Concerned Builder

Formerly Concerned Ladders. Building for basements and climbs in Valheim: vertical ladders with an original climbing animation, quick top exits, grabs from the water and in midair, jump-off, drop, side dismounts, a fast slide and a Climbing skill; floor trapdoors, sloped bulkhead cellar doors, railings and ladders in every vanilla building material; and an Iron Shovel that digs straight-sided basements. Each part has its own setting, on by default.

Built against Valheim 1.0.21 with BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2351 and Jötunn 2.30.2. The ladders, the climb and the Climbing skill were tested in game on Valheim 1.0.20 as Concerned Ladders 1.0.0; everything Concerned Builder 1.1.0 adds was tested in game in November 2026.

What it adds

• Vertical ladders in eight materials, with an animated climb and a Climbing skill.
• Floor trapdoors and sloped bulkhead cellar doors, one for every door in the game, that a ladder climbs through.
• Railings for floors, the game's stairs and the step ladder, in eight materials.
• The Iron Shovel, which digs basements of ready-made sizes with straight earth sides, joins holes edge to edge, digs sideways into its own earth, and fills a hole back in on request.

Moving from Concerned Ladders

This is the same mod under a new name. Install ConcernedBuilder and uninstall ConcernedLadders. The plugin ID and its config file (com.theconcernedcat.valheim.concernedladders.cfg) are unchanged, so your settings, your placed ladders and your Climbing skill carry over, as an update would. Do not keep both packages installed.

In action

Dig a basement. Scroll for a size, then dig: the hole gets straight earth sides and the bottom panel names the size.

Dig sideways into the earth. Aim at an earth wall and dig: the next room opens flush beside the last one.

Rooms line up. Two holes dug side by side make one straight-sided trench.

Cellar doors and railings. Every door has a sloped cellar door, and railings come in eight materials.

Climb out of the water onto a dock. Swim up to a ladder, press Interact, climb out.

Climb up and down. Each hand and foot takes its own rung.

Step off at the top, or get on from the floor above.

Catch a ladder in midair. Jump, press Interact, and you are on the rungs.

Jump off, step off to the side, or slide down.

Building

Equip the Hammer and open the Building tab. The ladders use the game's normal resource discovery: each one appears once you have found its materials.

All of them climb exactly the same. Placement, support, wards, repair, damage and refunds are the game's own. A free-standing stack follows the game's structural support, so a tall wooden stack needs bracing against the building (an unbraced wood stack holds about five sections).

Snapping. Cycle Snap offers Auto, Bottom, Top, Left side and Right side.

• Floor: aimed at a floor, the ladder goes on the floor edge nearest your aim. It hangs below the edge, or stands on it with Bottom.
• Wall: aimed at a wall, it goes on the wall face toward you, standing on the wall's bottom edge or hanging from its top edge (Top).
• Centring: Auto, Top and Bottom centre it. Left side and Right side line one rail up with that corner, as you face the climbing side.
• Ladder: aimed at another ladder, Auto, Top and Bottom extend the column in a straight line.
• Rotation: rotating the hammer turns a ladder snapped to a floor or wall up to 45 degrees either way. A turned section does not join the run below it.

Controls

The ladder uses the game's own bindings, so if you rebind a key in Settings, the ladder follows. The keys below are the PC defaults.

Near the top, the climber steps onto a floor beyond the rails or to either side. If there is nowhere to step off, or a closed roof or hatch is overhead, climbing stops about 1.3 m below the top, with both hands still on the rungs.

You can climb with the hammer out and build, repair or remove pieces while holding on. Removing the section you are holding makes you fall. A new section built above you extends the climb.

Gamepad buttons are wired to the same game actions, but controller play has not been tested yet.

Climbing skill

Concerned Builder adds a Climbing skill to the game's skill screen.

• Earning: you earn Climbing for each whole metre actually climbed at normal or fast speed. Holding still, sliding, jumping and dropping earn nothing, so hanging on a ladder cannot farm it.
• Effect: higher levels make fast climbing and sliding cheaper, up to 25% less stamina at level 100.
• Slide: level 20 unlocks the slide.
• Stamina: fast climbing costs 6 stamina per second and sliding 2 per second, before the skill saving, the world's stamina setting, and the movement modifiers from your equipment and status effects. Normal climbing is free.
• Saving and death: the skill is saved with your character and loses levels on death like any other skill.
• Jump: a powered jump-off trains the game's own Jump skill. No other vanilla skill is changed.

Falling. While you hold on, you take no fall damage. When you let go or jump, the game's normal fall damage is measured from where you let go.

Trapdoors and cellar doors

Every door and gate the game lets you build has a matching trapdoor (a 2 m floor hatch) and a sloped cellar door (a 2 m bulkhead, like a house's storm-cellar door), in the Hammer's Building tab next to the ladders. Each reads as its own door: planks, a gate, poles, iron bars, iron-strapped planks, a panel or flametal plates.

• Opening: Use opens and closes it, at the matching door's speed and with its sound. A lid or leaf waits instead of swinging into a player, a creature, an item, a cart or a building piece.
• With a ladder: aim a ladder at the frame in Auto or Top and it hangs inside the opening. You can open and close the lid from the ladder without letting go, and climb out only while it is open; a closed one holds you below.
• The cellar door is low at the front and 1.76 m tall at the back, open underneath, so a stair built down from the front passes under it, and the front is a step you walk over.

