Atlas Pirate Ships

Pirate ships now roam Valheim's seas. While you sail, crewed pirate boats appear on the horizon: skeleton rafts early on, Drakkar fleets of Ashlands warriors late in the game. They hunt you down, ram you, fight broadside with archers and fire, or leap onto your deck. Sneak past them, outsail them, or sink them for floating Pirate Spoils.

Works in single player and multiplayer, including dedicated servers.

What this mod adds

Pirate encounters at sea

• Pirate ships appear while you sail, once Eikthyr is defeated: every 1-4 minutes of sailing early on, up to 4.5-8 minutes late game.
• Seven tiers that follow your boss progress, from Tier 1 (Eikthyr) to Tier 7 (Fader). The tier decides the crew and the loot, and the pirate hull matches the boat you sail. Most encounters match your current tier, with some older, easier tiers mixed in.
• Crews made from the world's creatures: skeletons, draugr, fulings, dvergr, surtlings, fryslings, cultists, charred and Jotun witches. Each faction flies its own sail colors and emblem.
• Captains: every ship has a titled Captain at the helm, sometimes with stars. If the captain falls, a crew member takes the helm.
• Single ships, fleets and Pirate Battles. Fleets of 2-4 ships hunt together. In a Pirate Battle, 2-3 rival pirate fleets fight each other and turn on you if you join in.

Stealth: fight or avoid

• Pirates spot you from about 70-100 m (bigger boats are easier to see). Before that they can hear you: a ship under full sail draws them over to search. Half sail and rowing are quieter, and a Raft or Karve is quieter still.
• Alert icons above pirate ships, like vanilla creatures: yellow when a ship is searching, red once it has spotted you. They show while you look at the ship.
• New pirates sail into your path. Hold your course and you'll meet them; change course early and you can slip by.

Ship combat

• Pirates ram you, fight broadside with strafing passes, or board your deck with melee and ranged boarders.
• Pirate crews walk their decks, move to the rail to fight, and defend their ship when you board it.
• Morale: badly damaged ships, or ones that have lost too much crew, break off and flee.
• Jumping ship costs you the boat: leave it mid-fight and the pirates attack it for up to a minute. If it breaks, they come after you in the water.
• You can escape: pirates tack against the wind, their opening burst of speed fades, damaged pirates sail slower, and a pirate that can't close in or land a hit for 60 s gives up.

Rewards

• Pirate Spoils: a defeated ship leaves floating cargo crates. Contents depend on the tier (no late-game materials early) and grow with the ship's size.
• Pirate crew drop their normal creature loot (trophies included), and it floats so you can collect it from the water.

Atmosphere

• Pirate battle music starts when a pirate ship spots you and plays while pirates are around.
• Pirates appear out of a sea mist, and defeated ships break apart and sink.

Breathing room

• Late-game encounters come less often, a hard fight adds extra wait time, and sinking a pirate ship earns you an extra minute of peace.
• The encounter timer pauses near a Sea Serpent, and while you go back for your gear after a death.

Settings and tools

• A difficulty preset (Easy / Normal / Hard) and 60+ settings for fine-tuning (see Difficulty below and CONFIG.md).
• Support for ships from other mods (CustomHullSizes).
• Console commands for testing, spawning and cleaning up pirates.

Changes from the vanilla game

Almost everything here only affects pirates. Normal creatures, bosses, boats, items and the rest of the world behave exactly as in vanilla. These are the changes you'll notice:

At sea

• The ocean has a new threat: pirates can damage and sink your boat, and will attack a boat you've left.
• Pirate battle music replaces the sailing and biome music during a pirate fight. Raid music still takes priority.

Combat

• Pirate crews are always hostile to you, even creatures that are normally neutral (such as Dvergr). Rival pirate factions also fight each other.
• Melee on a ship: when a pirate is within reach, your melee swings pass through your own ship's rails and mast, so you can hit boarders on a crowded deck. Boarders' swings pass through your ship the same way, so they hit you rather than your hull.
• Pirate versions of some creatures are adjusted for fighting at sea: Surtlings don't take damage from water, and Surtling, Frysling and Charred Warlock projectiles fly faster (Warlock shots also flatter) so they can reach across the water. Pirate Cultists' flame breath has its own range, and Jotun Witches stay on deck instead of flying. The same creatures in the world are unchanged.

