VSS — Valheim Storage System

A shared storage grid inspired by the Refined Storage mod for Minecraft.

Build a book-and-quill pedestal, press E, and search all your nearby chests from one screen. Your items stay in the actual chests.

Features

• Cheap to build: Storage Inventory costs just 5 wood, with no workbench required.
• Nearby storage: combines accessible chests within 20 metres; the host can configure 1–100 metres.
• Search and sort: search item names, sort by name, quantity or category, and filter resources.
• Drag and drop: transfer items between the storage grid and your actual player inventory.
• Stack-first deposits: fills compatible partial stacks before taking new chest slots.
• Capacity at a glance: used/total slots, percentage occupied, free slots, chest count and radius.
• Chest preferences: choose the preferred resource category with the small icon beside a linked chest's normal inventory.
• Native inventory behavior: equipped-item highlights, hotbar numbers, right-click equip/unequip/use, and native notifications above the storage window.
• Co-op support: synchronized chest access, permissions and host-controlled radius. Successful live multiplayer testing reported by the author.

Wooden, reinforced and black metal chests, barrels, and accessible personal chests are supported. Chest privacy and ward permissions apply. Carts, ships, graves and temporary loot containers are excluded.

Getting started

1. Install VSS through a Thunderstore-compatible mod manager. The required BepInExPack Valheim dependency installs automatically.
2. Install the same VSS version on every player and the host/dedicated server.
3. Restart Valheim, equip your hammer and build Storage Inventory under Furniture or Storage. You need to have discovered wood normally.
4. Place the pedestal near your chests and press E to open the storage grid.

The pedestal refunds its 5 wood when removed. The window closes when you leave interaction range, die, teleport, or press Escape/Tab.

For a manual installation, install BepInExPack Valheim and copy the package's plugins/VSS folder into BepInEx/plugins. Keep VSS.dll, vss_assets and the complete ui folder together. Avoid duplicate installations of the old mod.

Controls

Withdrawals take at most one item's normal maximum stack size. A full player inventory accepts only the amount that fits. Unequip equipment before transferring it.

The capacity indicator counts occupied item-stack slots, not individual items. For example, 120/120 (100%) used • 0 free • FULL. A chest with every slot occupied can still accept items into compatible partial stacks.

Preferred resources

Open a chest normally while it is within range of a pedestal. Click the small icon beside its inventory and choose Any, Wood, Raw food, Food, Mead, Weapons, Armor, Ammo, Materials, Trophies, Tools or Misc.

Preferences are stored on the chest and shared with other players. Deposits fill matching partial stacks first, then prefer category-matched chests, unassigned chests, and finally other categories. Preferences guide new deposits; they do not relocate existing contents or block other items.

Item quality, variants, durability, crafter information and custom item data are preserved.

Configuration

Edit BepInEx/config/georo.vss.cfg, then restart the game:

[General]
RegisterStand = true

[Storage]
RadiusMeters = 20

[UI]
RefreshSeconds = 0.75

Set the radius on the host/server; clients use the host's value. Only loaded chests are scanned, so raising the radius does not force distant world sectors to load.

Multiplayer

The author tested co-op successfully. All participants need the same mod version. Chest owners validate access, distance and the pedestal, then grant a short exclusive lease before transfers update the normal chest inventory. Vanilla chest operations respect the lease.

Busy chests are skipped. Cancelled or unanswered requests do not remove player items. Leases expire after 10 seconds if a player disconnects.

For broader server testing, use the co-op checklist. Development tests cover local transfer and lease behavior; they do not replace every live network scenario.

Source and development

Source: Georodin/VSS-ValheimStorageSystem. Bug reports: GitHub Issues.

Clone this repository as VSS-ValheimStorageSystem inside your Valheim installation. The build references your locally installed game's managed assemblies and BepInEx; it requires the .NET SDK.

.\build.ps1 -NoInstall
.\test.ps1
.\test.ps1 -RenderPreview
.\package.ps1

Running build.ps1 without -NoInstall also installs the mod locally. package.ps1 writes the Thunderstore ZIP under dist without changing the installed mod.

5,494 native runtime checks passed during development, including inventory quantity/identity conservation, stacking, full inventories, equipment, lease expiry, native recipe discovery, asset-bundle loading, and UI layout at 1440×1080 and 800×900. Tests use isolated temporary inventories and saves, and require Valheim to be closed. The screenshot above is an in-game runtime preview with test inventories.

Credits

Created by Georodin. Inspired by the Refined Storage mod for Minecraft.

