Diamond HUD

A diamond-shaped HUD for playing Valheim with a controller. Four slots around a diamond, everything on the d-pad, plus the shortcuts a gamepad really needs: one button for your light, one for your shield, and spears that reload themselves.

Works on your game only. Your friends don't need it, the server doesn't need it, and it doesn't have to match anyone else's version.

Install

1. Install BepInExPack Valheim (the mod manager grabs it for you).
2. Install this, launch, play. Layout = Auto checks which gamepad layout you use in the game's own Controls settings and puts the shortcuts on buttons that layout leaves free. Switch layout while playing and it keeps up, no restart.

Everything else is optional. The config file is BepInEx/config/viktor.diamondhud.cfg, and changes take effect straight away, so you can tweak the HUD with a config manager while you're standing in game.

The four slots

The diamond is four slots plus an ammo window, and each one pulls from a different place:

The idea is that your hotbar is your fighting kit. What you put on it is what you can reach in a fight, and that's a decision you make before the fight, not during it. So weapons, shields and food only come from the bar.

Tools and ammo are the opposite. A pickaxe is dead weight on the bar and you still want it to hand, and nobody wants to spend a hotbar slot on arrows. Those read your whole bag.

Same for the things on their own shortcuts, which don't take up a slot at all: torches and lanterns, your belt items, and the Dverger circlet all come from the bag. So does the spear that slides in when you throw one - it comes out of your bag and into the hotbar slot the old one left.

Controls

Each direction on the d-pad does two things. A tap cycles that slot, a hold does the one shortcut that belongs to it. Up is the odd one out: no hold, so you can keep it pressed to scroll through your weapons like normal.

What it does

One button for your light. Hold d-pad left and you light up. If you're carrying a Dverger circlet it goes on your head and you keep both hands free. If not, you get a torch or a lantern, and here's the good part: you keep the weapon you were holding. Had a sword and shield? The shield steps aside and comes straight back when you put the torch away. Had a two-hander or a bow? It draws your last one-hander first so the torch has a hand to go in. Hold again and you're back exactly where you started. While the light is on, d-pad left switches between the lights you're carrying.

Shields that remember. Equip a sword next to a shield once and the mod notices. After that, drawing that sword brings its shield along. Guard + X is the quick swap: if your shield is up it comes off, and if you're holding a two-hander or a bow it puts your sword and shield back in one press. Got no shields on the bar? Then it just draws your first weapon, so the button always does something. Taking a shield off with guard + X is also how you tell it to forget that pair.

The pairs are saved in a plain text file for each character, one weapon = shield per line, so you can open it and edit it.

Spears that reload. The weapon slot shows how many of that spear you're carrying in total, not just the one in your hand. Throw it and the next one comes out of your bag, into the slot the old one left, and straight into your hand. You keep throwing instead of stopping to dig around. Different upgrade levels stack together in the count, and the slot shows the level of the one you're actually holding. The Abyssal harpoon is left out, since you don't throw it away.

Bombs sit with the food. A bomb is something you use up, not something you switch to, so it shares that slot. D-pad right scrolls past them along with your meads, and the use button puts one in your hand ready to throw. Bombs never get paired with a shield. If you've got a pile of them in the way, hold d-pad right and you'll skip straight to the first thing you can actually drink.

Your hatchet knows what it's for. Keep a one-handed axe on the hotbar and it's a weapon, so it shows up with your weapons. Leave it in your bag and it's a tool, so it shows up with your tools. Move it and it swaps sides. Nothing to configure.

Fishing. Pull out the rod and your first bait loads on its own. Your baits show up in the ammo window, the same place arrows show up for a bow, so you flick through them with the heavy attack button. Bait takes a moment to equip, unlike arrows, so it goes on the hook once you stop scrolling rather than on every press. Put the rod away and your arrows come back exactly where they were.

Ammo counter. A small window shows up above your off-hand slot whenever you're holding something that uses ammo, with how much you've got left. Arrows, bolts, and bait when you're fishing. Scroll it with the heavy attack button, which no bow, crossbow or rod uses anyway.

Your belt. Press both left shoulder buttons to cycle your utility items. Whatever you're wearing shows in the middle of the diamond, and its icon gets taken out of the status bar, since the diamond is already telling you.

No animation pile-ups. Tapping a direction just moves the highlight - the actual swap happens 300ms after you stop. Scroll past five weapons and you pay for one animation, not five. Holding guard locks your weapon and tool swaps but leaves food and ammo alone, so you can't fumble your kit mid-block.

Immersive mode (on by default). The diamond fades out after three seconds of nothing happening and comes back the moment something does. It won't disappear during a fight. The one exception is a lit torch: that slot stays up, because the durability bar on it is how much light you've got left. F1 turns the whole thing on and off.

