Steam Friends

Invite your Steam friends to your Valheim game - and see who is playing - right from the pause menu.

The pause menu's Player list becomes Players & invites and gets two tabs, styled like the game's own Settings tabs:

• Players - the game's usual list, unchanged.
• Steam friends - your friends as player cards:
  • avatar, name and status: In Valheim with the server's or world's name when it is known (the host's Steam lobby, or what a friend with this mod shares), In this game, Playing: <game> (the game's name from the Steam store), Online, Away, Busy, Offline (dimmed);
  • sorted: in Valheim → online → away → offline, then by name;
  • search by name;
  • Invite - a Steam invite into your game; the button shows Invited afterwards. When an invite is not possible the button is greyed out and its tooltip says why;
  • Join - one click into a friend's Valheim game: the host's open world, or the game a friend with this mod shares (in a world the game first asks to leave yours). Greyed out with the reason when it is not possible: another game, not in a game, a closed or single-player world, a different game version; a password-protected server is joinable and the game asks for the password;
  • Show friends my world and server - a tick (off by default): friends with this mod then see your world and server and can join you, and Steam's own Join game works too (Steam rich presence).
  • Write - a chat with the friend inside the game: their Steam messages come to the game (also into the game's chat), your answers go back as ordinary Steam messages, so the friend needs nothing. In the game's chat: /f name text writes to a friend, /r text answers the last one;
  • Tell me when friends come online - a tick: a line at the top left when a friend comes online or starts Valheim;
  • click a card to open the friend's Steam profile in the overlay;
  • Steam invite window - Steam's own invite dialog (needs the Steam overlay).

Party at the campfire (main menu)

On the character screen, where your character stands at the fire:

• Create a party - a friends-only Steam lobby for up to 10 players. Call a friend opens the mod's own Steam friends window - avatar, name and status, a search, scrolling and Invite for each; Steam's invite window stays as a spare button there.
• Invites inside the game - when a friend calls you to their party or into their open world, the game's own window shows who and where, with Accept and Decline and a chime, in the main menu and in a world (the friend needs this mod).
• Everyone in the party sees the others sitting around the fire in their own look - body, hair, beard, colours and worn gear - with the name and Ready above.
• Everyone sees who the party is waiting for (members who have not pressed Ready yet) or Everyone is ready; a member who is not ready is told to choose the character and press Ready. If the host presses Start before everyone is ready, the game asks first - the others can join later.
• Party chat, a Ready button for each member, and the game's emotes (wave, bow, cheer, dance and the rest): your figure plays them at everyone's fire.
• While a party is together the menu camera steps back smoothly to show the whole ring at the fire.
• The host presses Start and chooses the world on the game's own world screen as always (password and the rest there too); Start server is kept on for the party. The members who are ready join by themselves (the password is filled in); others press Join the host.
• Roles are clear: on top it says You are the host or You are in <name>'s party. Only the host sees the world, the password, Start and the invite list; a member has Ready, emotes, chat and Waiting for the host, and the game's own Start button on the character screen works as Ready (the host chooses the world). If the host leaves, the party ends and everyone gets the ordinary menu back.
• The panel grows with its content and scrolls when the screen is too low.
• Compact layout: the party at the left, the characters at the top right, the party's chat at the bottom right (Enter or Send). In a party the game's bar at the bottom is hidden; Manage saves is in the characters' list, and each character shows whether it is kept in the cloud or locally.
• Characters at the right: when you go to a friend (a party, or joining a friend's game) the character screen shows a compact, scrolling list instead of the arrows at the bottom - a 3D picture of each character down to the waist, the name, one click to switch, and New character. With AdminMenu, a character bound to another world gets a red ! (the tooltip says which world). [Menu] CharacterList = Joining / Always / Off.
• Without a party the menu shows only one small button. Everyone in the party needs this mod.

Also: everyone you meet in a world appears in Steam's Recently played with; friends in your party or game are grouped together in the Steam friends list ("2 of 10"); in the game's own player list a Steam player gets their avatar if the game shows the default picture.

Avatars and statuses update from Steam's own events, never every frame; cards are created a few per frame, so a list of hundreds of friends opens without a hitch.

How inviting works

Valheim creates a Steam lobby for every open world a player hosts - Steam and crossplay alike - and the friend's game accepts a lobby invite by itself.

Invites sent by a non-host arrive through Steam's "Join game". If the friend's Valheim is not running, Steam starts it and joins. If it is running, the plain game ignores that kind of invite - with this mod installed the friend accepts it like a normal one.

