Valheim Visual Enhanced

Valheim Visual Enhanced is a client-side graphics mod that enriches Valheim with carefully integrated visual effects while preserving the game's original style. THIS IS NOT RESHADE. Its effects respond to Valheim's lighting, water, weather, biome, and time-of-day systems instead of applying a generic screen filter.

Visual examples

1. Underwater caustic lighting

Optional animated caustics add moving sunlight patterns to shallow underwater terrain and objects. They respond to sunlight, wind, water depth, weather, and viewing distance, then pass through Valheim's own water refraction.

2. Meadows fireflies

Small yellow fireflies appear outdoors in the Meadows at night. Each is one soft glowing particle rather than a hard pixel, they fade smoothly near shelter, in wet weather, or during a Seasonality or Seasons winter, and they add no lights, colliders, shadows, or gameplay behavior.

3. Enhanced Environment

Optional all-day color palettes refine sunlight and fog across dawn, day, dusk, and night. The feature is disabled by default, preserves Valheim's weather and biome behavior, and leaves the normal sun path intact unless its separate override is enabled.

4. Wind-driven cloud shadows

World-XZ cloud patterns travel with Valheim's wind and attenuate direct light before fog, while native shadow maps remain in control. The result is atmosphere that belongs to the world rather than a post-process overlay. Their motion is smoothly compensated near sunrise and sunset, preventing low-angle projection from making shadows move unnaturally fast.

Features

• World-anchored cloud shadows that travel with Valheim's wind.
• Cloud shadows smoothly fade out at low sun, avoiding unnaturally fast projections at dawn and dusk.
• Direct-light attenuation integrated before fog, preserving atmospheric haze.
• Native Valheim shadow maps remain active.
• No directional-light cookie replacement, so the cookie slot remains available to Valheim and other mods.
• Optional animated underwater caustics on opaque terrain, rocks, structures, characters, and other depth-writing surfaces.
• Caustics respond to sunlight, weather, water depth, viewing distance, and wind.
• Flowing caustic motion bends layers independently and varies filament thickness without an additional texture or additional texture samples.
• Automatic fading at night and under roofs or inside caves.
• Automatic cloud-shadow fading in the Mistlands and Ashlands, while caustics remain independent.
• Automatic cloud-shadow fading during Valheim snow storms, and during winter when the optional RustyMods Seasonality or shudnal Seasons mod is installed.
• Cloud shadows gather in systems several hundred metres across instead of one uniform dapple size, and unresolvable detail is skipped at low mask qualities.
• Caustics follow the surface they light: floors and the seabed receive the most, vertical walls and hull undersides noticeably less.
• Optional full-day Enhanced Environment palettes: warm GoldenSaga, lush VerdantWilds, cool Frostbound, bold amber/crimson Emberfall, vivid teal/violet AuroraVeil, or configurable Custom; the separate sun-angle override is off by default and weather/biome behavior remains authored by Valheim.
• One narrowly scoped Harmony hook supplied by BepInEx; no Jotunn, network synchronization, or additional cameras.
• Subtle yellow Meadows fireflies at night: one particle renderer drawing a soft glowing sprite, tinted yellow through Valheim's native Thistle particle material; no lights, colliders, shadows, or per-firefly GameObjects. The sprite can be set back to the hard 1x1 pixel earlier versions used, or to Valheim's own Thistle particle sprite. When the optional RustyMods Seasonality or shudnal Seasons mod is installed, they stay inactive in winter. They also stay inactive in Valheim rain and wet storms.

Underwater caustics are enabled by default and can be controlled independently through Water Caustic Lighting.Enabled in the configuration file or BepInEx ConfigurationManager.

Requirements and compatibility

• Valheim 1.0 / Deep North on Windows.
• BepInExPack for Valheim 5.4.2350 or newer.
• Unity Built-in Deferred Shading with directional shadows enabled.
• Direct3D 11. The included shader bundle is built for D3D11; Vulkan is not currently validated.

