Living World — Hardcore dynamic survival for Valheim

The tenth world was never meant to be empty. Living World fills it with people: settlers you win over and lead, camps that grow and die whether you're watching or not, bandits who come for what you've built, and a survival layer where food, water, sleep and winter all matter.

You don't just build a base anymore. You found a town, and the town lives.

Public beta. Back up your worlds before installing. Bug reports and ideas shape what comes next (see Support).

The idea

Valheim is beautiful and lonely. Living World asks: what if the world went on without you?

• People live here. Wandering traders travel the land. Camps sit in the Meadows and the Black Forest, each with its own name, people, food stores and fortunes.
• The world moves on its own. Every day, every camp eats, works, grows, gets sick, gets raided, or collapses, even if you never visit. A camp you ignored for a week might be a thriving settlement, or a bandit hideout.
• You build something that outlasts your trip to the next biome. Your village keeps working while you're out: clearing land, raising buildings, hunting, farming, crafting better tools, and defending itself.
• Every choice has a cost. Help a camp and it trusts you. Rob it and every camp hears about it. Tax your people and the treasury fills, but they'll resent it.
• Surviving is harder. You need to eat and drink, not just for buffs. You need sleep. Winter comes, crops freeze, and the nights are deadly cold.

How a game plays out

Day 1 — Alone. You land like always, but now there are hunger, thirst and energy bars beside your health. Drink from a lake, eat, find somewhere to sleep. Strangers with names walk the roads: wandering traders.

The first week — A village. You build a Village Totem. The land around it is now your village. Put out a chest with some food and a bed. Talk to a wandering trader, bring them a gift, earn their trust, and ask them to stay. They move in, take a trade, and get to work.

The village grows. Your settlers clear the trees, stumps and rocks from town, level the ground and start building from a real plan: a workshop with the workbench, longhouses with beds for everyone, a storehouse for the chests. They gather, chop, mine and hunt, haul it all home, and craft their own tools from what they've stored. They work out what they need next and go get it.

The world around you. You find camps on the map. Some welcome you: trade with them, take their jobs, help them when bandits attack, and maybe convince one of their people to join you. Some are already bandit camps, and they'll raid you.

Your call. A rich settlement sits a short walk away with full chests. You can be its best friend, or you can take everything it has. Pick the fight and the whole town takes up arms. Win, and it's yours to strip bare. It'll lie in ruins for days, and the other camps will remember.

The long game. Your village follows Valheim's own progression. As you beat bosses, your town can house more people, and as new materials reach the village chests, your settlers learn new things to build and craft. Then winter comes, and you find out if you prepared.

Features in detail

🏘️ Your village

• Village Totem (hammer → Misc, 10 wood + 4 resin) founds a village around it. You're its leader.
• Village screen (F7): every villager's trade, mood, needs and current task; a combined view of every chest in town; and a members list where you invite friends and choose what they're allowed to do. Built your village yourself? Turn off Villagers build the town and they'll leave the building to you and just do their jobs. The Buildings tab shows the town plan; the leader can move, turn or remove buildings before they're started.
• Taxes and a treasury: villagers pay in daily. Fair taxes keep them content; heavy taxes make them unhappy, and unhappy villagers work slower.
• Village jobs: your own people post requests you can fill for a reward.

🧑‍🌾 Settlers with real jobs

• Seven trades: gatherer, woodcutter, miner, hunter, farmer, cook, guard. Change anyone's trade at any time.
• They use real Valheim tools: an axe for trees, a pickaxe for rock, crafted at the village workbench from the game's own recipes and the materials in your chests. The woodcutter and miner keep upgrading theirs.
• They get stronger: they craft and wear armor, shields and better weapons, guards first, and gain health as their fighting skill grows. Give them gear yourself and they'll wear it too.
• They run the smelter: ore and coal in, bars out, and bronze made at the forge.
• A daily rhythm: work by day, gather at the fire in the evening, sleep in their own bed at night.
• They move like people: they walk about town, use doors and stairs, give way to each other in doorways, and only run from danger or after prey.
• Guards fight for their home. When an enemy shows up, the alarm goes out and your guards go after it. Everyone else keeps working unless the enemy comes for them; then the armed fight back and the rest run for home. The wounded fall back to heal. Fighting skill improves with every fight.

