Treadwell

Build roads worth taking.

Treadwell is a focused, vanilla-plus Valheim mod that makes roads less tedious to build and more rewarding to use. Level Ground, Pathen, and Paved Road can use a larger or smaller synchronized terrain brush, paved roads can be placed without repeatedly moving a stonecutter, and dirt paths and paved roads provide modest sprint bonuses.

1.0.0 is the production release. It preserves the live-approved 0.2.3 adjustable terrain brushes and the live-approved 0.2.5 Keyboard-row Alt + Scroll — Change Size hint without changing their gameplay or UI behavior.

Features

• Adjustable terrain brush: with the hoe's exact vanilla Level Ground, Pathen, or Paved Road action selected, hold Left Alt or Right Alt and scroll up/down in 0.5 m steps. Level Ground ranges from 1–8 m; Pathen and Paved Road range from 1–10 m. The visible _GhostOnly brush marker and the placed terrain operation use the same proportional scale.
• Built-in control hint: the persistent keyboard placement row adds Alt + Scroll — Change Size only while one of those three verified terrain actions is selected and the piece selector is closed. It is hidden for Raise Ground, unrelated or changed pieces, invalid/ambiguous brush discovery, the open piece selector, and controller input.
• Input isolation: while the vanilla hoe is out in placement mode, Alt+scroll does not zoom the camera—even at a radius bound or with an ineligible hoe action selected. Without Alt, with another tool, or while the build-selection UI is open, ordinary camera zoom remains unchanged. Build-menu selection, placement rotation, controllers, and unrelated tools remain vanilla.
• Paved-road building: place the vanilla paved-road terrain piece without a nearby stonecutter by default. Stone cost, placement rules, tool behavior, and every other piece remain vanilla.
• Dirt paths: 10% faster sprinting and 10% less sprint-stamina use by default.
• Paved roads: 20% faster sprinting and 20% less sprint-stamina use by default.
• All four percentages are independently configurable from 0% to 100%.
• Bonuses apply only to the local player while sprinting on vanilla terrain-painted paths.
• A short 0.18-second smoothing window prevents flicker across small gaps in road paint.
• Cultivated soil, building floors, leaving the ground, and other non-terrain surfaces clear the bonus immediately.
• No status icon, popup, sound, gameplay message, custom world state, or server requirement.

Walking, sneaking, swimming, jumping, dodging, attacks, carts, creatures, natural terrain, cultivated soil, and building floors are unchanged.

Treadwell multiplies Valheim's calculated run-speed factor and final status-effect-adjusted sprint-stamina drain. It does not replace base values or bypass Run skill, equipment, status-effect, or global movement-stamina modifiers.

Installation

Treadwell requires BepInExPack for Valheim 5.4.2350.

Install through r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager, or copy Treadwell.dll to:

BepInEx/plugins/Treadwell/Treadwell.dll

Each player who wants the building convenience or movement bonuses installs Treadwell on their own client. A server installation is not required, and Treadwell does not synchronize configuration or write custom mod state into the world.

Configuration

Treadwell creates exactly six settings in BepInEx/config/com.jstack424.treadwell.cfg:

1. Enable mod (default true)
2. Paved roads without stonecutter (default true)
3. Dirt sprint speed bonus (%) (default 10)
4. Dirt sprint stamina reduction (%) (default 10)
5. Paved sprint speed bonus (%) (default 20)
6. Paved sprint stamina reduction (%) (default 20)

Terrain radius intentionally adds no configuration setting. Each action keeps its own independent session-only radius, initialized to its verified vanilla outer radius: Level Ground 3 m, Pathen 2 m, and Paved Road 3 m. Level Ground is constrained to 1–8 m; Pathen and Paved Road are constrained to 1–10 m. The runtime requires one unique complete three-brush set in the active tool's piece table, using each action's exact localized identity, operation shape, recipe fingerprint, and 3/2/3 m baseline. Runtime prefab object names are diagnostic rather than identity gates, which corrects Pathen recognition when Valheim's live object name differs. Zero, missing, changed, or ambiguous matches fail closed without changing the terrain effect.

