VikingColonies

A MineColonies-style colony for Valheim. Found a Chieftain's Camp, welcome settlers, house them in Longhouses and give them jobs. They build your village piece by piece, fell and replant trees, farm, forage, eat, sleep, shelter from raids and mend what monsters break — on their own, while you go adventuring.

The Lumberjack's Hut in the evening light: every hut is a Viking building made for its trade

Install it on the server and on every player's game (your mod manager adds Jötunn). Works with Valheim 1.0.20, checked 22 October 2026. On Thunderstore, Hexium and Nexus Mods.

Found a bug or have an idea? Press Report a problem in the camp's window, or post in #bug-reports on our Discord.

At a glance

• Found a colony with a Chieftain's Camp; settlers move in, get homes and jobs.
• They build huts piece by piece, chop and replant, farm, forage and mend, on their own.
• Every hut is a Viking building made for its trade, growing through five levels, from thatch to grausten.
• Guards and archers in Watchtowers defend the colony; the alarm calls everyone in.
• The colony grows with your journey: the Forsaken's trophies raise the camp, level 1 to 5, and its fire grows from a fire pit to a bonfire where the colony gathers.
• A Storehouse and its couriers carry the colony's goods for you, and its Needs tab says what to bring.
• Settlers eat, sleep, chat and have moods; it all works in multiplayer.
• Settlers fight off Necks, Boars and Greylings themselves, and run from anything stronger.
• Creative mode: in a world with No build cost, buildings go up and level up at once.

In pictures

Inside the Longhouse: beds on sleeping platforms round the fire

The Forager's Hut and its forager

The village from above, round the Chieftain's Camp

The Chieftain's Camp, where the colony gathers at the fire

The Watchtower and its guards

A lumberjack at work

A courier heads out with the colony's goods

The Lumberjack's Hut at levels 5 down to 1: every hut grows through Valheim's ages

The Storehouse: one store for the whole colony, on posts with a stair

The Storehouse at its five levels

Couriers coming back from a building site they supplied

Couriers on their way through the colony, the camp's fire behind them

The Storehouse's window: its level, its couriers and what each one is doing

The Farm and its windmill

The Longhouse: every bed in it is a settler's home

Two settlers stop for a chat

Evening by the fire: every settler has a mood, a trait and a trade

What you get

• Chieftain's Camp (called the Town Hall before 1.5.1) — founds the colony; four settlers arrive. Its window (Shift+E) opens on an Overview of the colony, then People (everyone, with a page each and Recall), Work (every building and repair, what it waits for, Do first / Set aside, and what the colony still needs), the Saga (who came, who died, what got built, and the colony's deeds) and The camp (its levels and its Keep in stock).
• Camp levels — the colony grows with your journey: hang the Forsaken's trophies on item stands by the camp (they aren't used up) and raise it a level for a wider colony, room for more settlers and the next age of huts, from level 1 to 5 (Eikthyr, then The Elder and Bonemass, Moder and Yagluth, the Queen).
• The camp's fire and seats — the builder puts them up round the camp's chest, growing with its level: a fire pit and a lean-to, then sitting logs, a maypole and trophy racks, a bonfire and a chieftain's seat, lanterns. The colony gathers at its fire in the evening, and trophies on its racks count for raising the camp.
• The huts — each a Viking building made for its trade, at every level: a workshop with a covered yard, a log house and woodshed, a forager's porch, a barn and fenced yard, a longhouse round its hearth, a watchtower with a ballista. They look their age as they grow (thatch and logs, a stone plinth, darkwood shingles, grausten) and are built from what that age gives, never from a trader's wares.
• Keep in stock — on every hut too: the items its chest keeps. Other settlers leave them, settlers with free time carry over what's missing, and a worker whose chest is full takes the load to another chest.
• Storehouse — the colony's store, a Norse storehouse on posts (one per colony, once it has a Builder's Hut). Its own chest is your drop-off, and every chest standing inside it, yours too, joins the store; the builder and meals look there first. Couriers (one to three) fill what every building keeps in stock and the builder's order, take the huts' surplus away before their chests fill, and put it away like with like. Its Needs tab lists what each building is short of, who is bringing it, and what nobody in the colony has: "Bring: 40 Iron, 10 Food".
• Builder's Hut — a builder clears and flattens each new hut's site and puts up its building from real hammer pieces, fetching materials and tools from the colony's chests. With nothing to build, the builder mends damaged buildings and puts back pieces a troll or a fire broke. Hand over gives the builder what an order needs from your bag; Take down has them take a hut down.
• Lumberjack's Hut — a lumberjack fells the tree kinds you tick (leaving trees by your buildings standing), gathers the wood, replants the kinds you tick and rests when the colony has enough wood. Every worker learns a skill and works faster with it.
• Farm — a farmer works the fields you mark with field markers, each with its own crop and size (one per Farm level, as in MineColonies), and grows the crops you tick from the seeds in its chest, then harvests them: the colony's steady food. With PlantEverything the farmer plants berry bushes and mushrooms too, for their price.
• Forager's Hut — a forager brings home wild berries, mushrooms and herbs that grow back (never your crops).
• Watchtower — guards (warriors or archers, up to three) keep watch or hold a post, fight monsters near the colony with the best weapons and armour in its chest, answer calls for help, gather at the camp's alarm and keep its ballistas loaded; the colony's border grows by the tower.
• Longhouse — beds: each one a settler's home. With a free bed and food in the camp a newcomer arrives each day.
• Free time — settlers with nothing to do sit on your benches and chairs, gather round a fire, chat in pairs and stroll; they greet you by name and make small talk about the colony (a death, the weather, a newcomer, their own trade, a raid held off, a boss fallen in your world).
• Mood — a home, a cosy bed, varied meals and an evening fire make settlers content and quicker; hunger, no home or a death make them unhappy and slower. Each says why (hover, or the camp), and nobody joins an unhappy colony.
• Who they are — newcomers walk in from the edge of the colony, where nobody is looking; each settler is good at a trade, has a trait and a past, and dresses for the work. The camp shows when an out-of-sight settler was last seen.
• The day — breakfast at the table, an evening round the colony's fire, sleeping in their own beds, and fires kept fed from the colony's wood.
• Daily life — a meal a day from the colony's chests (a hungry settler works slower); indoors at night and in raids with the door shut; a weak creature that goes for a settler is fought off with what's in their hands (more kinds count as weak as the camp grows), while anything stronger sends them running, and they heal when left alone; a cairn with their things where a settler dies, and a memorial stone that names the colony's fallen (and, if the server wants it, the fallen walking back in a few days later); the colony survives losing its camp for a few days.
• Hut levels 1–5, following Valheim's eras (as high as the camp's level): bigger work areas, better tools and bigger chests. With the game's devcommands on, vc_blueprint save makes your own building a hut's design.
• Creative mode — in a world with the No build cost setting (or for an admin in debug mode with free building): place a colony building already built at the level you pick, Build now, Upgrade now and Repair now beside each building's window, and on the camp Finish all now, its level without the trophies and Add settlers. Survival play stays as it is.
• Help as you play — with the game's raven hints on (Settings, "Enable raven hints"), Hugin the raven explains each step the first time and says what to do next for a new colony (on the camp's Overview too); and a settler who needs you says so above their head ("Needs 12 Wood", "Hungry").

