The Greatest Ships

⚠ Pre-release, still changing. This mod is new and hasn't reached 1.0. Cargo slots, default build materials, and other balance numbers will change as it's tuned against real sailing data. A future update can shrink a ship's hold or swap its recipe out from under you. Use it at your own risk, and expect to re-tune your own configs after an update.

New ships built on Valheim's own hulls. Install on the server and on every client.

Top speeds are in m/s, in full wind about 64° off the stern. They were worked out from logged sailing with the Captain's Log mod.

Hulls are priced by their planking: a ship's wood and nails follow the area of its hull, taking the vanilla Longship's 80 wood and 100 nails as the unit -- the cargo ships pay a small premium (about 1.05×) and the Byrdings, mostly open deck, a little less. Health follows the wood in the recipe, 1000 per 80, except the two fast ships, which are built light and take 20% less. Every recipe's materials weigh 450 or less -- one load with the Megingjord -- except the Greater Byrding, the biggest ship here, at 480: two trips, or one on a Mead of Troll Endurance. (The vanilla Longship's materials weigh 220, the Drakkar's 260.)

Every ship names itself on its rudder ("Use rudder (Fast Longship)") and its hold ("Fast Longship Storage"), and so do the vanilla ships ("Use rudder (Karve)", "Karve Storage"), so you can always tell which ship you are looking at.

Each ship sits in the Hammer right after the vanilla ship it is based on. As with every build piece, it shows up once you have picked up each of its materials.

Fast Karve

A light racing karve with an oversized sail. It outruns a longship, but its hull is lighter and it has only two storage slots.

Fast Longship

A long, lean longship under an oversized sail, braced with troll hide and extra iron and sealed with swamp guck: the fastest ship here, with a lighter hull and two thirds of a longship's hold.

Knarr, Busse and Big Busse

Three tiers of deep, heavy longship built to haul, named for real Norse cargo vessels. Each is slower and clumsier than a longship, but sturdier, and holds progressively more: the Knarr 32 stacks, the Busse 36, the Big Busse 64. The Busse and Big Busse are also stretched bow-to-stern (1.15× and 1.5×), not just wider, so their bigger hold reads as a longer hull, not just a fatter one; each holds about 1.4× as much per square meter of deck as a longship, which is what a hull with no rowing benches should manage.

Small Byrding, Byrding and Greater Byrding (experimental)

A longship with a rail-fenced pen on deck -- corner posts and two rails a side, no gate yet -- that keeps a frightened tamed animal from jumping overboard the way it can on a bare longship. Named for the Norse trading vessel that carried exactly this kind of cargo. Otherwise a vanilla Longship with one row of the hold given over to fodder and tack (12 slots instead of 18). This is a first pass: the pen's position, size and deck height are estimates rather than measured in-game, and it only stops animals from escaping -- it does nothing to protect them from outside damage (monsters, the ship hitting rocks). Expect it to need retuning.

That is the Small Byrding: a boar or two. The Byrding is the whole ship scaled 1.25×, with a pen the length of its deck, mast and all: room for a few boars, and a longship's hold. The Greater Byrding is scaled 1.5×, with a fence high enough that a wolf can't clear it: room for a lox, or a pack of wolves. Each is slower than the last: 10%, 15% and 20% under a longship, and each turns a little more slowly too. The Wood in each recipe is exactly what its pen's poles and beams would cost to build by hand: 24, 36 and 50. Each pen holds about one boar per two square meters -- three, ten and fifteen -- and past that the animals stand on one another and can be lost over the side. Under way, an invisible lip along the top of the rails keeps a jostled animal in; at rest it is gone, so animals can be dropped in over the rails from a dock. Each pen also has a gate on each side: look at it and Use, and it folds outboard into a ramp from the pen floor up over the gunwale, so with the ship alongside a dock at rail height animals can walk off, or on.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/DeathMonger.TheGreatestShips.cfg has one section per ship, named after it. When an update changes a default, any value you never touched moves to the new default by itself; a value you set yourself is kept. To get the new defaults for everything, delete the file (or just the entries you want reset) and start the game.