The stonecutter option is read live. When enabled, Treadwell identifies exactly one semantic Paved Road entry in the active tool table: one root Piece with no additional child Pieces, one paved terrain operation (including child components), one attached crafting-station requirement, and one single-unit Stone resource requirement. The Paved Road entry's root, Piece, station, and localized display names are diagnostic evidence only, not identity gates; the expected Stone resource prefab is checked as part of the semantic shape. Treadwell then removes only that Piece's crafting-station reference locally. Turning the option off restores the exact captured object. It never changes the resource requirement, unlock knowledge, terrain checks, hoe behavior, repairs, or unrelated pieces and stations. Zero or multiple semantic matches fail closed and leave vanilla requirements intact; a one-time bounded BepInEx diagnostic lists the observed candidate shapes and names for troubleshooting.

All percentages are constrained to 0–100 and are read live. The master switch installs or removes Treadwell's isolated Harmony patches.

If an earlier test build created the configuration file, BepInEx may preserve its older defaults. Delete BepInEx/config/com.jstack424.treadwell.cfg once to regenerate the current defaults, or set the four percentages manually to 10, 10, 20, and 20.

Compatibility and safety

Treadwell 1.0.0 uses a contract-based compatibility gate. Valheim's displayed version, Unity version, and loaded assembly_valheim MVID are logged as diagnostics, but they are not exact-version blockers. Client and dedicated-server assemblies, and compatible Valheim 1.0 patch releases, may differ in build identity while exposing the same APIs Treadwell needs.

Before installing gameplay patches, Treadwell verifies every required Valheim method and overload it patches or calls, the matching Harmony prefix/postfix shapes, every accessed game field, the Unity component/property methods used for road discovery, and the expected piece-table, resource, enum, and terrain-paint contracts. Each required gameplay member must resolve to exactly one compatible signature; missing or ambiguous members fail closed. Gameplay patch installation is transactional. The hint's UI/input contract and Harmony patch are checked and installed separately: if that optional surface changes or fails, Treadwell skips or removes only its owned hint while terrain-radius gameplay remains active.

Radius controls recognize only Valheim's exact localized Level Ground, Pathen, and Paved Road actions with their verified semantic shapes. Prefab object names (mud_road_v2, path_v2, and paved_road_v2) are retained as bounded diagnostics, not brittle identity gates. Each action must have exactly one root Piece, one root TerrainOp, no legacy TerrainModifier, no rotation, and the verified operation/recipe shape. Level Ground is smooth + Dirt paint at 3 m; Pathen is Dirt paint at 2 m; Paved Road is 3 m smooth + 2.2 m Paved paint, with its station-backed one-Stone recipe. Treadwell scales the separate placement ghost's _GhostOnly geometry uniformly in XYZ even while that vanilla child is inactive. Pathen's visible particle is nested beneath its rotated 4×4×1 marker and uses Unity's Local particle-scaling mode, so Treadwell also scales that particle's own transform; particles attached directly to _GhostOnly are not double-scaled.

During the exact local Player.PlacePiece call, Treadwell temporarily scales the selected prefab so TerrainOp.Awake searches the full chosen area. It then intercepts the exact TerrainOp.Settings instance entering TerrainComp.DoOperation, after the terrain owner has resolved the operation identity, and temporarily applies the selected radius to that final settings object. The patch proceeds only for the active placement position and exact vanilla Level Ground, Pathen, or Paved Road semantic shape. A Harmony finalizer restores the final settings after the terrain operation and grass reset complete. Paved Road's 2.2:3 paint-to-smooth ratio is preserved, disabled channels are never changed, and conflicting third-party changes are never overwritten. Changing tools/actions, closing input, scene unload, plugin disable, or any input exception restores or clears transient state.

