Buildheim

Plan it. Gather it. Build it.

A client-only blueprint mod for Valheim, inspired by Litematica. Load or capture a building, position a private hologram, and build it with your normal hammer.

Only you need the mod. The server and other players do not need Buildheim. Your blueprint stays local; the pieces you build become ordinary world objects. Building uses materials from your inventory.

Installation

In your r2modman profile:

1. Install BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2333 or newer and Jötunn 2.30.0 or newer.
2. Copy this project's Buildheim.dll into a folder under BepInEx/plugins. Remove the previous PlanBuild DLL when upgrading. Keep only one Buildheim DLL in the profile.
3. Launch with Start modded, join a world, and press End.

Download a ZIP from Releases or Actions, or build the DLL using the development instructions. Use this project's build: the original PlanBuild package has a different workflow. Restart Valheim after replacing the DLL.

Compatibility: compilation and automated checks pass against Valheim 1.0.7, BepInExPack 5.4.2350, and Jötunn 2.30.0. This is a development build. The new UI, targeting, and reconnect workflow still need in-game validation; multiplayer compatibility is not yet fully verified.

Your first build

1. Press End, open Blueprints, and click Open folder to open your configured blueprint directory. Put .blueprint or .vbuild files there. Extract downloaded ZIPs first. Subfolders work too. Fresh installs use BepInEx/config/Buildheim/blueprints inside your profile.
2. Return to the Blueprints tab and click Refresh. Choose a building to load its hologram and open the Build tab.
3. Close the planner and position the hologram with the shortcuts below. Loading or moving a hologram does not spend materials.
4. Open Materials to see what you need. Gather supplies and carry the materials for the pieces you want to place.
5. Select Click to build, close the planner, and equip your normal hammer. Aim at a missing hologram piece and click. Buildheim selects its recipe, position, and rotation, then Valheim checks and places it.

Completed pieces disappear from the hologram as they are detected in the loaded world.

To make your own blueprint, use New blueprint in the Blueprints tab or open Capture.

Capture a building

1. Enter a blueprint name and choose Select / edit box.
2. Aim at a surface and left-click to set corner A (cyan). Right-click sets opposite corner B (orange). A visible box shows the capture area.
3. Adjust the last corner you clicked with Ctrl + wheel (forward/back), Ctrl + X + wheel (sideways), or Alt + wheel (height). Steps are 0.1 m; hold Shift for 1 m. Middle-click switches which corner you adjust. Click either mouse button again to reposition that corner at your aim point.
4. Enclose the whole building, including its foundation and roof. If both corners are at ground level, raise B with Alt + wheel. The box needs width, height and depth.
5. Press End to review the corners, box dimensions and piece count, then choose Save blueprint. Use Select / edit box again to refine it.

Capture includes loaded, player-built pieces whose placement points lie inside the box. Pieces may extend beyond those points, so leave room around the building. Corner A becomes the blueprint origin. Existing files are never overwritten.

While selecting, mouse clicks pick corners without attacking, placing or removing pieces. Your loaded placement is temporarily hidden and autobuild is turned off. Opening the planner ends selection mode; Clear selection removes the box. Selection corners last for the current world session.

Positioning controls

Use these with a hologram loaded and the planner closed. Movement follows your camera's horizontal facing direction.

Control	Action
End	Open or close the planner
Ctrl + wheel	Move forward or backward
Ctrl + X + wheel	Move sideways
Alt + wheel	Raise or lower the hologram
Ctrl + Alt + wheel	Rotate the hologram
Shift with a positioning shortcut	Use larger steps
Home	Toggle autobuild while the planner is closed
F7	Enable or disable the current placement while the planner is closed
F8	Show or hide Buildheim's HUD while the planner is closed

Normal steps are 0.1 m and 22.5°. Hold Shift for 1 m and 90°. Rotation lands on the normal hammer's angle grid, so blueprints whose pieces use standard angles remain compatible with ordinary hammer replacements. Existing saved placements keep their exact angles until you explicitly rotate them. Imported blueprints can still contain nonstandard piece angles.