🏗️ A town that builds itself

• A real town plan around the fire: a workshop (workbench, chests, and workbench upgrades as they're learned), longhouses sized to how many beds the town needs (6 to 12 m long, split across more houses as it grows), and a storehouse. The plaza and the field stay open.
• Built properly, piece by piece, the way the hammer snaps them: floors on posts, walls, doors, gable roofs, and stairs down to the ground at every door. On a slope, posts go all the way down to the ground.
• Hold your hammer in town to see the plan's outlines on the ground.
• They clear the land first. Grown trees, saplings, stumps, logs, bushes and rocks come out before a post goes in. Trees near houses are taken down in pieces so nothing falls on a roof.
• They level the ground with a hoe under their buildings, gently (never more than 2 m), so hills stay hills.
• A 10 x 9 m field south of the fire, planted in straight rows, harvested and replanted by your farmer.

📈 Progression without a new tech tree

• Villages learn the way you do: from what their players know, and from the materials that end up in their chests.
• They figure out their next step (a chopping block, a better axe, leather armor, bronze) and send the right trade out for the missing materials, breaking made things down into what they're made from.
• Boss-locked stays boss-locked. No shortcuts past Valheim's progression. Every town, yours and the camps, can house 4 people to start, plus 3 for every boss your world has beaten.

🗺️ A world that moves on its own

• Wandering traders roam the land, each skilled at a trade. Gift them food, build their trust, invite them home (or pay their price in coins).
• Ten camps across the Meadows and Black Forest, three people each to start. They grow one stage at a time, and every stage looks it: a campsite raises a hut, a camp adds a workshop, longhouses and furniture, a settlement a storehouse, workbench upgrades and torch-lit doorways, a hamlet a palisade. Each stage's buildings are finished before the next begins, and they keep working while you're away. People die and newcomers settle; a camp that dies out falls to bandits, and if you clear them out, settlers return. Collapsed camps get taken over by bandits.
• Trade with camps: they sell what they make and buy meat and hides. Friends get 10% off, allies 25%, and a friendly camp will share supplies once a day.
• Jobs: deliveries, hunts, clearing bandits, rescuing people who've gone missing. Some can be shared with friends.
• Bandit raids hit villages and camps. Defend a camp and it won't forget.

⚔️ Raiding towns

• Turn on any camp: hit Attack when talking to its people, smash its buildings, or rob its chests (you're warned the first time).
• The whole town takes up arms. Kill every last defender and the town falls: its chests and buildings are yours.
• A fallen town lies in ruins for several days before new settlers arrive, and every other camp trusts you less.

❄️ Survival and seasons

• Hunger, thirst and energy beside your health. Bigger meals fill more; soups and stews help thirst; meads count as drinks. Drink from water or a craftable waterskin. Sleep restores energy; sitting down (emote, chair or bench) brings some back, faster by a fire under a roof. Run low and you slow down; run out of food or water and you start losing health.
• Four seasons (10 days each by default). Winter brings snow to the Meadows and Black Forest, cold days and freezing nights. Crops don't grow in winter and die if left in the ground: harvest in autumn.

📖 Built-in guide

• Press F9 in game for the full guide: getting started, every key, and how each system works.

How to play: your first hour

1. Install with r2modman or the Thunderstore app (dependencies install automatically).
2. Press F9 in game to open the guide any time.
3. Survive the basics: eat, drink from water (Y), and sleep. Craft a waterskin at the workbench (4 leather scraps).
4. Build a Village Totem where you want your town, then a chest with some food. (A bed helps; your villagers will build their own hut either way.)
5. Find a wandering trader (they show on your map). Talk (E), gift food, and ask them to join.
6. Open the village screen (F7) to see your settler at work. Give them tools, food and materials.
7. Explore. Find camps on your map. Trade, take jobs, recruit, or raid.

