Ominous

Something is following you, and you get to hear it coming. Ominous adds a proximity-driven dread score and a warning beacon that escalate as predators close in, driven by a craftable utility item you carry.

A Valheim BepInEx 5 plugin built on Jotunn.

Features

• The Ominous Sounder, a craftable utility item. A runic wisp orb floats over your shoulder.
• Threat escalation — a quiet suspense bed that swells as the nearest predator closes, then decays away over a few seconds once it is gone. Pitch rises with proximity, up to +15%.
• Beacon light on the item, shifting cyan → amber → crimson, with a pulse rate that accelerates from 1.5 Hz to 7.0 Hz as threat climbs.
• Perimeter sonar ping when a predator first crosses your detection radius, so something closing in from off-screen still announces itself.
• Vanilla music ducking — the dread track sits under exploration music rather than over it, and crossfades smoothly so nothing pops.
• A live web editor at http://127.0.0.1:8788/ while the game runs.
• Six Biome Attunement tiers, so you choose how far the sounder reaches — and how much of the map it listens to.
• Four synthesized starter tracks included.

Requirements

• BepInExPack Valheim
• Jotunn (2.30.x)
• Valheim 1.0.16+

Installation

1. Install through your mod manager (recommended).
2. Manual: place Ominous.dll into BepInEx\plugins\Ominous\, along with tracks\. ominous_config.json is written automatically on first launch.

How to Use

1. Craft an Ominous Sounder at a workbench: 10 Wood, 2 Copper, 5 Resin, 2 Leather Scraps.
2. Equip it in your utility slot.
3. Walk. The orb hovers over your shoulder and reacts to whatever is closest.
4. Open http://127.0.0.1:8788/ to assign tracks, tune distances and volumes, and set trigger radii.

Biome Attunement

Item quality doubles as your attunement tier, so upgrading the sounder widens both what it can hear and how far it reaches.

The item tooltip shows your tier, your radar range, your beacon aura range, and a ✓ or ✗ per biome. Attunement is stored per biome, so you are not locked into a single progression order.

The bundled tracks

Adding your own

1. Drop any .wav or .mp3 into BepInEx\plugins\Ominous\tracks\.
2. Point a creature at it — either in ominous_config.json or through the web editor.
3. For seamless looping, pick something that loops cleanly or is an atmospheric drone.

Configuration

Two files.

com.dfg.ominous.cfg, section General: Enabled, EnableWebGui, WebPort (default 8788).

ominous_config.json beside the plugin: MasterVolume, DuckingStrength, PitchScaling, FadeInSpeed, FadeOutSpeed, ScanInterval, RequireEquippedItem, EnableBeaconLight, BeaconLightRange, PingOnPerimeterEnter, and a Creatures array. Each creature entry carries its Prefab, Track, TriggerDistance, MaxVolumeDistance, Volume, Priority, Enabled, Biome and RequiredTier.

Notes and limitations

• The sounder occupies your utility slot and therefore competes with Megingjord and the Wishbone. That is deliberate — it is an item you carry, not a passive buff — but if you would rather it always run, set RequireEquippedItem to false in ominous_config.json.
• Creature scanning is allocation-free and runs four times a second by default (ScanInterval 0.25), not every frame.
• A creature with no biome assigned still gets a sensible tier from its name.
• The web editor listens on localhost only.

Support

If this mod has made your journey through the Tenth World a little better, consider tossing a coin into my Ko-fi jar: https://ko-fi.com/draugrforgedgaming. Your support keeps the forge hot and the mead flowing! Skål!