Getting started

1. Build a workbench, then a Chieftain's Camp (20 Wood, 10 Stone) from the hammer's Misc tab. Four settlers arrive. Its chest is the colony's store: keep food in it.
2. Build a Builder's Hut inside the colony's rings. Give the builder Wood, some Stone, a flint axe, an antler pickaxe and a hoe in a colony chest (the builder works with copies; your tools stay).
3. Place a Lumberjack's Hut, a Forager's Hut or a Farm: the builder puts it up, then a settler starts work there. A Longhouse's beds become your settlers' homes.
4. Shift+E on any colony building shows what it does and what it needs.
5. After Eikthyr, raise the camp in its window's The camp tab (a Forsaken your world has beaten counts; else hang its trophy on an item stand by the camp): huts can then go to level 2. Each later level opens the next age.
6. When goods pile up in the huts, build a Storehouse and hire a courier: after a trip, empty your bag into its own chest, and its Needs tab tells you what to bring next.

Multiplayer

Everyone on a server needs the mod and Jötunn. Works on dedicated servers, with or without crossplay. With crossplay, PC players join with the join code; Xbox and PlayStation players can't install mods, and the game doesn't stop a player with no mods from joining, so check everyone has it. Without crossplay, join by the server's address (Join IP). A colony is managed by the player who built its camp and the friends they put on a ward (Guard stone) covering the huts. Settlers only work while someone is near them, as everything in Valheim.

Settings

Every number (costs, work areas, carry sizes, hunger, newcomers…) is in the config file BepInEx/config/daalmyte.vikingcolonies.cfg, or in-game with a configuration manager. Server settings are synced to players, building costs included (a changed cost counts at once).

Works with other mods

Tested together with PlantEverything, PlantEasily, Seasonality, PlanBuild, EpicLoot, Monstrum (with Warfare), MyLittleUI, CraftFromContainers, Quick Stack - Store - Sort - Trash - Restock, MultiUserChest, ExtraSlots and Gizmo, all at once, and with ValheimPlus on its own: no errors and no clashing patches. Trees and bushes that PlantEverything makes plantable are cleared from a building site like any wild plant. Crops a mod adds to the Cultivator show up on a Farm's What to grow list, and PlantEverything's berry bushes, mushrooms, thistle and dandelions are on it too (unticked until you tick them). With MyLittleUI, Shift+E on the camp and the huts still opens their window (checked in the game with MyLittleUI 1.2.31).

Discord

discord.gg/yCzDUPQA3D: chat, quick help, ideas and pictures of your colonies.

What's coming

The roadmap: the next update, the ones after it, and ideas for later, kept in step with the plan (also in #roadmap on the Discord). About one update a week.

Bugs, feedback and the player guide

github.com/DaAlmyte/VikingColonies-issues: report a bug, share feedback or an idea, and read the full player guide (every building, job and setting). The Feedback button in the camp's window opens the Discord or the feedback form for you.

To report a bug, press Report a problem in the camp's window: it opens the bug form with the versions filled in and copies the bug report, so you paste it into the form and say what happened (nothing is sent until you press Submit). Away from a Chieftain's Camp, stand near the settler or building with the trouble, open the console (F5; it needs the -console launch option) and type vc_bugreport form (no cheats needed) for the same; vc_bugreport only writes BepInEx/VikingColonies-bugreport.txt in your mod manager profile, to attach with BepInEx/LogOutput.log.

The code: github.com/DaAlmyte/VikingColonies-source.

Before you remove the mod

Without VikingColonies, the camp's and huts' chests (and what's in them), the settlers and their cairns disappear from your world; they come back if you install it again. To keep those items for good, take them out of the colony's chests first. The buildings the builder put up are ordinary Valheim pieces and stay.

Requirements

• BepInExPack Valheim
• Jötunn

Changes

See the changelog tab.

Licence

Free to play, to share unchanged (in a modpack, with friends) and to make add-ons and compatibility patches for. Publishing the code or a changed copy needs my OK first: ask on the issues page or the Discord. Versions up to 1.4.1 were MIT.