This build's AssetBundle was rebuilt with Unity 6000.0.75f1, matching the Valheim 1.0 Windows engine. Valheim Visual Enhanced is client-side. Servers and other players do not need to install it.

Installation

Thunderstore, r2modman, or Gale

Install Valheim Visual Enhanced with the mod manager. Its BepInEx dependency is declared in the package manifest.

Manual installation

1. Install BepInExPack for Valheim.
2. Copy the ValheimVisualEnhanced folder into Valheim/BepInEx/plugins/.
3. Start Valheim once to generate BepInEx/config/dev.local.valheimvisualenhanced.cfg.

Do not install the mod on a dedicated server unless you only want to keep a copy there; it has no server-side behavior.

Default configuration

Hotkeys are unassigned by default. BepInEx ConfigurationManager is optional. MigrateLegacyCloudCoverageOnce is only for a known old configuration that used inverse cloud-coverage semantics; it resets itself after one migration. FlowingMotion=false selects the classic 0.2.0 caustics timing and wind carrier for a direct visual comparison. Enhanced Environment uses RGB channels in the 0..255 range and is disabled by default. Enable it with its Enabled setting or Hotkeys.ToggleEnhancedEnvironment. Choose its Preset through ConfigurationManager; Custom enables the RGB controls. It preserves Valheim's sun position unless OverrideSunAngle is enabled. Emberfall adds a bold amber/crimson grade, while AuroraVeil adds a vivid teal/violet grade. Meadows Fireflies are enabled by default in the Meadows at night. Their 12..64 particle cap controls the effect's small GPU cost; the default is 36. Sprite chooses what each firefly is drawn as: SoftGlow, the default soft halo, Pixel, the hard one-pixel dot earlier versions used, or NativeThistle, which draws Valheim's own Thistle particle sprite - a four-point spark; SpriteScale sizes it. Pixel is a hard square, so it looks best left at SpriteScale=1. All three cost the same single draw call. Each particle fades in and out while staying mostly steady during its visible lifetime. AutoDisableMeadowsFirefliesUnderRoof=true softly fades them out under a roof or in an interior. They also softly disappear while Valheim reports rain or a wet storm. If RustyMods Seasonality is installed, the fireflies also softly disappear while its season_winter global key is active; Seasonality remains an optional, non-required dependency. If shudnal Seasons is installed, they softly disappear during its winter as well, read from the loaded Seasons plugin rather than one of its opt-in season keys; Seasons is optional too.

AutoDisableInMistlandsAndAshlands=true softly hides cloud shadows in those biomes while leaving caustics independent. AutoDisableInSnow=true softly hides them while the current environment accumulates snow, and WinterCloudShadowStrength=0.3 separately dims them to 30% for the whole winter when RustyMods Seasonality or shudnal Seasons reports it; Seasons is detected through its own plugin state, so its opt-in season keys do not have to be enabled. The Deep North remains eligible for cloud shadows during daylight; the normal night automation handles darkness.

Existing configurations for Valheim Visual Enhanced retain their saved values when the mod is updated. The former CloudShadows package uses a different GUID; remove it before installing this renamed package.

Known limitations

• Cloud shadows affect opaque lighting only and require Deferred Shading.
• Caustics require a depth-writing receiving surface; depthless transparent objects cannot receive them.
• The caustic pattern is an efficient visual approximation and is not derived from Valheim's actual water normals or wave simulation.
• Stereo/VR cameras are disabled rather than using an incorrect mono projection.
• Vulkan and non-Windows graphics backends have not been validated.
• Another mod that patches EnvMan.SetEnv may need a compatibility check.

Troubleshooting

• If cloud shadows are absent, confirm that Valheim is using Deferred Shading and directional shadows are enabled.
• If another visual mod produces unexpected results, temporarily disable it to identify command-buffer or post-processing conflicts.
• The diagnostic hotkey is bound to F10 by default and writes debug_output.txt beside the plugin DLL, plus a UTC-timestamped copy so several samples can be compared. The dump names the single reason cloud shadows and caustics are each currently hidden.

