🗺️ Better Continents

"The Allfather did not carve the Tenth Realm in a single stroke. With hammer and chisel, the jagged peaks were raised, deep fjords torn open, and ancient oceans poured into the abyss. Take up the chisel, Viking, and shape the continents to your will."

Better Continents is a total procedural and bitmap overhaul of Valheim's world generation. It gives world builders, server administrators, and cartographers complete control over terrain generation—allowing you to replace or augment vanilla landmasses with custom heightmaps, bespoke biome layouts, precision spawn placements, and intricate multi-layered noise.

Whether you want to import a real-world map of Earth, recreate Middle-earth, sculpt realistic mountain ranges, or carve an unforgiving archipelago for a hardcore survival campaign, Better Continents makes it possible.

⬆️ Updating from 0.9.x? Worlds you already have keep generating as they did under 0.9.4; only worlds made with 0.10 get the new behaviour. What changes and what does not.

🔗 Looking for seamless travel across your custom continents? Check out TortalPortal on Hexium!

⬆️ Upgrading from 0.9: existing worlds and new worlds

An existing world keeps generating its terrain, biomes and locations as it did under 0.9.4, though not through a separate "0.9.4 mode": every world stores a settings version in its BetterContinents file, 0.10 reads it, and each new-world behaviour in the table below switches on only for version 12, which is what 0.10 gives a world it creates. A world made by 0.9.x is version 11, so it follows the 0.9.4 rules and is saved as 0.9.4 saved it. A few changes reach every world, old or new, and are marked "Applies too": memory use, water depth, the edge of the world, zone regeneration after bc changes and the config do not change what a world's settings generate, and the vegetation twin guard changes only the vegetation of zones that are not generated yet.

In the table, a "world made with 0.10" is a version 12 world. Not every world made in 0.10 is one: a world made from a preset of version 11 or older (the four presets that ship with the mod are version 7 files, and presets saved by 0.9.x are version 11), from an export of a world resized under 0.9.x or made under Expand World Size at another size, or with Override version 11 is version 11, and so belongs in the 0.9.x column (see Which version is my world?).

Most rows matter only when you use the feature. At the default World Size 10000 and Edge Size 500, with no Expand World Data, no Heightmap Alpha, Biome precision of 5 or less and no location map, a version 12 world generates the same as a version 11 one.

Which version is my world?

• Read it. bc info (console, F5; bc needs devcommands and runs only on the host) prints Version 11 or Version 12 first; on a joined player's machine, with the Server Devcommands mod, it shows the settings the server sent. The BepInEx log (BepInEx/LogOutput.log) prints the settings, whose first line is that Version line, when a world loads (single player, the host or a dedicated server), when a new world is created, on the server each time it sends the settings to a joining player who has no cached copy, and on a joining player's machine when the server's settings arrive (downloaded or from its cache). A save prints nothing there: the game saves on a background thread whose log lines never reach the file, though the world's BetterContinents file is still written at every save. A default-size version 12 world prints no "maps span" line, so the Version line is the one to read. The Esc-menu hint shows only the mod version and ENABLED or DISABLED. A world with no BetterContinents file in its folder is vanilla and has no version. A world from a much older Better Continents shows a number below 11 until it is loaded again after its first save (a save writes 11 but never changes the number the loaded world holds), as under 0.9.x.
• From Config (no export folder): a new world is version 12, unless Override version says otherwise (below).
• A preset file: the world gets the preset's version, saved as at least 11 (while Override version is set, every world is saved in that version instead: see below). A preset saved by 0.9.x makes version 11; one saved by 0.10 from a version 12 world (bc savepreset), or made by bc_import or an export, makes version 12 (11 by the export rule below). The four presets that ship with the mod (Continents, Pangaea, Swirls, Vanillaish) are old version 7 files, so a world made from one is version 11. They hold no map files and vanilla's size, where the two versions generate alike.
• A Directory ([00 BetterContinents.Debug]):
  • A folder with an export.cfg (a world export), and likewise bc_import and an export's own preset, gives version 12 when its maps span what its own World Size + Edge Size give (an export of a version 12 world, or of a vanilla-size 0.9.x world), and otherwise version 11 (an export of a resized 0.9.x world, or one made under Expand World Size at another size). A version 11 world's maps span 21,000 m, as a resized 0.9.x world's did, unless Expand World Size is installed, whose size then spans them: an export made under Expand World Size is rebuilt as it was only with Expand World Size installed at that size.
  • A folder of maps you made yourself, with no export.cfg, makes a new world, version 12. The same files give a slightly different world than 0.9.4 made from them (exact pins, start before pins, the alpha blend, finer precision, Expand World Data's rules); set Override version to 11 before you create the world to get the 0.9.4 result.
• Override version ([00 BetterContinents.Debug], empty by default, for testing): a whole number of 11 or more is the version a From Config world gets. It is also the version every world is saved in while it is set, one made from a preset too (only the preset file that bc_import or an export builds ignores it), and the one a host sends to joining players: 11 re-saves a version 12 world as 11, which loses what 12 added from its next load, and 12 re-stamps a version 11 world, so new zones follow the 0.10 rules and seams are likely where they meet old ones. A number below 11 writes the old fixed layout and drops data. Leave it empty, on a server above all.
• No upgrade from 11 to 12. Nothing in 0.10 converts an existing world; only Override version re-stamps one at a save, which is not recommended.

Mixing versions

• Multiplayer. On a world that uses Better Continents, the server and every player must run exactly the same version of the mod, whatever the world's settings version: a 0.9.x player cannot join a 0.10 server and a 0.10 player cannot join a 0.9.x server, and two different 0.10 releases refuse each other too. A world without Better Continents has no check. Players play the settings version the server sends, whatever their own config says. Update the server and every player together; a player's cached copy of a version 11 world stays valid, so it is not downloaded again.
• A version 12 world opened in 0.9.x is not supported: copy the world folder first. 0.9.x reads it as version 11 (maps spanning 21,000 m whatever World Size says, no layout, the heightmap's alpha read as 8 bits, and so on), so zones generated from then on follow the 0.9.x rules: a world of non-default size can show seams, and the pins already in the world stay. Its next save writes the world as version 11, and from then on 0.10 treats it as made by 0.9.x. A world made with Compact Maps cannot be read at all: 0.9.x switches Better Continents off for it, generates vanilla terrain that stays in the world, and leaves the file alone. A preset saved by 0.10 loads in 0.9.x as a version 11 world (a Compact Maps one makes a world without Better Continents).
• A 0.9.x world in 0.10 and back. With Override version empty, 0.10 writes a version 11 world's file exactly as 0.9.4 does, so the world opens in 0.9.x as before. BetterContinents.old beside the file holds only the save before the last: back up worlds_local/<World> before changing versions.

Your BetterContinents.cfg

0.10 reads your existing file as it is: every key keeps its name and section (two are gone, below) and the new keys appear in it. Except where noted, a setting is a default for worlds you create afterwards; an existing world uses what it stored.

• [09 BetterContinents.Export] Default Heightmap Amount of 2 (0.9's default) is set to 1 once, with a line in the log; set it back and it stays. The hidden Config Version in [07 BetterContinents.Misc] records the step.
• Fix Water Color and Ocean Channels ([01 BetterContinents.Global]) are gone, with the bc g fixwatercolor command: the first never did anything and the second matters only to settings formats 1 to 6. A world that saved them still loads them.
• New in [07 BetterContinents.Misc]: Compact Maps (off) and Map Memory (512 MB).
• Debug Reset Command ([00 BetterContinents.Debug]) is empty by default, because Better Continents regenerates the zones itself; the old default zones_reset start is set to empty once.
• Spawnmap File is only the creature spawn map: it is no longer moved into Locationmap File, and no spawnmap.png is renamed to locationmap.png.
• A new file selects the preset Disabled; an existing Vanilla stays and still makes a world without Better Continents, with an error in the log.
• Ranges: Start Position X and Y take -1,000,000 to 1,000,000 m (the config stopped at 10,500); Biome precision takes 0 to 31 (a version 11 world uses at most 5).
• Override version is read at every save, so editing it changes the next autosave of a loaded world.

⚔️ Core Features

Every map and setting below has its own chapter in BetterContinents-Guide.pdf, the Guide that ships in the Hexium package (see Documentation & Guides); the chapter is named in brackets.

Where a feature below says new worlds or a world made since 0.10, it means a settings version 12 world; the worlds you already have keep generating as under 0.9.4. Upgrading from 0.9 says which worlds are which and which changes reach every world.

🏔️ Precision Heightmap Layers

Shape mountains, cliffs, and ocean trenches using standard grayscale or RGB image files.

• 🌐 Base Heightmap: Sets the continental foundation and sea level contours (Guide: Heightmap). Use a 16-bit grayscale PNG for smooth slopes. Heightmap Amount (1 by default, Better Continents' default everywhere) says how tall white is: a pixel gives (pixel / 65535 * Amount - 0.15 + Lerp(1, -1, Sea Level Adjustment)) * 200 metres on the game's height scale, where the sea is at 30 m. At Sea Level Adjustment 0.5, Amount 1 spans -30 m to 170 m on that scale (60 m below the water to 140 m above it) and clips higher ground, and Amount 2 spans -30 m to 370 m (60 m below to 340 m above), which keeps every vanilla mountain.
• 🔆 Heightmap Alpha (new worlds, new in 0.10): with it on, a new world reads a 16-bit grayscale heightmap with a 16-bit alpha, and the alpha blends the heightmap with the game's own terrain: where a pixel is transparent, the game's terrain shows. A version 11 world keeps reading the heightmap at 8 bits with it on and ignores the alpha, as it always did; with it off every world reads 16-bit grayscale.
• 🌊 Detail Heightmap (legacy): Fine-grained detail for worlds made by old versions of Better Continents (Guide: Flatmap). A new world gets its fine procedural detail from height layers instead.
• ⛰️ Rough Heightmap: Where it is white the biomes' own rough ground shows through the heightmap, and where it is black the heightmap stays smooth; used with Heightmap Override All off (Guide: Roughmap).
• 🎛️ Blend Modes: Supports customizable blending operations including Add, Multiply, Maximum, Minimum, and Masked blending.

🌿 Handcrafted Biome Layouts

Forget vanilla's rigid concentric circles. Draw your world's biomes by painting a simple image map (Guide: Biome map):

• 🎨 Assign specific color keys to Meadows, Black Forest, Swamp, Mountain, Plains, Mistlands, Ashlands, and Deep North.
• 🏝️ Paint custom islands dedicated entirely to specific biomes, or craft seamless, realistic climate transitions.
• 🎯 Biome precision (working again in 0.9.0): set Biome precision from 1 to 5 and the ground follows your biome borders inside every 64 m terrain zone, on a grid of up to 6 x 6 cells (11 m), instead of only at the zone's corners. A version 12 world goes on up to 31, a grid of 32 x 32 cells of 2 m. Ground textures, grass, vegetation and spawn points follow; heights do not change. 0 is vanilla.
• 🧬 Expand World Data biomes (working again in 0.9.3): name the biomes Expand World Data adds in the biome map's legend (biomemap.txt) as its expand_biomes.yaml does, for example DeadWastes: 8B4513. Give each one a terrain in the yaml (without one Expand World Data leaves its ground flat under water). Install Expand World Data wherever the world is played, with the same yaml, and add new biomes at its end: it numbers them in that order, and the world stores the number.
• 🏷️ Expand World Data on new worlds (new in 0.10): its altitude rules (a biome's or territory's altitude multiplier and delta, water depth, height limits and lava dip) apply over the heightmap's heights, as they do over the game's own. With a biome map and no heat map (or Heatmap Scale 0), its lava: true biomes are hot where the biome map puts them; a heat map decides by heat. The terrain map's legend (terrainmap.txt) can name one of its biomes for a ground colour, for example DeadWastes: 8B4513, and Biome precision keeps its territories' ground colours. The world also saves the names of the biomes its biome map adds and follows them if Expand World Data numbers its biomes differently later: a biome it no longer has reads as None.

