks, audio toggles, and stone oven doors.

Install

Version 1.2.15 targets Valheim 1.0.20. Broader gameplay and mixed-client dedicated-server testing are still pending. Spear auto-pickup protection must run on the picking player's client, and shared custom sounds require modded listeners.

Install through Thunderstore Mod Manager or r2modman.

For manual installs, place the package contents into your Valheim profile so BepInEx/plugins/ValheimBB.dll and the adjacent Assets, Icons, and audio files are present.

Version

1.2.15

Changelog

1.2.16

• Non-Trash Forge of Potential.
  • Short version: This makes the FoP actually useful without breaking the game's difficulty tuning.
  • Longer version: removes chance to break items, upgrading items costs idols plus material from the next biome, and that cost increments to the following biome every 4 levels. Refined items will be slightly stronger than their counterpart on average. Also increases idol drop rates across the board. Honestly, they should fire whoever designed the vanilla FoP, or force them to fight endless hoards of Bats.
  • This change is off by default because 1) It's a bigger gameplay change than I normally like to do; 2) It's a large amount of code/data/settings changes; and 3) It needs further gameplay testing & tuning.
• Large bases run a little smoother: less background work each frame, less hitching after arriving at a base full of chests, and plain wood fires no longer save fuel data every two seconds.
• While Moder is active, the Asksvin Cloak now treats the wind as always at your back, so you get its full running speed and stamina bonus for the current wind strength.
• Fixed Standing Wood Torches built with a hoe disappearing after loading a second world in the same session, or after turning off Standing Torch / Kiln Tweaks or Custom Hoes & Hømmer.
• Cold eggs and egg stacks can now be picked up automatically; warm eggs stay in place.
• Removed the Resource Tracker inventory button until it works correctly in server-hosted games.
• Turning off a "Change in Main Menu" setting now restores the vanilla values on the next world load, without restarting the game.
• Torch and brazier burn time now follows the Standing Torch / Kiln Tweaks setting.
• Added an Alternate Fire Fuel setting for burning Core Wood and Ancient Bark.
• Performance cleanup for the options menu, Moder's side wind, and Haldor Sense.

1.2.14

• Hømmer now has 200 durability at level one and gains 200 per upgrade level.
• Target dummy sounds now fade out at 50 metres instead of 100 metres.
• Ships can sail as close as 30° to directly upwind, giving a 300° sailing range.
• Hømmer right-click now cycles through the build menu, hoe tools, and closing the menu.
• Pulled Bear now provides 40 health (vs 37...why tf would they make the HP WORSE than cooked bear meat?!)
• Flint Hoe, Bronze Hoe, and Hømmer now clear eligible brush on the first click (when the special clear is selected).

1.2.13

• Moved Hømmer's hoe tools to a dedicated Hoe tab at the top of the build menu.

1.2.12

• Added a Hoe category to Hømmer's build menu for terrain and brush-clearing tools.

1.2.11

• Fixed signs breaking after being placed on chests.

1.2.10

• Signs can be placed directly on chests.
• Sign text defaults to white; custom text colors still work.
• Added the Hømmer: Combines the hammer and Bronze Hoe into one tool.
• The Dverger circlet uses the utility slot, allowing it to be worn with a helmet.

1.2.9

• Relaxed crafting-station upgrade placement requirements.
• Added a brightness slider to ValheimBB Settings.
• Removed random leech-like splashes from ambience while preserving actual creature sounds.

1.2.8

• Clear paths and buildings: laying paths or placing building pieces permanently removes branches and loose stones beneath them, including hidden branch respawn spots.
• Reduced potion drinking action restrictions to 0.5 seconds.

1.2.7

• Holding fast or sitting on a boat now allows the same camera zoom-out distance as using the rudder.
• Fixed bedrock hits, fall/fire damage grunts, and death sounds ignoring the game's master and sound-effects volume settings.
• Debugging and cleanup

1.2.6

• Reduced the bedrock hit sound volume by 60%.
• Fixed custom hoe Pathen and Level Ground operations being rejected by Valheim 1.0's terrain settings lookup.
• Added fire and coal colors based on the wood currently burning, with fuel tracked in insertion order.
• Halved the normal monster loot delay.

1.2.5

• Fixed Flint Hoe, and Bronze Hoe and Bear Headdress recipes

1.2.4

• Updated compatibility for Valheim 1.0.7 and Unity 6000.0.75f1.
• Updated custom hoe inventory and dropped-item loading for the new save format while preserving legacy item aliases.
• Updated teleport handling, equipment visuals, build-piece hover markers, and creature audio patches for the changed game APIs.
• Improved resource-tracker save reliability and recovery after resource-removal errors.