Plugin GUID: dev.local.valheimvisualenhanced
Version: 0.5.25

Changelog

0.5.26

• Fixed a Unity log error the fireflies produced on every swarm in both biomes: "Particle Velocity curves must all be in the same mode". It had no visible effect - the drift and the slow updraft looked exactly as intended - but it filled the log, which matters because the log is what a bug report gets read from.
• No setting changed and nothing to retune: whatever Sprite and SpriteScale you have set carries over as it is.

0.5.25

• Fireflies are no longer little squares. Each one is now drawn as a soft glow - a bright core with a faint halo, which is how Valheim's own particles look. The hard one-pixel dot earlier versions used is still available as Sprite = Pixel, and it looks best at SpriteScale = 1, because that sprite is a square and enlarging it shows it.
• New Sprite and SpriteScale settings in both firefly sections, so the Meadows and the Plains can be set differently from each other. A third option, Sprite = NativeThistle, draws Valheim's own Thistle particle sprite instead of one the mod makes; that sprite turns out to be a four-point spark, so it reads as tiny stars rather than as fireflies.
• Both firefly colours are less saturated. The Meadows gold and the Plains orange keep their identity and stay easy to tell apart, but neither burns like a lamp now.
• None of this changes what the effect costs: still one particle renderer per swarm, still no lights, colliders, shadows, extra cameras or per-firefly objects.
• New diagnostic for bug reports: General.CaptureFireflySpriteOnce copies the game's own particle sprite into a PNG beside the mod, so a look can be discussed from the asset rather than from a description. It switches itself back off.

0.5.24

• Plains fireflies no longer wink out mid-flight. Each one was being yanked back to its group whenever it fell more than 3 m behind, and re-placing a firefly makes the one you were looking at vanish instantly. They are now only re-placed once they are far enough away that you cannot see it happen.
• Groups now wander on wide, curving paths instead of marching in a straight line. Two things were causing that: groups were being born almost outside the distance at which they get pulled back toward you, so they spent nearly their whole life being steered straight at you; and that steering replaced their heading entirely instead of blending into it. Groups now start closer in, carry a steady turning tendency that drifts slowly over time, and turn back on a wide arc.
• Groups last much longer before re-forming elsewhere, and each firefly lives longer, so a swarm stays put and readable instead of constantly replacing itself.

0.5.23

• Fixed: the new Plains fireflies were not actually grouping. Each one was being assigned to a group by its position in an internal list that does not keep still, so every group was reshuffled twice a second and the result looked exactly like the scattered Meadows swarm in a different colour. Groups are now decided by which one a firefly is closest to, so clusters hold together and travel as units.
• Plains fireflies are now far more numerous and much more visible: 40 instead of 24, closer in at 20 m, and in tighter, clearly separated knots.
• They no longer disappear almost as soon as you notice them. Each one now lives about twice as long, which was the single biggest reason the swarm felt fleeting.
• Groups travel noticeably faster, so a cluster crosses your view rather than crawling.
• A group left far behind by a riding player is now re-formed nearby instead of pathetically trying to walk back.

0.5.22

• New: orange fireflies in the Plains at night. They are a separate effect from the yellow Meadows fireflies, with their own settings under Plains Fireflies.
• Unlike the Meadows fireflies, which scatter and drift individually, the Plains ones travel in small groups. Each group has its own position and heading, wanders slowly across the plain, turns gently as it goes, and turns back before it strays too far from you. Every firefly in a group shares that group's travel and adds a small personal drift on top, so a cluster moves as a unit while its members mill inside it. They are also noticeably livelier than the yellow ones.
• Defaults are 24 fireflies in 4 groups, adjustable from 1 to 8 groups. Fewer groups makes each one denser and more obviously a swarm.
• Under a roof, in rain or a wet storm, and during a Seasonality or Seasons winter they fade out exactly the way the Meadows fireflies do.

