Waybound

Explore together. Find your friends.

Waybound shares exploration, manual pins and player locations across your Valheim group. Install Waybound 0.2.0 on the server and every player's PC. Dedicated servers and player-hosted worlds are supported; this is not a server-only mod.

Features

• Combine existing and newly explored areas of the same world. Received areas become fully revealed; unexplored areas stay covered.
• See connected friends on the map without a distance limit, regardless of their vanilla visibility toggle.
• Share new manual pins, including names, symbols and checked state. Everyone can cross off or delete them; late arrivals receive saved pins.
• Identify players and pin creators by persistent colors and a paged large-map legend.
• Optionally display names and distance through obstacles. F10 toggles Name ESP; it starts off. Default range: 200 metres, adjustable within the server limit.
• Smooth movement, fades, edge directions, pooled labels and reduced-motion settings.

Chams/body silhouettes and their shortcut were completely removed in 0.2.0.

Installation and controls

Dependencies: BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2350 and Jötunn 2.30.2. Install the same Waybound version everywhere through your mod manager with its dependencies. For manual installation, stop the game/server and copy both Ravenbond.dll and Ravenbond.Core.dll into BepInEx/plugins/Ravenbond. Keep only one active copy of each DLL.

The server handles synchronization and storage; each client renders its map and HUD. Unmodded and console clients are unsupported. Nodecraft's panel offers BepInEx and Thunderstore installation. Official Nodecraft guide.

Configuration: BepInEx/config/rinor.ravenbond.cfg. Client options include HUD / NameESP, WorldRange, PlayerLegend and ReducedMotion. Server options include Server / MaximumWorldRange (default 2000 metres) and AutosaveSeconds (default 30).

Console: waybound shows status, waybound esp on/off changes Name ESP, and waybound reload reloads configuration. ravenbond remains an alias. Without the console, edit settings while the game/server is stopped.

Upgrade and storage

Waybound replaces Ravenbond. Legacy filenames and plugin ID rinor.ravenbond preserve existing data. Old PlayerChams and TogglePlayerChams entries are ignored and may be removed.

Back up BepInEx/config/Ravenbond/worlds: .rbmap files store exploration; .rbpins files store shared pins and colors; .bak files provide recovery. Keep the same world UID when moving servers. Overwriting existing destination files does not merge histories.

Existing private pins and automatic death/boss markers are not imported. Network acknowledgements precede autosave; a hard crash can lose recent changes. Other map-sharing mods and altered map geometry need compatibility testing.

Built against Valheim 1.0.16. Isolated native fixtures include the dedicated-server branch; a live Nodecraft deployment and real multiplayer performance remain unverified.

The -thunderstore.zip is the mod-manager/upload package; -nodecraft.zip provides manual server files and the German installation/migration guide; -source.zip contains source and documentation.

Changelog

0.2.0 — Dedicated servers and Thunderstore packaging

• Remove player chams completely: no body-highlight renderer, Mouse4 shortcut, or chams configuration options. Old chams entries in existing configuration files are ignored.
• Keep shared exploration, synchronized manual pins, persistent player colors, the map legend and optional F10 name markers. Install the same version on the dedicated server and every client.
• Skip client map/pin adapters and the local-player roster path on dedicated servers; retain server-owned map/pin storage and relay without a local character or HUD.
• Provide separate Thunderstore and Nodecraft manual-install archives, a 256×256 package icon, and a server migration guide. Preserve the existing DLL names, configuration paths, map/pin stores and wire protocol 2.
• Declare the tested Jötunn 2.30.2 dependency. Update Waybound on the server and every PC together.

0.1.4 — Join synchronization and map legend fixes

• Fix the handshake that left the host as the only online player after friends joined through Valheim's Start Server / Steam invite flow. Resolve character identity from the peer's owned player ZDO instead of waiting for an unused native PlayerID RPC.
• Keep verified character identity through death and respawn; verify it again for a new connection or session. Map discovery, shared pins, colors and friend presence can now start synchronizing after the character spawns.
• Show game-peer and Waybound-peer counts in the host's waybound console status and log each successful Waybound connection.
• Place the legend inside the visible large-map frame, including nested HUD canvases, camera canvases, scaling and clipped/zoomed map images.
• Retain protocol 2 and existing settings/world files. Update the host and every friend to 0.1.4 together.

0.1.3 — Shared pins, player colors and silhouettes

• Share new manually placed pins with all participants, including cross-off and deletion actions. Keep the original creator and color when another player edits the pin. Existing private pins and automatic death/boss markers are not imported.
• Persist creator colors, shared pins and deletion records per world in a separate checksummed .rbpins file with verified-backup recovery. Limits are 4,096 records including deletions and 4,096 player identities.
• Add a large-map player-color legend, including offline creators of remaining shared pins.
• Add [HUD] PlayerChams = false and a Mouse4 toggle for colored silhouettes of locally loaded teammates within the configured world range. This switch is independent of NameESP; F10 remains the name-overlay shortcut.
• Use host-authoritative edit revisions, conflict responses and acknowledged pin batches with retries. Protocol 2 also carries stable player identity and color; update the host and every client to 0.1.3 together.
• Add 12 pure shared-pin regression scenarios covering conflicts, immutable creator identity, deletions, color/record limits, paged delivery, malformed packets and persistence recovery. Native controls, rendered silhouettes and full multiplayer integration require separate validation.
• Retain the existing assembly/plugin identity, exploration format and install/configuration paths. Native map pings keep their existing broadcast behavior.

0.1.2 — Full exploration and optional name ESP

• Project the party's exploration into the native fully explored map channel, so discoveries from friends look like personal discoveries and remain visible when Valheim's shared-map layer is hidden.
• Automatically promote previously faded shared areas during the budgeted scan, including pixels already present in the synchronized union. Preserve existing shared bits, personal discoveries and unknown areas; promoted exploration persists in the native character map.
• Reset the adapter scan when the native map or fog texture changes, and flush pending texture uploads only to their bound texture.
• Remove the world overlay's dark plate, gold rule and connector.
• Introduce [HUD] NameESP = false for the complete world name, distance and diamond overlay. It starts off on upgrade unless the new key is explicitly enabled; the former WorldLabels key is ignored. Map pins and exploration sharing remain independent.
• Add waybound esp on / waybound esp off, also accepting true / false. Preserve waybound reload, the historical ravenbond aliases, and the saved ToggleWorldLabels shortcut, whose default is F10.
• Add ten regression checks against the actual map adapter. All pass with the fix; seven fail against the packaged 0.1.1 adapter. These checks use game stubs and do not establish native rendering or multiplayer performance.
• Keep the plugin identity, assembly names, installation/configuration paths, protocol and world-store format unchanged. Update the host and all clients together.

0.1.1 — Waybound

• Rename the public plugin, distribution, documentation and branding to Waybound.
• Add waybound and waybound reload; preserve ravenbond and ravenbond reload as aliases.
• Preserve rinor.ravenbond, both Ravenbond assembly names, the RPC identity, configuration, world-store format and deployment folder for an in-place upgrade.
• Keep shared exploration, marker behavior and all gameplay settings unchanged. Install this release instead of Ravenbond, and update host and clients together.

Historical foundation: 0.1.0 — Ravenbond

Initial testable release: world-scoped shared exploration, paced acknowledged chunk transport, checksummed atomic persistence, peer-bound friend roster, configurable through-obstacle world labels, unlimited-distance session map pins, adaptive text refresh, pooled UI, frame-time smoothing, reduced motion, safe shutdown and host range limits.

Build scripts produce local archives. They do not publish the mod or install it into a live profile/server.