🌸 Paint Alt Biomes (new in 0.8.1)

Valheim 1.0 layers 32 alt biomes onto regions of your world, such as Dark Meadows, Troll Black Forest, Fortress Mountain and Lox Plains. Better Continents lets you choose where they go:

• 🖌️ Paint an alt-biome map (altbiomemap.png) and list its colours in a legend (altbiomemap.txt). Every alt biome has a default colour, and the legend is written for you when it is missing.
• 🎯 Every painted area becomes a region of its own. Stack several alt biomes on one colour, keep an area free of alt biomes with none, or plant the region under a point with at x, z.
• 🎲 Choose how the game places the rest: at random on unplanted land (what you planted counts toward its limits), only what you planted, or no alt biomes at all.
• 🎨 Every release includes a palette file for Krita and GIMP (BetterContinents.gpl) and a printable colour chart.
• 🌍 A new world's alt-biome grid covers the whole world, however big (see Worlds of Any Size). Mode = Off means no alt biomes, not no grid: Valheim builds its grid for every world.

🌲 Custom Forest Coverage

Take direct control over tree density and clearings across the realm (Guide: Forest):

• 🪓 Specify forest density maps, creating massive open tundra clearings in the Black Forest or thick ancient woods across the Plains.
• 🌲 Override tree generation even in biomes that are normally 100% forested (Swamps, Mistlands, Mountains).

📍 Absolute Location & Spawn Control

Dictate where history begins on your world (Guide: Spawn map):

• ⛩️ Starting Temple: Pinpoint the exact coordinates of the sacrificial stones and player spawn (Guide: Start Position). Start Position X and Start Position Y accept -1,000,000 to 1,000,000 m, for worlds bigger than vanilla's.
• 💀 Boss Altars: Place Eikthyr, The Elder, Bonemass, Moder, Yagluth, and the Queen exactly where your design intends.
• 💰 Traders & Dungeons: Place Haldor, Hildir, and crypts on designated islands or mountain peaks.
• 📌 Exact pins (new worlds, new in 0.10): a pin on the location map lands exactly on its pixel, where the height and biome maps put it. A pin of several pixels lands on the one nearest its middle, and locations that share a colour are dealt out the same way every time. The start position is placed before the pins, so a pin in its zone cannot take it. A world made from a world export reads its pins where the export wrote them.

🌊 Global Ocean & Continent Scaling

• 🌊 Sea Level Adjustment: Dynamically raise sea level to drown lowland continents into island archipelagos, or lower it to expose vast continental land bridges (Guide: Global).
• 🗺️ Continent Size: Scales the features of the height layers' noise (Guide: Global): a higher value makes them smaller, and 0.5 leaves them as they are. It does not scale a heightmap.

📏 Worlds of Any Size (new in 0.10)

On a version 12 world, World Size and Edge Size (in [01 BetterContinents.Global]; vanilla's are 10000 and 500) lay out the whole world, not only its edge:

• 🗺️ The maps span World Size + Edge Size in each direction, and the land drops away over the edge. A version 11 world keeps vanilla's 21,000 m whatever its World Size says: there World Size only moves the game's edge (the kill zone, the ship's push back and the water's edge).
• 🧭 The rest of the world is laid out to the size too: the alt-biome grid (12 m points out to the edge, so locations reach the whole world) and the minimap follow World Size + Edge Size; where locations are searched for, the game's own biome bands, the Ashlands and Deep North rings, and the lakes and stream sources follow World Size. Terrain detail keeps its size. Grid in [08 BetterContinents.AltBiomes] has no effect on such a world.
• 🧮 A bigger world costs more each time it loads: it builds a bigger alt-biome grid, on the server and on every client as it joins, which takes longer and about 0.2 GB at a radius of 16,350 m. Valheim builds the grid for every world, so Mode = Off means no alt biomes, not no grid.
• 📐 The practical maximum is World Size + Edge Size of 16,350 m. The game files every object beyond about 16.35 km from the centre under one shared sector.
• 🔌 With Expand World Size installed, it sizes and lays out the world as before (its size, grid, minimap and locations) and Better Continents leaves the layout to it. Install it on every machine that plays the world or on none, and do not add it to a world Better Continents laid out. Its World Stretch magnifies Better Continents' maps, so that only their centre shows (the log warns once, on any Better Continents world); keep it at 1.
• ℹ️ bc info says when a world's maps follow World Size.

⚡ Multi-Layer FastNoiseLite Procedural Engine

Under the hood, Better Continents integrates a high-performance FastNoiseLite layer system:

• 🧩 Stack unlimited noise layers (Perlin, Simplex, Cellular/Voronoi, Value).
• 🎚️ Apply independent frequencies, fractal octaves, domain warping, and masking to each layer.

🎨 In-Game World Architect UI

• 🖥️ Design, preview, and adjust your world directly inside Valheim.
• 👁️ Interactive visual editor shows layer stacking, real-time height visualization, and immediate terrain regeneration.
• 🔄 After each change made here or with the bc commands, Better Continents regenerates the world's zones itself, leaving the zones around what players built or worked, and around other players: see Debug Mode & Zone Regeneration.

💾 World File Sharing & Presets

• 📁 A world generated with Better Continents keeps its settings and maps inside its own save folder, in a file named BetterContinents (see Sharing Maps With Players).
• 🤝 Anyone with the mod can load and explore your shared world identically—no external dependencies or complex editors needed. On a world that uses Better Continents the server and every player must run exactly the same version of the mod (see Mixing versions).
• 🗂️ Presets are complete world recipes (settings and every map) that you pick in the Better Continents box of the New World screen. Every world export makes one, bc_import makes one from any folder of maps, and bc savepreset saves the loaded world's. They live in BetterContinents/presets/ beside the game's worlds_local folder. A preset keeps the settings version it was saved with, so a preset made before 0.10 still makes the world it always made; the four that ship with the mod (Continents, Pangaea, Swirls and Vanillaish) are old version 7 files and make version 11 worlds (Which version is my world?).
• 🌱 A world's settings and maps can be handed to players in advance as a .bcworld file (bc_cache export), so joining a huge world skips the download; only 0.10 accepts the file of a version 12 world. See Sharing Maps With Players.

📤 Export a World to Maps (new in 0.9.0)

Turn the world you are standing in, vanilla or Better Continents, into Better Continents image maps that rebuild it, ready to edit in any image editor:

• 🗺️ A 16-bit heightmap sampled the way the game builds its terrain, plus biome, location, forest, heat, alt-biome, lava, moss and ground-paint maps with their legends, and an export.cfg holding the settings that load them.
• 🗂️ Every export also makes a New World preset named after the world and the time, so you can create a world from it straight away. A README.txt in the folder explains every file and the ways to load it, step by step.
• 📐 Heights are encoded for Heightmap Amount 1 and Sea Level 0.5 unless you choose otherwise (Default Heightmap Amount in [09 BetterContinents.Export], or amount= in bc_export): -30 m to 170 m on the game's height scale (its sea is at 30 m, so that is 60 m below the water to 140 m above it), with the waterline at 0.30 of the pixel range. That is the encoding a map made at Better Continents' default settings uses, so exports and such maps can be cut and pasted into each other. Ground above 170 m on that scale (140 m above the water) is clipped, and the export says how many pixels; amount=2 spans -30 m to 370 m (up to 340 m above the water) and keeps every vanilla mountain.
• 🏷️ The exported heightmap.png records the Heightmap Amount and Sea Level Adjustment its heights are encoded for, in a PNG text chunk that image editors show and often keep. A new world that reads it at other settings warns in the log, and bc info shows the record.
• ⏱️ It runs in the background while you play, and a cancelled export removes its partial files and its preset.
• 🖥️ Start it from the console (bc_export) or from the export HUD: a small status box (F9) and a window (F7) with every map explained, a size and time estimate, and a summary of the last export, modelled on Wubarrk's Eye.
• 📁 Every export gets its own folder, BetterContinents/<world>/export-<time>/ beside the game's worlds_local folder, never inside the world's own save folder.

📥 Make a World From an Export (new in 0.9.0)

Four ways, from the easiest:

1. Pick the preset. In the main menu choose Start Game, pick your character and press Start, then New World; pick the export's preset (<world> <date> <time>) in the Better Continents box, and press Done. The preset is a copy of the folder as exported: it keeps working if you move or delete the folder.
2. After editing the PNGs, bc_import. Open the console (F5) in the main menu or in a world and type bc_import: it remakes the preset from your newest export as it is now and selects it. bc_import list numbers every export, and bc_import 3, bc_import <world> or bc_import <folder> picks one, including any folder of maps you made yourself. The export window's Import tab does the same with buttons.
3. To keep editing, the config. bc_import <number> config copies the folder's export.cfg into BetterContinents.cfg (your old file is kept beside it) and selects the preset "From Config", so every new world reads the PNGs as they are at that moment. Pasting export.cfg at the end of BetterContinents.cfg yourself does the same, with no restart. export.cfg lists Override version (empty), so an Override version you had set is cleared.
4. Or point Directory at the folder (since 0.9.4). Set Directory in BetterContinents.cfg to the export folder and create the world with "From Config": the folder's export.cfg comes with the maps and wins over your own settings for the keys it lists (edit or delete it to use your own; the log lists what it changed). Before 0.9.4 only the maps came, so an export encoded for Heightmap Amount 2 and loaded at 1 came out almost all ocean.

A world that already exists keeps the maps it was created with. A world made from an export is a version 12 world when the export's maps span what its own World Size + Edge Size give, as an export of a version 12 world and a 0.9.x export of a world of vanilla's size do. Otherwise (an export of a resized 0.9.x world, or one made under Expand World Size at another size) it is a version 11 world: its maps span 21,000 m, as a version 11 world's do (an export made under Expand World Size is rebuilt as it was only with Expand World Size installed at that size), and it gets none of the new-world behaviour (Which version is my world?). For step-by-step instructions written for first-timers, see BetterContinents-Export-Guide.pdf in the package.

🧭 Map Mods & No-Map Worlds (new in 0.9.2)

• 🗺️ The minimap is finished before the game hands it to other mods. It is still drawn on several CPU cores at once; the loading screen simply waits for it, as it does for vanilla's own map.
• 📜 ZenMap: cartography tables with hidden biomes and the admin map show the real land and sea, as crafted parchment maps already did. Before 0.9.2, ZenMap copied the map before Better Continents had drawn it, so the tables showed meadows and plains as sea.
• 🕯️ No-map worlds: mods that show players a map only at a table or on a parchment, or give admins their map back, get the finished map on every join.
• 🧩 Any mod that reads, copies or restyles the minimap when it loads sees the finished map, and mods that hook the game's map drawing run once, after it is done.

