Better Angling

Better fishing. Working boats. Bigger sea stories.

Prepare bait, outfit a boat, haul useful catches, recover sunken loot and face the creatures below. 0.10.5 is an early Windows multiplayer test release for Valheim 1.0.21. Use a copied world and test characters. All players and the server need matching versions. This is an unofficial Valheim mod.

New in 0.10.5

Reworked boarding pikes: matte chitin/beak heads, rooted tooth barbs, riveted collars, weathered wood, leather grips and frayed rope bindings. Hand alignment and inventory icons have been improved.
Seven lobster dishes: regional crops and cauldron levels gate stronger food. Each recipe uses one lobster for one serving; higher-quality lobsters do not bypass the other ingredients. Basic broth is now 15 health / 45 stamina.
One full game day for new lobster pots. Existing pots retain their saved completion times. The new SoakDays setting replaces the old seconds setting.
Themed catch journal with filters and pages, and corrected transparent tackle-bag icons.

Lobster dish	Regional ingredient	Cauldron	Health / Stamina
Lobster broth	Carrot, yellow mushroom	1	15 / 45
Lobster and turnip hotpot	Turnip, thistle	2	18 / 55
Lobster onion bisque	Onion, yellow mushroom	3	22 / 65
Lobster barley bowl	Barley flour, cloudberry	4	25 / 75
Jotun-puff lobster bisque	Jotun puffs, onion	5	28 / 85
Ashlands lobster firepot	Fiddlehead, vineberry	6	32 / 95
Northern lobster chowder	Oat flour, kale	7	37 / 110

Update the server and all clients together to 0.10.5. Existing item identities, bag contents and journal records are preserved.

Fishing and expedition gear

Bite and struggle alerts with configurable sounds and visual cues; nine simpler regional bait recipes retain normal fish preferences.
Twenty-six fish and seafood dishes with health, stamina and eitr choices across the biomes.
Nine hide tackle bags, growing from 6 to 24 slots. Store fish and bait, collect catches automatically and use selected bait directly from the bag. Stored contents still weigh something.
Bow harpoon holder and stern trawling winch, on opposite sides from the rudder where appropriate. Craft copper, bronze, iron and black-metal nets at the forge before mounting them. Speed, turning and cargo increase tension; sustained overload breaks the line.
Fishing-powered hauling: skill affects stamina cost and catches award Fishing XP. Boat-secured harpoons transfer strain to the fitting and hull.
Salvage trawl for sunken scales, trophies, equipment and lost lobster pots. Uses the net slot, with eight cargo slots and a 120m cable.
Upgradeable fish holds, from 24 to 60 slots through metal tiers. Destroyed boats drop a floating hold kit containing the stored catch; fit it to a replacement boat.
Deep-ocean lobster pots, baited with raw fish. Lower them into Ocean water 15–80m deep, wait one full in-game day (30 minutes in a normal world) and hold Use at the buoy to haul them back. A boat hook helps reach buoys from the deck.
Hide buoys for pots or standalone map markers. Deer lasts 5 game days, troll 10, wolf 15, lox 30, gjall 60 and Asksvin 90; seal and whale last indefinitely. Worn-out pots sink but retain their catch for salvage.
Catch journal: craft the book and right-click it to read discoveries and records in a wood-and-parchment interface with catch/wildlife filters and page navigation.
72 custom inventory items with their own sprites and pickup models, including whale/squid meat, teeth, blubber, beaks, a whale-tooth harpoon, chitin and squid-beak boarding pikes, and a blubber-fuelled lamp.

The deep Ocean

Colossal squid have eight arms, two long clubbed tentacles and mantle-first swimming. They dive under boats, surface tentacles-first, close to the rail and fight before plunging away. Every fifth attachment becomes a crushing grip: break it with 5 / 9 / 15 damaging boarding-pike or whale-harpoon hits at zero / one / two stars. An unanswered two-star grip sinks the boat. Holding a squid with a hand harpoon costs 75 stamina each time it attempts to dive, every 12 seconds; a secured line risks the boat instead.

Giant sperm whales use rams and tail strikes against boats, and their narrow, toothed jaws against squid and swimmers. Their boat attack cycle is ram, tail, ram, tail, then breach. A direct two-star breach can destroy a full-health longship. Three deep bell notes announce the fifth attacks, with the third aligned to the whale emerging or the squid latching on.

Both species have zero-, one- and two-star colors, health and damage. Distance from spawn, night and broad deep water influence encounters. Rare whale/squid battles include separation, dives, renewed bites and tentacle wrapping. Whale spouts appear above water at random intervals. Swimmers can equip one-handed knives and use primary attacks.

The White Whale has an experimental clue/ritual prototype. Moby Dick's separate sail-in boss arena is not finished. Fantasy scale and combat sounds are deliberate artistic choices.

Install

Create a new Better Angling Test profile in Thunderstore Mod Manager or r2modman.
Install CwewMods-BetterAngling and its dependencies, then choose Start modded.
Use a test character and copied world. For multiplayer, install the same versions on every player and the dedicated test server, then join using the host's connection details.

Dependencies: BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2351 and Jotunn 2.30.2. BetterRowing is optional; the CwewMods-OceanExpeditionTest pack installs both mods together for crew testing.

Manual installation: install the dependencies first, then copy this package's BepInEx folder into the test game installation. Keep only one copy of BetterAngling.dll. Fully close the game before changing mods.

Getting started

Use the workbench for tackle bags and simpler bait; use the forge for nets and boat equipment. The lobster pot requires Forge level 3, 8 Iron, 10 Ancient bark, 8 Leather scraps and 2 Deer hide. Equip crafted fittings on a boat, then follow the interaction prompts, which show your current key bindings.

Default Use is E, and Alternate Use is Left Shift + E. Right-click a buoy to select it and lower a carried pot; if you have no pot, a warning appears without spending the buoy. Shift + right-click places a standalone marker. Pot use falls back to the top-left usable buoy if none is selected. Right-click the journal to read it. Food, stamina and a boarding pike are useful before provoking the larger creatures.

Compatibility and test status

Tested locally on Windows with Valheim 1.0.21. Linux, macOS, Steam Deck and consoles are not validated.
Local gameplay, crafting, storage, creature and save/load checks have been exercised. Multi-person combat, ownership transfers and reconnects still need crew playtesting; this is not a stable release claim.
Do not combine with BaitMeBruh or FishCues; their credited adaptations are already included. Other inventory, boat, animation and combat mods may conflict.
Custom items and creatures require the mod. Back up test saves before updating or removing it. For vanilla play, fully exit and use a separate vanilla profile.
An incompatibility message can mean different game or mod versions. Compare versions first. Jotunn 2.30.2 can retain an earlier client's mod list in server memory; a graceful restart of the affected server clears that list. Do not delete characters or worlds to fix this. Required-version checks remain enabled.

Credits

Better Angling by CwewMods. MIT-licensed code, with credited MIT adaptations from FishCues (Andrew Shepard) and BaitMeBruh (Pete Navarra / Vapok). BepInEx and Jotunn are separate dependencies. Art and development used AI assistance. Supplied bell and T-rex recordings are included with the project owner's confirmed redistribution permission; they are excluded from the code's MIT grant. See the included notices and licenses. No Valheim assemblies, reference photographs or game audio are redistributed.