The build remains compiled and independently checked against the pinned Valheim 1.0.14 / Steam build 25364309 reference bundle. Its hashes and MVID document and protect build provenance only; they are deliberately not compared with the player's runtime assembly. The pinned IL verifies that PieceTable.UpdateAvailable reads each table entry's root Piece; discovery additionally searches children for the terrain operation. Treadwell applies the uniquely selected semantic Paved Road mutation when Valheim enters place mode, before piece-table availability refreshes, and re-discovers it immediately before vanilla requirement checks. Its Piece.m_craftingStation reference is set to null without depending on guessed piece, localization, or station identifiers. Valheim's normal recipe-knowledge and resource checks still decide whether the piece is unlocked and affordable. Disable, configuration changes, scene unload, and plugin unload restore the captured original reference. DLC, free-build, stone-count, placement, consumption, stamina, durability, skill, and effect handling remain vanilla.

Treadwell 0.1.2's road bonuses and stonecutter-free Paved Road behavior have been live-tested successfully. In the 0.2.x test line, Alt-wheel camera-zoom isolation has positive live confirmation. Live tests of both 0.2.1 and 0.2.2 showed that Level Ground's marker could resize while its real terrain effect stayed at the vanilla radius; Pathen's real effect also remained unchanged in 0.2.1. Version 0.2.3 was live-confirmed as working really well, including the corrected actual terrain-radius path. Version 0.2.4 attempted to add the native-style Alt + Scroll — Change Size discoverability hint, but cloned m_buildAlternativePlacingKey under its existing Gamepad parent. Valheim hides that branch for keyboard controls, while Treadwell hides the keyboard-only hint for gamepad controls, so it could never become visible. Version 0.2.5 validated the sibling Gamepad/Keyboard layout contract and attached its isolated clone to the Keyboard container without changing Valheim's source label or revalidating gameplay from the HUD; its Alt + Scroll — Change Size hint was then live-confirmed in the active Keyboard row. Version 1.0.0 promotes that same live-approved gameplay and UI behavior without adding features. The terrain RPC carries the operation prefab identity rather than custom radius values, so an unmodded remote terrain owner cannot receive the custom radius; multiplayer/remote-owner behavior remains explicitly unverified.

Development

Private Valheim and BepInEx assemblies remain untracked and are never packaged.

./scripts/build.sh
./scripts/test-package.sh

The build performs locked restore, warning-as-error Release compilation, pure behavior tests (including exact-contract acceptance/rejection and transactional rollback), an independent assembly-contract test against the pinned provenance assembly, reference fingerprint checks, repository checks, and an exact five-file package audit.

Source, issues, and license

• Source and issue tracker: https://github.com/JStack424/Treadwell
• License: MIT

Changelog

1.0.1

• Removed the Stonecutter-free Paved Road setting and all associated runtime station-discovery, override, requirement-check, availability-refresh, and restoration code in response to the reported inventory-change performance regression.
• Restored vanilla Stonecutter requirements for Paved Road placement.
• Preserved the live-approved adjustable Level Ground, Pathen, and Paved Road radii, active Keyboard-row Alt + Scroll — Change Size hint, camera-wheel isolation, and dirt/paved sprint bonuses.
• This exact package still requires live verification; the performance regression is not claimed fixed until that test passes.

1.0.0

• Promoted the live-approved 0.2.5 behavior to the first stable production release.
• Preserved the live-approved 0.2.3 adjustable Level Ground, Pathen, and Paved Road terrain radii and the 0.2.5 active Keyboard-row Alt + Scroll — Change Size hint exactly.
• Added no gameplay or UI features; multiplayer/remote-owner custom-radius behavior remains explicitly unverified.