👯 Vegetation Twin Guard (new in 0.10)

The game fills a zone with trees, bushes, rocks and the like from the world seed, the zone and each plant's name. A zone filled a second time over its own objects (a command that fills zones again, or a save put back together from mismatched files) draws every spot again, and everything in it is doubled: two copies of one plant on one spot.

• 🛡️ The guard: in every world made with Better Continents, old ones included, a plant is not placed within 1 m of the same kind of object already standing in its zone, or placed there by another vegetation entry in the same pass. It changes vegetation only, never terrain, and only in zones generated from now on; zones already generated keep what they have. One entry never blocks itself, so vanilla's densities and groups stay for every prefab with one entry, except beside an object of that prefab that already stands in its zone (one of a location placed just before, or of an earlier fill); where two entries place the same prefab (for example a vegetation map's, or an alt biome's added vegetation) a second plant within 1 m of the first is dropped, so such a zone can hold fewer plants than in 0.9.4.
• 🧹 bc_twins finds and removes the doubles a world already has (see Configuration & Console Commands): the copy nearest the ground stays, nothing a player built is ever removed, and removal runs where the world is.

🗜️ Maps in Memory & Compact Maps (new in 0.10)

• 🧱 Tiles, in every world: Better Continents holds its pixel maps (heights, biomes, forest, spawns, paint, terrain and the rest) in memory as tiles of 128 x 128 pixels, and a tile of one value, such as open sea, is held as that one value. Every value reads exactly as before. Measured on a real 10,501 px heightmap, forest map and biome map, a world holds about 99 MB instead of about 1.32 GB.
• 🗜️ Compact Maps (experimental, off by default, new worlds only): Compact Maps in [07 BetterContinents.Misc]. On, a world made while it is on keeps its maps compressed in memory, decodes each tile when it is first read, and saves and sends its maps compressed: on that same map set the world file shrinks from 126 MB to 10.5 MB, and a loaded world holds about 21 MB. It is read only when a world is made (From Config, bc_import, or a Directory's export.cfg), and a world keeps it for good. Better Continents 0.9 cannot read such a world: it would generate its terrain as vanilla.
• 🧠 Map Memory (also in [07 BetterContinents.Misc]; 512 MB by default, 64 to 65536): how much memory this machine lets the decoded tiles of those worlds take. Past it, the tiles read least recently are dropped and decoded again when read again. It applies at once and does nothing for any other world.

📦 Recommended Companion Mods

To get the absolute most out of Better Continents, we strongly recommend pairing it with:

• 🛠️ Server Devcommands — Unlocks administrative flying, god mode, and unlimited camera exploration while testing and designing your custom worlds.
• 🌍 Upgrade World — Commands for resetting zones, forcing location spawns (location_register), and regenerating sectors of a world you are building. It works alongside Better Continents: Better Continents regenerates the zones by itself after a bc change, and if you write zones_reset start in Debug Reset Command, it runs Upgrade World's command instead (see Debug Mode & Zone Regeneration).
• 🔨 Infinity Hammer — Perfect for building custom ruins, landmarks, and settlements directly into your handcrafted terrain.
• 🌀 TortalPortal — The ultimate portal overhaul with destination previews, favorites, and server synchronization across massive continents.

🍗 Installation & Setup

⚡ Automated Installation (Recommended)

Install using Gale or your preferred mod manager directly from Hexium.

🛠️ Manual Installation

1. Ensure BepInEx for Valheim is properly installed in your game directory.
2. Download the latest BetterContinents.dll release.
3. Place BetterContinents.dll into your Valheim/BepInEx/plugins/ directory.
4. Dedicated servers running custom maps need Better Continents installed and the world's folder (created in the game client) in worlds_local/.

🛠️ How World Generation Works

🗺️ Image Map Specifications

Better Continents uses standard image files (PNG recommended) placed in your world configuration folder:

• 📏 Resolution: 2048×2048 or 4096×4096 square images provide excellent fidelity for the full Valheim world disc. A map covers the whole world: 2 × (World Size + Edge Size) across, which is 21,000 m on a vanilla-sized world and on every version 11 world.
• ⚪ Heightmaps: Grayscale 8-bit or 16-bit PNG (16-bit gives smooth slopes). Pure black (#000000) is maximum ocean depth; pure white (#FFFFFF) is the highest mountain summit, at the height Heightmap Amount sets.
• 🎨 Biome Maps: RGB PNG where distinct color codes correspond to each biome type.
• 🌳 Forest Maps: Grayscale PNG where white denotes maximum tree density and black denotes open clearings.

📡 Sharing Maps With Players

Valheim 1.0 saves each world as a folder, worlds_local/<WorldName>/. Better Continents stores the world's settings and image maps inside that folder, in a file named BetterContinents (no extension).

• To share a world with players or a dedicated server, copy the whole <WorldName> folder.
• A dedicated server cannot create a Better Continents world itself: create it in the game client, then copy the folder to the server.
• 📥 Players need no copy of the world. When a player joins, the host or dedicated server sends them the world's Better Continents settings and image maps before the join finishes, and their game caches them, so the download happens once per world revision. A detailed world is tens of megabytes, and Valheim pins every Steam connection to about 150 KB/s, so that first join can take over a minute: Settings Transfer Rate raises it.
• 🌱 Pre-seeding the cache. bc_cache export writes that same data as a shareable .bcworld file; a player who imports it (bc_cache import <file>) joins with no download at all. The file keeps the world's settings version, so one of a version 12 world is accepted by 0.10 only: 0.9.x refuses it as a bad header. Better Continents also imports every .bcworld it finds under BepInEx/plugins/ (recursively) or in BepInEx/config/BetterContinents/seed/ when it starts, so a mod pack that contains nothing but a .bcworld file (for example "MyWorld-WorldCache") pre-seeds every player who installs it, with no command to run.
• 🗜️ Compact Maps (experimental, new worlds): a world made with Compact Maps on saves and sends its maps compressed, far smaller than the pictures: see Maps in Memory & Compact Maps.

⚙️ Configuration & Console Commands

Better Continents has six console commands (open the console with F5). bc is for building worlds: it is a cheat command, so it needs devcommands, and it is registered for the host only. The Server Devcommands mod lets any player with devcommands type it on their own machine, but on a joined player's machine a bc change alters only that player's copy of the settings and their own view of the ground, never the world or the other players, and the zone regeneration refuses there ("it runs on the machine that runs the world"). Make bc changes on the host or in single player. bc info on a joined player's machine shows the settings the server sent. bc_altbiomes, bc_export, bc_import, bc_cache and bc_twins work for every player, and bc_import and bc_cache work in the main menu too. bc <group> help lists a group, for example bc h help. When an admin sends a command to a dedicated server (bc_export server ..., bc_twins server ...), its answer comes back to the admin's own console as well as the server's log.

• ⌨️ bc info — Prints the current world's settings, including whether its maps span World Size and the record in an export's heightmap.
• ⌨️ bc regen — Regenerates the zones now, the way every change does: every generated zone is reset and generates again with the current settings when someone comes near, except the zones that hold something to keep: what players built or worked, a tombstone, other players, or you inside a dungeon. Players, what players built, tombstones and tamed animals are never removed, and the loaded terrain is left as it is (see Debug Mode & Zone Regeneration).
• ⌨️ bc reset — Redraws the minimap (revealing all of it), rebuilds the alt-biome grid and the loaded terrain, then regenerates the zones as bc regen does. Most changes do all of that for you.
• ⌨️ bc reload <map> — Reloads an image map from disk and reapplies it (hm, bm, fom, lm, heat, … or all).
• ⌨️ bc <group> <setting> [value] — Reads or changes a setting, for example bc g sl 0.55. Groups include g (global), h (heightmap), b (biome map), fo (forest) and st (start position). bc h alpha decodes the loaded heightmap again at once, in every world, by that world's own rule.
• ⌨️ bc scr — Saves a screenshot of the map.
• ⌨️ bc export run [options], bc export status, bc export cancel — Exports the loaded world as maps that rebuild it, shows how far it has got, or stops it.
• ⌨️ bc import run [what] [config], bc import list, bc import status — The same as bc_import, in the bc tree.
• ⌨️ bc cache [export | import <file or folder> | list | help], bc twins [radius | remove [confirm] [radius] | server ... | help] — The same as bc_cache and bc_twins, in the bc tree.
• ⌨️ bc show [filter], bc hide [filter], bc bosses — Pins locations on the map, or removes the pins.
• ⌨️ bc savepreset — Saves the current settings as a preset.
• ⌨️ bc ab info, bc ab list [filter], bc ab here — Shows what each alt biome did in this world, which regions have alt biomes, and the region you stand in.
• ⌨️ bc ab fn [path], bc reload ab — Sets the alt-biome map, or re-reads it and its legend from disk.
• ⌨️ bc ab mode [Random|PlantedOnly|Off] — Sets how the game places the alt biomes you did not plant. bc ab help lists the rest: seed, chance, amount, overrides, export and more.
• ⌨️ bc_altbiomes [here|names|hash|list] — For any player: the region you stand in, the alt-biome names and colours, and whether your placement agrees with the server's. list needs devcommands.
• ⌨️ bc_export [size] [options], bc_export status, bc_export cancel, bc_export help — The world export for any player the server allows (Allow Export). A client's export holds only the locations the server shows on the map; bc_export server [options] asks a dedicated server to export its own world, for admins only. Options: amount= (the Default Heightmap Amount, 1, unless given), sealevel=, heatscale=, edge=auto|on|off, forest=additive|exact, noheight, nobiomes, nolocations, noforest, noheat, noaltbiomes, nolava, nomoss, nopaint, nosources, nopreset, perpoint.
• ⌨️ bc_import, bc_import list, bc_import <number>, bc_import <world>, bc_import <folder>, bc_import ... config, bc_import status, bc_import help — Makes a New World preset from an export (your newest one when you name none) and selects it; with config, loads the folder through BetterContinents.cfg and "From Config" instead. Works in the main menu and in a world, for any player.
• ⌨️ bc_twins [radius], bc_twins remove [radius], bc_twins remove confirm [radius], bc_twins server ..., bc_twins help — Finds and removes doubled vegetation, two copies of one plant on one spot. bc_twins counts twins by prefab and zone, exact (on one spot) and near (within the radius: 1 m unless you give one, 0.1 to 5 m); any player counts what their machine holds. remove shows what a cleanup would delete, and remove confirm deletes the extra copies, 1000 a frame: the copy nearest the ground stays, nothing a player built is ever removed, crops players grow go only when they stand on one spot, and without a radius only exact twins go. Removal runs where the world is: single player, the host, or a dedicated server through bc_twins server ... (admins only). Back the world up first.
• ⌨️ bc_cache export, bc_cache import <file or folder>, bc_cache list, bc_cache help — A shareable form of the world cache, for pre-seeding players before they join an extra-large world. export writes a .bcworld file plus a .txt description into BetterContinents/<world>/ (on the host or a dedicated server: this world's settings; on a client: your cached copy of the world you are in); import copies one file, or every .bcworld under a folder, into your cache (ids you already have are skipped, never overwritten, and the id is computed from the file's content, never its name); list shows what is cached. import and list work in the main menu too, for any player.

