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. Unless you bring a deer from an animal mod: the sled is animal-friendly (see Draft animals).

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).

The vanilla cart gets a seat too, for a passenger (no steering or brakes: someone pulls, or it rolls) — fair is fair (CartSeat turns it off).

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 (or back with S, once stopped: out of a dead end), and jump to bail out. A gamepad works too: the left stick steers (the further you tilt it, the sharper the turn), a flick forward or back pushes off, and the hint shows the stick. A sled left standing stays put on a slope: its runners settle into the snow. 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, crunch through deep powder, rasp on ice, grind on frozen ground and stone, rumble over wooden floors and drag through dirt, and at speed the wind joins in: real recordings, not synthesized noise (credits below). 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.

Draft animals

An animal-friendly sled. New: tame animals can pull it too, with a mod that hitches carts to them. You can ride in the sled while they do. Tested with:

• Draft Animals 1.1.3 (4gestr): put a harness on a tame boar, deer or wolf, press Shift+E at the sled's shafts, then drive it from the bench at the front or let it follow you. The sled gets the same hitch and driver's bench as the cart. A deer is as close to a reindeer as Midgard gets.
• Beasts of Burden 1.0.8 (AWL Gaming's maintained fork): use the sled's handles with a tame lox, wolf or boar next to them, and the closest one gets hitched. To take the handles yourself with an animal nearby, hold Shift (the alternate placement key) while pressing E.
• OdinHorse 1.9.3: horses, and other tame animals, pull it.

When the animal slows down or stops, it holds the sled back (AnimalHoldBack), so the sled doesn't glide on into it on snow. On slopes the shafts stay at hip height above the ground (LevelAnimalHitch): the animal mods measure the hitch from the animal's feet, so behind a big animal the sled used to nose into the snow downhill and lift off uphill. The vanilla cart gets this too.

One difference from pulling it yourself: an animal keeps its own pace on any ground. The snow-versus-ground trade-off (the sled slow on bare ground, the cart slow in snow) applies to players only for now. If that makes the sled too good with animals, tell me (a comment or a GitHub issue) and I'll fix it.

Some quirks come from those mods or the game and happen with the vanilla cart too: with Beasts of Burden a hitch doesn't survive leaving the area. On Deep North ice the game takes an animal's footing away, as it does yours: pulling the sled, it keeps its footing like you do (SureFootedPulling); with the vanilla cart it slips and crawls, as in vanilla.

Use one cart-hitching mod at a time. Not compatible: LetsGo (Hardwire99) hitches carts to animals itself and its page asks to remove Beasts of Burden, so it fights the mods above over the same hitch; it isn't tested with the sled.

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; with Draft Animals 1.1.3, Beasts of Burden 1.0.8 and OdinHorse 1.9.3 in single player.

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.
• Sounds, recorded by Freesound users: snow and powder by Nox_Sound (Snowboard_Slide_Loop_Mono_02 and _01, CC0), ice by alexarje (Sledging (SoundAction 359), CC BY 4.0), frozen ground and stone by Percy Duke (Ice Block - Sliding, Crunching, Scraping, CC BY 3.0), ground by brunoboselli (Dragging Kayak, CC BY 4.0), wood floors by papimre (Wood Plank Pushed On Wood Floor Long, CC0) and wind by FunWithSound (Car Strong Wind Noise, CC0). Each loop is rebuilt from short grains of its recording, so it keeps the recording's tone but stays even and has nothing in it you'd hear repeat (details).
• 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, translations, tests and this text — was made entirely with AI, and tested in the game. The sounds are real recordings by the people credited above, picked by ear and turned into loops by AI.

License

MIT, see LICENSE. The sound recordings keep their own licenses (CC0, CC BY), see Credits.

Changelog

0.2.5

• 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.

0.2.4

• Multiplayer: a player sitting on a sled (or in a cart) now shows seated to everyone else too. Before, only the rider saw themselves sitting; the player pulling them and anyone nearby saw them standing in the sled. The game sends other players only some of a character's animation flags, and the sitting pose wasn't among them. Only the players who watch need this version: a rider with an older one shows seated to them too.
• The description has a Bugs section: bugs and ideas go to the GitHub issues page. Its links to the developer notes and the license work on the mod sites too (they pointed to files next to the README).

0.2.3

• Description update only; the mod itself is unchanged. The README and the mod page show screenshots: hauling through the Deep North, riding downhill, the frozen sea with Seasons, and a deer from Draft Animals pulling the sled.

0.2.2

• New sounds: real recordings instead of synthesized noise, and more of them. The runners hiss on snow, plough heavier through Deep North powder, rasp on ice, grind on frozen ground and stone, rumble over wooden floors (their own sound now) and drag through dirt; a rider at speed hears the wind rush past. Each loop is rebuilt from short grains of its recording: the recording's tone, steady, with nothing in it you'd hear repeat. Recordings from Freesound by Nox_Sound, alexarje, Percy Duke, brunoboselli, papimre and FunWithSound (credits and licenses in the README).
• Dirt, frozen ground and stone grind 3.5 dB quieter than the snow's hiss, which they drowned out; at the default SoundVolume the sled now sounds about as loud as the vanilla cart on snow and ice, a little quieter on wood and quieter still on earth and stone.
• A sled that stops and goes again no longer starts its sound from the same spot each time.

0.2.1

• Description update only; the mod itself is unchanged. Beasts of Burden 1.0.8 is tested with the sled: an animal no longer leaves its hitch settings behind for the next player, and holding Shift (the alternate placement key) while pressing E at the handles lets you take the sled yourself with a tame animal nearby. The README and the mod page say so, and no longer list "the closest tame animal gets hitched rather than you" as a quirk.

0.2.0

• New: draft animals. Tame animals pull the sled with a mod that hitches carts to them, and you can ride in the sled while they do. Draft Animals (boar, deer, wolf): the sled gets the same hitch and driver's bench as the cart; Shift+E at the shafts, then drive from the bench or let the animal follow you. Beasts of Burden (lox, wolf, boar) and OdinHorse (horses) hitch the sled as they do any cart.
• The animal holds the sled: when it slows down or stops, the sled stops behind it instead of gliding on into it (AnimalHoldBack); on a climb the sled doesn't roll back down, and a team standing on a slope stays put.
• On slopes the shafts meet the animal at hip height above the ground under them (LevelAnimalHitch), for the sled and the vanilla cart alike: the animal mods measure the hitch from the animal's feet, which behind a big animal puts it in the ground downhill and in the air uphill.
• On slippery ice (Deep North, and shallow frozen water with Seasons) an animal pulling the sled keeps its footing, as you do (SureFootedPulling).
• An animal keeps its own pace on any ground: the snow-versus-ground trade-off applies to players only for now.

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).