0.2.5

• Fixed the brush-size hint after live testing confirmed that 0.2.4's clone never appeared. Pinned Valheim 1.0.14 prefab evidence proves m_buildAlternativePlacingKey is specifically BuildHints/Gamepad/Text - AltPlace, not a generic keyboard placement label.
• Corrected the impossible 0.2.4 visibility path: keyboard mode could satisfy Treadwell's eligibility, but the clone's Gamepad ancestor was inactive; gamepad mode could activate that ancestor, but Treadwell intentionally hid the keyboard-only hint.
• Restored the isolated owned-clone design and now validates the direct sibling Gamepad/Keyboard containers, their horizontal layouts, the source label's Gamepad parent and LayoutElement, then attaches Alt + Scroll — Change Size as the final child of the Keyboard layout. Valheim's source label remains unchanged.
• Kept the hint read-only with respect to terrain gameplay: it consumes the existing validated brush-binding snapshot and never refreshes discovery or calls radius revalidation from the HUD postfix. Changed/missing UI hierarchy quarantines only the optional hint; gameplay remains active.
• Added a committed hash-pinned HUD fixture plus compatibility, routing, hierarchy, ownership, duplicate-cleanup, and gameplay-isolation regression checks. The hint was subsequently live-confirmed in the active Keyboard row, and 1.0.0 promotes this exact behavior.

0.2.4

• Added a native-style keyboard control hint to Valheim's persistent bottom placement row: Alt + Scroll — Change Size.
• Scoped the hint to the same exact, revalidated Level Ground, Pathen, and Paved Road bindings used by the proven radius feature; Raise Ground, unrelated tools and actions, ambiguous or changed brush sets, the open piece selector, and controller input stay untouched.
• Cloned a vanilla placement-row hint so layout, typography, settings visibility, and surrounding controls remain native; the owned clone is removed on disable, scene unload, UI-owner replacement, or hint failure.
• Added pure visibility-routing tests, isolated optional runtime compatibility and Harmony-patch checks for the UI/input surface, pinned KeyHints.Update/UpdateHints IL contracts, and narrow-scope/cleanup infrastructure assertions. A hint-only incompatibility leaves the proven gameplay patches active.
• Preserved the 0.2.3 terrain-radius implementation unchanged. Version 0.2.3 was live-confirmed as working really well; 0.2.4 only adds the discoverability hint and still needs an in-game UI/layout check.

0.2.3

• Reworked terrain-radius application after live testing showed that 0.2.2 still resized Level Ground's marker without changing the real terrain effect.
• Kept the selected prefab adjustment for TerrainOp.Awake's initial heightmap search, then added a tightly scoped patch at private TerrainComp.DoOperation(Vector3, Vector3, TerrainOp.Settings), the final local boundary that receives the terrain owner's resolved settings.
• Added a thread-local placement scope tied to the exact local Player.PlacePiece call and placement position. The final settings mutation runs only when that scope matches and the received settings have the exact vanilla Level Ground, Pathen, or Paved Road semantic shape; Raise Ground, wrong paint types, changed radii, and modded shapes fail closed.
• Restores both the selected prefab and final operation settings in Harmony finalizers, without overwriting conflicting third-party changes or replacing the original exception.
• Expanded pinned Valheim 1.0.14 IL coverage for owner-gated RPC deserialization, direct operation-position/rotation/settings flow into DoOperation, InternalDoOperation/ResetGrass order, all consumed radius channels, and proof that Settings.Serialize carries operation identity rather than custom radius values.
• Preserved the live-confirmed Alt-wheel camera suppression, Pathen marker scaling, 1–8 m Level Ground range, 1–10 m Pathen/Paved Road ranges, Paved Road's 2.2:3 paint-to-smooth ratio, Raise Ground exclusion, and every 0.1.2 road feature.
• This is an unverified local test candidate. Level Ground's larger and smaller actual effect, marker/effect agreement, Pathen's marker and effect, and multiplayer/remote-owner behavior still require live validation.