🛠️ Debug Mode & Zone Regeneration

Turn on Debug Mode in [00 BetterContinents.Debug] (off by default) to edit a world's settings live with the bc commands. In a world that uses Better Continents, on the machine that runs the world (single player or the host), it turns devcommands on when you spawn, which the bc commands need, shows "Better Continents Debug Mode Enabled!" at the top left, and adds a Better Continents button to the Esc menu and the large map that opens the settings window (Alt+F8 does the same while the Esc menu or the large map is open, and does nothing elsewhere). It does not reveal the map: most bc changes do that, as they redraw the minimap and explore all of it. Leave it off for a world you play. Every change you make with the window or with bc applies to the loaded world at once. The game fills a zone once and then keeps it, so after each change, and on bc regen, Better Continents also regenerates the world's zones itself. That belongs to the bc commands, not to Debug Mode: it runs whenever they do, and they only need cheats on, by Debug Mode or by typing devcommands.

• 🔄 Every generated zone is reset, except the zones within one zone (the 3 x 3 around) of something a player built, a tombstone, ground a player has worked (fields, paths, roads, levelled or dug ground), or you while you are inside a dungeon. A player connected from another machine keeps the zones their game has loaded around them (their simulation distance: the 5 x 5 block with the game's default, never less than the 3 x 3). That is checked as the work goes, so a player who moves keeps the zones around where they are now, and something you build while it runs keeps its zone from then on. The ground around your own character on the surface is regenerated too.
• 🏘️ A location that reaches into more than one zone is kept or regenerated whole: if one of its zones stays, the others stay with it. When a location is regenerated, the parts of it that stand in a zone nobody has generated yet are cleared with it, so regenerating again does not leave a second copy.
• 🧍 Players, what players built, tombstones and tamed animals are never removed. Crops are kept with their field. A tree a player grew from a sapling counts as the world's, so it goes unless something nearby keeps its zone.
• ⛰️ The ground follows the new settings everywhere, kept zones included. The ground of every zone is built from the world's settings, so after a change it follows them, also under a base and in the zones around it; the edits players made with the hoe, the cultivator or the pickaxe are stored as changes to the ground and ride on the new ground. A change that lowers the ground under a base leaves its pieces standing in the air, and the game breaks a piece that has lost its support a few seconds later (in a test, a workbench and a floor left about 3 m up were gone 8 seconds later); a change that raises the ground buries them, and the trees and rocks of kept zones float or sink the same way. So make big height changes before you build, or away from what you want to keep. bc regen on its own changes no ground.
• 🌱 Each reset zone generates again with the new settings, its locations included, when someone comes near.
• ⏱️ The work is spread over frames, so the game keeps running, and the console shows a line when it starts, progress lines on the way and a line when it finishes. A new change, or bc regen again, while it runs starts it over, after the zone it was in is finished. If the world is saved while it runs, the zones it has emptied are saved as not generated, and a location is never saved half cleared, so nothing is saved half empty: the emptied zones generate again when someone comes near. If an error stops the work, the zones it had emptied and left waiting for their neighbours are finished, so they generate again when someone comes near, and the zones it had not reached are as they were: bc regen resets them.

A zone that was already reset is not brought back when something is built beside it later. A location whose home zone the game generates while the work is running (someone came near it) can end up half placed, or placed twice; bc regen again sets it right.

Zone regeneration runs in single player or on the host, in a world that uses Better Continents. Better Continents never resets the zones of a world without it, which is the game's own: there bc regen says "Zone regeneration: this world does not use Better Continents." and rebuilds nothing.

bc regen does the same on demand, without rebuilding the loaded terrain: nothing changed, so the ground already matches the settings. A change made with the bc commands or the settings window (any setting, bc reset, an alt-biome change, a map reload or Biome precision) rebuilds the loaded terrain once first (the distant terrain and the grass too, and a zone that is loading at that moment) and then regenerates the zones. That stalls the game for a second or two (1.6 s measured); the regeneration itself is spread over frames. bc reset redraws the minimap and rebuilds the alt-biome grid first; bc regen does neither. Use the bc commands on a test world, or back the world up first.

Debug Reset Command in the same section is empty by default: Better Continents regenerates the zones itself. A console command written there runs instead, after each change and on bc regen (for example zones_reset start, Upgrade World's). A BetterContinents.cfg that still holds the old default, zones_reset start, is set to empty once, with a line in the log that says how to go back.

📤 World Export and Import HUD

Turn on Hud in the [09 BetterContinents.Export] section of BepInEx/config/BetterContinents.cfg, or in Configuration Manager. In a world, F9 shows or hides a status box: the export's progress, the last export folder, and the map pixel you stand on. F7 opens the window, which frees the mouse while it is open. It has two tabs:

• Export this world — every map with a line saying what it holds (point at one for more, including what the paint map costs), all on by default. Choose 1024, 2048, 4096 or 8192 pixels, set the Heightmap Amount and Sea Level the heights are encoded for, read the size, memory and time estimate, and press Start export. When it finishes, the window shows what the export came to (heights, clipped pixels, missing locations, the preset) with Copy the folder path and Open the folder.
• Import an export — your export folders, newest first. Make preset builds a New World preset from the one you pick and selects it; Use as config loads it through BetterContinents.cfg and "From Config" instead.

The [09 BetterContinents.Export] settings:

• Hud (off) — Shows the export HUD.
• Allow Export (on) — Whether players connected to this server may export the world. The machine that runs the world always may: single player, the host, and a dedicated server's own console.
• Hud Hotkey (F9) and Window Hotkey (F7) — None turns a key off.
• Default Size (4096), Default Heightmap Amount (1) and Default Sea Level (0.5) — What bc_export and the export window use unless told otherwise. A BetterContinents.cfg that still holds the old default of 2 is set to 1 once, and the log says so.

These settings apply at once. Better Continents reads BetterContinents.cfg again whenever the file changes on disk, and Configuration Manager changes apply straight away. On a client connected to a server that runs Better Continents 0.9.0 or later, the server's Hud and Allow Export replace the client's own, and a change on the server reaches connected players immediately. Every other Better Continents setting is a default for new worlds: an edit is read at once, but it only changes worlds created afterwards. The exceptions are Settings Transfer Rate and Map Memory in [07 BetterContinents.Misc], which apply at once too, and Override version in [00 BetterContinents.Debug], which is read at every save and every join: an edit changes the next autosave of a loaded world and the version a host sends to joining players, so leave it empty.

📡 Settings Transfer Rate

Settings Transfer Rate (KB512), in [07 BetterContinents.Misc] — How fast this machine (the host, or a dedicated server) sends a joining player's Better Continents settings and images over their Steam connection: Vanilla (Valheim's own ~150 KB/s), KB256, KB384, KB512, KB768, MB1, MB1_5, MB3 or Unlimited (100 MB/s). The rate is set on that one connection for the transfer only, then Valheim's own is restored.

• Steam sends at exactly the rate set, with no congestion control, so pick one the server's upload can carry. The transfer itself moves about 4 MB/s at most. Measured on a local dedicated server with an 11.8 MB world: Vanilla 78 s, KB512 23 s, Unlimited 3 s.
• Server enforced: only the value on the sending machine matters. A client's own value has no effect.
• PlayFab (crossplay) connections cannot be raised at all and are sent at Valheim's rate; the log says so once.
• The value is read when a player joins, and the file is re-read when it changes, so a new value applies to the next player who joins, without a restart.
• The log shows Settings transfer rate: 512 KB/s (server setting) when a transfer starts and Settings sent: <bytes> in <seconds> (<KB/s>) when it ends.

📚 Documentation & Guides

For deep dives, tutorials, and configuration references:

• 📕 The Better Continents Guide for 0.10.x: BetterContinents-Guide.pdf, included in this package, with a clickable table of contents.
• 📗 Export & Import, the easy guide, for 0.10.x: BetterContinents-Export-Guide.pdf, included in this package: illustrated, step-by-step instructions written for first-timers: exporting a world, editing the pictures, cutting and pasting between worlds, Biome precision, and making new worlds from an export.
• 🤖 Map-making, a skill for AI agents, for 0.10.x: BetterContinents-AI-Skill.pdf, included in this package: hand it to an AI agent (Claude, Gemini or another) and it learns the whole map-making craft for Valheim 1.0: what the game demands of a map, how to make one read as natural geography, the generator and checker toolkit (attached inside the PDF), world export and import, and the traps.
• 🎨 Colour scheme: BetterContinents.gpl (a palette for Krita and GIMP with every biome and alt-biome colour) and altbiome-palette.png (a printable colour chart), included in this package.
• 🚀 Setup & Quick Start, ❓ FAQ, and a chapter for every image map and every setting — all in the same guide, with a clickable table of contents. The older online docs by Jere Kuusela describe Better Continents 0.7.x (no Valheim 1.0 Deep North, no lava map, no alt-biome planting, no export); everything in them is in the PDF, updated for Valheim 1.0.
• 🌿 Alt biomes in Better Continents — planting alt biomes with colours: the legend syntax, the colour scheme, the quota rule, the commands and the log lines, and what a world laid out to its World Size changes.
• 🔧 Valheim 1.0 migration notes — what changed for Valheim 1.0 and what has been verified in play.
• 💬 Community Discord Server

📜 Credits & History

• 👑 Originally created by billw2012 — the pioneer of Valheim heightmap and custom continent generation.
• 🛠️ Maintained and expanded by JereKuusela.
• ⚡ Modernized for Valheim 1.0 by Wubarrk.

⚖️ License

• Better Continents is free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 (LICENSE.md). Source code: github.com/RGlabs84/BetterContinents10. This package includes the exact source of this release as BetterContinents-source.zip.
• BetterContinents.dll also contains ImageSharp (Apache-2.0), five .NET libraries (MIT) and FastNoiseLite (MIT). Their notices are in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt.
• BetterContinents-Guide.pdf is the Better Continents Guide, originally written by billw2012 and maintained by JereKuusela, updated for Valheim 1.0 by Wubarrk. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3 (GUIDE-LICENSE.txt), and its source files are attached inside the PDF.
• BetterContinents-Export-Guide.pdf is Better Continents: Export & Import, the easy guide, written by Wubarrk with Claude (Anthropic) as the drafting agent. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3 (GUIDE-LICENSE.txt), and its source files and pictures are attached inside the PDF.
• BetterContinents-AI-Skill.pdf is Better Continents map-making: a skill for AI agents, written by Wubarrk with Claude (Anthropic) as the drafting agent. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3 (GUIDE-LICENSE.txt), and its source files and toolkit are attached inside the PDF.

