Seamanship

Makes Valheim sailing feel more like real sailing without changing how the game plays. Small numbers throughout: boats are about as fast and as handy as in vanilla, but the wind now has a strength you can read, shifts you can see coming, and consequences for carrying too much sail.

What it adds

• Wind strength levels. Light, Moderate, Fresh, Strong and Gale, read from the weather, the water you are in and the vanilla wind roll.
• Gradual wind shifts. The wind veers and backs slowly instead of snapping to a new direction, with the occasional sudden shift. A change of weather arrives with a shift.
• Gusts from Fresh upward.
• Easier upwind. A little more drive close-hauled, about 10% better progress to windward. Dead into the wind still stops you.
• Windage. While someone is at the helm the wind pushes the hull to leeward, turns the bow off the wind, and slows a boat pointed into it. The more sail is up, the more wind she catches.
• Overpressing. Full sail in a Strong wind or a Gale stresses the hull. You get creaks, camera shake and a warning first; damage is slow, repairs normally, and never sinks the boat on its own.
• Seamanship skill. A livelier helm, pointing higher, less windage, a rig that rides gusts better. Earned at the helm: sailing, sailing close-hauled, tacking and riding out gusts.

Reading the ship HUD

Everything is added to the vanilla wind indicator; there is no extra panel.

• Speed in knots under the boat, with a green or red arrow while it is changing.
• Course arrow on the boat icon, pointing where the boat is actually travelling. Its angle off the bow is your leeway. It gains an arrowhead for every 4 knots.
• Wind level named beside the wind icon, coloured by strength. It flashes white in a gust.
• Shift arrow beside the wind icon, pointing the way the wind is swinging. Red and blinking for a sudden shift.
• Hull stress reddens the boat icon, and pulses when it is dangerous.

Settings

Every number is in BepInEx/config/com.stuco.seamanship.cfg, including a master switch ("Enabled") that returns the game to vanilla. Gameplay settings are synced from the server. An admin can change them in game with a configuration manager, or by editing the file on the server while it is running.

Multiplayer

Required on the server and on every client, at the same major.minor version; connections are refused otherwise. Wind direction is computed from the world seed and game time, so everyone sees the same wind.

Changelog

0.5.0

• First public release.
• HUD: the wind level name no longer runs off the edge of the screen.

0.4.5

• While aboard, logs the sea state once a minute: the weather, the game's own wind strength, and the strength the waves are using. A setting; 0 turns it off.

0.4.4

• Master switch ("Enabled" under "1 - General"): turning it off mid-voyage now also clears any hull stress and stops stutter logging.

0.4.3

• Stutter logging now waits for a frame over 2 seconds (a setting; 0 turns it off).
• Config file is written once after a burst of changes instead of once per setting.
• The ship's owner learns the helmsman's skill as soon as ownership changes hands.
• Dedicated servers no longer compute wind they never use.
• Logs: other mods patching the same game methods, the wind being handed back to the game (debug wind, world's edge, Moder), mistyped list settings, missing sound names.

0.4.2

• HUD: the wind readout names the level (Light, Moderate, Fresh, Strong, Gale) and sits outside the ring from the wind icon.
• Logs any frame over 0.3 s while aboard, with the last thing the mod did, to trace stutters. Settings read every physics step are now parsed once per change.

0.4.1

• HUD: speed and wind readouts sit on dark plates so they stay legible over the wind icon; speed reads in "kt" with its faster/slower arrow tight beside it; wind strength is shown in knots instead of a level number, still coloured by level; the course arrow is thicker, white with a blue edge like the wind icon.

0.4.0

• Fixed the sea slewing and heaving during wind shifts and gusts. The swell now cross-fades to the new wind direction the way vanilla does, once per shift, and gusts no longer raise the waves.
• The course marker is now an arrow from the boat icon that gains arrowheads with speed, drawn part transparent. Opacity and knots per arrowhead are client settings.
• New "Handling" settings: sail force, paddle force, turning under sail, turning under paddle and rudder speed, plus an experience multiplier.
• Editing the config file on a running server now takes effect and reaches clients without a restart.

0.3.0

• Windage now depends on how much sail is up: full sail catches the most wind, half sail three quarters of it, and a boat under paddle or stopped half.
• Windage brakes a boat pointed into the wind, down to a crawl, in place of the separate in-irons drag. A tack carries through much as in vanilla; a boat left head to wind stops in a third of the time.
• Removed the "In irons drag" and "Stopped factor" settings.

0.2.0

• Readouts moved onto the vanilla ship HUD: speed in knots with a faster/slower arrow, a course-over-ground marker on the boat icon, wind level on the wind icon, an arrow when the wind is shifting, and the boat icon reddening with hull stress. The separate panel is gone.
• Now required on the server and every client.
• Closer to vanilla handling: bow fall-off turns the hull without pushing it sideways, skill gives +10% rudder and +5% sail force at 100 (was +25% and +8%), and a sail held head to wind now slows the boat.
• Skill experience roughly four times slower.

0.1.0

• First build: wind levels, gradual wind shifts and gusts, easier upwind, Seamanship skill, windage, overpressing and the instrument panel.