Smelter Grate Fire 0.2.0

Adds animated flames to the regular Valheim smelter's rear grate and lets you choose its fire color. The added flame follows the existing burning state.

Choose your fire color

1. Open in-game text chat and enter /smeltercolor. The slash is required.
2. Click or drag on the color wheel to choose hue and saturation. Adjust Brightness.
3. Press Apply to save the selection for all regular smelters you see, including newly built smelters and the rear grate.

Cancel, × and Escape discard the staged selection and close the window. Vanilla colors immediately restores the original colors and saves that preference. Vanilla colors are the default. Opening the command again uses the same window. The handled command is not sent as public chat.

The chooser uses a dark panel, warm gold accents and an available Valheim font. It is designed for mouse and keyboard.

Client-local visuals

The saved color applies to all regular smelters on your client, across worlds in the same BepInEx profile. It is not a per-smelter setting and is not synchronized with other players. Each player can choose their own color. Other players need their own copy of the mod to see the added rear flame on their client. Dedicated servers do not need this visual mod.

Color affects the four continuous flame effects, fire glows and two interior ember surfaces. Lights, surrounding illumination, smoke and production sparks retain their vanilla appearance. Saturated colors can appear brighter or darker depending on game textures and lighting.

No changes to smelting speed, fuel, recipes, output, damage, heat, colliders or audio. Vanilla burning and idle behavior stays in control. Blast furnaces are excluded. The mod writes no world data and adds no network settings.

Requirements

BepInEx 5 only; Harmony is supplied by the loader. The manifest declares denikson-BepInExPack_Valheim-5.4.2351.

Tested on Windows with Valheim 1.0.20 (Steam build 25909357) and BepInEx 5.4.23.5 / BepInExPack_Valheim 5.4.2351.

Installation and updates

Install through your Valheim mod manager, or use its local-mod import feature for this ZIP. Replace an existing manual DLL so only one copy remains installed.

For manual installation:

1. Close Valheim.
2. Open the active mod-manager profile folder, or the direct Valheim installation containing BepInEx.
3. Copy the archive's BepInEx folder there. The DLL belongs at BepInEx/plugins/SmelterGrateFire/SmelterGrateFire.dll.
4. Start the game. A regular smelter with coal and ore should show the added rear flame. Use /smeltercolor in text chat.

Your preference is FlameColor in BepInEx/config/local.smeltergratefire.cfg: an HTML #RRGGBB color, or empty for vanilla. Prefer the chooser; close the game before editing this file manually.

To uninstall, close the game and remove the package in your mod manager, or remove its DLL for a manual installation. Optionally remove its configuration file to discard the saved color. Restart afterward. Worlds need no cleanup.

Validation and known limits

Isolated single-player runtime checks covered command interception, ordinary command routing, repeated opening, apply/cancel, Escape and scene-close handlers, input/cursor release, exact vanilla reset, saved-color reload, existing/new regular smelters and blast-furnace exclusion. In-game screenshots were inspected for the chooser and colored/vanilla fire.

Rear-flame checks covered burning, empty fuel with ore remaining, empty ore with fuel remaining, refueling, save/reload and duplicate prevention. Collider/light/audio counts and smelting parameters stayed unchanged. Shared materials are untouched; ember tint uses per-renderer property overrides.

Physical mouse/keyboard interaction was not exercised. Commands and control handlers were invoked through a private in-game test harness, including an instrumented Escape key result. Multiplayer/non-owner clients, dedicated-server operation, controller navigation, broad modpack compatibility and other game versions remain untested. Mods replacing smelter visuals, hierarchy or input handling may conflict.

Only the production DLL, manifest, original icon, README and changelog are bundled. No game assets, dependencies, settings or test plugins are included. This archive has not been imported into a mod manager or published to Thunderstore as part of validation.

Feedback & Bug Reports

For feedback, questions, or bug reports, join the Discord server.

Changelog

0.2.1

• Fixed the top decorative plume retaining its vanilla color.
• Fixed the smoke, fire and cinders from both coal and ore loading retaining vanilla colors.
• Applied the client-local preference to newly spawned loading visuals, with live recoloring and exact vanilla reset.
• Preserved shared prefabs, smoke simulation, particle emission/lifetime, lights and gameplay. Production/output bursts are unchanged.

0.2.0

• Added the client-local /smeltercolor command and a dark, gold-accented color chooser.
• Added saved color selection for regular smelter flames, glows and ember interiors, including the rear grate.
• Added Apply, Cancel, close/Escape handling and exact vanilla-color restoration.
• Preserved rear-flame placement and vanilla burning behavior. No gameplay or network changes.

0.1.1

• Added the Discord feedback and bug-report link.
• Corrected requirements to state that this standalone mod requires BepInEx only.
• Documentation-only package update; the DLL remained version 0.1.0.

0.1.0

• Added the rear-grate flame effect, controlled by the regular smelter's vanilla burning state.