Updating from 0.9.0 moves a Fast Karve speed of 1.14 and the old Cargo Longship recipe to the new defaults. The Cargo Longship's own section also moves across under its new name, Knarr. Values you changed yourself are kept either way.

Changelog

0.9.10 — 2026-10-05

• New "Boat Camera Max Distance" setting (General, yours alone): the farthest the camera can be from you while steering, in meters -- how far you can zoom out: 8 to 40, and 16 is the game's own limit (8 on foot). It is one number for every ship, so a hull half again a longship's size fills that much more of the frame at full zoom-out -- try 24 to see the whole of a Big Busse.
• New "Sail Opacity" setting (General, yours alone), for the ship you are standing on: 1 draws its sail as the game does, lower draws the side you see from the tiller see-through, 0 hides it; other ships are drawn as the game draws them. Works on this mod's ships and the vanilla ones, and applies at once. From the bow the sail still looks normal unless "Sail Opacity Both Sides" is on; it always applies at the rudder, and "Sail Opacity On Deck" (on by default) says whether it also applies anywhere else on the deck. Not a breaking change.

0.9.9 — 2026-10-04

• Fixed: 0.9.8 threw an error every frame the inventory was open (FieldAccessException in the hold-fitting patch), which could leave the inventory not updating. Update from 0.9.8 straight away.

0.9.8 — 2026-10-04

• Fixed: the slot-shrinking that fits a big hold into the inventory panel was applied to every inventory grid, including the player's -- which, with AzuExtendedPlayerInventory's extra rows, shrank the player inventory and scrambled its equipment slots. It now applies only to the hold of one of this mod's ships while that hold is open.

0.9.7 — 2026-10-03

• The cargo holds are now all the panel's own shape, two wide to one tall, so each fills it edge to edge at a smaller scale: Knarr 8 × 4 = 32 (unchanged), Busse 10 × 5 = 50 (was 8 × 6 = 48), Big Busse 11 × 6 = 66 (was 8 × 8 = 64, which drew at half size with the sides empty). Items that sat in a row or column the new shape no longer has move into free slots the first time the hold loads, so nothing is lost; not a breaking change.

0.9.6 — 2026-10-03

• A hold with more rows than the inventory panel shows (the Big Busse's 8 × 8) no longer scrolls: its slots are drawn smaller so the whole hold is in view at once, the same way a hold wider than the panel already was. Holds that fit are drawn as before. Not a breaking change.

0.9.5 — 2026-09-27

Breaking: the server and every player need 0.9.5. The Busse's hold changed size, so 0.9.4 and 0.9.5 cannot share a server.

• The Busse holds 48 (8 × 6) instead of 36 (9 × 4): the cargo line now steps 32 → 48 → 64, and no hold is wider than the inventory panel any more. Its hull grows to 1.4× wide and 1.25× long to carry that at the same cargo density as its neighbors, and its recipe and health follow the planking rule: 50 Fine Wood, 70 Ancient Bark, 150 Iron Nails, 15 Deer Hide, 15 Troll Hide; health 1500. Anything that sat in an existing Busse's ninth column moves to a free slot the first time the hold loads.

0.9.4 — 2026-09-25

• Fixed: a burst of errors in the log when a pen ship's area unloaded -- a teleport, or sailing out of range. The gate kept reading the ship's network state for a frame or two after the game had detached it. Nothing was affected beyond the log.
• The package description now mentions all eight ships.

0.9.3 — 2026-09-20

• New "Lock Configuration" setting (General, on by default, the server's): while on, the synced settings -- recipes, speeds, health, rudder, hull dimensions -- can be changed only by the server's admins, from their own game, and every other player sees them read-only. Before this any player could change them for the whole server. Not a breaking change: 0.9.2 clients can still connect, they just can't change what they aren't allowed to.

0.9.2 — 2026-09-20

Breaking: the server and every player need 0.9.2. Hull Width, Hull Length and Hull Scale are now the server's, so a 0.9.1 client would keep its own.

• Hull Width, Hull Length and Hull Scale come from the server, like the recipe, speed and health. Every player must agree on where a hull is; a player who set a different width was standing in a hull the others' game said wasn't there. The shape is applied when the server's values arrive, to the ships already afloat as well. Sail Color, Hull Color and Hull Stripes stay yours: they are only looks.

