ClientPortals

Pick your portal destination from a list or on the map. No need for tag pairs or portal hubs anymore, though vanilla pairs keep working. Learn portals by exploring, and share them with your friends at the cartography table. Fully playable with a gamepad (Steam Deck included), and built from the game's own UI, so it looks and sounds like part of Valheim.

100% client-side. Nothing to install on the server: it works on any dedicated server, on a friend's local host and in single player, and the other players don't need it either. Anyone who installs it can use it.

In your language. Translated into all 35 languages the game ships, following its language setting (or the mod's own Language setting).

How it works

Look at any portal and press Q (on a gamepad: tap L3), or walk into an unpaired portal. The portals you know open in a list: pick one and you are there. Unpaired portals swirl like paired ones once you know somewhere to go, and vanilla tag pairs keep working as usual.

You learn a portal by:

Single player and local hosts know every portal in the world from the start (configurable).

Moved or destroyed portals don't strand you. A known portal destroyed anywhere while you play leaves your list at once. If one went while you weren't around, the trip checks the destination under the loading screen: a portal rebuilt nearby under the same name takes you in (and replaces the old one in your list, favorite kept); with none, you come back to the portal you left from, and the old one leaves your list.

The list

Search by name, sort by name or distance, and star your favorites to keep them on top. The All, Favorites and Ignored tabs switch between them. The … mark (F2) renames a portal from afar: a tag pair is renamed at both ends, so it stays connected (only a portal you have been near since joining the game: the game hasn't sent you the others).

Portal rooms fill a list with portals you never want to pick:

• Ignore a portal to move it to the Ignored tab (and back the same way). Unnamed portals count as one: ignoring one ignores them all.
• Same names (HideTwins, on by default): of portals sharing a name, only the one farthest away is shown. In your portal room, that's the far end of each tag pair.
• HideNearby hides every portal close to the one you use.

Map view

Tab (or Map view) turns the list into the game map with every portal you know on it, even in areas you haven't explored, its name written underneath (Portal names). Hover a portal for its name and distance, click it to travel, right-click it for a favorite, middle-click it to ignore it. Only portals hides the map's other pins. The search works here too: the map zooms to the matching portals, and Enter travels when only one is left. Tab or the map key goes back to the list, Esc clears the search and then closes. The view you used last opens next time (View).

With a gamepad, move a portal under the crosshair (LB/RB jump from portal to portal): A travels, Y marks a favorite, R3 ignores, X shows only portals, L3 the names, the triggers zoom, B clears the search and then cancels.

Cartography table: a shared atlas of portals

The cartography table already shares the explored map. With ClientPortals it also keeps an atlas of portals: Write map records every portal you know, Read map teaches you every portal recorded there, and the table's hover text shows how many it holds. Destroyed portals leave your list, and the table the next time you write to it. Players without the mod share the map as usual.

Renaming both ends of a pair (optional)

Renaming one end of a vanilla tag pair breaks the pair. With RenameBoth on, Shift + E (RenameKey) at a paired portal (on a gamepad: alt + use) renames both ends at once, so the pair stays connected, also for players without the mod. Names can be up to NameLimit characters, in the game's own rename dialog too. Off by default, and while TagConnectedPortals is installed.

Names above portals (optional)

With Enabled in the Labels section, each portal's name floats above it, hidden behind walls and far away; PageUp shows or hides them. Color, font and size are in the settings. Off by default, and while Teleporter Overhead Text is installed.

Languages

English, Bulgarian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (European and Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian: the mod follows the game's language setting, or the Language setting to pick another one. Corrections are welcome.

Good to know

• Why learning? On a dedicated server, the game only sends each player the portals near them. A client-side mod can't see the others until someone has been close to them, so portals are learned by visiting, through tag pairs, or from the cartography table.
• The game's rules still apply: no travel with ores or other restricted items (unless the portal allows them), and none when the world disables portals or during a boss fight with that option on.
• Known portals, favorites and ignored portals are saved with your character, separately for each world. Favorites and ignored portals are personal: they are not shared at the cartography table.
• With Zen.ModLib's "Alternate Interact Key" on Q (its default, like TravelKey), Q at a portal opens the destinations and Zen's alternate interaction stays for everything else.
• ClientPortals never changes portal tags or connections on its own: only when you rename a portal yourself.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/rgeraskin.ClientPortals.cfg. Every setting is your own: nothing is synced from the server. Configuration Manager (F1) changes them in game.

Installation

Needs only BepInExPack Valheim. Install with a mod manager, or put ClientPortals.dll into BepInEx/plugins. Only you need it: not the server, not the other players.

Tested on Valheim 1.0.21 with BepInExPack 5.4.2351, in single player on Windows and macOS, with keyboard and mouse and with a gamepad; also with Zen.ModLib.

Development

Built with dotnet from mise: mise run build, mise run test (unit tests), mise run package (the mod's zip). The architecture and the in-game test harness are described in CLAUDE.md.

Credits

• Inspired by EasyPortal (hrossow), also client-side. ClientPortals is the same idea written from scratch: open source, full gamepad support, 35 languages, a map view you can switch to with search and portal names, ignoring portals, renaming from the list, a redesigned interface built from the game's own UI, etc.
• The names above portals take their settings from Teleporter Overhead Text (ModdedWolf), and renaming both ends follows TagConnectedPortals (Neobotics): with either mod installed, ClientPortals leaves that feature to it.
• The title on the mod's images is set in Cinzel (Natanael Gama, SIL Open Font License).

Made with AI

This mod — code, translations, tests, images and this text — was made entirely with AI, and tested in the game.

License

MIT, see LICENSE. Source code: github.com/rgeraskin/valheim-client-portals.

Changelog

0.1.5

• Description update only; the mod itself is unchanged. Bugs and ideas can now also go to the chat for my mods, on Discord or Telegram; the GitHub issues page stays.

0.1.4

• Cartography tables in multiplayer: when two players wrote to the same table, the second player's portals could be lost. Both lists now end up on the table.
• A pair renamed by another player while you were far away no longer gets its old name back after you learn the new one from a table, and you no longer spread the old name with your next write.
• Writing to a table where a ward refuses you no longer records portals there.

0.1.3

• Pressing Enter in the map view's search to travel to the one matching portal no longer opens the chat too.

0.1.2

• Renaming both ends of a pair (RenameBoth) works on dedicated servers: the far end could keep its old name and the pair broke.
• A pair renamed by another player shows its new name at the far end too, not only at the end next to you.

0.1.1

• Moved or destroyed portals no longer strand you. The destination is checked behind the loading screen: a portal rebuilt within 50 m under the same name takes the trip there; with none, you go back to the portal you left from, with a message saying why, and the portal leaves your list.
• A known portal destroyed anywhere while you play leaves your list at once.
• Works with teleport-speed mods (QuickTeleport).
• Easier to find in mod managers: searching for "client portal" now finds it in Gale and on Hexium.

0.1.0

• Initial release.