The Fifth Beacon — 0.1.6

Leave a light to find your way back. Mark a landing spot, a route through the swamp, a dungeon entrance or a meeting point for your group. Five elemental colours make destinations easy to distinguish, with a tall signal for travelling and a shorter lighthouse beam for approaching home by sea.

Requirements and installation

This is a client-side mod for Valheim, built against version 1.0.16. It requires BepInExPack_Valheim: https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/3605

1. Exit Valheim and install BepInExPack_Valheim if needed.
2. Extract this ZIP, retaining the BepInEx/plugins/TheFifthBeacon folder inside your Valheim installation.
3. Replace the previous DLL when updating; avoid duplicate copies elsewhere in plugins. Mod-manager users can install this package directly.
4. Start Valheim and enter a world. Press F8 to open the beacon panel.

Install on each player who wants to see or share beacons. The server does not need the mod. Players without it cannot see its lights or map markers. Public sharing still needs broader multiplayer/crossplay testing.

Using beacons

Choose Signal or Lighthouse, a colour, Private or Public, and a lifetime in the panel. An optional label applies to your next placement. Close the panel with X when finished typing.

• Hammer: select The Fifth Beacon or Fifth Harbour Beacon from the build menu and place it on a surface.
• Map: hold Left Alt and middle-click the location. The marker uses the estimated terrain or water surface, refined when nearby.
• Aimed placement: with the panel closed, Left Alt + F8 places at the surface under your crosshair within 100 metres.
• Colour shortcut: Left Shift + F8 cycles the next placement colour.
• Navigation: select a coloured dot on the map or a beacon in the panel for a distance/direction guide.
• Labels: double-click your own map dot to edit its optional text. Map dots are unnamed by default.
• Removal: aim at the base within normal building reach and use the hammer's remove action. Alternatively, right-click its map dot or use Remove in the panel, including for distant or ocean markers.

Placement costs no materials and removal refunds none. The hammer shortcut follows your normal game bindings. Beacon shortcuts can be changed in the config. The interface is designed for mouse and keyboard.

Modes and colours

Signal uses Valheim's ward-stone idol. Default beam height is 2,500 metres, with a maximum drawing range of 12 kilometres. Nearby light is cylindrical, with rising rings and elemental trails. It blends into simpler distant rendering between 100 and 120 metres.

Lighthouse uses a bonfire-shaped base and a gently pulsing 60-metre beam, visible within its default 800-metre range. It starts with Permanent selected. Set ShowBonfireBase = false for lighthouse light only, then place it above your own fire or structure.

Colours: Fire (orange-red), Water (blue), Wind (pale silver), Earth (green), Fifth Element (golden yellow).

The magical signal uses a native looping effect when available, with a generated harmonic hum as fallback. Lighthouses use native fire crackle when available. Sound is local within 25 metres; AmbientVolume = 0 mutes it.

These are navigation markers, not functional wards or fires. They provide no protection, heat, comfort, fuel use or illumination of surrounding terrain. They do not keep distant areas loaded.

Playing alone or together

Private beacons are visible only to you and saved locally for the current character/world. Unexpired private markers return when you rejoin.

Public beacons are shared with other compatible mod users. Use them to mark a rally point, guide a boat to shore or show friends where you found a destination. Public markers last only for the creator's current session, even when their lifetime is Permanent. After an abrupt disconnect, removal may take about 45 seconds.

Only the owner can remove a beacon by default. Allowing other players to remove new public beacons is optional and applies at placement. These are cooperative client rules, not server-enforced protection against modified clients. Public markers do not reveal unexplored terrain.

Hide beam hides that marker's world visual and guide for you while keeping its map dot. This choice lasts for the current session.

Limits and lifetime

The default limit is five beacons per player, combining both modes and privacy settings. A sixth placement replaces the oldest. Configure AtLimit = Reject to refuse it instead; MaximumBeacons can be changed from 1 to 20. The panel shows paging controls only when needed, including when others share more markers.

Lifetime presets: 30 seconds, 5 minutes, 1 game day, or Permanent. RealTime counts real seconds, including offline time. GameTime follows world time and advances with sleeping/time skips. Permanent has no timer, but public beacons still end with their owner's session.

Configuration

Created after the first launch: BepInEx/config/au.tyvalheim.thefifthbeacon.cfg

Exit Valheim before editing the config, then restart. Changes made while the game is running are not automatically reloaded and may be overwritten.

Options cover placement methods, remappable shortcuts, sharing/removal permissions, beacon count, lifetimes, mode height/range, lighthouse base visibility, guide visibility and ambient volume. AllowWeaponDestruction is separate from hammer removal and defaults off.

Limitations and performance

Distant beams use camera-relative projection to remain visible without increasing the world's draw distance. They can appear in front of distant terrain; they are navigation aids, not physically accurate light shafts. Visibility can still be affected by weather or other rendering mods.

Map placement estimates outdoor terrain/water height. Roofs, modified ground and overhangs may need nearby refinement. Use hammer or aimed placement for precise positioning. No-map world restrictions are not bypassed.

The nearest 24 visible beams are rendered by default. Shared geometry/materials/audio, nearby-only detail, periodic surface checks and bounded network messages limit overhead. More markers and other mods can still affect performance.

Private records live in BepInEx/config/TheFifthBeacon, per character/world, with a previous-save backup. They are separate from Valheim world saves and are not automatically synced to another computer. To uninstall, close Valheim and remove this mod's DLL; keep the config/records if you want your private markers later.

Version 0.1.6 has been playtested by the author. Broader multiplayer/crossplay compatibility testing remains ongoing.

Credits

Concept, direction and testing: Gomisan / TY Valheim. This mod was coded with the assistance of ChatGPT 6.0. Iron Gate AB: Valheim's native models, materials, UI and sound assets, referenced at runtime; no extracted game assets are included. BepInEx contributors: loader and configuration APIs. Andreas Pardeike and Harmony contributors: runtime patching. Unity Technologies: engine and UI APIs supplied with the game. Original procedural fallback hum is generated by this mod. The Fifth Element (1997), directed by Luc Besson, inspired the name and elemental theme. No film footage, recordings or models are included. Unofficial; not endorsed by Iron Gate or the film's rights holders.

Artwork

AI-generated promotional illustration from the Nexus gallery, not a gameplay screenshot. Promotional art was created with OpenAI image generation.

View the Nexus gallery.

Thunderstore installation

Install BepInExPack Valheim and this package through your mod manager, or use the manual steps above. This is the same 0.1.6 DLL published on Nexus, with no gameplay changes or version bump for packaging. Packaging and documentation use OpenAI Codex; AI attribution metadata is provided separately to preserve the DLL.

Discord and feedback

Feedback and bug reports are equally welcome on Nexus or Gomisan's Mods Discord. Use whichever is easier; no need to cross-post. New members should join using the invite first, then open The Fifth Beacon feedback post.

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