PortableShips

By FalseHarmony.

Carry your Karve, Longship or Drakkar in your inventory, preserving its health and supported upgrades. Buy Beastbinding from the Bog Witch to transport tamed animals too.

Experimental release — 0.12.1. Built against Valheim 1.0.20, BepInEx 5.4.23.5 and Jötunn 2.30.2. The build and 2,276 offline checks pass. Ship packing has been exercised during development, but the moving Drakkar portal, Beastbinding, upgrade preservation across saves, and multiplayer edge cases still need thorough in-game testing. Back up worlds and characters before testing.

Installation

Install with r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager. BepInExPack Valheim and Jötunn are required dependencies. Install the same PortableShips version on every client and the host/dedicated server, then restart them.

For manual installation, copy BepInEx/plugins/PortableShips/PortableShips.dll from this ZIP into your installation's BepInEx plugin folder and install the dependencies separately.

If upgrading from a locally imported Local-PortableShips build, back up first, remove that old mod entry/DLL and install this package. Keep exactly one PortableShips DLL. Existing item identifiers and save data are retained; do not load the character/world with PortableShips absent during the transition.

Shrinking and summoning ships

1. Install Skíðblaðnir's Boon: stand outside the hull beside the helm, look at the wood and press E. It costs 20 Refined Eitr, 20 Yggdrasil wood and 10 Blue Jute, once per ship. No crafting station is needed.
2. Stop the ship and have everyone leave its deck, seats and helm. Close storage and finish other ship interactions.
3. Aim at the outer hull from outside and press P. Keep aiming through the 2.5-second animation and progress bar. You need an empty inventory slot and ward permission. Any player may pack a ship.
4. Collect its cargo at the original location: cargo drops there and is not transported inside the packed ship.
5. Put the packed ship on your hotbar, aim at nearby water and use that slot's number key. Complete the 2.5-second cast to summon it.

Packed ships preserve their health fraction and supported upgrades. Items cannot be sold, weigh 10 and do not stack. Inventory icons use the corresponding vanilla build-menu ship icon; dropped items show a miniature ship. Rafts are unsupported.

Hull Reinforcement

Stand outside the ship and aim at the right/starboard outer hull, within normal shrinking range. Press E to buy the next tier immediately, without a cast bar or animation (server authority confirmation may take a moment). No station or Boon is needed. Before buying the Boon, its helm area remains reserved for that purchase. Only the next purchasable tier is shown; at tier 3, the reinforcement prompt disappears. Installed Boon status text is hidden; usable actions such as shrinking, name editing and the horn remain available.

Tiers require the previous purchase and replace its HP bonus. Karve totals: 750 / 1,000 / 1,500; Longship: 1,500 / 2,000 / 3,000; Drakkar: 4,500 / 6,000 / 9,000. Health percentage stays the same when upgrading. Paid tiers persist through packing and refund all purchased tier materials on destruction.

Longship Upgrades remains optional. Once reinforcement is installed, its active configured hull health is added in full: default Hull 2 produces Longship totals of 3,500 / 4,000 / 5,000 HP. Without reinforcement, its original HP behavior remains. Reinforcement does not grant Ashlands resistance. Live HP/repair, purchase orders, save/load, packing cycles and multiplayer still require testing. Unrelated health mods/world-level modifiers are not integrated.

Ship upgrades

All upgrades are independent purchases. The Boon is required to shrink a ship, but is not required to install the other upgrades. When a ship is destroyed, paid PortableShips upgrade materials are recovered in floating cargo crates. Packing retains upgrades instead of refunding them.

The wooden nameplate stays visible after purchase, including when blank. Names allow up to 128 plain-text characters; the packed item's name follows the ship's name.

Njörðr's Horn uses an animation, progress bar and sound. It immediately changes the world's wind direction randomly while retaining wind strength, until the next natural change. Its 15-minute cooldown is shared by the ship and persists while packed and offline.

