Concerned Ladders

Vertical ladders for compact Valheim builds. Three 2 m hammer pieces - Vertical Wood Ladder, Vertical Copper Ladder and Vertical Iron Ladder - that stack into one continuous climb, 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.

Built and tested against Valheim 1.0.20 with BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2351 and Jötunn 2.30.2.

In action

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 three 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 Ladders 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.

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.
• 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 Ladders 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 Ladders 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.

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]

Changelog

1.0.0

First public release.

• Vertical Wood, Copper and Iron Ladders: 2 m hammer pieces in the Building tab that stack into one continuous climb, with Auto, Bottom, Top, Left side and Right side snapping onto floors, walls and other ladders.
• An original climbing animation: each hand and foot takes its own rung going up and coming down.
• Get on from the ground, from a floor above, in midair, or out of the water. Step off at the top, onto a floor beside the ladder partway up, or at the bottom. Jump off, let go, or slide down.
• Climbing skill: earned per metre climbed, makes fast climbing and sliding cheaper, and unlocks the slide at level 20.
• Fixed: a climber who grabbed the ladder from the water showed the swimming pose under the climbing arms and legs. The game's swimming and falling animation states are now cleared while on the ladder.
• Multiplayer, dedicated servers and controllers are not tested yet. See the README for what uninstalling does to placed ladders and the skill.

The entries below are internal development candidates. None of them was published.

0.2.7

Internal owner playtest candidate. Not a release.

• Climbing posture (owner-approved): the climber stands off the ladder with the hips and chest square to it, steps two rungs at a time with the support leg nearly straight, and the knees stay in line instead of folding to the chest or falling outward.
• Getting on and off is quick and clean (owner decision): mounting from the ground, catching in midair, stepping off at the top, onto an intermediate floor or at the bottom, and getting on from a floor above all take about a quarter to half a second, with the limbs simply taking or leaving the rungs.
• No squat near the top: climbing stops (or steps off onto a floor) about 1.3 m below the top, with both hands on the top rungs; getting on from a floor above ends in the same normal climbing stance.
• Grab a ladder while swimming, like climbing aboard a boat: Interact pulls you up out of the water onto the rungs.
• Renamed to Vertical Wood Ladder, Vertical Copper Ladder and Vertical Iron Ladder so they no longer share a name with the game's own Wood ladder. Placed ladders are unaffected.
• Mounting from a floor no longer refuses a step or two back from the edge; a jump that brushes a rung is still caught as a midair grab; top landings are found along a floor's edge, and small floors beside the ladder are found for the intermediate exit.
• Snapping (owner revision): Cycle Snap now offers Auto, Bottom, Top, Left side and Right side. Left side and Right side line the ladder's left or right rail up with the left or right corner of the floor edge or wall you aim at (left and right as you face the ladder's climbing side), standing on a wall's bottom edge or hanging below a floor edge like Auto. Auto, Top and Bottom still centre the ladder. Every mode sits the rails against the real face of the wall or floor edge, including wood walls whose snap points lie inside the wall.
• Rotate while snapped: the hammer's rotation now turns a ladder snapped to a floor or wall about the chosen anchor (the middle, or the left or right corner), up to 45 degrees either way, and never into the surface. Square to the building it faces straight out, as before. A turned section does not join the climbing run of the ladder below it. Ladders stacked on ladders always line up with the column.
• Copper and Iron Ladders have new artwork: slim metal rails and round rungs. Copper has rounded tube rails and a warmer colour; iron has sharp flat-bar rails and a cooler colour. The Wood Ladder is unchanged. Height, rung spacing, recipes, durability and placed ladders are unchanged.

0.2.6

Internal owner test candidate. Not a release.

• Climbing is slower and more natural (owner decision): 0.9 m/s, 1.2 m/s with Run (were 1.8 and 2.43). Sliding, stamina and the Climbing skill are unchanged.
• New climbing animation authored in Blender: hands and feet move one at a time on their own timing (a hand reaches, the opposite foot recovers knee first, then the other pair), knees point into the ladder, and the body rises more slowly while a foot comes up. Grabbing the ladder sets hands and feet in turn; a midair catch grabs with the hands first.
• Snapping redone (owner decision): Cycle Snap offers Auto, Bottom and Top. Aimed at a floor, the ladder centres on the floor edge nearest your aim, flush against it, hanging below so you climb up onto the floor (Auto, Top; Auto stands it on the edge when there is no room below) or standing on the edge (Bottom). Aimed at a wall, it centres on the wall face toward you, standing on the wall's bottom edge (Auto, Bottom) or hanging from its top edge (Top). Aimed at a ladder, it extends that column. Any hammer rotation.
• The two wall-corner snap modes are removed.