Railings

Railings snap along a stair's side edge, a floor's edge or another railing, in wood, copper, iron, darkwood, ashwood, flametal, dvergr and log. Wood and the other woods are plain, copper has twisted balusters with a knuckle, and iron and flametal have twisted bars, scrolls and finials.

Wood railings cost 1 Wood (half), 2 (level) or 3 (stair) at the Workbench; copper 1 Copper and 1 Wood, iron 1 Iron and 1 Wood, at the Forge; the other materials cost what the game's own pole of that material costs.

The Iron Shovel: digging basements

Craft the Iron Shovel at the Forge from 10 Iron and 4 Wood, once you have found Iron. Equip it like a weapon.

• The outline shows the hole before you dig: green when it will dig, amber when there is nothing to dig, red with the reason when it cannot. The bottom panel names the size and what it is for, as the hoe's does.
• Lining up: a hole lines up edge to edge with the holes you just dug beside it, so a row of rooms stays straight even with mixed sizes; with none beside it, it snaps to a grid of its own size.
• Straight earth sides: the ground cannot be cut vertically, so each hole's sloping 1 m border is filled with earth blocks in the terrain's own rock, up to the ground beside it. Build a wall against the face; the blocks have corner snap points.
• Digging sideways: aim at an earth block and dig: the new hole opens flush beside the old one and takes the blocks it covers out, so you can tunnel out rooms one hole at a time.
• Clearing earth: the hoe's Level and Raise and the pickaxe's dig remove the blocks they reach, so separate holes can be joined into one dug-out area; a pickaxe breaks a block in one hit, and the hammer removes it. No refund.
• What it clears: plants and stones in the way are picked for you; rocks, stumps, bushes, logs and trees are removed. Carts, ships and fixed scenery stop a dig; building pieces are left alone.
• Rules: the ground must be within 8 m and the first thing you see; no digging from a ladder, inside a ward that does not grant you access, or in no-build areas. A dig costs stamina and durability by the ground it removes: 10 stamina plus 0.3 per cubic metre (at most 60) and 0.16 durability per cubic metre. The game stops 8 m below natural ground, so the deepest floor is 7 m down.
• Filling back in is refused once the ground has changed or something stands in the hole. Up to 10 holes can be filled back in, until you leave the world.

Multiplayer

Every player and the server need the mod, at the same version. The ladders are custom building pieces that a game without the mod cannot load. The mod also tells Jötunn that every client and the server must have it at a matching version, and Jötunn checks that when a player connects.

• Tested: single player, with version 1.0.0.
• Not tested yet: dedicated servers, hosting for or joining other players, mixed modded and unmodded players, and mismatched versions.
• Other players' view of a climber: the climbing animation is applied only in the climber's own game. It is not sent to other players, and what they see has not been tested.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/com.theconcernedcat.valheim.concernedladders.cfg

Known limitations

• Other players do not see the climbing animation (see Multiplayer).
• Multiplayer, dedicated servers and controllers are untested.
• Uninstalling deletes placed ladders and resets the Climbing skill (see Uninstalling).
• A free-standing wooden stack taller than about five sections falls apart on reload because of vanilla structural support. Brace it, or use copper or iron.
• Grabbing from the water: the swimmer bobs, so it can take a second Interact to aim at the ladder.
• Concerned Foreman's own ladder climbing conflicts. While it is active, Concerned Builder refuses to mount and says so. Turn off Foreman's Ladders/Enabled and restart to use both mods.

Troubleshooting

• No ladders in the build menu. Open the Hammer's Building tab. You may not have discovered the materials yet: Wood for the wooden ladder, Copper or Iron for the metal ones.
• "Move closer to climb". Stand within about 1.5 m of the rungs and look at the ladder.
• Run does not climb faster. You are out of stamina.
• Run + S does not slide. Climbing is below level 20.
• Can't connect to a server. Install the same Concerned Builder version on the server and every client.
• Reporting a bug. Attach BepInEx/LogOutput.log. The mod's startup line shows its exact version.

Uninstalling

Remove every ladder from your world first, while the mod is still installed. Tested 2026-10-27 on a disposable world and character:

• Placed ladders: if the world is loaded without the mod, the game deletes every placed ladder for good and refunds nothing. Reinstalling does not bring them back.
• Climbing skill: a character loaded without the mod loses the skill, and it is back at 0 after reinstalling.
• Everything else: floors and walls built around the ladders, and every other skill, were unaffected.

With the building settings on (the default), placed trapdoors, cellar doors, railings, family ladders and earth blocks are deleted the same way, and crafted Iron Shovels are discarded when their inventory or chest loads. Holes already dug are the game's own terrain edits and stay, with sloping sides once their earth blocks are gone.

To keep everything, deconstruct the ladders with the hammer before removing the mod. Turning off ClimbingEnabled instead keeps both the ladders and the skill.

Credits and license

Made by The Concerned Cat (Eren Cansunar), developed with AI coding assistance. The climbing animation is original, authored in Blender for this mod. The ladders reuse the game's own materials at runtime. No game files are bundled.

MIT License (see LICENSE in this package). Requires BepInExPack Valheim and Jötunn.

Support

• Bugs and suggestions: https://github.com/Weakened/ConcernedCatMods/issues
• Private or sensitive reports: [email protected]