Windstride's Bow Animations 1.0.2

Adds a bowstring that follows the drawing hand, a visible nocked arrow during the pull, and custom bow-pull animations synchronized with the bow's actual charge progress.

Five directional draw poses blend from 90 degrees down to 90 degrees up. The mod also includes subtle breathing, movement sway, and client-side multiplayer pose synchronization while preserving Valheim's native bow sounds.

Install with a Thunderstore profile or r2modman. Each player should use the same version for matching multiplayer visuals.

Created by Windstride. Original animated bowstring system and initial bow integration by Wakigawa.

Changelog

1.1.1

• Added automatic compatibility with Better Archery 2.0.1. Windstride's bow animations take priority over its spine rotation and crouched-draw animation overlay.
• Prevented Better Archery from creating a duplicate held arrow while Windstride's Bow Animations handles the bow.
• Restored vanilla crouch behavior when both mods are installed: the character stands while drawing or shooting, then returns to crouching if crouch remains toggled. This prevents the stretched crouched shooting pose.
• Better Archery's quiver, zoom, draw cancellation, arrow gameplay, crosshair, and movement-speed features remain outside the animation overrides. Better Archery is optional.
• Fixed jittery bow-draw hands on female characters by applying the native shoulder adjustment before bow alignment.
• Improved pose restoration at the end of the draw blend-out and faded the breathing overlay fully to zero.
• Preserved native arrow-light brightness controllers and prioritized nearby illumination while drawing.
• Restored fire-arrow flame and light effects while drawing the bow.
• Preserved native particle and light visuals for other equipped arrow types, including frost, poison, needle, and carapace arrows.
• Kept flight trails disabled on held arrows. Held visuals disappear on release without spawning an extra projectile.

1.1.0

• Updated all five base aim poses in the vertical blendspace: 90 degrees down, 45 degrees down, level, 45 degrees up, and 90 degrees up. The charge-synchronized pull animations remain unchanged.
• Raised the visible arrow point by 6.5 cm while keeping its nock attached to the drawing hand and string.
• Fixed the head orientation when quickly switching from blocking to drawing a bow by resetting the cached aim offset at draw start while preserving the smooth authored head blend.

1.0.9

• Fixed head orientation while drawing. The head now keeps its authored offset relative to the live bow aim after the stance, spine, and bow corrections run, so it follows the drawn bow consistently during stationary aim offsets and while moving.
• Smoothed stationary feet realignment by increasing the stance recenter interpolation to 0.18 seconds.

1.0.8

• Fixed the bow animation binding error reported on Nexus: some current Valheim player models expose fewer than 13 bones through the body renderer. The mod now falls back to the humanoid Animator for the missing chest, neck, and head bones.
• Added stationary turn-in-place and aim-offset behavior while drawing a bow. The upper body can follow the aim independently within the offset window, then the planted stance smoothly recenters after a sustained offset or immediately past the threshold.
• Added the authored additive foot-readjustment animation, layered only onto the legs so it preserves the bow, hands, torso, and equipped items.