Better Rowing

Hold Shift at the helm to paddle faster into a headwind, even on a solo voyage. With friends aboard, take a seat and pull on the drumbeat. Moving strokes train your Rowing skill, giving you more power for less stamina.

Tested in Windows multiplayer with our crew on a dedicated Valheim server.

Row with your friends!

Watch the 50-second BetterRowing gameplay trailer on YouTube

Watch four rowers hit the same drumbeat for a 30% crew bonus, then see a solo helmsman earn a Rowing level while paddling into a headwind. Filmed in Valheim with a locally staged crew.

More full-resolution screenshots

The captain hears the drum when a passenger is seated to row. A lone passenger also hears the cue. Chain consecutive Perfect strokes for up to 1.5× Rowing XP. BetterRowing is an unofficial Valheim mod.

What it adds

• A Rowing skill: successful moving strokes improve the skill. Higher skill gives more rowing power and lower stamina costs.
• Perfect combos: consecutive Perfect strokes earn 1.0×, 1.1×, 1.2×, 1.3×, 1.4×, then 1.5× XP on the sixth and following Perfects. Good, Miss, a skipped beat, leaving/changing seats, paused rowing or a new boat rhythm resets the chain. Each rower has their own combo; the gold Perfect label shows its multiplier. This bonus affects XP only, before the game's normal XP modifiers.
• Captain boosting: hold Shift while using forward paddle speed or backward paddling. The boat's selected direction decides the boost direction; the captain keeps the native steering oar.
• Crew rowing: sit in a supported passenger seat and tap Shift on the beat to follow the captain's paddle direction. Ctrl + Shift rows opposite that direction: forward while the captain reverses, backward while the captain paddles forward. With no captain, Shift rows forward and Ctrl + Shift back-rows.
• A shared three-second drum beat: a compact panel below the minimap shows an animated drum, crew timing and coordinated bonuses. Perfect is gold, Good green, and Miss red.
• Coordinated strokes: two or more accurate strokes on the same beat and in the same direction earn a bonus, up to 30%. Uneven port/starboard rowing adds a turning pull; balanced crews help keep the boat straight.
• Visible crew oars: fitted hull ports, weathered wood matched to the boat, overhand grips, torso movement, water splashes, ripples and sounds synchronized to accepted strokes.

The karve, longship and Drakkar have fitted crew visuals. The raft supports captain boosting without added passenger oars. Drakkar rowing uses eight main-deck side boxes; raised benches and the captain-side station are excluded.

Controls

Crew can row with the helm empty and sails raised, or at forward/backward paddle speed when someone is steering. The rhythm panel appears with any seated passenger rower. The captain hears the drum only while another player is seated to row; standing passengers do not count. Solo passenger rowers keep the cue. Captain reverse boosting and crew assistance do not require Ctrl. Sailing settings do not enable rowing boosts.

Install and play together

1. Open your Valheim profile in Thunderstore Mod Manager or r2modman. Install CwewMods-BetterRowing with its dependencies, then choose Start modded.
2. For multiplayer, install the same BetterRowing version and balance configuration on every player's client and on the dedicated server, if you use one. A player can also host a world using Start Server.
3. Raise the sail and select paddle speed at the helm. Hold Shift to boost. Passengers can sit down and tap Shift on the drum. The crew panel appears as soon as one passenger sits down to row.

To row without a captain, raise the sails, leave the helm empty and sit in a passenger seat. Tap Shift on the drum for forward strokes or Ctrl + Shift to back-row. Normal stamina costs, movement-based skill gains and team bonuses apply; F8/F9 are not required. A single side rower will turn the boat. With someone at the helm, select forward paddling (speed 1) or backward paddling for crew rowing. Taking a stopped helm pauses crew strokes until the captain selects a paddle setting.

Dependencies are BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2351 and Jotunn 2.30.2. For manual installation, install those dependencies first, then copy this package's BepInEx contents into the installation's BepInEx folder. Avoid duplicate copies of BetterRowing.dll.

The drum defaults to Audio.BeatVolume = 0.9 and follows game master/SFX volume. The mix now delivers 2× the previous RMS output at the same volume setting, with stereo-linked peak protection. This also works with an existing saved volume setting. Layered acoustic bass and frame drums provide one strong rowing cue every three seconds, preceded by two quieter preparation taps. Row on the main hit. Lower the volume to taste; zero mutes the cue. Recorded takes alternate using the shared beat index and retain their natural tail.

Drum recordings: Versilian Community Sample Library, Versilian Studios / Sam Gossner, CC0 1.0. The recordings are pitched, equalized, layered and arranged for rowing. See the included third-party notices. No audio from the Drums of Drakkar reference track is bundled.

Balance included in this package

The package includes BepInEx/config/curti.valheim.betterrowing.cfg so fresh installations match the playtested balance. Keep it consistent on the server and all clients because boat ownership can move between players. Timing and stamina settings are shared by the boat owner; all force settings are not centrally locked.

These cutoffs taper rowing thrust; they do not clamp velocity or erase wind/wave momentum. Rested, food and world modifiers affect endurance. Installing or updating the package can replace its bundled configuration, so preserve any custom edits first. The development F8/F9 solo modes are off in the shared configuration and cannot run in multiplayer.

