RealisticRunning

Realistic Running

Feel your stride settle, your breathing deepen and your surroundings open up as you run through Valheim. Realistic Running turns sprinting into a more physical experience, with smoother acceleration, widening vision, richer colors, rushing peripheral effects and the sound of your own effort.

Push yourself by repeatedly tapping E while sprinting. Keep the rhythm going and enter adrenaline, where the world becomes quieter, your heartbeat takes the foreground and your running reaches its most intense tier. Spend your last stamina and the experience changes again, from running hard to catching your breath.

The mod was created after extensive research and design work into the experience of running, fatigue, breathing, visual attention and recovery. That research shaped the progression from an awkward opening stride into sustained effort and exhaustion. This is a realism inspired interpretation for Valheim, not a medical or physiological simulation.

The running experience

Movement accelerates and slows smoothly instead of responding with an immediate full speed change. Sprint speed builds as your stride settles, while exertion accumulates during sustained effort and influences fatigue, stamina drain and movement.

Your field of view starts at 60 and smoothly widens toward 70 during normal sprinting. Pushing raises the target to 80, and adrenaline raises it to 85. Transitions start from the currently visible value, so changing tiers partway through a transition does not restart the view from zero.

Color richness, subtle clarity, wind rush and controlled peripheral motion blur build alongside the same shared visual progression. The effect is intended to make running feel more immediate and alive without turning the world into an exaggerated color filter.

The default visual transition duration is 1 second in both directions, making running changes responsive while keeping them smooth. Adjust VisualTierTransitionSeconds in the configuration to suit your preference. The FOV targets are configurable too.

Breathing and footsteps

Normal running breathing follows exertion rather than a fixed running clock. Shallow breathing plays below 20 percent exertion, Medium Flow breathing plays from 20 to below 40 percent, and Heavy Breathing plays from 40 percent upward.

The clips crossfade instead of abruptly switching. Hill climbing, pushing and adrenaline can bring heavier breathing into the experience.

The opening running phase adds heavier stomp footsteps. After that opening phase, Valheim keeps its own surface aware footsteps. There is no separate custom quiet running loop.

Breathing, stomp audio and heartbeat stop while the pause menu is open. Recovery does not play a backlog of missed gasps or beats when you return.

Vision and camera effects

Camera bob and breathing sway add a sense of gait and effort. Bob strength, sway and camera effect settings can be adjusted or disabled for comfort. The gait bob is speed driven rather than attached directly to native footstep events.

Fatigue adds a soft peripheral tunnel effect and edge softening. These effects are separate from the widening FOV, allowing the view to open with running while fatigue still affects the edges.

Controlled motion blur samples the scene radially in the peripheral wind rush zone. Its contribution is zero inside the clear center, preserving the central area for aiming and combat. This is radial running blur, not a velocity based blur simulation.

Depth of field tracks the distance of whatever the camera is aimed at. It gently softens other depths, with stronger focus effects through higher running tiers. This is optical depth blur, so it can affect objects outside the focus distance even in the central area.

Realistic Running controls its own DOF and disables native full screen motion blur to avoid stacking competing effects. Some camera effects have closest zoom settings, which can limit where they appear.

A heartbeat synchronized whoosh and subtle screen edge pulse reinforce the sensation of blood pumping during effort.

Tier One Pushing

Hold Shift and move forward, then repeatedly tap E while you are actually sprinting.

The starting configuration requires about 3 taps per second, maintained for 1.5 seconds to enter Pushing. A short grace interval helps prevent a brief frame hitch from immediately breaking the rhythm.

Pushing brings heavier breathing and higher visual intensity, with FOV moving toward 80. The movement multiplier is configurable. Its current default is 1.0 relative to normal sprint speed, so the default Pushing tier does not add another speed increase.

Each accepted E tap costs an extra 0.05 native stamina points. This is a small fixed point cost, not a percentage of your maximum stamina.

Keep tapping to maintain the rhythm and build toward adrenaline. If the cadence drops while stamina remains, you return to normal movement without an exhaustion penalty.

Tier Two Adrenaline

Maintain the fast tapping rhythm continuously for approximately 13.5 seconds to trigger adrenaline. This sustained window is measured from when the fast cadence is established, not as another full countdown after entering Pushing.

Once adrenaline activates, further E tapping is ignored by the running system. You no longer need to tap to maintain the tier. Continue using normal movement controls.

Adrenaline lasts up to 3.5 minutes, unless native stamina runs out first. Its current speed multiplier is 1.1 relative to normal sprinting, and its sprint stamina drain is halved.

FOV moves toward 85 while the shared visual effects reach their strongest tier.

During the opening audio focus period, game audio smoothly falls by 70 percent while heartbeat_double.wav rises to full volume. Audio fades back rather than snapping abruptly.

The sustained heartbeat remains elevated. Facing a nearby hostile monster can increase it by 25 percent. Each encounter has its own decay after disengagement, with a gradual beginning and a faster return toward baseline as the encounter fades. Getting farther from combat helps it settle sooner.

