MotorMod

Rideable motorcycles for Valheim. Build one with the hammer, feed it Surtling cores, ride it across the land and over the sea, pop wheelies, and leave a trail of fire behind you. Works in single player, on a hosted world and on dedicated servers. Built with BepInEx and Jötunn.

Pictures

More in docs/pictures.

The bikes

All three ride the same: fast (65 km/h, 130 km/h with boost), long and heavy. Trails only hurt enemies: never players, tamed animals or buildings.

Riding

• Stopped, the rider puts both feet on the ground; they go back on the pegs as soon as the bike moves.
• Wheelies: gravity pulls the front back down, so you keep it up by feathering the key. Hold too long and the front just drops; you never fall off. Wheelies longer than 2 seconds show their time and your best.
• Water: bikes ride on water, but only stay up while planing: at boost speed (Shift+W) or in a wheelie. Anything slower sinks fast: cruising without boost it is swamped in about 3 seconds, standing still in 1.5, and 1.5 seconds after that it breaks apart. Braking to a stop takes longer than that, so a bike that stops on deep water is lost. Get up to boost speed from the shore. In shallow water it just sits on the bottom.
• Crashes: ramming a creature at speed hurts it, and crashing into a building damages the building.

Fuel

The bikes run on Surtling cores and nothing else. A full tank holds five cores and goes 6.7 km; new bikes are built with an empty tank.

• Fuel burns by the distance you drive; boost burns it twice as fast, and standing still burns nothing. At sea you need boost to stay up, so one tank crosses about 3.3 km of water.
• Filling only works while the bike stands still: Shift+E takes cores from your bag, then from the saddlebags; a core used from the hotbar (1-8) goes in too. A rolling bike shows no fill prompt and takes nothing.
• Looking at a bike shows its fuel; while riding, the panel a saddled lox shows becomes the fuel gauge. You are warned at 20 % and 10 %.
• Empty, the engine dies and the bike rolls to a stop. On water that means it sinks: there is no refuelling at sea, so watch the gauge before you set out.

Flaming skulls

Wear a burning skull instead of your own head (the Ghost Rider look). Made at the workbench, they are only for looks and give no armour:

The skull is the game's own skeleton skull; hair and beard are hidden while you wear it. Its size and place can be tuned in the [FlamingSkull] settings.

Saddlebags

Every bike has leather saddlebags with two slots. Look at the bags and press E to open them. They stay shut while someone rides the bike. Shift+E takes cores from them when your own bag has none, so spare fuel can ride along. What is in them does not count toward your carry weight.

Durability

Bikes use the game's own building durability, like boats and carts:

• With the hammer in hand, looking at a bike shows its condition bar. The hammer's repair tool repairs it when a forge is nearby. Nothing repairs itself.
• Monster hits, weapons and hard crashes wear it down, and the bike shows it the way the game's ships do: below 75 % it turns sooty and lets off a burst of smoke with a metal crunch; below 25 % it is black with soot and smokes from the engine until it is repaired. Looking at a bike shows its condition next to its fuel.
• A head-on crash at boost speed breaks a bike outright whatever its condition, and a crash that breaks a bike ends in a fireball. At plain top speed a head-on costs about a quarter.
• A broken bike drops everything it cost loose where it broke: on land the materials lie on the ground; a sunk bike's go down to the seabed, and in deep water they are gone. Only what the saddlebags held comes up in a floating leather saddlebag, which waits for you and vanishes once emptied.
• The hammer can take a bike apart near a forge (everything back, on the ground), but never while someone is riding it. Wards protect bikes like any building.

Building a bike

Equip the hammer, open the Misc tab and stand near a forge:

Metal bars weigh 12 each (silver 14) and cannot go through portals, so plan a cart or a boat for the silver.

Installing (players)

Everyone who joins a world with bikes needs the same MotorMod version.