0.2.2

• Corrected Pathen's placement indicator after inspecting the exact Valheim 1.0.14 path_v2 prefab: its direct _GhostOnly child is serialized inactive, rotated 90 degrees, and uses a 4×4×1 local scale, while the visible nested particle uses Local scaling and therefore ignores its parent's scale. Treadwell now scales the marker plus each nested Local-mode particle's own transform from its captured baseline, without double-scaling particles attached directly to the marker.
• Attempted to address the actual-effect failure shared by Level Ground and Pathen by mutating both the selected piece-table prefab and the matching local ObjectDB entry. Later live testing showed that this still did not change Level Ground's real terrain effect, so this approach was superseded by 0.2.3's final-boundary interception.
• Retained a hash-pinned extraction record for Pathen's direct inactive, rotated 4×4×1 marker and added executable coverage for the actual dual-source mutation session: Level Ground and Pathen clone/effect lifecycle, the 0.2.1 selected-only failure shape, distinct and shared settings, disabled channels, conflict-safe restoration, partial-application rollback, uniform marker scaling, and pinned call order through the terrain-RPC/ObjectDB resolution path.
• Preserved the confirmed Alt-wheel camera-zoom suppression, Level Ground's 1–8 m range, Pathen/Paved Road's 1–10 m ranges, Paved Road's 2.2:3 paint-to-smooth ratio, Raise Ground exclusion, per-action session-only radii, and every 0.1.2 road feature.
• This remains a local test candidate. Level Ground's actual-effect growth, Pathen's visible-indicator and actual-effect growth, and remote-owner/multiplayer radius propagation remain explicitly live-unverified.

0.2.1

• Prevented camera zoom while Alt+scroll is routed through the vanilla hoe placement mode, including radius bounds, rejected/no-op adjustments, and ineligible hoe actions; zoom without Alt, with another tool, or in the build-selection UI remains vanilla.
• Scoped wheel suppression to the exact GameCamera.UpdateCamera(float) call and restored it in a Harmony finalizer, leaving Treadwell's placement input, build-menu selection, rotation, controllers, and unrelated tools untouched.
• Reduced Level Ground's maximum radius from 10 m to 8 m; Pathen and Paved Road remain independently adjustable from 1–10 m in 0.5 m steps.
• Corrected Pathen recognition by treating runtime prefab object names as diagnostics while retaining exact localized identity, complete three-brush uniqueness, operation/recipe fingerprints, root-component constraints, and vanilla 3/2/3 m baselines.
• Kept Pathen's independent 2 m session baseline and synchronized proportional indicator/effect scaling.
• Added exact runtime and pinned-IL contracts for GameCamera.UpdateCamera(float) and its two ZInput.GetMouseScrollWheel() reads, plus regression coverage for camera-routing noninterference, per-action bounds, and Pathen live-object naming.
• Preserved all 0.1.2 road bonuses, stonecutter-free Paved Road behavior, transactional terrain mutation/restoration, and Raise Ground exclusion.
• This remains a live-unverified test candidate. Remote-owner and multiplayer radius propagation remains explicitly unverified.

0.2.0

• Added session-only terrain-radius controls for the hoe's exact vanilla Level Ground, Pathen, and Paved Road actions: hold Left Alt or Right Alt and scroll in 0.5 m steps from 1–10 m.
• Gave each action its own session-only vanilla baseline (Level Ground 3 m, Pathen 2 m, Paved Road 3 m) and kept the visible/effect scale proportional to that action.
• Kept the placement brush and real terrain operation in proportional lockstep by uniformly scaling the placement ghost's active _GhostOnly geometry and proportionally scaling every enabled TerrainOp.Settings radius. Paved Road retains its vanilla 2.2:3 paint-to-smooth ratio; disabled channels remain untouched.
• Limited recognition to one unique exact vanilla three-piece set in the active hoe table, with exact prefab/piece identities, one root Piece, one root TerrainOp, no legacy TerrainModifier, no rotation, verified operation/recipe shapes, and exact 3/2/3 m baselines. Raise Ground, cultivator actions, removal mode, hammer pieces, other actions, changed pieces, and ambiguous/modded duplicates fail closed.
• Consumed mouse-wheel input only while Alt is held with an eligible synchronized brush; ordinary scroll and rotation behavior remains vanilla everywhere else.
• Applied terrain-radius fields only around Valheim's synchronous Player.PlacePiece clone, with finalizer restoration, conditional conflict-safe cleanup, and reset paths for selection/tool changes, scene unload, disable/unload, and exceptions.
• Expanded runtime contracts and pinned 1.0.14 assembly checks for placement input, selection, placement cloning, terrain-radius fields, visible marker scaling, and mouse-wheel suppression.
• Preserved all live-successful 0.1.2 road bonuses, compatibility behavior, and Paved Road stonecutter removal.
• This is a test build pending live validation of radius input and brush/effect lockstep. Remote-owner and multiplayer behavior is explicitly unverified because Valheim's terrain RPC serializes the operation prefab identity, not custom radius values.