• v0.10.4

  • Baked buildings. A bake takes the pieces players built within a circle or a box and makes them part of the world's layer: every player's game draws them, solid to walk on, and none of them is a game object any more, so the world neither saves, sends nor updates them one by one. In a test village the objects within 128 m went from 7,984 to 2,472 (5,512 pieces baked); in the densest block of a 700,000-piece town the frame rate went from 45 fps as real pieces to 81 fps baked (measured on one machine). The export window (F7) has a third tab, Bake buildings, and the console has bc_bake. Every change shows a dry run first and needs Confirm (or confirm).
  • What stays real: doors, chests and other containers, stations, beds, cooking fires, portals, wards, signs, anything that moves, and any part of a mod that Better Continents does not know. With the Town option a bake also takes comfort decor (tables, banners, rugs, plants; chairs and benches become seats you can still sit on) and torches and lanterns, which become lit copies that never need fuel; the pieces that stay become protected parts of the layer that nobody can damage or remove. A baked piece gives no comfort and a baked light no warmth.
  • Nothing that gives items is baked: bushes, mushrooms, flax, saplings and items on the ground stay the game's own. Black marble and the other pieces the game turns at random bake, each drawn with its own turn.
  • Undo and unbake. bc_bake undo puts back exactly what the last change took, from its undo file; bc_bake unbake turns baked pieces in an area back into real pieces; bc_bake unbake world does it for every baked piece, the way out before removing Better Continents from a world. Every change writes its undo file before it changes anything, and a crash or a cut save is finished or taken back at the next load: no piece is ever lost, and none is both a real piece and a baked one. An undo also finds a piece that the game's physics dropped or lifted, and every change reports what it could not find.
  • Town files. A placements.bcp in the maps folder (format 1, written by a town compiler) builds its towns into a new world: drawn pieces, live pieces made real (doors, stations, chests) and protected, the ground under the towns, paint and cleared vegetation. bc_bake load brings a newer file into a running world; the live pieces follow, and a container that holds items is never taken away. Consumables in the file are placed once as the game's own objects, unless the file marks a kind as decor: then it is drawn like the rest of the town and cannot be picked. bc_bake export writes the layer out.
  • Players download the layer when they join (a few MB for a whole town file, kept in the cache for the next time), and a change made during play reaches them as a small patch before any piece is taken away.
  • New settings in [10 BetterContinents.BakedPlacements], each player's own and applied at once: Draw Distance, Draw Scale, Detail Scale, Shadows, Light Distance, Light Count (how many baked lights burn: the nearest 24 by default; the rest are drawn unlit), Light Shadows (how many of them cast shadows: 4), Seat Distance, Tints and Diagnostics.
  • Shadows of baked pieces. Near you, a zone's shadow-casting pieces are merged into a few shadow-only shapes, built in the background on the other processor cores; the pieces you see are drawn as before, and the shadows look the same. Farther out, each zone's or slab's shadows are drawn on their own, so a light or shadow band redraws only what it reaches. In the busiest view of a test town of 33 blueprint buildings the frame rate went from 38 to 63 fps, with about 350 MB of graphics memory for those shadows (measured on one machine).
  • A world with baked pieces needs 0.10.4 or later: an older Better Continents opens it as a world without Better Continents (vanilla terrain), and the game alone without its layer; either way its baked pieces are neither drawn nor solid there. The settings and the layer stay in the world's files, and 0.10.4 reads them again.
  • New guide: Baked buildings, the easy guide (BetterContinents-Baking-Guide.pdf, GPL-3.0), in this package.
  • Updated AI doc to v0.10.4.

• v0.10.3

  • Maps up to 16,384 x 16,384 pixels. Pictures are read a few rows at a time and kept as tiles: a server making a world from five 16,384 px maps peaked at 1.80 GB of memory, where 0.10.2 needed 5.83 GB (measured on one machine). A bigger picture is refused before it is read. Max Map Size in [07 BetterContinents.Misc] (4096, 8192 or 16384; 16384 by default) can set a lower limit for map files; it is each machine's own and applies the next time a map is read.
  • Compact Maps is Auto / On / Off, Auto by default. Auto makes a new world compact when any of its maps but the location and alt-biome maps is more than 8,192 px across, or when its heightmap has fine heights: five 16,384 px maps take 52.6 MB in the world file instead of 352.5 MB. On makes every new world compact and Off none (heightmap-fine.png is then not read). An old true reads as On and false as Auto.
  • Worlds past 16 km. Valheim files objects by zone only out to about 16.4 km from the centre. Past that, far objects shared one list that was sent whole to any player out there, a patch about 22.1 km south-west shared its save file with every portal in the world, and the creature spawners of zones past 32.7 km east, west, north or south were moved to the 20 km line at every save. Wide Sectors in [07 BetterContinents.Misc] gives every zone out to 65.5 km its own place in memory and in the save, and saves the spawners where they are. Auto, the default, makes every new world past 16,350 m wide and leaves existing worlds as they are. On also converts an existing big world when it loads, one way: the game first saves a copy of the old save, and damage already done is not undone. Off makes no new wide worlds; a wide world stays wide. The setting is read by the machine that runs the world, and a joining player's game follows the world. A wide world needs 0.10.3 or later: an older Better Continents opens it as a world without Better Continents, and an older version, or the game alone, that saves it writes its objects twice. World Size + Edge Size can go up to 65,000 m.
  • Terrain up to 16 km high. Heightmap Amount takes 0 to 81 (it was 0 to 5); at 81, white is 16,170 m on the game's height scale. A world whose heightmap is read at an Amount above 5 gets Better Continents' versions of the game's height rules, which were made for land under about 400 m: inside a dungeon means more than 3,000 m above the ground below, the ground is found at any height, and the altitude limits of 1,000 m or more for plants, creatures, locations and grass are lifted. Worlds read at 5 or less keep the game's own rules. High Terrain in [02 BetterContinents.Heightmap] (Auto, On or Off; Auto by default) gives them to every world or to none; its description says what Off costs. A new world keeps the mode it was made with, and bc h ht changes it in a running world. Older versions open a world whose High Terrain is On or Off as a world without Better Continents.
  • Fine heights. An optional heightmap-fine.png beside the heightmap adds 1/256 of a 16-bit step to each height, 24 bits in all, so the gentle slopes of a tall world stay smooth. A record inside it ties it to its heightmap by CRC-32. A world made with it is compact, and 0.10.0 to 0.10.2 cannot read it. The world export writes it: bc_export fine=auto|off|4|8, or the Fine heights choice in the export window. Auto, the default, writes 4 bits where one step of heightmap.png is more than 1.5 cm, from a Heightmap Amount of about 4.92, so an export at a lower Amount is the same as before.
  • The world export goes up to 16,384 px, and Default Heightmap Amount and bc_export amount= take 0.01 to 81. An export holds about 100 MB of memory at any size (measured on one machine), because each map is written as it is sampled. Largest Size in [09 BetterContinents.Export] (4096, 8192 or 16384; 16384 by default) sets the largest export offered. Above 8,192 px the export leaves the New World preset to bc_import.
  • A world with a very large World Size loads in seconds: 16 s for World Size 32,264 on a 32-core server (measured on one machine). The game's lake search took minutes there on every machine at every load; it now takes seconds and finds the same lakes.
  • Making a new world no longer stops the game. The New World screen read a new world's maps and wrote its settings inside Done, on the game's main thread: with five 16,384 px maps the game stood still for about 30 s, drawing nothing and answering nothing (measured on one machine). They are now made in the background behind the game's "Please wait", and the world is made when they are ready; its settings are the same, byte for byte. A dedicated server makes a new world's settings as before. Lines Better Continents logs from work in the background (a new world's settings, a world import) now reach the log; Unity used to drop them.
  • Loading a big world, or joining one, no longer stops the game for half a minute. Whenever a world loads, and as each player joins, the game builds its alt-biome grid on its main thread: 6,392 x 6,392 points for a world of World Size 32,264, which took 29 s (measured on one machine). Better Continents now samples the grid on every core and builds its regions on flat arrays: 5 s on the same machine (32 cores; fewer cores take longer). The grid and its regions are the game's own, point for point. Where another mod changes those steps, the game's own way runs.
  • Joining a big world: the server's log says how long the download will take. A world's settings package and the .bcworld file can be up to 1.5 GB (the file was limited to 512 MB).
  • The sea's colour and waves in a big world. The game's water shader colours the Ashlands sea red by its own ring of a vanilla-size world, so a bigger world, or one with a heat map, had red water where the sea is cold (on a 32 km world, canals 20 km from the centre). Each 64 m patch of water now takes its colours from the world's own hot sea, the sea that heats swimmers and damages ships; only the sea counts, so lava on land leaves the water beside it plain, and with a heat map the sea is red only where the heat map has heat over it. The shader also draws the waves dying down past its own circle, 12,000 m from (0, -4,000) in every direction, which in a big world is most of the sea. Better Continents had moved the waves that boats and fish float on, by the biome map since 0.8.0 and by the world's size since 0.10.0, so they floated on waves that were not drawn. They now float on the waves as drawn, so a big world's far sea is calm to sail too.
  • Console fixes. bc clouds no longer removes the pins on the map, and bc hide with no prefix removes only the pins bc show and bc bosses placed; both used to remove every pin, the player's own too. bc savepreset with no name saves under the world's name (it saved a preset with no name). A height layer's op sets its opacity (it set its threshold). Adding the first height layer to a world with no heightmap, or deleting the last one, shows at once (it waited for the next change).

• v0.10.2

  • Forest Scale is 0.5 by default, the game's own size of forest and clearing patches. Since 0.7.20 the default was 1, which Better Continents turns into patches about five times the game's size, so a new world made from an untouched config had far larger forests and clearings than vanilla. The values mean what they always did: 0 gives patches about a third of the game's size, 0.5 the game's own, 1 about five times larger. Keep it within 0 to 1: near 1.15 the game's own forest is the same everywhere, and above that the patches shrink again. Its description in BetterContinents.cfg says so.
  • A BetterContinents.cfg that holds Forest Scale = 1, as every config written by 0.7.20 to 0.10.1 does unless somebody changed it, is set to 0.5 once, the first time the game starts with this version, and the log says so ([07 BetterContinents.Misc] Config Version becomes 3). A 1 written there again afterwards is kept, and any other value stays as it is.
  • Only new worlds read Forest Scale. Every existing world and preset keeps the forest it was made with, and a world made from an export folder takes the Forest Scale in the export's export.cfg, as before.
  • The Better Continents Guide's forest chapter and "Map-making: a skill for AI agents" describe the default, and say what black means in a forestmap: with the default Forestmap Multiply 1 and Add 1, black is a clearing; with Forestmap Multiply 0 and Add 1, black leaves the game's own forest and the map only adds trees.

• v0.10.1

  • Rebuilt against Valheim 1.0.17 and re-verified: the reference check passes against the 1.0.17 client and dedicated server, every offline test suite passes, and a world made from image maps on a 1.0.17 dedicated server comes out the same, height for height and pin for pin, as under 1.0.16. Nothing that Better Continents patches changed in 1.0.17.
  • The New World screen's Better Continents panel shows the mod's own emblem, the package icon, for "From Config" and for a preset without a picture of its own. It still showed the original 2021 pictures, a gear beside "BC" and "BC" over a map.