Tips

• Trust and room = more settlers. A wandering trader moves in once they trust you (or you pay their price) and there's room in the village. No bed waiting? They sleep by the fire and build their own.
• Build your own buildings too. Villagers never build on or beside them; your beds count as the town's beds and your workbench stands in for their workshop.
• A foreman runs each town. Everyone builds while there's building to do; the right trade fetches what the builders are short of; someone brings in food when stores run low. The village screen shows the plan.
• Stock the chests. Your villagers build and craft from what's stored. Wood, stone, resin, flint, leather and hides keep the town moving.
• Give your farmer a cultivator and seeds. The field won't start without them.
• Keep the fire burning and taxes fair. Happy villagers work faster.
• Harvest before winter. Frost kills crops left in the ground.
• Raiding has consequences. Every camp hears about it.

Keys

All keys can be changed in the config.

Multiplayer and dedicated servers

• Every player and the server need the mod, on the same version. The server's settings apply to everyone.
• Villages, villagers, camps, jobs, reputation and the treasury live in the world and are synced to every player. Invite friends into your village and choose what they can do.
• Server setup: install BepInExPack_Valheim, Jotunn and Living World; start the server once to create the config; edit BepInEx/config/com.firstphase.livingworld.cfg.
• PC only (console players can't join modded servers).

Configuration

Nearly everything can be tuned or turned off (in the config file, or in game with Configuration Manager):

• Survival: hunger, thirst and energy rates; damage when empty; turn needs off entirely.
• Seasons: season length, weather per season, which biomes get winter, crop frost.
• Villages: size, starting population, villagers per boss, following Valheim's progression, learning on their own.
• Work: whether villagers build, level ground and replant; work range; field size; how much stock they keep.
• World: wandering traders per day, camp count, spacing and growth speed, raid chance, recruit costs.
• Quests and taxes: on/off and tax rates.
• Raiding towns: allow it or not; how long a fallen town stays empty.

Compatibility

• Built for Valheim 1.0 (Deep North) with BepInExPack_Valheim and Jotunn.
• Adds its own villagers, bandits and Village Totem. It doesn't replace vanilla creatures or building pieces.
• Mods that also change food, stamina or survival needs may stack; you can switch needs off.
• Removing the mod won't break a world (villagers and camps simply disappear).

FAQ

Do villagers keep working when I'm away? Yes. Camps simulate every day no matter where you are. Your own village catches up when you come back: the time you were away turns into clearing, levelling, building and stocked chests (it needs a Village Totem or a fire to keep time by).

What does recruiting need? Being on good terms (or coins) and room in the village. No bed or food needed.

Will they build on my base? They only build inside their own village, from their own plan, and never take down anything a player built.

Can I play solo? Yes. Solo, hosted co-op and dedicated servers are all supported.

Do I have to raid towns? No. You can be everyone's friend, everyone's enemy, or anything in between.

Admin and test commands (F5 console)

Anyone: vd_status, vd_villagers, vd_camps, vd_sites (a village's building plan and what it needs next). Admins with devcommands: vd_villager_spawn, vd_raid, vd_camp_war, vd_skipdays, and more (type help).

Known issues (beta)

• Villagers can only reach what's loaded around a player. If the land near town is picked clean, they'll wait until you range further.
• Farming needs a cultivator, which needs copper (after the first boss).
• Furniture that needs fine wood waits until the village can get it.

Support

Report bugs with your BepInEx/LogOutput.log, your mod list, and whether you were solo, hosting, or on a dedicated server.

Unofficial fan mod. Not made, endorsed, or supported by Iron Gate.