0.5.21

• Cloud shadows now appear more often by default. CloudCoverage defaults to 0.5 instead of 0.4 and CloudSizeMeters to 75 instead of 85, which is the combination the owner settled on in game. Note that 0.5.19 and 0.5.20 looked sparser than 0.5.18 for most existing installs only because a regenerated configuration silently dropped a saved CloudCoverage = 0.5 back to the 0.4 default; the effect itself did not become rarer.
• Meadows fireflies drift slightly faster.

0.5.20

• Underwater caustics now deform as they move instead of sliding. Two new settings in Water Caustic Lighting replace the old "two static patterns laid over the seabed" look:
  • Interference (default 0.6) blends the two caustic layers from a plain overlay toward an interference network, so the bright parts become narrow crossings instead of two full-strength patterns stacked on each other. 0 restores the previous overlay.
  • Distortion (default 0.5) stirs the pattern with a slow irregular distortion so it deforms while it travels. 0 restores the previous smooth motion and skips the extra texture sample entirely.
• MaskQuality stays at Low512. A 0.5.19 build briefly raised the default, which was reverted once it became clear that resolution is not what limits how many cloud shadows you can see.

0.5.19

• Cloud shadows now fade away smoothly as the sun sinks toward the horizon instead of switching off at one instant. The fade runs from about 15 degrees of sun elevation to about 5 degrees, roughly the last 75 in-game minutes of daylight, and Automation.AutoFadeAtLowSun turns it off if you want shadows right down to the horizon.
• Underwater caustics no longer cost a full-screen pass when there is no water in view. Standing inland with the sea out of sight now skips work that could not have been seen anyway.
• F10 writes the diagnostic dump by default, and it now also saves a date-and-time-stamped copy so several samples can be compared. The dump names the single reason cloud shadows are currently hidden, the same way it already did for caustics.

0.5.18

• Raised the default Water Caustic Lighting.Intensity to 1.8, the value the effect reads well at in game after the surface-orientation change; existing configurations keep their saved value.

0.5.17

• Winter from RustyMods Seasonality or shudnal Seasons now dims cloud shadows to 30% of their strength instead of removing them completely, through the new Automation.WinterCloudShadowStrength (0 restores the old full fade-out, 1 ignores the season). Snow weather still fades cloud shadows out completely.
• Cloud shadows now gather in larger systems. A much bigger, slower noise field decides where the existing detail is allowed to form, so an overcast day shows broad bands and gaps instead of one uniform dapple size. The average coverage stays where CloudCoverage puts it.
• The smallest detail octave is dropped when a shadow-mask texel can no longer resolve it. This removes the fine shimmer that appeared at high ShadowDrawDistance or on the lower mask qualities; MaskQuality now changes sharpness without changing which features exist.
• Underwater caustics now follow the surface they light up. Vertical walls, stone faces and boat hull undersides receive noticeably less than floors and the seabed, because caustic light enters from above. No additional texture samples were added.

0.5.16

• Meadows Fireflies now choose their spawn points the way Valheim defines a sheltered area: a candidate position is rejected when a player-built piece is the first surface above it, so fireflies no longer hover inside a roofed base or on a built floor while the player is outdoors. This reuses the probe the spawn already performed, so no additional raycasts were added.
• Firefly particles now vary their breathing between two alpha curves, and their yellow carries a small colour-temperature spread, so a swarm no longer pulses as one flat colour. A slow updraft is applied by Unity's particle system, which adds no per-frame C# particle work.