Biome colours. The slot frames pick up a colour from wherever you are - green in the meadows, gold in the plains, deep red in the ashlands. Change them per biome or turn it off.

Settings worth knowing

• Layout - Auto by default. Lock it to Classic, Alt1 or Alt2 if you'd rather, or use Custom and put every shortcut where you want it.
• AnchorX / AnchorY / PixelOffsetX / PixelOffsetY - where the diamond sits.
• DPadHoldSeconds - how long a hold takes. Set it to 0 to turn all three holds off and get normal scrolling back on every direction.
• EquipDelay - the pause before what you picked actually gets equipped.
• ImmersiveMode, ImmersiveIdleSeconds, RequireGamepad, BiomeTint.
• ShowTorchWindow - a separate torch window that never fades. Off by default, since the off-hand slot already shows that bar.
• ExtraToolNames, TorchNames, RodNames, CircletNames, ExtraBombNames, SpearExcludeNames - add modded items here if the mod doesn't sort them correctly on its own.

Compatibility

Tested on Valheim 1.0.15 with BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2351.

The mod borrows three bits of the normal HUD instead of drawing its own, so another UI mod that moves the same things will argue with it. Each one has a switch:

• the normal hotbar is hidden while the diamond is up - HideVanillaHotbar
• the status effect icons move next to the forsaken power, smaller, filling left to right - MoveStatusList
• the forsaken power can sit in the middle of the diamond - GuardianPowerInCentre, off by default

It also takes a few controller buttons off the game so the shortcuts can use them: sit, crouch, the automatic weapon-holstering, and the face buttons while you're holding guard. SuppressVanillaSit, SuppressVanillaCrouch, SuppressVanillaAutoHolster and GuardOwnsMacroButtons give them back one at a time.

Building a Custom layout? Set DebugButtons = true and the log will print every button as you press it, so you can see what your controller has spare.

Changelog

1.1.6

• Deprecated. ModernArpgControllerGameplay is the new and better version of this mod. Nothing else changed.

1.1.5

• Spears keep their slot. The mod records which hotbar slot you throw each kind of spear from. When you pick one up off the ground it's moved back to that slot, and anything that ended up there in the meantime is moved out of the way — unless it's an item the diamond cycles, which is left alone. New setting SpearSlotMemory, on by default.
• Picking a spear up can also equip it, if that spear was the last weapon you had in your hand and your hands are still empty. If you drew something else in between, the spear is only moved back to its slot.
• Fixed: the spear restock never equipped the new spear. It refilled the slot after a throw and stopped there. Moving an item inside the inventory replaces it with a copy, and the mod was still holding the original, which the game won't equip because it's no longer in your inventory. It now equips the spear that actually ended up in the slot.
• Fixed: ListRefreshSeconds, the fallback that rebuilds the slot lists after a set time, only applied to three of the five lists. It now applies to all of them. No change at the default of 0.
• Fixed: if another UI mod replaced the vanilla hotbar, the mod searched the HUD for it on every frame indefinitely. The search is now spaced out.

1.1.1

• You can cycle while an equip animation is playing, and change slot while you're at it. Previously the diamond was locked for the whole animation and anything you pressed during it was lost. The new choice goes into the game's own action queue and starts when the current animation ends, so the equips themselves are unchanged. The 350 ms delay still decides which choice gets sent, so scrolling past five weapons is still one swap.
• The highlight now stays on what you picked until the game gets to it, instead of jumping back to your previous weapon for the length of the animation.
• The diamond no longer dims during an equip, since you can act during one.

1.1.0

• Shields are no longer in the d-pad cycle. They're on guard + X: it equips or unequips the shield, and from a two-hander or a bow it draws a one-handed weapon and equips the shield in one press. If you have no shield on the hotbar it draws your first weapon instead.
• The ammo window now doubles as a shield window. It shows your shield when one is equipped, your ammo when a bow, crossbow or fishing rod is out, and is hidden otherwise.
• Spears moved to the left slot, with the bows and crossbows. The weapon slot is melee and magic only.
• Your armour can be re-equipped after a death. The mod records chest, legs, helmet, utility, cape and trinket when you die, and re-equips them in that order when you press both left shoulder buttons with your grave looted. Slots that were empty stay empty. If you're over the weight limit, the Megingjord goes on first.
• New: AutoShieldWeapon (on) — guard + X also draws the one-handed weapon your weapon slot is showing, not just the shield.
• New: RestoreGearAfterDeath (on) and AutoMegingjord (on), for the armour restore above.
• EquipDelay raised from 0.3 to 0.35. 300 ms was close enough to instant to be awkward mid-fight.

1.0.0

First public release.