TotemOfSongs: Home playlist and soundtrack control

Build a Totem of Songs: a totem that plays your favourite songs from the game in your base, by day, by night or both. Call a raven to make it your home totem, unlock new songs as you explore and progress, and remix the rest of Valheim's soundtrack biome by biome: the full vanilla music, complete silence, or something in between.

• A stereo for your base. Your home totem plays the track you pick, all day, by day, by night, or with a separate night track. More totems give your workshop, farm or camp their own music.
• Call a raven home. The raven sits on your home totem. Call it to another totem to make that one your home.
• Dozens of songs to unlock. Biome themes, places, traders, raids and bosses unlock as you explore, craft and defeat bosses.
• You set the range. A volume slider decides how far each totem plays, from 4 to 30 metres.
• Shared with your friends. The music lives in the totem, so everyone at your base who has the mod hears the same playlist.
• Your soundtrack, biome by biome. Vanilla, Silent, Silent night, Silent day or Dramatic for each biome, plus Creepy mix in the Mistlands. The first time you enter a world, the mod asks which soundtrack you want.
• Combat music when it counts. A track from the game's soundtrack starts when a real fight starts and fades out when it ends. Raids and Hildir's minibosses get their own.
• Client-side. It doesn't need to be on the server, and players without it hear the game as usual.

Why I made this

After chopping wood at night in the Meadows, I realized I like playing without the soundtrack: it lets me hear all the ambient sounds and foley. So I made a little mod to mute the soundtrack, with a few exceptions. Many features later, it became a fully fledged tool to control your soundtrack and even set up your own home playlist, so I added a few extra features to make it accessible to everyone.

Quick start

1. Install the mod and enter a world. A window asks you to select your soundtrack. Pick one, or press Esc to keep Remixed, the author's mix.
2. Once you have a surtling core, build a Totem of Songs indoors, near your bed. It's in the same tab of the hammer as the ward, and needs a workbench nearby. A raven lands on it: this is your home totem.
3. Hold Use on the totem to open the music menu. On the right, choose when it plays, the track, and its volume.
4. Tap Use on the totem to turn it on or off.
5. Want other music in the workshop? Build a second totem there.
6. Play as usual. When enough enemies are on you, combat music starts.

That's all you need. The rest of this page explains each part in detail.

Controls

The totem

The music menu

While the menu is open your character stands still, and the track you pick starts playing so you can hear it.

The Totem of Songs

The totem is a stereo you build. While it's on, everyone around it who has the mod hears the music you set on it, instead of the game's music. You can have one at home and more around your base.

Building one

• Cost: 10 stone, 1 surtling core, 1 greydwarf eye. It's in the ward's tab of the hammer and needs a workbench nearby.
• Who can change it: anyone can turn a standard totem on or off and change its music. A home totem only listens to the players who live there: their own bed within 30 metres of it. Everyone else sees its settings greyed out, and can still change their own soundtrack from it.
• Its light takes the colour of the biome of the track that's playing: green for the Meadows, blue for the Black Forest, red for the Swamp, and so on. Its sparks rise as music notes. When it's on but has nothing to play, like a Day only totem at night, its light dims and the notes stop.

Your home totem

The first totem you build indoors, within 30 metres of your own bed, becomes your home totem. A raven lands on top while it's on, and the hover text says Home Totem of Songs. A home has only one.

Build it outside, or away from your bed, and it's a standard totem instead.

You can move the raven later:

• Send away: hold Use on the raven. It flies off and the totem becomes a standard one.
• Call raven: hold Use on the top of a standard totem's head. It becomes your home totem and turns on. You need to be indoors, near your own bed, or you get This place is not cozy enough. If another totem of the same home has the raven, the raven flies over and that totem becomes a standard one.

More totems around your base

Every other totem is a standard totem: one for the workshop, one for the farm, one for the camp down the road.

Each totem has a volume: a slider under the track list, from 4 to 30 metres. A new totem starts at 15. What it means depends on the totem:

So walk into the workshop and you hear the workshop's totem; step back near the home totem and its music takes over.

Two more rules keep things tidy:

• No other totem inside the home totem's volume. The hammer shows a new totem in red there.
• Standard totems don't play over each other. Turning one on, building one, or turning its volume up turns off the other standard totems it reaches.

Totems built before version 1.2.0 keep their old 30 metre range. The one near a bed becomes your home totem.

Your playlist

Plays decides when the totem plays:

Below it is the track list:

• Home - A place to enjoy, the game's own home theme, at the top.
• Automatic plays the theme of the biome you're in, in every biome.
• Then every track you've unlocked, grouped by biome. The description under the list gives each track's official title and where it plays in the game.

The right column of the menu is titled with the name of the nearest house pin on your map on the home totem, and Totem of Songs on the others.