Experimental moving Drakkar portal

After purchase, use E on the portal arch to set a normal case-sensitive portal tag, up to ten characters. Give another portal the same tag and allow time for the connection. Buy level 2 at the wooden mount to replace the wooden portal with a stone portal, retaining its tag.

The portal travels with the ship. Packing retains its level and tag. Native departure-portal metal restrictions apply: the Drakkar stone portal permits metals departing the boat; a land portal follows its own rules. Arrival attempts track the ship and check the destination deck; a missing, obstructed or changed destination can return you to the departure point.

Moving portals remain experimental. Test stationary travel in both directions before testing sailing, unloaded destinations or ownership changes. Transit and packing/destruction races have not been fully verified on a live dedicated server.

Beastbinding: tamed animal transport

Buy Beastbinding from the Bog Witch in the Swamp for 1,000 coins. It permanently unlocks shrinking for that character and disappears from their shop after purchase.

Aim at a fully tamed supported animal and press P, completing the 2.5-second cast. Put its item on your hotbar, aim at clear dry ground or a clear ship deck and use the slot to release it. Anyone can release an already packed animal; only packing requires the purchase.

The payload preserves health/max health, stars, saddle, supported color/appearance, name and tameness. Growth, feeding and breeding timers pause while packed. Icons use trophies over the Cold status-effect background; hens/chicks use native model portraits when available. Items weigh 5, do not stack and cannot be sold.

Supported native animals: boar/piglet, wolf/cub, lox/calf, hen/chick, asksvin/hatchling and moose/calf. Optional adapters support inspected OdinHorse 1.9.1 horse/foal and Monstrum 1.6.1 land animals/young. Horse coat, armor and wait state are included. Dismount, detach carts/tethers and empty/close saddlebags first.

Wild animals, unknown creatures, temporary summons and unsupported attachments are refused. Status effects, arbitrary third-party creature fields and saddlebag cargo are not serialized. Vendor purchase/save behavior, animal appearance, ground/deck placement and multiplayer still require in-game verification.

Compatibility

Longship Upgrades is optional, not a dependency. Compatibility is implemented for the inspected 1.0.23 build. Supported installed upgrade flags/styles, hull max health, storage dimensions, mounted trophy, turret ammunition/filter and map data are stored and restored; cargo remains at the old location. Unsupported binaries or incomplete data are refused. Actual preservation across live saves and multiplayer remains to be verified. A packed upgraded ship requires its supported extension to deploy.

OdinHorse and Monstrum are also optional. Packed animals from those mods need their compatible creature mod/assets to be released. Compatibility with other packing mods and arbitrary creature/ship modifications is unverified.

Configuration and console items

Configuration is generated at BepInEx/config/portable.ships.cfg. Default packing key: P; packing distance: 5 m; deployment distance: 25 m.

Console-created items deploy fresh, empty, full-health ships without free upgrades:

spawn PortableShips_PackedKarve
spawn PortableShips_PackedLongship
spawn PortableShips_PackedDrakkar

Buy the Boon on these ships before packing them again. Existing saved or unfinished item data is never reset to console defaults.

Saves, recovery and troubleshooting

Keep PortableShips installed while worlds/characters contain its custom items or portals. Missing custom prefabs can cause saved items to disappear. Do not remove creature/upgrade dependencies while their packed items still need them.

If the game reports a missing prefab hash, check that all clients and the server loaded the same mod version and dependencies, and retain the full error/hash for diagnosis.

An interrupted operation can leave a pending item or locked ship/animal. Keep it and check BepInEx/config/PortableShips.transactions.log alongside BepInEx/LogOutput.log. Do not duplicate items or manually clear locks without checking whether the original/recreated object exists. Character inventories and world saves are separate; crashes and disconnects are not an atomic transaction.

For a useful bug report include the PortableShips/game/dependency versions, single-player or dedicated server, exact steps, full error and relevant log excerpt. Remove personal details and server credentials before sharing logs.