1. Install BepInExPack Valheim (5.4.2351 or newer) and Jötunn (2.30 or newer). A mod manager such as r2modman does both for you.
2. Download MotorMod-<version>.zip from the releases page and extract it into BepInEx/plugins/, so you get BepInEx/plugins/MotorMod/MotorMod.dll and a bundles folder next to it.
3. Start the game. The bikes appear in the hammer's Misc tab.

macOS: BepInEx runs under Rosetta on Apple Silicon. Follow the macOS steps on the BepInExPack page; tools/mac/start_valheim.sh in this repository is an optional Steam launcher that asks each time whether to start vanilla or modded.

Linux clients are untested (the bikes' shaders are built for Windows and macOS).

Installing on a dedicated server

See docs/SERVER.md, with step-by-step notes for Indifferent Broccoli and other hosts. In short: the server needs BepInEx, Jötunn and the MotorMod folder; it needs no music.

Sea soundtrack

Ride on water with friends nearby (or alone in your own world) and a shared soundtrack plays: everyone hears the same song at the same moment. Leave the water and it fades out over half a minute; back on it sooner and the same song carries on.

1. Put MP3, OGG or WAV files in BepInEx/config/MotorMod/music (created on the first start; the console command motor music open opens it).
2. Give your friends the same files: zip the folder and send it. Songs are matched by file name, and the playlist only uses songs that everyone listening has.
3. New files are picked up when you join a world, or at once with motor music rescan.

The mod measures each new song once (length, and loudness so every song plays equally loud). The soundtrack follows the game's music volume slider; F7 switches it off for you. More in docs/MUSIC.md.

Settings

All settings live in BepInEx/config/com.shiva.valheim.motormod.cfg, created on the first start. Each bike has its own section (speed, acceleration, turning, wheelie difficulty, rider and saddlebag placement); shared sections cover riding (including how far the handlebars turn), the headlight, the trail, durability, fuel, water, wheelie, the flaming skulls and the soundtrack. On a server, the fuel rules come from the server's file. Edit the file with the game closed, or use motor reload in the console. Each player's own settings apply to the bikes they ride.

Console

Open the console with F5. motor list lists the bikes, motor <bike> (hel, wraith, draugr) spawns one in front of you, motor remove removes the nearest, motor repair repairs bikes within 10 m, motor fuel 50 sets their tanks to 50 %, and motor music status shows what the soundtrack is doing. Spawning, repairing, refuelling and removing bikes are cheats: they need devcommands (on a server, only admins can turn that on). docs/cheat-sheet.md lists handy test commands.

Building from source

See docs/DEVELOPMENT.md.

Credits and licence

The bike model is by BatCat and the saddlebag by Red_Ilya, under Creative Commons Attribution licences. Full credits, including the engine sounds, are in CREDITS.md.

The code is under the MIT licence (see LICENSE).

MotorMod is an unofficial fan mod. Valheim is © Iron Gate AB; the mod reuses the game's own effects and objects (the campfire and torch flames, the skeleton trophy, the cargo crate, the chest window) at runtime and ships none of its assets.

Changelog

0.8.0 (2026-10-25)

• Damage shows. Like the game's ships and carts, a bike has three states: clean above 75 % condition, sooty below it, black and smoking from the engine below 25 %. Each step down comes with a burst of smoke and a metal crunch, and every hit clanks. The hover text shows the condition. DamageLook in [Durability] switches the look off.
• Fatal crashes end in a fireball. A crash that breaks the bike goes up in the game's dynamite fireball with its bang; the materials still drop loose. CrashDamage is 100 per m/s above 8 m/s (was 40), so a head-on at boost speed breaks a fresh bike and one at plain top speed costs about half.
• Harness: --condition <bike> photographs the three states, --wall with --boost is the fatal crash, --inspect dumps a prefab's wear objects, effects and material shaders.
• Twice the durability. A bike has 3000 health (was 1500). A head-on at 24 m/s or more into the surface (FatalCrashSpeed, boost speed on grass) breaks it outright whatever its condition.
• Harness: --gear dresses the rider (armour, cape, a sheathed weapon), --biome stages the pictures in a named biome, the rider is a ghost.
• Settings defaults changed (CrashDamage, MaxHealth): edit the lines or delete the settings file to pick them up.
• MIT licence; pictures in docs/pictures; a new icon.