0.9.1 — 2026-09-20

Breaking: the server and every player need 0.9.1. The Fast Longship's hold changed size, so 0.9.0 and 0.9.1 cannot share a server.

Rebalanced against real top speeds, worked out from logged sailing: the Karve reaches 7.3, not the 8.8 that 0.9.0 was tuned against, and the Longship 9.65, not the 9.5 it was tuned against.

• Fast Karve: top speed multiplier 1.14 → 1.37, so it reaches about 10 and outruns a longship as intended (at 1.14 it topped out at 8.4). Health 500 → 400.
• Fast Longship: 12 storage slots (4×3) instead of 9. Health 1000 → 800. Top speed multiplier 1.28 → 1.342, which gives it exactly the Fast Ship Skuldelev's sail force: about 13. Its recipe is now all Swamp-tier and below -- 40 Fine Wood, 40 Ancient Bark, 120 Iron Nails, 10 Deer Hide, 10 Troll Hide -- so it no longer waits on the Plains for Linen, and Resin (never a real cost) is gone; and it is 10% longer as well as 15% narrower.
• Cargo Longship: health 1000 → 1100, and its rudder swings at 0.8 of a longship's speed, so it turns more slowly. Its recipe takes 120 Iron Nails instead of 150, 50 Ancient Bark instead of 60, no Core Wood, and Troll Hide as well as Deer Hide, as the Fast Longship does. Top speed about 8.4.
• New per-ship settings "Health" and "Rudder Speed", synced with the server.
• Every ship names itself: its rudder reads "Use rudder (Fast Longship)" and its hold "Fast Longship Storage". The vanilla ships get the same ("Use rudder (Karve)", "Longship Storage", and the Drakkar and Raft), in the player's language, so you can tell which ship you are looking at. "Name Vanilla Ships" turns that off for the vanilla ones.
• A config from 0.9.0 still holding the old Fast Karve speed or the old Cargo Longship recipe is moved to the new defaults. Values changed by hand are kept.
• Fixed: the three ships never showed up on the map or compass with HUDCompass installed. HUDCompass decides what counts as a ship once, at the main menu, before this mod's ships exist yet -- so it never saw them. If HUDCompass is installed, this mod now asks it to look again once its own ships are ready.
• The Cargo Longship is renamed Knarr, after the real Norse cargo ship -- same stats, same hold, same recipe, nothing else changes. Its saved config moves across to the new section name automatically.
• Two new, bigger cargo tiers above the Knarr, both slower and clumsier than the one before but tougher and roomier: the Busse (36 slots, 1400 health) and the Big Busse (64 slots, 1900 health).
• New "Hull Length" setting, alongside "Hull Width": stretches the ship bow-to-stern instead of side-to-side. The Busse (1.15×) and Big Busse (1.5×, and 1.5× wide) use it so their bigger hold reads as a longer hull, not just a fatter one -- and so the Big Busse's 64 slots fit its deck at the Knarr's cargo density rather than twice it.
• Experimental: a Small Byrding -- a Longship with a rail-fenced pen built onto the deck -- corner posts and two rails a side, no gate yet -- that keeps a frightened tamed animal from jumping overboard the way it can on a bare longship. First pass: the pen's position, size and deck height are estimates, not measured in-game, and it doesn't protect penned animals from outside damage (only from jumping off). Otherwise a vanilla Longship 10% slower, with 12 hold slots instead of 18, the rest going to fodder and tack. Named for the Norse trading vessel that carried livestock.
• Experimental: two bigger sizes of it. The Byrding is the whole ship scaled 1.25×, with a pen the length of its deck: room for a few boars, a longship's hold, 1400 health, 15% slower than a longship and a little slower to turn. The Greater Byrding is scaled 1.5×, its fence high enough for wolves: room for a lox, 24 hold slots, 1600 health, 20% slower, slower to turn. Its recipe takes 20 Lox Pelt, which makes it Plains-tier -- as a lox carrier is anyway.
• New "Hull Scale" setting: the whole ship in all three dimensions; "Hull Width" and "Hull Length" multiply on top of it.