Credits

Created with AI coding assistance. Native meshes, textures, icons and effects are loaded from the player's installed game at runtime; game assemblies and extracted game assets are not included. Longship Upgrades, Jötunn, BepInEx, OdinHorse and Monstrum belong to their respective authors.

Optional EpicShips integration (0.12.1)

PortableShips now exposes an optional addon transfer API. The separate EpicShips addon can enchant packed ships through Epic Loot, preserve sockets/cooldowns, and apply ship/Voyager effects. Epic Loot is not required by PortableShips itself. Enchanted ships require their addon to pack/deploy, and missing/malformed addon data is rejected. The companion API and EpicShips are experimental and require live testing.

Changelog

0.12.8

• Replaced Longship Upgrades binary-version restrictions with checks on the methods, field types and saved upgrade keys used by the adapter.
• Compatible updates can summon existing packed ships without adding their DLL hashes to PortableShips. Incompatible changes report the failing contract and preserve the item.

0.12.7

• Added compatibility with the inspected Longship Upgrades 1.0.24 build. Existing 1.0.23 packed ships retain their upgrade data.
• Broadened exterior-hull targeting on curved sections and added a small crosshair tolerance for shrinking and hull interactions.

0.12.6

• Added portableships_recover to finish an interrupted summon using its matching pending item and existing locked ship.
• Recovery checks transaction identity and restored upgrades before consuming the item and unlocking the ship; it never spawns a replacement.
• Fixed Boon verification for fresh ships without the upgrade and tightened deployment identity checks.

0.12.2

• Fixed successful Hull Reinforcement purchases leaving the global action flag busy, silently blocking shrinking and other actions until restarting.
• Reinforcement now releases its reservation and action flag on completion or failure, including cleanup exceptions.

0.12.1

• Hull Reinforcement purchases no longer use a cast bar or animation; network authority and payment checks remain.
• Expanded reinforcement targeting to the right exterior hull within shrinking range. The unpurchased Boon retains its helm purchase area.
• Hide installed Boon status and fully upgraded reinforcement text. Retain next-tier purchases, shrinking and interactive upgrades.

0.12.0

• Added optional registered addon capture/validation/restore/verification hooks and required-addon checks for packed ships.
• Added instance-local additive health, cast-duration and authoritative horn-cooldown/proc callbacks.
• Added 17 transfer bridge regression checks with native-type stubs.
• PortableShips remains independent of Epic Loot; the separate EpicShips addon requires this companion release.

0.11.0

• Added three sequential Hull Reinforcement tiers for Karve, Longship and Drakkar: +50%, +100% and +200% vanilla HP.
• Recipes use 10 Bronze/Iron/Black Metal and 20 Fine Wood/Ancient Bark/Yggdrasil wood respectively.
• Added exterior hull interaction, progress bar/animation, preserved health percentage and cumulative material refunds.
• Preserves reinforcement through save/load and packing with schema 7; earlier packed ships remain supported.
• Optional Longship Upgrades hull health adds in full to reinforced vanilla HP; snapshots isolate the extension baseline to prevent compounding.

0.10.2

• Replaced the Drakkar portal upgrade block's mismatched primitive material with native wooden-post meshes and matching materials.
• Cleaned up failed mount creation before retrying.

0.10.1

• Command-spawned packed ship items deploy fresh, full-health ships without upgrades.
• Existing partial snapshots and unfinished transactions remain protected from default initialization.

0.10.0

• Added Beastbinding, a permanent 1,000-coin Bog Witch purchase for shrinking tamed animals.
• Added supported animal state preservation, hotbar release, native icons and optional OdinHorse/Monstrum adapters.

Earlier development

• Added Karve, Longship and Drakkar packing/deployment with animations, progress bars, sounds and particles.
• Added Skíðblaðnir's Boon, ship nameplates, Njörðr's Horn, destruction refunds and experimental two-level moving Drakkar portals.
• Added optional Longship Upgrades preservation and dedicated-server deployment improvements.