ValheimBB

Valheim ButBetter is a wide ranging quality-of-life mod for Valheim. It bundles a set of small, practical changes for building, crafting, equipment handling, UI feedback, world exploration, and audio cleanup.

These range from these that just annoy me (Moder wind buff not giving side wind?!) to small SFX/VFX changes like adding a distinct sound when hitting 'bedrock'. Most of the changes do not effect gameplay significantly, though some may speed up progress very slightly depending on your playstyle.

Changes

Building & Crafting

• Custom hoe progression: the vanilla hoe is treated as the Stone Hoe and is unchanged. Flint and Bronze hoes have new ability to clear small shrubs (does not yield wood). Bronze hoes can additionally place torches.
• Torch, brazier, and kiln cleanup: torch and brazier fuel lasts longer, standing wood torches can hold more fuel, and kilns can no longer consume Fine Wood.
• Alternate fuel: fireplaces & kilns can use Core Wood & Ancient Bark (will use any regular wood on you first).
• Stone oven doors: stone oven hatches use a tighter proximity trigger and wait briefly before closing, reducing constant open/close chatter in kitchens and busy bases.
• Crafting sort toggle: the crafting panel gets a Sort: Classic / Sort: A-Z toggle so long recipe lists can be sorted alphabetically when desired.

Item Tweaks

• Arrow cost adjustment: Reduced metal/gland cost of metal arrows, metal bolts, and frost arrows by increasing the batch size to 100 and wood/feather cost, but not increasing metal cost. I.e., you get 100 arrows for one ingot instead of 20.
• Headdress of the Bear recipe: removes the Bear Trophy requirement so you actually have a shot at building the full set before it's obsolete.
• Muckshake food tweak: increased Muckshake health regeneration to 2 hp/sec.

Equipment & Combat

• Wisplight outside Mistlands behavior: choose between vanilla orbit, off, or locked in place. The default keeps the Wisplight equipped but pins it in front of the player outside Mistlands so it is not constantly flying in front of the camera and generally being annoying (especially indoors).
• Crossbow loaded-state persistence: reload-required weapons stay loaded when you swap away and back.
• Pickaxe stamina tuning: pickaxe stamina costs scale slightly more gently by tier, and dirt-only swings can refund part of the paid stamina cost.
• Mace knockback tuning: Maces have lower primary knockback and much stronger secondary knockback, so you can more easily combo with normal attacks, and use secondary when you want to create space.
• Thrown spear pickup protection: thrown spears should not be automatically picked up by others players. (You basically can't throw spears when adventuring with friends without this, unless you want to be constantly asking them for your spears back.)
• Moder power tweak: Moder lasts 10 minutes and changes wind direction to a side wind while active (sail faster for longer).

World & UI

• ValheimBB options menu: settings are available from the main menu and in-game pause menu. Settings marked Change in Main Menu affect prefab setup and should be changed before loading a world.
• Main menu version label: the main menu shows the installed ValheimBB version.
• Night popup: shows a center-screen message when night begins. (for people who want to known exact timing but play with music off)
• Build/craft unlock markers: newly unlocked build pieces and crafting recipes show a ! marker until hovered or selected.
• Plant growth hover states: plants and picked regrowing objects show a general regrowth state ("Recently Planted", "Growing", "Nearly grown").
• No-map biome label: when playing without the map, the current biome label remains visible in the upper right of screen.
• Resting countdown: the Resting status icon shows a countdown, and the delay before Rested is reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Haldor Sense: MY FAVORITE ONE. Adds a 600m radius trigger around potential Haldor locations that alert you of 'a magical presence to the [North, Northeast, etc]'. This works regardless of map mode. Adds a "New Biome" style popup when you reveal Haldor.

Audio and Visual Effects

• Bedrock pickaxe feedback: pickaxe hits against bedrock get custom audio feedback and the flying rocks particle effect is removed.
• Vegetation pickaxe feedback: pickaxe hits on bushes include the vegetation hit sound instead of only the pickaxe hit sound.
• Creature sound origin cleanup: many creature idle, alerted, attack, and trail sound effects are attached to the creature origin instead of staying at the point where the sound started. (A personal pet peeve of mine. Creature/monster sound effects are NOT tied to their source in Vanilla, they are spawned at a stationary point and play from that point regardless if the creature has moved away from it.)
• Player damage SFX: player fall and fire damage plays a new grunt SFX.
• Player death SFX: player death plays a custom death splat sound.

Chat Commands

These are mainly for no-map playthroughs paired with compass mods. I may end up building my own compass eventually.

In the chat box (NOT the developer console):

• /addpin [index] adds a map pin at your current position.
• Pin indexes: 0 = Campfire, 1 = House, 2 = Anchor, 3 = Dot, 4 = Portal.
• /removepin [radius] removes the nearest pin within the chosen radius. Default radius is 10 meters.
• /cleardeaths removes all death markers from your map.

Configuration

Open ValheimBB Options from the main menu or pause menu for the most commonly changed settings.

The BepInEx config file is also available at:

BepInEx/config/com.valheimbb.cfg

Config coverage includes feature toggles for custom hoes, item tweaks, wisplight behavior, pickaxe stamina, unlock markers, plant hover states, Haldor Sense, resting tweaks, audio toggles, and stone oven doors.

Install

Install through Thunderstore Mod Manager or r2modman.

For manual installs, place the package contents into your Valheim profile so BepInEx/plugins/ValheimBB.dll and the adjacent Assets, Icons, and audio files are present.

Version

0.2.2