Compatibility and current limits

• Built with Valheim 1.0.20, Unity 6000.0.75f1, on Windows. Linux/macOS clients and Steam Deck visuals are not validated; the rendering bundle targets Windows. Consoles are unsupported.
• The Drakkar keeps its existing seats and compact outer ports. Rough-wave adaptation is intentionally restricted to avoid hull clipping; blades can miss the surface or remain submerged during recovery in rough water.
• Client settings let you disable the animated body, oars, wave adaptation, water effects, drum audio or HUD. Other mods that alter boat meshes, seats, player animation or rowing physics may conflict.
• Characters carry their own Rowing skill progress. Back up your character before switching to an unmodded profile if you want to keep that progress.
• This download contains the mod and its configuration. It does not contain a world save, Valheim assemblies, native boat meshes or third-party dependency DLLs.

Updating or disabling

Update CwewMods / BetterRowing in your Valheim profile with the game closed. For multiplayer, update the clients and the server together, then restart them. To play vanilla, close Valheim and start it from your vanilla profile.

For a normal server, fully exit the game and use Start vanilla. If a server running Jotunn 2.30.2 previously rejected your modded client, it can retain that old mod list in memory. A graceful server restart clears the stale list. Alternatively, try one connection using Start modded with only BepInEx and Jotunn enabled, and BetterRowing disabled, to send a fresh list. This does not require deleting character or world files.

Credits and license

Better Rowing by CwewMods. MIT-licensed mod code and original mod assets. Uses BepInEx and Jotunn as separately installed dependencies. Oar wood artwork and the package icon were created with AI image-generation assistance; boat/character fitting references remain local and are not redistributed.

Changelog

0.3.27

• Silence the drum for the captain when no other player is seated to row. A seated passenger brings the cue back on the shared beat; standing passengers do not count.
• Keep the drum for solo passenger rowers, captain-free rowing and local seated practice. Stale crew snapshots cannot keep the captain's drum playing.
• Preserve the three-second rhythm, drum sound and volume, HUD, captain boosting and rowing balance.

0.3.26

• Add individual Perfect-stroke XP combos: 1.0× on the first Perfect, +0.1× for each consecutive Perfect, capped at 1.5× on the sixth. Good, Miss, skipped beats, seat/boat changes, rowing pauses and new rhythm/owner schedules reset the chain. Only accepted, moving strokes award XP; F9 remains practice without XP.
• Show the confirmed multiplier beside the gold Perfect grade in the compact drum HUD. The boat owner tracks each chain, rejects repeated inputs and shares bounded combo state with observers.
• Ctrl + Shift now opposes the captain's selected paddle direction, allowing forward counterstrokes while reversing. Empty-helm controls remain Shift forward and Ctrl + Shift backward.
• Double the acoustic drum's measured output, including preparation taps, while protecting peaks and keeping the stereo image, original recordings, natural tails and three-second schedule. Existing BeatVolume and game audio controls still work.
• Keep stamina costs, boat speed limits, skill benefits and coordinated propulsion bonuses unchanged. All clients and the test server must update together.

0.3.25

• Fix occasional silent drum hits caused by normal differences between the render clock and the audio buffer clock. The scheduler now tolerates one device buffer of jitter while retaining cancellation for significant late clock corrections, mute and schedule changes.
• Show gold Perfect, green Good and red Miss regions on the timing line, using the actual scoring windows and a white moving marker. Preserve the compact panel below the minimap.
• Keep the approved acoustic samples, three-second cycle, volume, stamina and boat movement unchanged.

0.3.24

• Seated crew can tap Shift on beat to assist a reversing captain. The boat owner resolves the paddle direction for each accepted stroke and shares it with movement, oars and crew grades.
• Ctrl + Shift remains an explicit backward stroke. Captain-free rowing and existing stamina, skill and coordination rules are preserved.
• Replace the synthesized cue with layered acoustic bass/frame drums from the CC0 Versilian Community Sample Library. Two quieter taps prepare one main rowing cue every three seconds; recorded takes alternate consistently across peers. Retain the natural tail, mute controls, shared-clock scheduling and clipping headroom.
• Keep Perfect gold, Good green and Miss red.
• Document the Jotunn 2.30.2 stale mod-list issue when returning to a normal server.

0.3.23

• Show the rhythm HUD whenever at least one passenger is seated to row, independently of helm occupancy.
• Enable normal single-player and multiplayer crew rowing with an empty helm and raised sails, including from Stop. Normal stamina, skill gains, speed limits and coordination rules apply; no F8/F9 activation is needed.
• Keep occupied-helm crew rowing at forward speed 1, F8 cosmetic preview isolated, and F9 practice free of skill XP.
• Retain the 0.90 drum volume introduced in 0.3.22.

0.3.22

• The crew rhythm HUD appears with one seated rower plus an occupied helm, as well as with two seated rowers. Its heading identifies the helm separately; only passenger strokes earn timing grades and coordination bonuses.
• Doubled the default and bundled drum volume from 0.45 to 0.90. The shared three-second beat and game master/SFX controls are unchanged.
• If your mod manager preserves your existing configuration, set Audio → BeatVolume to 0.9 to hear the louder drum.

0.3.21

First public multiplayer test package, based on the locally playtested build.

• Rowing skill, captain Shift boosts in forward and reverse, crew rhythm strokes and coordination bonuses.
• Three-second shared drum cycle and bundled playtest stamina/force settings.
• Compact minimap-anchored HUD with animated drum and coloured timing grades.
• Karve, longship and Drakkar fitted ports, weathered crew oars, overhand animations and synchronized water effects.
• Early boat-port initialization and water rendering through fitted openings.
• Development solo preview/test modes disabled in the shared configuration.

Local reverse rowing and HUD appearance were confirmed by the tester. Automated checks and Unity simulations passed; live multiplayer testing is the purpose of this release.