Winter Sled

A cargo sled for Valheim. Hitch it, load it, haul it — just like the cart, except this one actually likes winter. Reindeer not included: you are the reindeer.

It rides on runners instead of wheels, so how it moves depends on what is under it:

• Snow and ice: it glides as if it was born for this. Pulling it feels like cheating.
• Frozen ground (cleared ground in the Mountains and the Deep North): the runners scrape and complain, but keep going.
• Bare ground in the warm biomes: the sled becomes a very heavy plough. You walk slowly, tire quickly and start to question your choices, more so with a full load.
• Wood floors, roads and rock: neither here nor there.

That makes it the cart's winter rival: the cart wins on grass, the sled wins in snow. To keep things fair, wheels now sink in snow — the cart had it too easy (you can turn that off if you feel sorry for it).

You can also sit in it and ride down a snowy slope: steer with A/D, brake with your heels on S, push off with W, and jump to bail out. A parked sled stays put on a slope. A sled you let go of at full speed does not: it has places to be. Odin does not cover runaway sleds.

While you pull it, an icon shows what the runners are on — snow, deep snow, ice, frozen ground, wood, stone or ground — in case your legs haven't told you already.

Sounds

The runners hiss on snow, sing on ice, scrape on frozen ground and grumble on dirt, and at speed the wind joins in. The volume is in the settings, for those who prefer to sled in dignified silence.

Seasons

Plays along with Seasons (shudnal) and Seasonality (RustyMods): when winter reaches the Meadows, the sled is the first to celebrate. It glides through snowy meadows, forests and plains, and frozen lakes and sea become the fastest roads in Midgard (with Seasonality, turn on its "Water Freezes" option). Neither mod is required.

Languages

All the game's languages: English, Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Finnish, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (European and Brazilian), Romanian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Turkish, Greek, Georgian, Hindi, Thai, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese and Korean. The riding hint even shows your own key bindings.

Building

Hammer → Misc, at a workbench: 20 Wood, 10 Fine wood, 4 Iron, 2 Wolf pelt. It unlocks with your first iron and wolf pelt — about when the Mountains start trying to freeze you to death. With Seasons or Seasonality winter comes much sooner, and so does the sled: it costs 20 Wood, 8 Leather scraps, 10 Bronze nails instead, like the cart. Both recipes can be changed in the settings.

Looks

The body is the cart's, borrowed without asking. Underneath are curved runners with Norse curled tips, iron shoes, rope lashings and a wolf pelt on the seat (the wolf wasn't asked either). Everything uses the game's own textures, so the sled looks like it was always there.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/rgeraskin.WinterSled.cfg. The settings go from what you are most likely to change to the fine tuning; the two Advanced sections are hidden in Configuration Manager until you tick "Advanced settings". Everything that changes how the sled moves is synced from the server (admin only), so all players simulate the same sled; sound and effects are each player's own.

Changes apply right away, also to sleds already built (with Configuration Manager, F1, without leaving the game).

Installation

Needs BepInExPack Valheim and Jötunn. Install with a mod manager, or put WinterSled.dll into BepInEx/plugins. Everyone on a server needs the mod.

Tested on Valheim 1.0.20 with BepInExPack 5.4.2351, Jötunn 2.30.2, Seasons 1.10.5 and Seasonality 3.8.4, single player and with two players.

Development

Building, tests, the in-game test harness and releasing: DEVELOPMENT.md.

Credits

• Inspired by Shield Sledding (ModdedWolf), whose surface rules (ice by name, Deep North powder depth) this mod follows.
• Valheim World Editor built the test courses: snowy slopes, a strip of bare frozen ground, a flat pad for coasting tests, all edited live in the test world. It helped a lot: every surface could be tested under the same, repeatable conditions. Its release script is also the base of this mod's publishing to the mod sites.

Made with AI

This mod — code, 3D model, sounds, translations, tests and this text — was made entirely with AI, and tested in the game.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.

Changelog

0.1.2

• S kicks back on a sled that has (nearly) stopped, like W forward: one push per press, same stamina. Out of a dead end, away from a wall. At speed S is still the brake.
• Gamepad: riding already took the left stick (analog steering, a flick forward or back to push off or brake), but the riding hint read W/A/S/D; with a gamepad it now shows the stick's directions and the gamepad's jump button.
• Air drag was about five times too strong: a sled coasting on the flat (the frozen sea above all) slowed down as if into a gale. It now coasts much farther. The speed cap above MaxSpeed is steeper, but the downhill top speed is a little higher than before (about 17 m/s instead of 15-16 on a 28° slope). The setting is renamed to AirResistance (0.12), so a value saved under the old AirDrag (0.55) no longer applies.
• Steadier on bumps: the centre of mass is lower, down by the runners, and a new Stability setting keeps the sled level with the ground under it (and level in the air, so it lands on its runners). On the test run, where 0.1.1 tipped over on small bumps, it no longer rolled over.
• New, and more than the game allows: pulling a sled, you keep your footing on slippery ice. Where the game takes the legs' control away (Deep North ice, and with Seasons frozen water shallower than 4 m) the sled dragged you to a crawl (about 2.5 m/s), and the vanilla cart can't be pulled there at all; now you run at about 6 m/s with the sled, as on other ice. Ice where you keep control anyway (Seasonality's, Seasons' deep sea) is unchanged, glide included. The cart is unchanged. SureFootedPulling (on by default) turns it off, for vanilla rules.

0.1.1

• The vanilla cart gets a seat too: a passenger's, with no steering or brakes (someone pulls, or it rolls). CartSeat turns it off.
• Getting off (Jump) stands you up in the sled, where you sat, instead of on the ground beside it; you step or jump off from there.
• The cargo stays in sight while someone rides: only the crates under the rider hide, and they hide or show at once.
• Pushing off with W is now a kick per press that costs stamina (PushImpulse, PushStamina), instead of a steady push that drove the sled across flat ice like a car. PushForce is gone.
• A sled left standing is held by static friction (its runners settle into the snow), but no longer on ice, where a bumped sled now slides. ParkSpeed is now StaticFrictionSpeed.
• Runner sound: it follows the sled's speed smoothly instead of rising and falling with every step, the loops are longer and seamless, and ice is an iron-on-ice scrape instead of a whistle. The wind plays only for a rider.
• The surface on the status icon (and the hauling speed and sound with it) no longer flickers between snow and deep snow.

0.1.0

First release.

• A cargo sled built from the cart (Hammer, Misc, needs a workbench): wooden runners, iron shoes, rope and a fur seat. It carries what the cart carries and is pulled the same way.
• Runner physics per surface: snow, Deep North powder, ice, frozen ground, wood floors, stone and bare ground, each with its own friction and grip. A sled coasts about four times farther on ice than on snow, and drags hard on thawed ground. Parking brake, air drag, a speed limit.
• Hauling: pulling the sled is easy on snow and ice, slower on frozen ground and floors, slow and tiring on bare ground, and slower with load.
• Ride it: sit on it and steer, brake and push off downhill. Any player can ride; the rider takes over the physics of a sled nobody pulls. Hitting something at speed damages the sled and what it hits.
• Snow spray, Deep North powder trails, and synthesized runner sounds for each surface plus wind at speed.
• Wheeled vehicles (the vanilla cart) slow you down in snow (0.8) and powder (0.6); SlowCartsInSnow turns it off.
• Optional support for Seasons (shudnal) and Seasonality (RustyMods): seasonal snow counts as snow, frozen water as ice, and the sled uses SeasonalRequirements (no iron) while one of them is installed.
• Every coefficient is in the config, synced from the server and applied live.
• All the game's languages (Abenaki falls back to English).