0.1.2

• Replaced exact runtime game-version, assembly SHA-256, and MVID blocking with a contract-based compatibility gate, so compatible client/server builds and minor Valheim patches are not disabled solely because their build identity differs.
• Kept pinned assembly hashes and MVIDs as build/reference provenance checks only.
• Added exact, unique runtime checks for every patched target, Harmony constructor/API and patch method, accessed game member, and Unity road-discovery contract; missing or ambiguous signatures still fail closed before Harmony construction or gameplay-hook installation.
• Strengthened transactional patch rollback so every cleanup step runs, gameplay entrypoints are cleared, the owned Paved Road station is restored, and incomplete restoration state is retained for a safe cleanup retry before Treadwell remains disabled.
• Preserved all paved-road placement, movement, configuration, multiplayer, and client-only behavior unchanged.

0.1.1

Release package prepared with the exact DLL bytes supplied for live validation.

• Revalidated unchanged 0.1.1 gameplay and configuration against Valheim 1.0.14, anonymous Steam dedicated-server build 25364309, and Unity 6000.0.75f1.
• Updated the fail-closed runtime fingerprint, private reference bundle, metadata/IL contracts, documentation, and deterministic test package.
• Added Paved roads without stonecutter, enabled by default, so the vanilla paved-road terrain piece can be placed outside stonecutter range.
• Replaced the unsuccessful requirement-check bypass with a direct, local recipe edit: the exact Paved Road piece's crafting-station reference is removed as Valheim enters place mode, before its piece table refreshes, and immediately before vanilla requirement checks.
• Fixed a second test-build failure caused by incorrectly requiring the live station object to carry exact stonecutter prefab and display identifiers; Treadwell now captures and clears whatever non-null station reference is attached to the exact Paved Road piece.
• Replaced brittle paved_road / $piece_pavedroad identity gates after live diagnostics proved the active entry did not match both guessed names. Discovery now uses the pinned root-Piece table structure plus one paved terrain operation, a station requirement, and one single-unit Stone resource requirement; Paved Road and station names are diagnostic only; the expected Stone resource prefab remains part of the semantic constraint.
• Traverses child components for terrain operations, requires exactly one semantic candidate, and fails closed on zero or multiple matches.
• Preserved and safely restored the captured station reference when the option is disabled, the scene unloads, or Treadwell shuts down.
• Added one-time bounded BepInEx diagnostics for successful semantic selection and for zero/ambiguous matches, including sanitized candidate shapes and names without adding in-game messages.
• Kept the normal stone cost, unlock knowledge, placement checks, hoe stamina and durability, effects, repairs, and every unrelated piece or crafting station unchanged.
• Added regression coverage for station/name independence, semantic discovery, zero/multiple-match rejection, nested terrain shapes, real place-mode and placement-check lifecycles, restoration, piece-table reloads, runtime conflicts, and setting changes.

0.1.0

Initial public release.

• Added configurable sprint bonuses for vanilla dirt paths: 10% more speed and 10% less sprint-stamina use by default.
• Added independently configurable paved-road bonuses: 20% more speed and 20% less sprint-stamina use by default.
• Constrained all four percentage settings to 0–100 and included a master enable switch.
• Preserved Valheim's Run skill, equipment, status-effect, and global movement calculations by applying multiplicative modifiers.
• Added short path-edge smoothing with immediate clearing on cultivated soil, floors, non-terrain surfaces, and leaving the ground.
• Limited all effects to the local player while sprinting; carts, creatures, other movement actions, UI, sounds, and world state are unchanged.
• Added exact fail-closed compatibility checks for Valheim 1.0.12 / Steam build 25253764.
• Live-tested the core road bonuses in Valheim.
• Added pure behavior tests, independent assembly-contract tests, pinned reference verification, deterministic packaging, and an exact five-file package audit.