• v0.10.0

  • Every existing world and preset keeps its terrain, biomes and locations exactly as in 0.9.4, and a world is saved byte for byte as before. What else changes for them is listed under "For every world". Everything under "For new worlds only" belongs to new worlds, those of settings version 12, which is what 0.10 gives a world it creates, and never reaches a world marked with an older version. A preset keeps the version it was saved with, so it makes the world it always made: the four presets that ship with the mod are version 7 and make version 11 worlds. A new world made from map files of your own is a version 12 world, which reads them the 0.10 way; setting [00 BetterContinents.Debug] Override version to 11 before you make it gives a version 11 world, which gets none of the new-world changes, as 0.9.4 would have made it. While Override version is set it is also the version every world is saved in and sent to joining players, so leave it empty. The README's "Upgrading from 0.9" section sets out which worlds get what.
  • A world made from an export folder (the export's own preset, "bc_import", or a Directory with an export.cfg) is version 12 when the export's maps span what its own World Size and Edge Size give, which an export of a version 12 world and a 0.9.x export of a world of vanilla's size do. Otherwise (an export of a resized 0.9.x world, or one made under Expand World Size at another size) it is version 11: its maps span 21,000 m, as a version 11 world's do (an export made under Expand World Size is rebuilt as it was only with Expand World Size installed at that size), and it gets none of the new-world changes.
  • Play a version 12 world with 0.10. Better Continents 0.9 still opens it, but as an older world (its maps span 21,000 m whatever its World Size says, for one), and its next save writes the world as version 11, so 0.10 then treats it as made by 0.9. It cannot read a world made with the experimental Compact Maps below: it generates that world's terrain as vanilla and leaves the world's settings file alone. It refuses a .bcworld file of a version 12 world as a bad header. On a world that uses Better Continents the server and every player must run exactly the same version, so update them together.
  • The README, ALTBIOMES.md and the three guides in the package (the Better Continents Guide, "Export & Import, the easy guide" and "Map-making: a skill for AI agents") describe 0.10: the guides are rebuilt as the Valheim 1.0 / Better Continents 0.10.x editions.
  • For every world
    • Better Continents regenerates the zones itself, after each change made with the "bc" commands or the settings window and on "bc regen". It resets the world's generated zones on the machine that runs the world (single player or the host), in a world that uses Better Continents: in a world without it, which is the game's own, the zones are left alone and the console says so. This comes with the "bc" commands, not with Debug Mode: they need cheats, which Debug Mode turns on at spawn (or type devcommands). The "bc" command is registered for the host only; the Server Devcommands mod lets any player with devcommands type it on their own machine, but on a joined player's machine a change alters only that player's copy of the settings and their own view of the ground, never the world or the other players, and the regeneration refuses there ("it runs on the machine that runs the world"). Make "bc" changes on the host or in single player. The work is spread over frames, with a start line, progress lines and a finish line in the console, and a new change or a new "bc regen" while it runs starts it over, after the zone it was in is finished. Each reset zone generates again with the new settings, locations included, when someone comes near. Players, what players built, tombstones and tamed animals are never removed, and a creature that a creature spawner made goes with its spawner unless it is tamed or stands in a zone that is left alone. If an error stops the work, the zones it had emptied and left waiting for their neighbours are finished, so they generate again when someone comes near, and the zones it had not reached are as they were: "bc regen" resets them.
    • What zone regeneration leaves alone. Every generated zone is reset except zones within one zone (3 x 3) of something a player built, a tombstone, ground a player has worked (fields, paths, roads, levelled or dug ground), or you while you are inside a dungeon; the ground around your own character on the surface is regenerated too. A player connected from another machine keeps the zones their game has loaded around them (their simulation distance: the 5 x 5 block by default, never less than the 3 x 3), checked as the work goes, so a player who moves keeps the zones around where they are now; something you build while it runs keeps its zone from then on. A location that reaches into more than one zone is kept or regenerated whole: if one of its zones stays, the others stay with it, and the parts of a location that stand in a zone nobody has generated yet are cleared with it, so regenerating again does not leave a second copy. Crops are kept with their field. A tree a player grew from a sapling counts as the world's, so it goes unless something nearby keeps its zone, and a zone that was already reset is not brought back when something is built beside it later. A location whose home zone the game generates while the work is running (someone came near it) can end up half placed, or placed twice; "bc regen" again sets it right.
    • The ground under what it leaves alone. The ground of every zone, the zones it keeps included, is built from the world's settings, so after a change it follows the new settings; the edits players made with the hoe, the cultivator or the pickaxe are stored as changes to the ground and ride on the new ground. A change that lowers the ground under a base leaves its pieces standing in the air, and the game breaks a piece that has lost its support a few seconds later (in a test, a workbench and a floor left about 3 m up were gone 8 seconds later); a change that raises the ground buries them, and trees and rocks in kept zones float or sink the same way. Make big height changes before building, or away from what you want to keep. "bc regen" on its own changes no ground.
    • Zone regeneration and saves. A zone is never saved half emptied, and a location is never saved half cleared: if the world is saved while the regeneration is going, the zones it has emptied are saved as not generated and generate again when someone comes near. A reset zone also waits to generate again until the zones around it that are being reset have been cleared, so a location that reaches over a zone edge is built once, whole. Where a zone that stays meets a zone that was reset, the height edits along the shared edge are cleared on the side that stays (the paint stays), so that the two grounds meet; this follows the zones actually reset, also when the regeneration is cut short.
    • "bc regen" does what a change does to the zones, on demand, and leaves the terrain that is loaded as it is: nothing changed, so the ground already matches the settings, and the game does not stall when it starts. It does not redraw the minimap or rebuild the alt-biome grid either, which "bc reset" still does before it. In a world without Better Continents it answers "Zone regeneration: this world does not use Better Continents." at once and rebuilds nothing.
    • A change made with the "bc" commands or the settings window (any setting, "bc reset", an alt-biome change, a map reload, Biome precision) rebuilds the loaded terrain once, the distant terrain and the grass too, and then regenerates the zones. That stalls the game for a second or two (1.6 s measured), as the rebuild after a change did in 0.9.4; the regeneration work itself is spread over frames.
    • The whole ground follows a change at once. After a "bc" change or "bc reset", the distant terrain, the grass and a zone that is loading at that moment take the new settings straight away; before, they could keep the old shape until the game redrew them or the zone loaded again.
    • "bc h alpha", "bc reload lm" and "bc reload terrain" read a map by the loaded world's own rule. "bc h alpha" decodes the loaded heightmap again at once, in every world: a version 11 world re-reads it the old way (8-bit grey, the alpha unused) with Heightmap Alpha on, and as 16-bit grey with it off; before, a change did nothing until the world was loaded again. "bc reload lm" reads the location map's pins exactly, and "bc reload terrain" reads the terrain legend's Expand World Data ground names, on a version 12 world; a version 11 world reads both as it always did.
    • [00 BetterContinents.Debug] Debug Reset Command, which held the console command that regenerated the zones (zones_reset start), is empty by default now: Better Continents regenerates the zones itself. A console command written there runs instead, after each change and on "bc regen" (for example zones_reset start), and a BetterContinents.cfg that still holds the old default is set to empty once, with a line in the log that says how to go back. The hidden [07 BetterContinents.Misc] Config Version records it, so a zones_reset start you write afterwards stays.
    • [00 BetterContinents.Debug] Debug Mode's description says what it does. The old one, "Automatically reveals the full map on respawn, enables cheat mode, and debug mode", named a map reveal that Debug Mode does not do, and did not in 0.9.x either. In a world that uses Better Continents, on the machine that runs the world (single player or the host), it turns devcommands on when you spawn, shows "Better Continents Debug Mode Enabled!" at the top left, and adds a Better Continents button to the Esc menu and the large map that opens the settings window (Alt+F8 does the same while the Esc menu or the large map is open, and does nothing elsewhere). What reveals the whole map is a "bc" change: most of them redraw the minimap and explore all of it.
    • Water follows its ground. Each 64 m zone's water works out how deep the sea is under it once, when the zone loads, so ground rebuilt in place afterwards (a "bc" change, "bc reset", or a terrain edit that loads after its zone) left a square of sea with straight edges looking deep among shallow-looking water, or the other way round. Now each zone's water takes the depth of its rebuilt ground. Worlds without Better Continents are untouched.
    • Vegetation is no longer placed twice. The game fills a zone with trees, bushes, rocks and the like from the world seed, the zone and each prefab's name, so a zone filled a second time over its own objects (a command that fills zones again, or a save put back together from mismatched files) draws every spot again and doubles everything in it: "a clone of everything within inches or 1 m", as a player put it. Now a plant is not placed within 1 m of the same kind of object already standing in its zone, or placed there by another vegetation entry in the same pass, in every world made with Better Continents, old ones included. It changes vegetation only, never terrain, and only in zones generated from now on: zones that are already generated keep what they have. One entry never blocks itself, so vanilla's densities and groups stay for every prefab with one entry, except beside an object of that prefab that already stands in its zone (one of a location placed just before, or of an earlier fill); where two entries place the same prefab (for example a vegetation map's, or an alt biome's added vegetation) a second plant within 1 m of the first is dropped, so a zone generated from now on can hold fewer plants than in 0.9.4.
    • Adds "bc_twins" (any player; "bc twins" in the host's bc tree) to find and remove the doubled vegetation a world already has. "bc_twins [radius]" counts twins by prefab and zone: exact twins (two copies on one spot) and near ones (within the radius, 1 m unless given, 0.1 to 5 m). "bc_twins remove [radius]" shows what a cleanup would delete and "bc_twins remove confirm [radius]" deletes it, 1000 objects a frame: the copy nearest the ground stays, nothing a player built is ever removed, crops players grow go only when they stand on one spot, and without a radius only exact twins go. Removal runs where the world is: single player, the host, or a dedicated server ("bc_twins server ...", admins only). Back the world up first. If another mod has changed the game's vegetation code so that the guard cannot be installed, the log says so (the vegetation map is off then too) and the rest of Better Continents still works.
    • Maps take far less memory. Better Continents now holds the float maps (height, rough, forest, heat, lava and moss), the biome map, the spawn and vegetation maps and the paint and terrain maps in tiles of 128 x 128 pixels, and a tile of one value (open sea, the empty canvas around a painted area) is held as that one value. Every value reads exactly as before, and as fast. Measured on a real set of 10,501 px maps (a heightmap, a forest map and a biome map), a world holds about 99 MB where 0.9.4 held about 1.32 GB. The world file and what is sent to joining players are unchanged.
    • Heightmap Amount is 1 everywhere. [02 BetterContinents.Heightmap] Heightmap Amount and the bc console already used 1; [09 BetterContinents.Export] Default Heightmap Amount, which was 2, is 1 now too. With Sea Level 0.5 an export's heights then span -30 m to 170 m on the game's height scale, where the sea is at 30 m (60 m below the water to 140 m above it), and clip higher ground (the export says how many pixels); "amount=2" (or Default Heightmap Amount 2) keeps the old encoding of -30 m to 370 m (up to 340 m above the water), which keeps every vanilla mountain. A BetterContinents.cfg that still holds the old default of 2 is set to 1 once, and the log says so; the hidden [07 BetterContinents.Misc] Config Version records it, so a 2 you choose afterwards stays.
    • A world export's heightmap.png now records the Heightmap Amount and Sea Level Adjustment its heights are encoded for, in a PNG text chunk that image editors show and often keep. A new world that reads a heightmap with such a record at other settings says so in the log, and "bc info" shows the record. Nothing changes by itself, and a heightmap without a record (every existing one) reads exactly as before.
    • A world export, with Expand World Data installed, treats an added biome whose terrain is the Ashlands or the Mistlands as that ground for the lava and moss maps, so rebuilding the world paints them again. Worlds without such biomes export as before.
    • [05 BetterContinents.StartPosition] Start Position X and Y accept -1,000,000 to 1,000,000 m (the config stopped at +-10,500 and the console's x and y at 0 to 1), for worlds bigger than vanilla's.
    • When a location cannot be placed because its zone already holds one (the game keeps one location per 64 m zone and drops a second with only "Location already exist in zone"), the log now says which: an error when the start position override was refused, a warning for a pin of the location map. Before, it claimed the position was "overriden".
    • The edge of the world keeps to each world's own size within one game session. Before, a world loaded after another one of a different World Size kept the first world's edge (the ship's push back, the kill zone and the water's edge), and with [01 BetterContinents.Global] Map Edge Drop-off off another mod's patching of the same game code could put the edge back at World Size.
    • When Expand World Size's World Stretch is not 1, the log warns once, in any Better Continents world, that it magnifies the maps so that only their centre shows: keep it at 1.
    • Console tools answer where they were asked. "bc_export", "bc_cache", "bc_import", "bc_altbiomes" and "bc_twins" share one set of plumbing: what an admin sends to a dedicated server ("bc_export server ...", "bc_twins server ...") now answers in the admin's own console as well as in the server's log, and a server export tells the admin when it ends. "bc cache" and "bc twins" join "bc export", "bc import" and "bc ab" in the host's bc tree. The group descriptions that said "get more info with 'bc param X help'" now name their own group ("bc h help"), and "help" on a group lists it instead of first printing "argument help is not recognized".
    • The bc console's defaults and ranges now come from the same place as the config's, so they agree: Heightmap Override All, Forest Scale, Forestmap Add and Start Position X and Y had drifted.
    • Fix Water Color and Ocean Channels are no longer in BetterContinents.cfg, and the "bc g fixwatercolor" command is gone. The first was never implemented and the second is read only by the oldest height formulas (settings formats 1 to 6); worlds that saved them still load them.
    • [06 BetterContinents.Maps] Spawnmap File is the creature spawn map, and Better Continents no longer treats it as the old name of the location map. Before, a BetterContinents.cfg with a Spawnmap File and no Locationmap File had the Spawnmap File moved into Locationmap File when the game started, and a missing locationmap.png with a spawnmap.png beside it had the spawn map renamed to locationmap.png.
    • A new BetterContinents.cfg selects the preset "Disabled". Its old default, "Vanilla", named no preset: a new world was made without Better Continents and logged an error saying so. An existing BetterContinents.cfg that holds "Vanilla" keeps it and still logs that error. The map-file settings' descriptions say what each file is and that Directory wins, and none refers to Nexusmods any more.
  • For new worlds only
    • World Size lays out the whole world. Until now a world's maps always spanned vanilla's 21,000 m and World Size only moved the game's edge (the kill zone, the ship's push back and the water's edge), so a World Size 20000 world had its land end at 10,500 m, ringed by ocean out to its edge. On a new world the maps span World Size + Edge Size in each direction, the land drops away over the edge, and the rest of the world is laid out to the size too: the alt-biome grid (12 m points out to the edge, so the locations reach the whole world too) and the minimap's pixels (its texture keeps its size) follow World Size + Edge Size; where locations are searched for and how far from the centre each may be, the game's own biome bands, its Ashlands and Deep North rings with their gaps and the Deep North's calm sea, and the area lakes and stream sources are searched for in follow World Size. Terrain detail (hills, rocks, noise) keeps its size. [08 BetterContinents.AltBiomes] Grid has no effect on such a world, and "bc info" says when a world is laid out to its size.
    • A bigger world builds a bigger alt-biome grid each time it loads, on the server and on every client as it joins: slower, and about 0.2 GB at a radius of 16,350 m. Valheim builds the grid for every world, so [08 BetterContinents.AltBiomes] Mode = Off means no alt biomes, not no grid. The practical maximum is a World Size + Edge Size of 16,350 m: the game files every object beyond about 16.35 km from the centre under one shared sector.
    • With Expand World Size installed, it lays out the world as before (its size, grid, minimap and locations) and Better Continents leaves the layout to it. Install it on every machine that plays the world or on none, and do not add it to a world Better Continents laid out. Its World Stretch magnifies Better Continents' maps, so that only their centre shows, and it should be 1.
    • [02 BetterContinents.Heightmap] Heightmap Alpha now blends. Before, a heightmap with it on was read as 8-bit grey (heights in 256 steps) and its 8-bit alpha was never used. A new world reads 16-bit grey with a 16-bit alpha, and the alpha blends the heightmap with the game's own terrain: where a pixel is opaque the heightmap alone decides, where it is transparent the game's terrain shows. A version 11 world keeps the old reading with it on: 8 bits, the alpha unused (with it off every world reads 16-bit grey).
    • Expand World Data's rules reach the maps. Its altitude rules (a biome's or territory's altitude multiplier and delta, water depth, height limits and lava dip) apply over the heightmap's heights as they do over the game's own; before, Better Continents' heights replaced them everywhere but where the rough map is white. On a world with a biome map and no heat map (or Heatmap Scale 0), its lava biomes ("lava: true" in its yaml) are hot where the biome map puts them, so lava burns there; before, only the Ashlands were hot on a biome map. With a heat map the heat decides. The terrain map's legend (terrainmap.txt) may name one of its biomes for a ground colour ("DeadWastes: 8B4513"), and Biome precision keeps its territories' ground colours instead of replacing them. A new world also saves the names of the biomes its biome map adds and follows them when Expand World Data numbers its biomes differently (it numbers them in its yaml's order, and a world stored the number): a biome it no longer has reads as None, where before it read as whichever biome held its number.
    • [03 BetterContinents.Biomemap] Biome precision goes up to 31: cells of 2 m in each 64 m terrain zone. A version 11 world stops at 5.
    • The location map's pins land exactly on their pixel, where the height and biome maps put it (before, at the pixel's corner, up to a pixel to the south-west). A pin of several pixels is placed on the one nearest its middle, and locations that share a colour are dealt out the same way every time, so one set of maps gives one world. Maps from a world export are still read where the export wrote them. The start position override is placed before the pins, so a pin in its zone can no longer take it.
    • [07 BetterContinents.Misc] Compact Maps (EXPERIMENTAL, off by default). On, a world made while it is on keeps its maps compressed in memory, decodes each tile when it is first read, and saves and sends its maps compressed. On the same 10,501 px maps as above the world file shrinks from 126 MB to 10.5 MB and a loaded world holds about 21 MB. It is read only when a world is made (From Config, "bc_import" or a Directory's export.cfg), and a world keeps it for good: Better Continents 0.9 cannot read such a world. [07 BetterContinents.Misc] Map Memory (default 512 MB, 64 to 65536) is how much memory this machine lets the decoded tiles of those worlds take. Past it the tiles read least recently are dropped and decoded again when read again. It applies at once and does nothing for any other world.