Building pauses while positioning modifiers are held, and the wheel does not also zoom the camera or rotate the hammer piece. These shortcuts take priority over crouching and sitting while positioning.

The planner slides open and closed with Valheim's inventory timing and uses its opening and closing sounds. Closing releases controls immediately; toggling again during the slide reverses its direction.

Move to my feet in the Build tab relocates the blueprint origin to your character. Positioning shortcuts appear while you hold a positioning modifier, unless you hide the HUD.

Choose how to build

Mode	What happens
Preview only	See the hologram and select and place hammer pieces yourself.
Click to build	Aim at a missing hologram piece and click. Its recipe and alignment are selected for you.
Autobuild	Walk with your hammer equipped. Nearby eligible pieces are placed without aiming or clicking.

Both assisted modes find real placement surfaces around the chosen piece, so your crosshair does not have to hit its support surface precisely. Normal hammer reach, line of sight, recipe knowledge, crafting stations, placement restrictions, stamina, and durability still apply. The HUD explains placement failures when Valheim supplies a reason.

Autobuild attempts at most one piece every half-second and respects the hammer cooldown. Menus and putting away the hammer pause it. Press Home to turn it off. Loading another blueprint, dying, or reconnecting turns autobuild off as well.

Take a break

Press F7, or choose Disable placement in the Build tab, to hide the hologram and its HUD and stop all build assistance. Your position, layers and material checklist stay saved. Normal hammer building and camera controls work while the placement is disabled, and you can still use the Materials tab and record chest contents while gathering.

Press F7 again or choose Enable placement to resume. Disabling turns autobuild off; enable it again explicitly when ready. The placement stays disabled across reconnects until you enable it.

To hide only the build status and shortcut hints, press F8 or use Hide HUD at the top of the planner. Use the same key or Show HUD to bring it back. This preference persists across restarts and does not change the hologram or build mode, including autobuild.

The selected blueprint piece uses Valheim's normal hammer preview and invalid-placement coloring. Blocked targets remain highlighted in the hologram. Valheim's native info card shows the hovered hammer piece's name, icon, material costs and crafting station, with shortage colors for materials missing from your inventory. A visible preview does not bypass material, reach or placement requirements.

Build status appears for the current target and hides when there is no target or you put the hammer away. Capture and positioning keep their own instructions visible while active. The compact status panel avoids the native building UI and stamina bar.

In click-to-build mode, aim at the piece's visible shape. In autobuild mode, the hammer preview shows the next candidate for half a second before its attempt. Autobuild skips pieces whose materials or recipe requirements are missing and rechecks the selected layer as you move. An unsuccessful attempt advances to another candidate.

Build from the bottom up

In the Build tab, choose Bottom to show the lowest occupied layer. Finish it, then use Next to move upward. Previous moves down, and All layers shows the whole blueprint again. Empty layers are skipped.

Only pieces in the selected layer are shown and eligible for assisted building. Autobuild does not advance layers automatically.

Layer height ranges from 0.5 to 4 m, with a 2 m default. A piece belongs to the layer containing its origin, so a tall wall can extend beyond that layer. Changing the layer height returns a selected layer to the bottom.

Materials and gathering

The Materials tab lists costs for unfinished pieces. Switch between the whole blueprint and the selected layer.

Column	Meaning
Need	Materials required for the remaining pieces
Bag	Materials currently in your inventory
Chests	Last known contents of chests you have opened
Gather	What is still missing after bag and chest counts

Open chests normally while a blueprint is loaded to record their contents. Opening the same chest again updates its count instead of counting it twice. Changes in observed, loaded chests update their counts; unloaded chests retain their last known contents. Those counts can become stale if someone moves items. Forget chests clears the observations.

Check off individual materials, use Check stocked to mark rows with nothing left to gather, or Check all to mark the current list. Reset checks clears your marks.

