True North Compass

Made for the no-map community. True North Compass gives you a way to navigate without opening a map, while staying honest to the vanilla experience - no HUD overlay, no pinned waypoints, no exact bearings. Just a craftable item you pull out and read, the way an actual compass works.

It also exists to close a loophole: the classic "hammer compass" trick lets you read your exact camera heading off the building-placement ghost with pinpoint precision, effectively turning any hammer into a perfect boss-finding compass. True North Compass gives you a real, intentional item for that instead - one with deliberately general readings so it guides you without doing your navigation for you. Hand crafted compass by me!

Philosophy

• No HUD, ever - the only feedback is a short pop-up message when you use the item
• No exact degrees - readings are always general named directions (8 or 16 headings, your choice), never a precise number
• No passive information - you have to actively pull out the compass and use it, same as any other item
• Built to support no-map and immersive runs, not replace them

How to use

• 3 Settings (Easy, Normal, and Hard)
• Craftable at a Forge - fully configurable recipe, up to 4 materials (defaults to 5 Bronze + 1 Iron)
• Can be attached to Item Stands and Armor Stands

Easy

• 16 heading directions ie South, SouthEast, South-SouthEast, etc
• 3 second cooldown (Configurable)
• For more precise directions

Normal (Default)

• 8 heading directions ie North, NorthWest, etc
• 3 second cooldown (Configurable)
• For general directions to encourage exploration rather than just running straight towards the boss

Hard - True North Version

• Use it to pan your view to face north, the same kind of directional turn the boss-stone (Vegvisir) reveal does, just pointed at a fixed compass bearing instead of a boss
• To know which way is north so you don't get too lost, but you work out the rest

Requirements

• BepInExPack for Valheim
• Jotunn

Manual install

1. Install BepInExPack for Valheim and Jotunn.
2. Copy TrueNorthCompass.dll into Valheim/BepInEx/plugins/.

Mod managers like r2modman install these automatically.

Multiplayer

Requires all players and the dedicated server to have this mod installed. It doesn't modify world save data or affect other players directly.

Changelog

1.1.2

• Fixed a bug where the compass could be "attached" to boss-trophy Sacrificial Stones and would activate them - it now shows the same "can't attach this" message any other incompatible item would
• Added Armor Stand support - the compass can now be mounted there too, same as an Item Stand. Because I used the bronze shield to clone it, it appears upside down.

1.1.1

• README rewrite - no code changes

1.1.0

• New Easy/Normal/Hard difficulty setting - Normal and Easy report your current facing as 8 or 16 headings instead of just panning to true north
• Configurable cooldown between readings (Normal/Easy only - Hard is untouched)
• Recipe is now fully configurable: 4 material slots, each with a resource dropdown and amount (defaults to 5 Bronze + 1 Iron)

1.0.1

• Added discord channel for mod feedback

1.0.0 - Initial release!

• This is my first mod!