• v0.9.4

  • A world export loads correctly when the Directory setting points at it. Setting only Directory to an export folder and creating the world with "From Config" loaded the maps but not the settings in the folder's export.cfg, so the world kept BetterContinents.cfg's own: at the default Heightmap Amount of 1 the heightmap, stored for Heightmap Amount 2, put the waterline twice as high and a vanilla world came back almost all ocean (reported from the Valheim Worlds discord). The forest came out wrong too, and the game placed its own locations and random alt biomes beside the exported ones.
  • Now a new world made with "From Config" takes the export.cfg of the Directory along with its maps, the way a preset import does. Its settings win over BetterContinents.cfg for the keys it lists: edit export.cfg, or delete it, to use your own. Directory stays where BetterContinents.cfg points, so a moved export still loads, and BetterContinents.cfg itself is not changed. The log names every setting the export changed. A folder without export.cfg (hand-made maps) loads exactly as before, and presets and existing worlds are not affected.
  • An export's README.txt and export.cfg describe this as a fourth way to make a world from it.

• v0.9.3

  • Works with Expand World Data's biomes again. A biome map's legend (biomemap.txt) names them the way Expand World Data's expand_biomes yaml does, for example "DeadWastes: 8B4513", in any case. Since 0.8.0 Better Continents accepted only the ten vanilla biome names: such a line was reported as "Invalid biome name", the whole legend fell back to the default colours, and the added biome's area became whichever biome's default colour was nearest (often Mistlands).
  • Legend names may be written as the game shows them, with spaces, underscores or hyphens ("Black Forest", "deep_north"). A legend line Better Continents cannot use (a name that is no biome here, a colour that does not parse, or a line that is not "name: colour") is reported and skipped, and the rest of the legend still applies: the pixels of a skipped name's colour are left to the default generation (None) instead of becoming the nearest other biome, and a vanilla biome whose colour does not parse keeps its default colour. Lines starting with # are comments. Before, one such line threw the whole legend away for the default colours.
  • bc reload bm and bc b fn keep the world's biome map when the new picture or legend has an error, and say so. Before, a legend error reloaded the picture with the default colours (a wrong path switched the biome map off), and the next save kept the damage.
  • Expand World Data's biomes survive world saves and the settings a server sends to its players. A world made with Better Continents 0.7.x and Expand World Data biomes loads with them again, unless a 0.8 or 0.9 version has saved it since: those versions erased them. There, reload the biome map from its picture (bc reload bm) and the next save keeps it.
  • The rest of Better Continents handles them too: Biome precision, alt-biome planting, location placement, the minimap (including Expand World Data's per-biome map heights, which Better Continents' own map drawing skipped), the "bc ab" report, and world export, which gives each added biome a colour of its own and names it in biomemap.txt.
  • Expand World Data numbers its biomes in the order its expand_biomes yaml lists them, and a Better Continents world stores that number. Install it wherever the world is played, with the same yaml, and add new biomes at the end. Where a world's biome map holds a biome Expand World Data does not define now (not installed, or its yaml changed), the default generation decides and the log says so; the map keeps the biome for when it is defined again. Before, such a biome would have stopped the world from loading.
  • Give each added biome a terrain in the expand_biomes yaml (for example "terrain: Plains"): its ground is then that biome's. Without one Expand World Data gives it vanilla's default ground, flat and 30 m under water, with or without Better Continents; only a heightmap with Override All hides that.
  • Where a biome map or heat map says what a place is, it now wins over Expand World Data's world yaml in every case: Expand World Data's Ashlands test could override the heat map, so Ashlands there had no lava heat or Ashlands weather.
  • locationmap.txt keeps Expand World Data's "Name:Alias" locations, which were dropped without a word; a location listed twice keeps its last colour, and a colour that does not parse skips only its line (before, both threw the whole legend away). Other mods' locations already worked by name.
  • On a world that uses Better Continents the server and every player must run the same version, so update them together, and install Expand World Data on all of them when its biomes are in the biome map.