Checkmarks are gathering notes. They do not change quantities or authorize building. Chest contents are never withdrawn automatically: the materials must be in your own inventory when you build. Costs exclude unavailable pieces, which the planner reports. Completion counts reflect construction detected in the loaded world.

Pick up where you left off

Your active hologram is saved automatically for each character and world, including:

• A copy of the blueprint and its position and rotation.
• Layer height and selected layer.
• Gathering checkmarks and whether you chose Preview only.
• Whether the placement is enabled or disabled.

Reconnect with the same character to the same world to restore it. Moving the original blueprint file does not lose the saved plan. Autobuild is always off after reconnecting. Chest observations last only for the current world session.

There is one active hologram per character and world. Loading another blueprint replaces it. Clear hologram also removes its saved placement. If a save cannot be read, the planner reports the problem and preserves the file.

Files and settings

These paths are relative to your r2modman profile:

Path	Contents
BepInEx/config/Buildheim/blueprints	Imported and captured blueprints
BepInEx/config/Buildheim/placements	Saved holograms and gathering notes
BepInEx/config/augusdogus.Buildheim.cfg	Planner, autobuild, placement and HUD keys; HUD visibility; blueprint directory
BepInEx/LogOutput.log	Mod loading messages and errors

The configuration file is created on first launch. The positioning modifier combinations are currently fixed.

Upgrading from our earlier PlanBuild builds preserves your setup: Buildheim copies marcopogo.PlanBuild.cfg into its new config file if one does not already exist, including custom keys and blueprint directories. If the profile already has BepInEx/config/PlanBuild and no Buildheim data folder, it continues using that existing folder for blueprints and saved placements. Fresh installs use the Buildheim paths above. Original files are preserved.

Blueprint support

Buildheim reads .blueprint and .vbuild files, up to 10,000 pieces and 8 MB per file.

• Terrain edits, container contents, and custom snap markers are not applied.
• Pieces with nonstandard scales can be displayed but cannot be placed by hammer assistance.
• Modded pieces require their original piece mods, including on the server when those mods require it.
• Assisted building requires resource costs. Disable the world's free-build setting to use it.

When switching from the original PlanBuild, finish or remove its shared plans with the original mod first and back up affected worlds and characters. This version does not migrate its plan objects, runes, Plan Hammer, or totems. Existing local blueprint files can still be imported.

Build

Use a .NET 8 SDK, a local Valheim installation, and BepInEx from your mod profile. From the repository root:

dotnet build src/Buildheim/Buildheim.csproj -c Release \
  -p:GameDir="/path/to/Valheim" \
  -p:BepInExDir="/path/to/profile/BepInEx"

dotnet test tests/Buildheim.Tests/Buildheim.Tests.csproj \
  -p:GameDir="/path/to/Valheim" \
  -p:BepInExDir="/path/to/profile/BepInEx"

The mod DLL is src/Buildheim/bin/Release/net48/Buildheim.dll. Install only the mod DLL, not game assemblies or the entire build directory. Building does not install or publish anything and does not modify the installed game assemblies. Environment.props can supply local paths; BepInExDir defaults to the game's BepInEx directory.

The client implementation lives in src/Buildheim/Client.

Tests cover blueprint parsing, material accounting, layer selection, autobuild scheduling, placement saves, and the game methods used by the hammer and input hooks. They do not run Unity. Runtime validation should include UI layout, modifier shortcuts, obstructed placement, inventory and chest transfers, reconnecting, and a vanilla server with an unmodded observer.

For bug reports, include the mod and Valheim versions, steps to reproduce, and relevant log entries. Include the blueprint file when the issue depends on a particular building.

Development and releases · Repository layout · Changelog

Acknowledgments and license

This project builds on the original PlanBuild, created by MarcoPogo and developed with contributions from Jules, Algorithman, Dreous, and Jere. It uses Jötunn.

Licensed under the WTFPL.