0.5.15

• Added optional compatibility with shudnal's Seasons 1.9.2: Meadows Fireflies now smoothly disappear during its winter as well, read directly from the loaded plugin so the effect also works with Seasons' opt-in global keys left disabled. Seasons remains a non-required dependency.
• Added Automation.AutoDisableInSnow and Automation.AutoDisableInWinterSeason, both enabled by default: cloud shadows now smoothly fade out during Valheim snow storms in the Mountains and the Deep North, and for the whole winter in every biome when RustyMods Seasonality or shudnal Seasons reports winter. The snow state, the current environment name, and both season-mod states are included in the diagnostic dump.
• Fixed Meadows Fireflies re-seeding all live particles when an unrelated setting changed; they now re-seed only when a firefly setting changes, and they no longer pop in place while a cloud-shadow slider is dragged.
• Fixed repeated per-frame work when the game runs on an unsupported rendering path, and reset the cloud carrier each world load so its precision cannot drift across long sessions.
• Failed renderer detachment is now reported as Disposal pending in the diagnostic dump, and the Enhanced Environment restores its temporary sun-angle change even when it is switched off during an environment change.
• The hotkey settings table and configuration descriptions were synced with the in-game text, and the release script now refuses to package when a setting is missing from either README.

0.5.14

• Reworked cloud-mask projection to a horizontal world-XZ mapping. Cloud shadows now follow the same wind vector as Valheim's minimap, particle wind, and cloth force without a competing positional shift from the moving sun.

0.5.13

• Replaced low-sun cloud-motion compensation with a smooth automatic fade-out of cloud shadows at dawn and dusk, removing the stretched fast projection.
• Adjusted cloud-mask advection direction; it is superseded by the complete horizontal world-XZ mapping in 0.5.14.

0.5.12

• Added smooth low-sun motion compensation for cloud shadows. The moving cloud pattern slows near the horizon, avoiding unnaturally fast shadows at dawn and dusk, and returns to normal wind-driven speed as the sun rises.

0.5.11

• Added enabled-by-default Automation.AutoDisableInMistlandsAndAshlands. Cloud shadows now smoothly fade out in the Mistlands and Ashlands while caustics remain independent; the state is included in the diagnostic dump.
• Replaced the package icon with the current user-supplied artwork.

0.5.10

• Made the current tested settings the defaults for new configurations: caustic intensity 1.2, Meadows Fireflies radius 24, and the disabled-by- default Enhanced Environment's selected preset Emberfall.
• Replaced the package icon with the current user-supplied artwork.

0.5.9

• Meadows Fireflies now use Valheim's public wet-weather state to smoothly disappear in rain and wet storms, then return when the weather clears.
• Replaced the package icon with the current user-supplied artwork.

0.5.8

• Added optional compatibility with RustyMods Seasonality 3.8.2: Meadows Fireflies now read its season_winter global key and smoothly disappear in winter, without adding Seasonality as a required dependency.
• Replaced the package icon with the current user-supplied Valheim Visual Enhanced artwork.

0.5.7

• Hosted the visual-example screenshots in the public Bellorite-oss/ValheimVisualEnhanced-Media repository and replaced local Markdown paths with direct HTTPS image URLs, so previews render on Thunderstore.
• Removed documentation screenshots from the installable archives; the package README now loads them from the public media repository instead.

0.5.6

• Rewrote the public description to present the mod as a vanilla-style visual enhancement and to make clear that it is not ReShade.
• Added four numbered visual examples for caustics, Meadows fireflies, Enhanced Environment, and cloud shadows to the packaged documentation and Nexus page source.

0.5.5

• Renamed the user-facing Fantasy Environment feature to Enhanced Environment. Existing palette settings and ToggleFantasyEnvironment hotkeys migrate once to the renamed configuration section and ToggleEnhancedEnvironment key.
• Added two deliberately stronger all-day palettes: amber/crimson Emberfall and teal/violet AuroraVeil.

0.5.4

• Added Automation.AutoDisableMeadowsFirefliesUnderRoof, enabled by default, to smoothly fade Meadows fireflies while the player is under a roof or in an interior.
• Expanded Water Caustic Lighting.Intensity from 0..1 to 0..3; values above 1 now reach the shader without being clamped.