• v0.9.2

  • Works with ZenMap and no-map worlds. Better Continents drew the minimap on background threads and let the game carry on before the drawing was done, and the game hands the map to other mods at that moment. ZenMap copies it there to build the biome-hidden map it shows at cartography tables, so on a Better Continents world the tables showed meadows, plains and low ground as sea and the rest as noise. The map is now finished before the game carries on, so cartography tables and admin maps on no-map worlds show the real land and sea, as crafted parchment maps already did.
  • The minimap is still drawn on several threads, now on every CPU core (up to 16) instead of four. The loading screen waits for it, as it does for vanilla's single-threaded drawing, which takes longer.
  • Mods that hook the game's map drawing now run once, on the finished map. Before, they ran twice, the first time on an empty map.
  • If drawing the map on several threads fails, the error is logged and the game draws the map itself. Before, a failed thread was ignored and part of the map stayed empty.
  • No world needs changing: every player's game redraws the map each time it joins. On a world that uses Better Continents the server and every player must run the same version, so update them together.

• v0.9.1

  • Rebuilt against Valheim 1.0.16 and re-verified: the reference check passes against the 1.0.16 client and dedicated server, the mod boots on a 1.0.16 dedicated server, and the offline alt-biome harness passes every check. Nothing that Better Continents patches changed in 1.0.16, and the game's alt-biome list is the same 32 entries.
  • The README, ALTBIOMES.md, the config descriptions, the console output, the generated legend headers and the printable colour chart no longer name a Valheim patch: they say "Valheim 1.0" or "vanilla". The three guides are rebuilt as the Valheim 1.0 / Better Continents 0.9.x editions, so neither a game patch nor a mod patch release needs new guides.

• v0.9.0

  • Adds world export: it dumps the loaded world, vanilla or Better Continents, into Better Continents maps that rebuild it. That is a 16-bit heightmap sampled the way the game builds its terrain, plus biome, location, forest, heat, alt-biome, lava and moss maps with their legends, and an export.cfg with the settings that load them. Heights are encoded for Heightmap Amount 2 and Sea Level 0.5 by default (-30 m to 370 m, waterline 0.15).

  • The export samples on worker threads and writes its PNGs on a background task, so the game keeps running. It writes to BetterContinents/<world>/export-/ beside worlds_local, never into the world's save folder, and a cancelled or failed export deletes its partial files.

  • Adds the "bc export run/status/cancel" console commands for the host, and "bc_export" for every player the server allows. "bc_export server" asks a dedicated server to export its own world (admins only).

  • Adds an export HUD modelled on Wubarrk's Eye: a status box (F9) with the progress, the last export folder and your map pixel, and a window (F7) with the export options, Start and Cancel. The window frees the mouse while it is open. Turn it on with Hud in the new "BetterContinents.Export" config section.

  • The Export section applies at once: Better Continents now reads BetterContinents.cfg again when the file changes on disk, and Configuration Manager changes apply straight away. Other settings are still read only when a world is created.

  • A server sends its Hud and Allow Export values to every Better Continents client, and a change reaches players who are already connected. A client connected to an older server, or to one without the mod, uses its own values.

  • Fixes the server forgetting a joining client's Better Continents version at the game's own handshake, which made a world using Better Continents turn every client away (since 0.7.31).

  • Adds a "Settings Transfer Rate" setting ("07 BetterContinents.Misc": Vanilla, KB256, KB384, KB512 (the default), KB768, MB1, MB1_5, MB3 or Unlimited, 100 MB/s). Valheim pins every Steam connection to about 150 KB/s, so a detailed Better Continents world could take over a minute to reach a joining player; this sets that one connection to the chosen rate for the transfer, then restores it. Steam sends at exactly the rate set (it has no congestion control), and the transfer itself moves about 4 MB/s at most: with an 11.8 MB world a join took 78 s at Vanilla, 23 s at KB512 and 3 s at Unlimited on a local dedicated server. Only the value on the machine that sends the settings (the host, or the dedicated server) matters, a client's own value has no effect, and the rate cannot be raised at all on PlayFab (crossplay) connections. The log shows the rate used and the transfer's size, time and speed.

  • Adds a shareable form of the world cache: "bc_cache export" writes a world's settings as a ".bcworld" file (the same data a joining client would otherwise download: 11.8 MB for a 2048 px world, more for larger ones) with a ".txt" description beside it; "bc_cache import <file or folder>" puts one into a player's local cache before they ever connect, so joining skips that download entirely; "bc_cache list" shows what is cached. Better Continents also imports any ".bcworld" it finds under BepInEx's plugins folder or in BepInEx/config/BetterContinents/seed/ automatically at startup, so a mod pack containing nothing but a ".bcworld" file pre-seeds every player who installs it. An import never overwrites an entry, and a file's id is computed from its content, never taken from its name.

  • Adds world import: "bc_import" (any player, in the main menu or in a world) makes a New World preset from an export folder, or from any folder of Better Continents maps with or without an export.cfg, and selects it, so Start, New World and Create make the world. With no argument it takes your newest export; "bc_import list" numbers them, and a number, a world's name or a folder picks one. "bc_import ... config" instead copies export.cfg into BetterContinents.cfg, keeping the old file beside it, and selects "From Config", for when you keep editing the PNGs. "bc import run/list/status" does the same in the host's debug tree.

  • Every export now makes a New World preset "<world> <date> " when it finishes, so it is a choice in the New World screen straight away (not selected: pick it). The preset carries every map and a 256 px picture of the map, so it keeps working if the folder is moved or deleted. "bc_export ... nopreset" (or the HUD) switches it off.

  • An import builds the settings exactly as "From Config" would, but from a copy of the config with export.cfg laid over it and on a worker thread, so your config is left alone (except the selected preset) and a loaded world is not touched. Making the same export's preset again replaces it; a preset of that name made some other way is moved aside, not overwritten.

  • The export HUD window has an Import tab (your exports, newest first, with Make preset, Use as config, Open the folder and Copy the folder path) next to the Export tab, which now explains every map in a line (and more when you point at it), estimates the size, memory and time, and shows what the last export came to: heights and clipped pixels, missing locations, the preset. The window scrolls when it is taller than the screen.

  • The paint map is now exported by default, like every other map ("bc_export ... nopaint" leaves it out). A Better Continents world's own terrain, vegetation and spawn maps, which no sampled map holds, are now copied into the export folder too, so the new world keeps them.

  • README.txt in every export is rewritten for first-timers: the three ways to make a world from the export, step by step, what every file is, and how to edit and cut and paste between exports. export.cfg starts with a short explanation. The old advice to quit the game before pasting export.cfg is gone: the config is read again while the game runs.

  • Fixes preset pictures never showing in the New World screen on Linux (and where the user name has a dot), and preset names with a dot being cut short there.

  • The Directory setting's description now lists all 13 map file names it loads.

  • Biome precision works again, now on Valheim 1.0 (it was switched off in 0.7.20). "Biome precision" 1 to 5 makes the ground follow the biome borders inside each 64 m terrain zone, on (N + 1) x (N + 1) cells down to 11 m, instead of only at the zone's 4 corners: ground textures, grass, vegetation and spawn points. 0 stays vanilla. Heights do not change, and "bc b p" changes it in a loaded world. An export's export.cfg carries the world's value.

  • Adds BetterContinents-Export-Guide.pdf to the package: "Export & Import, the easy guide", an illustrated, step-by-step guide for first-timers to exporting a world, editing the pictures, cutting and pasting between worlds, Biome precision and making new worlds from an export, with a table of what can go wrong and how to fix it (GPL-3.0, its source attached inside the PDF).

  • The package now carries three PDFs: the Better Continents Guide, "Export & Import, the easy guide", and "Map-making: a skill for AI agents" (BetterContinents-AI-Skill.pdf), a stand-alone document that teaches an AI agent how to author, check, export and import Better Continents maps; its toolkit is attached inside. - Known issue: the location map's grid is corner-based, unlike every other map's, so rotating or flipping an export's PNGs in an editor shifts every location by one pixel (10 m at 2048 px). Two locations can then land in the same 64 m zone, and the game keeps only the first: 487 of 11,817 were lost in a test world rotated by 180 degrees. Cut-and-paste and hand edits are not affected. To be fixed in a later version.

• v0.8.1

  • Adds alt-biome planting: an alt-biome map (altbiomemap.png) plants Valheim's alt biomes with colours, the way the biome map plants biomes. Its legend (altbiomemap.txt, written with a default colour per alt biome when missing) says which colour plants what, and "at x, z" lines plant the region under a point. Every planted area becomes a region of its own.
  • Planted alt biomes count toward the game's per-alt-biome maximums when it places the rest at random.
  • Adds per-world alt-biome options in the new "BetterContinents.AltBiomes" config section: mode (Random, PlantedOnly, Off), grid, placement seed, chance, amount, region size and distance scales, region filters and per-alt-biome overrides. They are baked into each new world.
  • New worlds stop the alt-biome grid at the edge of the world when it is inside 10500 m.
  • Adds the "bc ab" and "bc reload ab" console commands, and "bc_altbiomes" for every player, to inspect, export and change alt-biome placement.
  • Clients use the server's alt-biome placement, and both sides log whether they agree.
  • Fixes an index out of range error on Expand World Size worlds smaller than 10500 m, and wrong alt-biome regions on larger ones.
  • Fixes Deep North weather on worlds with a biome map following the camera height instead of the map.
  • Fixes land beyond 10500 m on worlds with the map edge drop-off disabled taking the ocean's biome for terrain, vegetation and spawns.
  • Fixes locations that accept several biomes searching the wrong biome, or one the map lacks.
  • Fixes debug-mode map edits not reaching alt-biome regions and chunk biomes.
  • Guards the game's biome data cache with a fingerprint, so a cache built for other settings is never reused. Valheim 1.0.15 itself no longer reads that cache.
  • Worlds that use none of the new alt-biome features are saved exactly as 0.8.0 saves them. Worlds that do need 0.8.1 or later: 0.8.0 loads them without Better Continents.

• v0.8.0

  • Updates the mod for Valheim 1.0.15.
  • Saves world settings in the new 1.0 chunked save format, inside the world's own folder.
  • Adds an upgrade path: a pre-1.0 world's settings are imported and moved into the world folder on its first save, and the old file is kept as "<world>.BetterContinents.pre10".
  • Carries the settings through Valheim's save operations (rename, copy, move), which filter by file extension and would otherwise drop or delete them.
  • Fixes the minimap drawing Swamp, Mountain, Plains and Mistlands as Black Forest, and restores the Ashlands and Mistlands map shading.
  • Fixes world generation hanging forever when the biome map omits a biome.

• v0.7.31

  • Fixes wrong default name for moss map image file (was mossmmap.png, should be mossmap.png).
  • Fixes manually reloading heat map using forest map file path.
  • Fixes flat map being disabled when rough map blend was zero (should be only disabled when flat map blend is zero).
  • Fixes None biome on biome maps not using the default biome generation.
  • Fixes location pin removing possibly removing a random pin from the map.
  • Minor optimizations.

• v0.7.30

  • Adds spawn map.
  • Adds vegetation map.
  • Changes the "Skip default location placement" config setting to be saved on the map settings.
  • Improves config settings layout.
  • Minor optimizations.
  • Fixes index out of range error when going out of map bounds.
  • Fixes "Disable map drop off" not working.

• v0.7.29

  • Fixes some worlds not working.

• v0.7.28

  • Adds fallback handling for lava when heat map is missing.

• v0.7.27

  • Fixed for the new game version.