WildGlow

Client-side collectible effects for Valheim. Each collectible keeps a sparse vertical column alongside motion suited to its material: pollen, spores, berry glints, mineral flecks, hive loops, chest seam dust or orbiting fragments. Includes 58 styles and four detailed mote silhouettes per style.

Version 0.4.4

Lighting changes.

Features

• Mushroom spores now rise through the full column at a consistent upward pace, avoiding a dense slow cluster at the base. Their flecks are smaller and translucent with shorter tails. Dandelion motion is unchanged.
• Every effect retains the doubled-height column. Default density is 0.6: 38 main motes instead of 64, plus fine dust, glints and short trails.
• Daytime uses quieter material emission. Nighttime emphasizes trails, sparkle and soft model emission. Automatic transitions follow the game clock; Appearance.VariantMode can be Auto, Day or Night.
• Ore surface textures, fracture lines and added crystal geometry are removed. The original node appearance is preserved; the working surface motes and sparse columns remain.
• Plants, hives, chests and other world collectibles sample their visible readable model triangles, with physical-surface fallback. Effects follow those model transforms. Large deposits retain their six-sided collider sampling.
• Whole-model glow uses the original shader, albedo, texture tiling and leaf transparency. Ore self-emission is reduced by about 92% and berry bushes by about 94% from 0.4.3; mushroom self-emission is increased 25%. These are shader settings, not measurements of perceived brightness.
• Actual surrounding illumination now accompanies every eligible model. Broad overlapping point lights sit above the visible bounds, with shared intensity and coverage extending beyond the model. Small models request one source, large ones up to four; the nearest groups share a 24-light budget. Buried deposit samples do not inflate lighting bounds. Original materials restore and lights are removed when an effect ends.
• Structures and greydwarf nests are excluded before drop/style classification. Building components, doors, Fuling village parts and bone rib props receive no WildGlow effects. World chests and collectible hives remain eligible under their existing ownership rules. All mote movement and artwork are unchanged from 0.4.3.
• Dropped ItemDrop objects are always excluded, including with an old IncludeLooseItems = true configuration. Vanilla dropped-item effects remain.
• Close ordinary pickups share an effect within a 2.5 m maximum group diameter. Mixed groups use the most common style. Deposits retain an independent effect covering their whole node, so nearby plants cannot shift their origin.
• Beech, pine and fir trees, saplings, small/shrub variants and generic shrubs are excluded, along with flint, Surtling cores, common wood/stone and wildlife. Loose Fir cones remain collectible. Player-built objects stay excluded by default.

The labels magic and treasure are artistic behavior choices, not official rarity tiers or drop-rate estimates. Magic covers black/molten/frost cores and Dyrnwyn fragments. Treasure covers amber, ruby, crystal and dragon eggs. Ore deposits keep geological effects, and Surtling cores remain excluded. All categories keep columns.

Installation

Install WildGlow through r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager in your Valheim profile. BepInExPack_Valheim is required. Start the game once to generate the configuration.

For a local build, use Import local mod and select Local-WildGlow-0.4.4.zip. The local package uses Local as its author label. Copying a DLL directly into the game folder does not create an entry in the manager. Manual installation is also supported: extract the included BepInEx directory into Valheim's installation directory.

Use one installation method per launch setup. Avoid an extra manual WildGlow DLL in a profile that already contains the managed copy.

Settings and previews

BepInEx creates BepInEx/config/local.valheim.wildglow.cfg. Existing config values remain in effect on upgrade. For an existing config, set Appearance.Density = 0.6 and Appearance.VariantMode = Auto to use the new default look; preserve your other preferences. The package intentionally does not overwrite your config.

Other defaults: Height = 2, Speed = 0.9, Dust = 1, TrailLength = 2, Twist = 1.45, AreaGlow = 1.2. Appearance.AreaGlow controls model emission globally; zero restores the original materials. Lighting.SpillIntensity = 0.6 controls actual surrounding light, and Lighting.SpillRange = 3 adds reach beyond model coverage. Performance.MaxSpillLights = 24 caps total sources; zero disables spill. Mote Brightness is independent of lighting. Legacy LightRange, LightIntensity and MaxAreaLights values are ignored.

Each [Style.<id>] has SurfaceGlow and LightSpill controls. Defaults for SurfaceGlow: mushrooms 1.25, berry bushes 0.065, geological styles 0.085, other styles/fallback 0.15. LightSpill = 1 is the multiplier for that style. These work alongside the existing Enabled switch; no effect is shown when disabled. For mixed pickup groups, surrounding light uses the group's majority style, while surface emission follows each member's style.

With the game console enabled, run wildglow_preview carrot, wildglow_preview mushroom, wildglow_preview honey, wildglow_preview copper or wildglow_preview blackcore. Each creates a local demonstration for 30 seconds. Console previews have no real collectible mesh; ore surface attachments must be checked on an actual deposit. wildglow_preview stop clears the demonstration. wildglow_reload reloads configuration. wildglow_status reports the loaded version, nearby model anchors, emissive material counts and active spill lights to the console and BepInEx log.