0.2.5

Internal owner test candidate. Not a release.

• Snapping: aim at a ladder to extend it; the new section lines up as one straight column above (Bottom) or below (Top), and Auto picks the nearer end without ever burying a section in the ground. A wall corner centres the ladder on a 2 m wall at the wall's own angle, facing you. Corner modes aimed at a ladder, and ends beyond your building reach, are refused (red ghost) instead of showing a displaced ghost. All the game's own placement checks still apply to the final position.
• New climbing animation: right hand with right foot, then left with left, every hand and foot on a real rung. Limbs cycle half as fast as 0.2.3 at the same climbing speed (a four-rung stride). Stopping settles every limb on the nearest rung; climbing down retraces the motion. Near a flush top the hands take the rails and the step onto the floor uses the game's own walk.
• With the hammer out only your right arm swings; the body, legs and left hand keep holding the ladder.
• Fixed: the game's own foot placement pulled the climber's feet to the ground under the ladder.

0.2.4

Internal development builds for in-game checks (several, one version number). Superseded by 0.2.5.

0.2.3

Internal animation checkpoint, replacing 0.2.2 before any gameplay use.

• Fixed: 0.2.2 let go of every ladder the moment you mounted. It called a game method that is not accessible at runtime (found in game).

0.2.2

Internal animation checkpoint for the owner test lane. Not a release.

• New original climbing animation: hands and feet follow the rungs with your actual climbing, replacing the 0.2.x limb pose. It is a first prototype and still being fitted.
• Crouch while climbing drops straight off the ladder, with no hop and no stamina cost. Jump still hops off.
• You can mount, climb and build with the hammer equipped. While the hammer is out your right arm uses the game's own hammer animation; the rest of the body stays on the ladder.
• Building a new ladder section above you while climbing extends the climb without getting off. Removing the section you are holding lets you fall normally.

0.2.1

• Pressing Use partway up now steps off onto a landing beside the ladder. In 0.2.0 the safe-dismount search looked only 0.75 m to the side, where a standing footprint still overlapped the rails, so a real side landing was refused.

0.2.0

Owner-test candidate implementing the owner revision of 25 October 2026.

• Grab from about 1.5 m, measured from the chest to the rungs (or, standing on a floor at the top, the step onto the rails); the prompt says "Move closer" when a press would be out of reach.
• Climb either face; the route stays on the face you approached. Grab while rising or falling; a refused grab leaves the fall untouched.
• Jump hops off upward and in the steered direction with the game's own jump and stamina; without stamina it simply lets go. Re-grabbing needs 0.4 s and a new press.
• Run climbs at 2.43 m/s for stamina; native Climbing skill; slide at level 20.
• Stepping onto floors at the top now also works to either side and around a lip.
• Refusals name the real reason; only another building piece is blamed as one.
• Wood Ladder, Copper Ladder and Iron Ladder names; readable Cycle Snap labels.
• Custom procedural climbing animation on the native rig.

0.1.1

• Owner-test candidate built against Valheim 1.0.20, BepInExPack 5.4.2351 and Jotunn 2.30.2; implements the 1.0.20 hover interface.
• Mounting works from flat ground, slopes, off-centre approaches and uneven ground; the bottom, top and side-landing exits complete and leave the player standing.
• Use while climbing asks for a safe dismount wherever the player is looking; with no safe landing the player stays on the ladder with a message.
• Wall corner snaps sit against the wall face instead of inside it.
• A push or other displacement the ladder did not make is released without overwriting that motion or the fall it started.
• An icon that fails to render keeps the fallback icon and is reported; the cloned pieces hold no references into the removed donor model.
• Development status: single-player only. Multiplayer, dedicated server and controller play are not yet verified.

0.1.0

• Initial independent Concerned Ladders source candidate.
• Original runtime-built vertical wood, copper and iron pieces, 2 m snaps and native building resource requirements.
• Explicit local-owner climbing with collision-aware movement and safe release policies; normal locomotion animation fallback.
• Dependency-only test-profile import and narrowly scoped deployment tooling.
• Development status: licensed build, single-player, controller, multiplayer, durability visuals and save/reload acceptance remain unverified.