0.7.0 (2026-10-24)

• Surtling cores only. Coal is no longer fuel. A core goes 1.33 km (was 4 km) and five fill the tank, which now holds 6.67 km (was 20). Shift+E pours cores from your bag, then from the saddlebags; the hotbar works as before. The CoalMetres setting is gone.
• Boost doubles. Boost is twice the top speed (was 1.2 times) and burns fuel twice as fast (was 1.5): a full tank lasts about 3.3 km under boost.
• Sinking is quick. Standing still on water a bike is swamped in 1.5 s (was 12), cruising without boost in about 3 s (was 24), and it breaks apart 1.5 s after that. Braking to a stop takes longer than that, so a bike that stops on deep water is lost; it must come up to boost speed from the shore. A wheelie still holds it up.
• No bag for the bike's materials. A broken bike, whether smashed, hammered or sunk, drops everything it cost loose where it broke: on the ground, or down to the seabed. Only the saddlebags' contents still come up in the floating leather bag, now two slots like the saddlebags.
• Filling needs a standing bike. A rolling bike shows no fill prompt and takes no fuel until it stops, so there is no refuelling at sea.
• Harness: --seadry (was --seafuel) runs a bike dry at sea and expects it to sink; --sink, --refund and --ui count the loose materials instead of a bag; --water bikes are held up until a test studies sinking.
• Settings defaults changed (TankKm, BoostBurn, SinkSeconds, BoostMultiplier): delete BepInEx/config/com.shiva.valheim.motormod.cfg (or edit those lines) to pick them up; an existing file keeps its old values.

0.6.0 (2026-10-24)

• Three bikes. Thor's Chariot, Greyfire and Tarsvin are gone, with their lightning, tar and blue-fire trails, the greydwarf head and the ImpactDamage setting. The mod is the Hel Cycle, the Wraith Cycle and the Draugr Cycle.
• Blue and green flames really. The Wraith and Draugr Cycles' trails burned orange: the game's torches get their colour from each flame particle's own colour data, not from the flame material. Copied now.
• Feet down at a stop. Standing still on land, the rider puts both feet on the ground beside the bike (on tiptoe where the ground is far); they go back on the pegs as soon as the bike moves.
• Soundtrack fade. Leaving the water fades the music out over 30 seconds (FadeOutSeconds, was 1.5), and the host keeps the song running for 30 seconds (GraceSeconds, was 5), so coming back within that time carries on in time.
• Flaming skulls. New icons: the skull three-quarter from the front with its flames burning, on a clear background. The Hel Skull now burns with the plain torch's flames like its twins; the campfire's tall tongues it had before streaked behind a moving rider.
• Cleanup: the Hel Cycle's prefab is HelCycle (was HellCycle; bikes saved under the old name in a test world do not load), the mod's network names no longer carry the old FatBoy prefix, the old-name aliases, the three bikes' models, sounds, configs and pipeline code are removed, and the credits list only what is used.

0.5.0 (2026-10-24)

• Wraith Cycle and Draugr Cycle: the Hel Cycle with blue and with green flames (the same fire damage), each with its own name. Built like the Hel Cycle, with a wraith trophy or a draugr trophy instead of the skeleton trophy.
• Flaming skulls to wear: Hel Skull (orange flames), Wraith Skull (blue) and Draugr Skull (green), made at the workbench from a skeleton trophy. The skull covers your head; hair and beard are hidden. Only for looks.
• Handlebars turn: the bars, fork, front wheel, headlight and front fender turn with the steering: up to 22 degrees at walking pace, 5 at top speed (settings HandlebarTurn and HandlebarTurnFast). The rider's shoulders turn with the bars, and the bars never turn further than the rider's outside hand can follow, so the hands stay on the grips. Other players now see your bars turn and your bike lean.
• More lean in turns (22 degrees, was 16).