Unlocking tracks

Each track unlocks with something you do in the game: entering its biome, finding an item from its place, learning a recipe, returning one of Hildir's chests, defeating its boss, or getting an item its trader sells. Biome themes unlock as soon as you enter the biome. A biome you've never entered shows its icon as a black silhouette.

A totem plays its tracks for everyone, even for friends who haven't unlocked them yet.

No totem yet?

Your home still gets music where the game plays its home theme: while you're resting in a shelter in your base. With LocationIntro installed, it plays anywhere in your home area. What plays follows the biome's mode (see Your soundtrack, below):

In the Mistlands (HomeAllDayBiomes) the time of day never stops it: Silent night, Silent day and Dramatic play the home theme day and night. Dramatic still goes quiet during storms.

A totem that is switched off keeps its area quiet. To turn this off, set HomeWithoutTotem = false in the config file.

Your soundtrack

The left column of the menu, Soundtrack, is yours: it applies wherever you go, and only you hear it. Each biome has a mode:

A few things to know:

• The Ashlands have no Dramatic. Their weather is always hostile, so Dramatic would be the same as Silent.
• Sailing music follows the Ocean's mode, wherever you sail. The music for sailing to the Ashlands always plays.
• Dungeons have no day, night or weather. In Silent and Creepy mix their music plays only during fights, and boss music always plays.
• No hard cuts. When the game's music has to stop at dusk, in a storm or when a fight starts, it fades out over two seconds.

Select your soundtrack

The window that opens the first time you enter a world sets every biome at once:

Esc or B closes the window and keeps your current settings. You can change any biome later from a Totem of Songs. To see the window again, set AskSoundtrack = true in the config file.

Combat music

Combat music plays in every mode, Vanilla included. It starts when one of these is on you:

• enough enemies for the biome you're in: 6 in the Black Forest, 5 in the Swamp, 4 in the Mountains, 6 in the Plains, 4 in the Mistlands, 8 in the Ashlands, 4 in the Deep North, 3 everywhere else
• one huge enemy: bears, trolls, abominations, stone golems, lox, fuling berserkers, gjall, morgen, fallen valkyries, serpents and bonemaw serpents

Small and half-passive creatures never count: leeches, bats, deathsquitos, seeker broods, charred twitchers, voltures and skugs. In the Meadows a fight starts combat music only against a huge enemy or during a raid.

Some huge enemies stop counting on their own once the boss of their biome is down. They still count as normal enemies:

What plays: the combat tracks of the biome you're in, which come up twice as often until you defeat its boss; the tracks of every biome whose boss you've defeated, anywhere; the music of Hildir's dungeons once you've returned their chests; and Eikthyr's battle theme once he's down.

In dungeons, combat music starts with 3 enemies, or with one strong enemy: cultists, seeker soldiers or morgen. Dungeons with a track of their own play it. Fighting one of Hildir's minibosses plays the original music of their dungeon, and switches to it if the miniboss joins a fight already going.

Combat music fades out six seconds after nothing is attacking you. You can turn it off in the menu.

Raid remix

With Raid remix on, raids play this mod's combat music. Hildir's raids play her quest track, Mistlands raids play Kneel to The Seeker Queen (ambient), and the Jotun Invasion plays its own track. Every other raid plays a combat track.

With Raid remix off, raids play the game's raid music, and no combat music starts while a raid is on.

Settings

In the game

Hold Use on a Totem of Songs. The right column holds the totem's music. The left column holds your soundtrack: each biome's mode, combat music and Raid remix.

Config file

Everything else is in BepInEx/config/vktr.totemofsongs.cfg, created on the first launch. The settings you're most likely to look for:

A modded creature should start combat music? Add its prefab name to HugeEnemies. One should never count? Add it to ExcludedEnemies.

Compatibility

• LocationIntro: your home totem plays in your whole home area, not just within its volume, and home music without a totem plays there too.
• Other music mods that replace or mute the game's music can clash with this one, since both act on the same music.
• Players without the mod hear the game's music as usual. To them a Totem of Songs looks like a ward that is switched off.

Good to know

• Client-side only. It doesn't need to be on the server, your friends don't need it, and versions don't have to match. Friends who have it hear your home's music.
• Uninstalling turns your totems into plain wards, switched off. Nothing else is left in your world.
• All the music is the game's own. The mod adds no audio files, and its music follows the game's music volume.
• The menu is in English. Track titles are the official ones from the game's soundtrack.

Technical details

Tested on Valheim 1.0.15 with BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2351.

• The mod mutes the game's own music player and plays its tracks on a separate audio source, on the game's music channel.
• A Totem of Songs is saved in the world as a ward with a mark. With the mod, marked wards load as totems and protect nothing. Without it, they load as wards, switched off.
• The totem's settings are saved on the totem itself and shared with other players through the game's own networking. Your soundtrack settings stay in your config file.

Installation

With r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager: click Install.

Manually: install BepInExPack Valheim, then put TotemOfSongs.dll in BepInEx/plugins.