0.5.3

• Stopped replacing live fireflies shortly before their natural fade-out.
• Reduced the brightness variation and lengthened the final fade, eliminating sharp distant blinking while retaining a subtle living quality.

0.5.2

• Added smooth per-particle fade-in and fade-out for Meadows fireflies.
• Added a gentle, desynchronized brightness pulse to avoid abrupt distant firefly flicker without introducing C# per-frame particle work.

0.5.1

• Fixed Meadows fireflies on Valheim clients that do not expose built-in particle shaders through Shader.Find.
• The firefly renderer now clones the already-loaded material from Valheim's native Thistle particles, while keeping the effect's own 1x1 texture and yellow particle tint.

0.5.0

• Added enabled-by-default Meadows fireflies for outdoor nighttime Meadows.
• Kept the effect to one particle renderer with a yellow 1x1 source texture, no lights, shadows, colliders, extra cameras, or per-firefly GameObjects.
• Added firefly count, radius, brightness, and enable settings plus diagnostic state output.

0.4.0

• Added selectable Fantasy Environment palettes that visibly grade dawn, day, dusk, and night: warm GoldenSaga, lush VerdantWilds, and cool Frostbound.
• Added Custom palette mode with configurable daylight sun and fog RGB channels alongside the existing morning, evening, and night controls.

0.3.1

• Disabled Fantasy Environment by default.
• Added the unassigned Hotkeys.ToggleFantasyEnvironment toggle and its in-game status message.
• Split the sun-path adjustment into the disabled-by-default Fantasy Environment.OverrideSunAngle setting, preserving Valheim's normal sun position whenever only the palette is enabled.

0.3.0

• Added an enabled-by-default Fantasy Environment palette with configurable morning, evening, and night sunlight/fog RGB colors, blend strength, and sun elevation.
• Applied the palette through a narrow EnvMan.SetEnv Harmony hook without modifying Valheim's stored biome or weather environment definitions.
• Added palette patch state to the diagnostic dump.

0.2.1

• Changed newly generated configuration defaults to CloudSizeMeters=85 and WindSpeedMultiplier=0.8, matching the recommended defaults.
• Fixed the flowing-caustics wind response so sustained strong wind reaches its configured carrier speed with reduced calm-weather drift and no gust steps.
• Made FlowingMotion=false a genuine classic-motion A/B path.

0.2.0

• Updated the marketplace icon with the current Valheim Visual Enhanced artwork.
• Added enabled-by-default flowing caustics motion with a classic-motion fallback setting, without new textures or texture samples.
• Rebuilt the AssetBundle with Unity 6000.0.75f1 for Valheim 1.0 / Deep North.
• Updated the required Valheim BepInExPack dependency to 5.4.2350.
• Renamed the mod to Valheim Visual Enhanced.
• Breaking change: the plugin GUID, configuration file, DLL, AssetBundle, and installation folder now use ValheimVisualEnhanced.
• Changed the default cloud-mask quality for newly generated configurations to Low512.
• Improved caustic contrast in shallow clear water without adding texture samples or full-screen passes.
• Replaced broad caustic brightening with a soft contrast response that keeps dark water-bottom areas dark while retaining midtone filaments and crossings.
• Raised wet-weather caustic attenuation from 25% to 50% of configured strength.

0.1.0

• Added soft, world-anchored cloud shadows driven by Valheim's wind.
• Integrated cloud attenuation into the directional screen-space shadow mask so fog and native shadows retain their normal rendering order.
• Added optional two-layer underwater caustic lighting with sunlight, weather, depth, distance, deformation, and wind response.
• Ensured water refraction moves opaque surfaces and their caustics together.
• Added automatic cloud-shadow fading at night, in wet weather, and under roofs or inside caves.
• Added independent caustics fading at night, under cover, and during wet weather.
• Added configurable hotkeys and a detailed diagnostic dump.