When adrenaline expires with stamina remaining, normal running becomes available again. Continued exertion and its effects recover naturally rather than causing a compulsory empty stamina bar.

When the tier has ended and movement is available, the normal E tapping mechanic can be used again.

Native stamina and exhaustion

The mod uses Valheim's actual stamina pool. Food still determines the stamina available to your character, and the native yellow bar remains the source of truth.

Exhaustion recovery starts when native stamina reaches zero. Stopping E tapping or completing adrenaline with stamina remaining does not by itself trigger exhaustion.

Normal sprint exhaustion brings immediate heavy gasps that gradually space out and quieten. Resting or walking recovers breathing faster than continuing to jog. Trying to sprint or push again can return the breathing to its faster rate. Continuing an uphill climb pauses recovery progress.

Baseline recovery can temporarily cap movement to jogging. Exhaustion during Pushing also uses a jog limit, while adrenaline exhaustion initially uses a walk only limit.

Movement restrictions release after the minimum recovery time and a safe amount of native stamina have returned. Breathing and fatigue can continue tapering after movement becomes available again. The longer audio recovery timers are not mandatory movement locks.

Pushing exhaustion has an 80 second recovery envelope, while adrenaline exhaustion uses a 120 second envelope. Baseline breathing recovery is approximately 60 seconds at rest or walking and approximately 120 seconds when jogging, before pauses or renewed effort are considered.

When recovery is active and native stamina is below one point, a red RECOVERING bar replaces the stamina display in its usual location. The yellow bar returns when native stamina rises above that display threshold. A white seconds countdown is available through ShowRecoverySeconds and is off by default.

Terrain, weather and injuries

Running on a slope adds a small flat stamina drain bonus instead of stacking an angle graduated drain system.

During Pushing or Adrenaline, the uphill portion of that extra drain is reduced by 30 percent. The full slope bonus returns when the higher tier ends.

Wet, cold and freezing conditions can affect effort, stamina drain and recovery. Optional compatibility with You're Injured allows leg injuries to influence movement and exertion.

Controls

Hold Shift with W, or your usual movement input, to sprint.

Repeatedly tap E while sprinting to enter Pushing and build toward Adrenaline. Holding E is not the same as tapping it.

Stop or slow the E cadence to leave Pushing while stamina remains.

Once Adrenaline activates, stop tapping E. The running system ignores additional E taps until that automatic tier has ended.

Normal Valheim controller movement remains available. The custom push detector currently reads the keyboard E key directly and has no dedicated gamepad binding. A controller needs an external mapping that sends keyboard E presses to use this mechanic.

E remains Valheim's interaction key as well. Be mindful of interactable objects when tapping nearby.

Debug controls are disabled by default and are not required for play. If explicitly enabled in configuration, F7 forces Adrenaline for testing, F8 prints diagnostics, F9 toggles RR audio mute and F10 cycles audio previews. Keep these disabled during normal play.

Optional peripheral motion awareness

An experimental renderer option can help broad moving contrast survive the radial running blur near the screen edges. It does not recognize enemies, highlight animals or sharpen their fine detail.

Camera movement is compensated using scene depth and previous frames. Stationary scenery is not intentionally enhanced, but foliage, lighting changes, reflections and fast camera movement can affect detection.

The effect cannot undo optical DOF blur already present in the image. Its strength and performance should be checked on your setup.

EnablePeripheralMotionAwareness is off by default. Leave it off to retain the established rendering path.

Survival View compatibility

Survival View is optional. Realistic Running does not require it for its movement or running visuals.

When both mods are enabled, Realistic Running claims FOV and movement authority through their compatibility bridge, preventing duplicate input smoothing and movement multipliers. Survival View continues to control its first person camera position.

The running FOV tiers are available in third person and Survival View first person. Closest zoom restrictions for other effects can be adjusted separately.

Multiplayer

The implementation is designed to operate on the local player. Camera and audio effects are local, movement changes target the local character, and saved running state is written only when that client owns the character's network data.

Install the mod on each player's client that should receive its features. It does not provide a dedicated server gameplay component or synchronize configuration between players.

A two client multiplayer validation session has not been completed, so multiplayer support is intended rather than a verified compatibility guarantee. Check your server's mod policy and use consistent movement settings when playing together.

Installation and configuration

Use a Valheim installation with BepInEx installed. Place RealisticRunning.dll and the supplied assets folder together inside the mod's BepInEx plugins folder. Keep the breathing, stomp, heartbeat and whoosh files in their supplied locations.

The configuration file is com.marccunningham.survivalmovementexertion.cfg inside BepInEx config. The internal identifier remains unchanged from the earlier mod name.

Configure FOV targets and timing, tap cadence, tier multipliers, stamina costs, camera effects, audio volumes and the optional recovery countdown to suit your game.

For motion sensitivity, lower or disable bob, sway, DOF, peripheral blur or wind rush effects. Other mods that change movement, stamina, FOV or post processing may still conflict and should be tested together.