Loot

• Pirate crew only drop loot when killed by a player. Pirates killed by other pirates drop nothing. So do pirates knocked into the water that can't swim: they drown after a few seconds without dropping anything.
• Pirate ships can't be taken or salvaged: their helm and storage are locked, and breaking a pirate hull drops no wood or materials. The Pirate Spoils crates are the reward.

World and saves

• Pirates are temporary. They aren't saved with your world, and they disappear once you're more than about 300 m away.
• No new items, recipes, buildings or creature types. Everything is built from vanilla creatures and items.
• Safe to remove: run pirates_cleanup before uninstalling (see Installation).

Installation

With a mod manager (recommended): install Atlas Pirate Ships with r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager. BepInEx is installed for you.

Manually:

1. Install BepInExPack for Valheim.
2. Put the AtlasPirateShips folder (containing AtlasPirateShips.dll and treasure_hunter.ogg) in Valheim/BepInEx/plugins/.
3. Start the game once to create the config file.

Pirates start appearing once Eikthyr is defeated.

Uninstalling: run pirates_cleanup in the console first (see Console commands) to remove any pirates still in the world.

Difficulty

Set DifficultyPreset to Easy, Normal (the standard balance) or Hard in the config file BepInEx/config/com.atlas.pirateships.cfg. It's at the top, under [1 - General].

Every other setting is described in CONFIG.md (included with the mod) and in the config file itself. The most useful ones for fine-tuning:

How often pirates appear

The timer only counts while you sail. Average sailing time between encounters at default settings (clear day):

Night and fog make the timer count faster, and thunderstorms slightly slower. Sinking a pirate ship adds a minute to your next wait.

Tips for surviving at sea

• Keep your distance. Pirates you steer well clear of usually never see you.
• Go quiet. Lower your sail or row near pirates: half sail is heard from 70% of the normal distance, rowing from 35%.
• Sail into the wind. Pirates have to tack upwind.
• Outlast their sprint. A pursuer's opening burst of speed fades after about 25-55 s.
• Hurt them. Damaged pirate ships sail slower, and battered ones flee.
• Stay out of reach. A pirate that can't gain on you or land a hit for 60 s gives up.
• Head for the shallows. Pirates avoid shallow water and shore.

Multiplayer

• Every player should install the mod and use the same config file.
• Players without the mod can still join, see the pirates and fight them. They just never get encounters of their own.
• Each pirate ship is run by one player's game, normally the closest player's, and is handed over automatically as players move around.
• Players sailing close together (within 250 m) share one encounter timer.
• On a dedicated server, install the mod on the server too. Pirates then survive a player disconnecting, and pirates_cleanup can reach every pirate.

Compatibility

• Other ship mods: pirates tell boat sizes apart by name. Ships added by other mods count as a Raft unless you list their size in CustomHullSizes (for example BigCargoShip:Drakkar).
• Pirates only use the vanilla boats themselves.

Console commands

Open the console with F5 and enable devcommands first. On a server, only admins can use these.

Known limitations

• If the player running a pirate encounter disconnects, the pirates are handed to another player within 300 m. With nobody that close they disappear. This needs the mod on the server, or a self-hosted game.
• A ram only earns hull-kill credit when the ramming player's own game is running that pirate ship.
• The timer pause after a death only lasts for the current play session.

Bug reports

If something goes wrong, please include your BepInEx/LogOutput.log in your report. For a detailed log, set VerboseLogging = true under [9 - Diagnostics] in the config, reproduce the problem, then send the log.

Credits

• Pirate battle music: "Treasure Hunter" by TAD, CC0 (public domain), OpenGameArt.

Version history: CHANGELOG.md. Every setting: CONFIG.md.