The thumbnail and decorative UI layers were made with AI image generation; code development also used AI assistance. The square thumbnail master and exact prompt are in assets/branding, and UI prompts/layout are in assets/ui. Pedestal export details are in assets/README.md.

VSS is an unofficial Valheim mod.

Changelog

0.4.0 — machine output collection

• Add a separate auto-collect master in the storage window and a saved F7 toggle while facing a producing machine. Both start Off, independently of auto-refill.
• Collect finished food from grills/cooking stations and ovens, plus output from charcoal kilns, smelters, blast furnaces, windmills and spinning wheels.
• Deposit into existing compatible stacks before using free slots and respect chest resource preferences, range, permissions and exclusive leases.
• Retain food on cooking stations and remaining machine drops when storage is full or busy; never sweep up unrelated loose items.
• Preserve native item identity, world/cheat flags and output provenance across save/load. Only the machine owner collects, with fresh checks before deposit.
• Move the auto-refill default from G to F6 because vanilla uses G for the radial menu. Migrate the old unmodified G default; preserve other custom shortcuts. Both new keys are configurable.
• Keep automatic cooking inputs disabled and special-wood protection unchanged. Retain the 0.3.2 availability and hover performance fixes.

0.3.2 — performance fix

• Remove scene-wide Unity object searches from ward checks; read Valheim's live ward registry instead.
• Cache controller lookup and indexed item totals for repeated build and workbench availability checks, including when no controller is nearby.
• Refresh availability on inventory changes, movement, station changes, radius/world changes, transaction changes and a short periodic timeout.
• Reuse refill hover hints and avoid finding the controller twice on every hover update.
• Avoid temporary argument arrays and allocated scopes in native requirement patches.
• Preserve fresh permission checks, chest leases and exact resource planning for actual actions.
• Add an independent low-priority headless test runner that leaves an open game's installation, config, logs and saves untouched.
• Prevent normal build/install commands from replacing the mod while Valheim is running.

0.3.1

• Keep the storage controller master Off by default and start every refillable object's automatic supplies Off too.
• Add a configurable G key control while facing a linked machine, fire or lamp, with a native VSS auto-refill On/Off hover prompt.
• Save and share individual object choices in co-op; the master switch pauses the whole network without clearing those choices.
• Enforce both switches during chest authorization and again before automatic supplies commit.
• Use the nearest eligible controller consistently when network ranges overlap.
• Always protect core wood, fine wood and other special woods from VSS station supplies, even with an empty exclusion list. Crafting/building retain access to their required woods.
• Add native owner-RPC tests for toggles, sender identity, actor distance/death, master/object gating and the real kiln's normal-wood conversion.

0.3.0 — local test build

• Craft and upgrade at linked workbenches, forges and other crafting stations using chest resources, with player inventory taking priority.
• Build with the hammer using the storage network while inside a pedestal's radius.
• Refill native fuel users and processing machines directly from storage, including fires, torches, lamps, kilns, smelters, blast furnaces, windmills and spinning wheels.
• Add a saved, shared Auto refill toggle per pedestal. Protect special woods by default with host-synchronized exclusions.
• Support manual cooking input and automatic oven fuel, while keeping automatic cooking inputs disabled to avoid burning food.
• Add a visible Stack/Half/One transfer selector and direct right-click consumption of stored food and mead.
• Add AI-generated controller and chest-preference icons styled using actual installed vanilla sprite references.
• Acquire required chest leases before crafting/building, preserve native recipe gates, and debit refill items only after owner-side acceptance.
• Expand isolated native tests for exact resource payments, changed items, alternate-ingredient batch quality, direct consumption and partial-stack controls.

0.2.4

• First public release, inspired by the Refined Storage mod for Minecraft.
• Searchable shared grid over nearby chests, with name/quantity/category sorting and drag-and-drop transfers.
• Book-and-quill Storage Inventory pedestal, available for 5 wood.
• Chest resource preferences and stack-first deposit routing.
• Multiplayer chest leases, permission checks and host-synchronized storage radius.
• Separate AI-generated UI layers with complete corners, clear panel spacing and native equipped-item highlights.
• Native equip/unequip messages appear above the storage window.
• AI-generated square thumbnail and Thunderstore packaging that preserves the UI asset folders.
• Successful live multiplayer testing reported by the author; 5,494 native runtime checks passed during development.

0.2.3

• Redesigned storage screen and equipped-item indicators.

0.2.2

• Added the exported pedestal model and corrected native furniture recipe registration.

0.2.1

• Corrected the stool prefab used for the building base.