Invite is disabled when: the world is not open to others (single player), Steam is still creating the lobby, or you are a client and the host is not your Steam friend (and it is not a dedicated server).

The Players & invites button only appears where the game shows its player list: in an open world (Start server) or on a server - not in single player.

Requirements

• Valheim 1.0.20 (built and tested against it) on Steam (on the Xbox / Game Pass version the tab simply doesn't appear).
• BepInEx pack for Valheim (5.4.23+).

Install

Thunderstore / r2modman: install the mod. Manually: put SteamFriends.dll into BepInEx/plugins. Uninstall: delete SteamFriends.dll (and BepInEx/config/chistix.steamfriends.cfg if you like).

Compatibility

• Client only. The server and other players don't need it; versions may differ. Nothing goes over the game's network.
• Game names are looked up on the Steam store (the public appdetails page data, by the game's number) one at a time and cached in BepInEx/cache/SteamFriends; GameNames = false turns it off.
• Patches the opening of the player list window and its entries (avatars), the pause menu's start (the button's label), the game's language loading, the console's commands (/f, /r), the main menu (start, character preview, camera, character Start, world screen and world Start for the party), the game's lobby invite (a party's invite goes to the party), the Yes / No window's labels (Accept / Decline) and the menu keys while a field of the mod is typed in (Enter sends instead of pressing Start). No known conflicts.

Languages

All 35 languages of the game, following the game's language (changing it in Settings applies at once). Abenaki shows English. Texts of the game itself are translated by the game.

Settings (BepInEx/config/chistix.steamfriends.cfg; settings of versions before 0.1.2 carry over by themselves)

• ShowOffline (true) - show offline friends at the end of the list (search finds them anyway).
• LastTab - the last open tab, remembered.
• DebugLog (false) - details in the log: window layout, invites, lobbies.
• GameNames (true) - names of the games friends play, from the Steam store.
• [Notify] FriendsOnline (true) - the line when a friend comes online or starts Valheim.
• [Chat] InGame (true) - friends' Steam messages come to the game while it runs (off: as usual in Steam, after a restart).
• [Privacy] ShareWorld (false) - share your world, server and the way in with friends (the tick in the tab).
• [Menu] CharacterList (Joining) - the characters' list at the right: Joining / Always / Off.
• [Screenshots] MadeUpNames (false) - for screenshots and streams: friends' names in the mod's windows are replaced with made-up ones (Bjorn, Astrid, ...), avatars stay; your own name is kept. Best turned on before starting the game.
• [Screenshots] DemoParty (0) - stand-in friends for screenshots and videos when no friend is at hand: 1-5 of your Steam friends (their avatars, made-up names) sit at the main menu's fire as a party, chat a little and show as in Valheim in the friends tab. Nothing is sent to them or to Steam. DemoRole (Host / Member), keys DemoInviteKey (F8, the invite window), DemoOnlineKey (F9, the "friend started Valheim" line in a world), DemoReadyKey (F10, everyone ready). 0 - off.

Troubleshooting

The log is BepInEx/LogOutput.log (look for SteamFriends). Every invite is logged with how it was sent and whether Steam accepted it.

Credits

• Made by Chistix: idea, design, direction and testing. Code written with Claude Code (Anthropic) as an AI coding assistant, under Chistix's direction.
• Translations other than English and Russian are machine translations - corrections welcome.
• Uses BepInEx and Harmony, and Steamworks.NET as shipped with Valheim.
• The icon is drawn from scratch; no game art is included.

License

All rights reserved - see LICENSE. You may use the mod, show it in videos and streams and list it as a dependency; re-uploading or changed versions need the author's permission.

По-русски

Кнопка меню паузы «Список игроков» становится «Игроки и приглашения». Во вкладке «Друзья Steam» видно, кто из друзей в Valheim, а кто в сети. Там же можно пригласить друга в свою игру («Пригласить») или зайти в его открытый мир («Присоединиться»). Мод нужен только тому, кто приглашает, а хост может звать кого угодно. В карточке друга видно, во что он играет, есть кнопка «Написать» (переписка Steam прямо в игре) и строка, когда друг зашёл в сеть.

В главном меню на экране персонажа можно собрать отряд у костра: друзья сидят у огня в своём облике, есть чат, «Готов», эмоции и приглашения прямо в игре («Принять» / «Отклонить»). Хост жмёт «Начать» и выбирает мир на обычном экране игры, готовые участники заходят сами. Справа компактный список персонажей с 3D-портретами. Для отряда мод нужен всем его участникам.

Работает на всех языках игры. Мод только клиентский, серверу он не нужен.

Links

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