0.4.0 (2026-10-23)

• Fuel. A full tank goes 20 km. Every bike burns coal (400 m each, 50 fill the tank), and each also takes its own fuel from the hotbar: Surtling core (Hel Cycle, 4 km), refined eitr (Thor's Chariot, 2 km), tar (Tarsvin, 800 m), greydwarf eye (Greyfire, 800 m). Fuel burns by the distance driven, 1.5 times as fast with boost; standing still burns nothing. Shift+E fills the tank with coal from your bag, then from the saddlebags. Empty, the engine dies. While riding, the game's mount panel shows the tank; warnings at 20 % and 10 %. New bikes are built empty. The fuel rules come from the server.
• Saddlebags. Every bike carries leather saddlebags with two slots: look at them and press E.
• Durability the game's way. Bikes use the game's own building durability, like boats and carts: the hammer shows the condition bar and repairs them near a forge, nothing repairs itself, and the hover text no longer shows a health number. Any broken bike gives back everything it cost (it used to be half), in a floating leather saddlebag together with what its saddlebags held, on land and at sea. The hammer still takes bikes apart near a forge, but never while someone rides.
• Shift+E fills the tank instead of packing the bike up. (The 0.3.0 docs called it Alt+E; the key was always Shift+E, the game's alternate use.)
• Greyfire replaces the Ghost Lox: the skull on its front is now a greydwarf brute's head. Bikes saved as Ghost Lox or Old West load as Greyfire, and motor lox still works.
• Recipes: Hel Cycle 50 bone fragments (was 30); Thor's Chariot black metal 100, lox pelt 4 and a thunder stone (was iron 40 and deer hide 4); Tarsvin black metal 100 (was iron 35 and black metal 10); Greyfire deer hide 12 and a greydwarf brute trophy (was leather scraps 12).
• The Tarsvin hits 1.5 times as hard when it rams creatures or crashes into buildings (ImpactDamage per bike).
• Console: motor fuel [percent] fills the tanks of bikes within 10 m (a cheat).

0.3.0 (2026-10-23)

• The mod is now MotorMod (it was FatBoyMod). New plugin ID com.shiva.valheim.motormod: settings start fresh in com.shiva.valheim.motormod.cfg, and the plugin folder is BepInEx/plugins/MotorMod. Remove an old BepInEx/plugins/FatBoyMod folder.
• Bikes renamed after Valheim's world: Thor's Chariot (was Chopper), Ghost Lox (was Old West, now without its shotgun) and Tarsvin (was Wasteland). Bikes already built under the old names load as the new ones, and the old console names still work.
• Water: a foam wake, spray off the front tyre and a rooster tail. Bikes stay up only at boost speed or in a wheelie; otherwise they settle, and swamped they break apart.
• Sea soundtrack: drop MP3, OGG or WAV files into BepInEx/config/MotorMod/music. The mod measures each song itself (no extra tools); motor music open and motor music rescan in the console.
• Contact damage: a ram counts only the bike's own speed toward a creature, at half the old damage and at most once a second per creature. Crashes damage buildings and other breakable objects.
• Headlights light the road without the glowing disc at the lamp.
• The ride log is off by default.
• Shift+E packs up a bike you built and returns all its materials; other players' bikes and warded areas are protected (it used to delete any bike without a refund). Removed again in 0.4.0.
• motor <bike>, motor repair, motor remove and motor removeall are cheats now: they need devcommands, so players on a server cannot spawn free bikes or remove other people's.

0.2.0 (2026-10-23)

• Four bikes with their own engine sounds, headlights and trails (fire, chain lightning, tar, blue fire) that hurt enemies.
• Wheelies, bike health and repairs, crash and ram damage, riding on water.
• The sea soundtrack: a shared playlist while riding on water.

0.1.0 (2026-10-20)

• The first rideable motorcycle.