• Hulls priced by their planking: each ship's wood and nails follow the area of its hull, with the Longship's 80 wood and 100 nails as the unit. The cargo ships had been paying about 1.5× the wood and 2× the nails per unit of hull, so they come down to about 1.05× (Knarr 90 wood, 120 nails; Busse 110 wood, 140 nails; Big Busse 150 wood, 180 nails); the scaled Byrdings had been paying less than a Longship per unit of hull, so they go up about 10% (Byrding 110 wood, 150 nails; Greater Byrding 130 wood, 200 nails). The Byrdings' Wood is exactly what their pen's poles and beams cost (24 / 36 / 50, gates included). Every recipe's materials now weigh at most 450 (one Megingjord load) except the Greater Byrding's 480 (two trips, or a Mead of Troll Endurance).
• Health follows the wood in each recipe, 1000 per 80: Knarr 1100, Busse 1400, Big Busse 1900, Byrding 1400, Greater Byrding 1600. The fast ships keep their 20% less, built light for speed. Saved Health, Hull Width and Hull Length values still at an earlier default move to the new one.
• Fixed: selecting a ship with six or more ingredients in the Hammer threw an error every frame: the build HUD's requirement row has six slots, five ingredients plus the crafting station. Every recipe here now stays within five (the cargo ships' Core Wood folds into Ancient Bark, the Fast Longship drops Guck, the Greater Byrding drops Deer Hide). A hand-edited sixth ingredient still shows -- the row grows to fit it -- but the station's icon then hangs off the panel.
• Fixed: a panicked boar could climb out of a pen. It can't jump, but at a run its collider rides up the lower rail and then the upper one -- two rails make a staircase. The rails now carry an invisible flat inner wall from the deck to the top rail, so there is nothing to climb, and while the ship is under way an invisible lip along the top of the wall, jutting inward, so an animal lifted by a shove or a heeling deck meets a ceiling instead of an edge. Both are off at rest, so animals can still be dropped in over the top at a dock. A pen holds about one boar per two square meters -- three on the Small Byrding, ten on the Byrding, fifteen on the Greater -- and past that they stand on each other, and no wall holds a boar standing on a boar.
• The pens have a gate on each side: a section of the rails (the whole side on the Small Byrding, a 2 m section on the others) that folds outboard on Use into a ramp from the pen floor up over the gunwale, which at midships is only half a meter above the deck. Dock on either side, open that gate, food on the dock at rail height, and the animals walk off -- or, from a dock, walk on. Each gate's state is kept in the ship and shared by everyone aboard.
• Fixed: livestock aboard a ship under sail died to the ship itself. A ship rams whatever its colliders strike above 1.5 m/s -- rails, mast and deck included -- for up to 50 blunt, and a tamed boar has 10 health; a frightened animal running into the mast or the bow rail on a ship doing 6 m/s was killed outright. On this mod's ships a tamed creature is never rammed.
• Fixed: the Busse's nine-wide hold overflowed the inventory panel, half a slot off each side. A hold wider than the panel now draws its slots a little smaller to fit (the panel is built for eight).
• Each ship's Hammer icon is a picture of that ship -- its own sail and hull colors, its width and length, its pen -- instead of the longship's icon eight times over. The icons are also written to BepInEx/config/TheGreatestShips/icons/ as PNGs.

0.9.0 — 2026-09-16

First release.

• The Fast Karve: a Karve with about 14% more top speed (about 10, where the Longship reaches 9.5), two storage slots, and a blue sail. Built from Fine Wood, Ancient Bark, Bronze Nails, Troll Hide and Resin.
• The Fast Longship: a Longship with a top speed of about 12.2, nine storage slots, and a blue sail. Built from Fine Wood, Ancient Bark, Iron Nails, Linen Thread and Resin.
• The Cargo Longship: a Longship slowed to about 8.5 with 32 storage slots and an amber sail. Built from Fine Wood, Ancient Bark, Iron Nails, Deer Hide and Core Wood.
• The fast ships have red-striped hulls, the Cargo Longship green-striped, and are 15% narrower; the Cargo Longship is 25% wider. "Hull Color", "Hull Stripes" and "Hull Width" change them.