GreydwarfDanceParty

The Black Forest is no longer hostile. It's a club.

Greydwarfs — regular, brutes, and shamans — stop chasing you, plant their feet, and dance: bouncing on the beat, twisting, swaying. Every so often two of them standing close will turn to each other, lean in, and share a kiss, complete with a floating pink heart.

And you can join in. Walk up to any dancing Greydwarf, and your Use key prompt changes to Kiss. Press it: your Viking blows a kiss, the dwarf leans in, hearts pop, and the two of you dance together. Every Greydwarf you kiss grants you Greydwarf Love — faster health and stamina regeneration, one minute per dwarf, stacking up to ten.

Built for Valheim 1.0 (September 2026) with BepInEx 5.4.2350.

Multiplayer / dedicated servers

This mod works on dedicated servers, and it belongs on the clients — not the server.

It is entirely client-side: each player's game animates the Greydwarfs locally, and the buff is applied to your own character. Nothing is written to the world, and nothing is synced over the network. So:

• Install it on every player's client. That is all that is required — the server itself needs no mods and no configuration, and works completely unmodified.
• Installing it on the dedicated server is harmless but does nothing. A server renders no graphics and has no local player, so it detects that it is headless and stays out of the way entirely. It cannot push the dancing to players who do not have the mod — Valheim gives a server no way to send custom animations to an unmodified client.
• Mixed installs are safe. There is no version handshake and nobody gets kicked. Players without the mod simply see ordinary, aggressive Greydwarfs.

One thing worth knowing about mixed installs

Valheim runs each creature's AI on whichever player is nearest (that player "owns" it), and only that player can stop it attacking. So if someone without the mod is closest to a Greydwarf, it will chase and attack normally — even for players who do have the mod, who will see it dancing and swinging at them. Install the mod on everyone and the whole forest behaves consistently.

The kiss interaction and the Greydwarf Love buff are per-player: they always work for you regardless of who owns the creature, and each player can kiss each dwarf once.

Config

greydwarf.danceparty.cfg — edits apply live, about half a second after you save the file. No restart needed.

[General]

• Enabled — master switch (default true)
• FreezeInPlace — Greydwarfs stop chasing and attacking while dancing (default true). Turn this off if you still want a real fight — they'll dance while hunting you.
• DanceSpeed — tempo (default 1.0)
• DanceIntensity — how wild the moves are (default 1.0)

[Kissing] — Greydwarfs smooching each other

• Enabled (default true), Distance (6 m), Interval (~5 s between attempts), Duration (2.5 s), Hearts (default true)

[Interaction] — you kissing them

• Enabled (default true)
• OncePerDwarf — each Greydwarf can only be kissed once, so you can't farm the buff off a single dwarf (default true)
• DanceWithThem — your character dances after the kiss (default true)

[Buff] — Greydwarf Love

• Enabled (default true)
• SecondsPerKiss — buff time granted per dwarf (default 60)
• MaxSeconds — cap on stacked duration (default 600)
• HealthRegenMultiplier (default 1.5), StaminaRegenMultiplier (default 1.5)

Warning

With FreezeInPlace on (the default), Greydwarfs are completely harmless — they won't chase or attack. Great for screenshots and nonsense, but it does trivialize the Black Forest. Set it to false for a party that still bites.

Changelog

1.0.0

• Initial release. Greydwarfs dance, pair up, and kiss. Hearts included.

1.1.0

• Live config reload: edits to the .cfg now apply within half a second while the game is running, no restart needed.

1.2.0

• Fixed hearts crashing every kiss (Valheim strips the Standard shader; now picks a shader that exists).
• Kisses are much more visible: the whole body leans toward the partner, bigger hearts.
• Kissing is more frequent by default (Distance 6m, Interval 5s).
• Music file is now found anywhere under BepInEx\plugins or BepInEx\config, so r2modman reinstalls no longer silence it.

2.0.0

• Removed the music feature.
• You can now walk up to a dancing Greydwarf and press your Use key to kiss it: you blow a kiss, it leans in, hearts pop, and you dance together.
• New 'Greydwarf Love' buff: +50% health and stamina regen, 60s per Greydwarf kissed, stacking to 10 minutes. All configurable under [Buff].
• Each Greydwarf can only be kissed once by default.

2.1.0

• Dedicated server support: the mod now detects a headless server reliably (graphics device and ZNet.IsDedicated) and stays fully inactive there.
• Fixed a multiplayer bug: the AI takeover now respects ZDO ownership, so it no longer claims to handle AI for creatures owned by another peer.
• README documents exactly where to install for dedicated servers.