Validation and limitations

Compiled against the locally installed Valheim/Unity/BepInEx assemblies. Build, binary linkage, coverage geometry and material/light lifecycle checks pass. Tests cover outside-model source placement, whole-bounds reach, shared brightness, budgets and cleanup. They do not simulate Unity rendering. Actual brightness, hotspot visibility and performance need an in-game playtest.

The light spill approximates a diffuse source with broad, shadowless real lights; it is not true emissive-mesh global illumination. It can light nearby grass, terrain and characters, but may also spill through nearby thin walls. The nearest-group budget can leave more distant models with motes and self-glow only.

Local asset inspection confirmed that Valheim's vegetation and static-rock shaders expose _EmissiveTex and _EmissionColor. The plugin also supports standard _EmissionMap materials. Unsupported custom shaders retain their original appearance. Readable static meshes provide mote attachments, with physical-surface fallback. Shader-only foliage movement is preserved for the model's emission; particle anchors follow the underlying mesh/transforms. No save, loot, networking or original game textures are modified. Remove the package through the manager to disable it in that profile.

Individual effect switches

In BepInEx/config/local.valheim.wildglow.cfg, set Enabled = false within the desired [Style.copper], [Style.mushroom], [Style.honey], or other style section. All 58 switches default to true and are listed in WildGlow-effects.cfg. [Style.fallback] controls unlisted/modded collectibles. Reload using wildglow_reload, or edit while Valheim is closed. The preview also exports your on/off selections.

Feedback and support

Join Vassteels workshop for bug reports, suggestions, config help and screenshots. Include your mod version, game version and steps to reproduce when reporting a problem.

Changelog

0.4.12

• Refresh the README with current features, setup and controls.

0.4.11

• Restore all old groups before assigning model glow after a merge/split, preventing nested temporary materials and destroyed-material references.
• Restore newly rebuilt mining renderers during cleanup and release unused emission materials.
• Release cached particle materials and textures when applying appearance changes.

0.4.10

• Updated README testing-status wording.

0.4.9

• Shortened the README and gave the gull a pitch specific to this mod.

0.4.8

• Rewrote the README in the voice of a Viking gull selling a well-used longship. Installation, controls and testing status remain documented.

0.4.7

• Attach Valharvest apple-tree particles and surface glow to the nine apples, with light spill originating among the fruit.
• Keep fruit-tree effects separate from nearby plants and remove them when harvested; restore them on regrowth.
• Handle the installed non-readable apple mesh without falling back to trunk colliders.

0.4.6

• New Viking gull icon artwork.
• Shorter README with GitHub and Discord links.

0.4.5

Lighting changes.

0.4.4

Lighting changes.

0.4.3

• Fixed mushroom spores bunching below a faster column: both now share full-height upward motion. Dandelion movement is unchanged.
• Smaller translucent spore flecks, shorter tails and no hard spore glints.
• Replaced all local point lights and glow patches with whole-model material emission using original texture colors and tiling.
• Preserved original shaders, foliage alpha clipping, mesh geometry and material-slot identity; original materials restore when the effect ends.
• Excluded beech/pine/fir seedlings, small/dead/shrub variants, generic shrubs and tree/log components.
• Retired LightRange, LightIntensity and MaxAreaLights controls; AreaGlow now controls model emission.

0.4.2

• Removed ore surface textures, fracture lines and added crystal geometry.
• Preserved working ore mote attachment and sparse vertical columns.
• Distributed soft glow and real illumination over model surfaces, with up to four lights per large model and a strict global light budget.
• Extended attachments to readable world-collectible meshes, with physical-surface fallback.
• Excluded all dropped ItemDrop objects even when a legacy config enables loose items.
• Updated wildglow_status to report model anchors and active surface lights.

0.4.1

• Ore fracture/inclusion texture covers the actual intact and mined 3D meshes, following live mesh rebuilds.
• Surface sampling covers all six sides; crystal facets, flecks and trails follow local surface normals.
• Vertical columns start on upper surfaces, preserving a sparse beacon above the deposit.
• Mined or hidden mesh parts lose their overlay; effect disabling removes all surface layers.
• Added wildglow_status diagnostics for loaded version and nearby ore coverage.
• Added Vassteels workshop feedback invite to package metadata and documentation.

0.4.0

• Individual Enabled switches for all 58 effect styles, including fallback items; disabled items are excluded before grouping.
• Self-contained preview entry points with independent on/off controls and config export.
• Ten motion families alongside retained vertical columns; default main mote count reduced from 64 to 38.
• Automatic day/night presentation and a manual comparison override.
• Collider-attached ore effects, fracture veins and crystal facets spread over exposed deposits.
• Independent deposit grouping and Fir Tree exclusions.
• Thunderstore-format package, dependency manifest and 256x256 icon for r2modman local imports.

0.3.0

• Doubled height, wider real lights, proximity grouping and wildlife filtering.

0.2.1

• Tuned trails/twist/glow and removed flint and Surtling core effects.