The Floods: The Broken Cycle

Watch the horizon. Prepare the coast. Survive what comes ashore.

New in v0.16.3 — Earthquake & Wildfire Update

Built and tested for Valheim 1.0.20. This update brings a brand-new disaster - earthquakes that tilt the world - and completes the wildfire overhaul: fires that spread for real, fill the sky with smoke and scar the land, while staying smooth to play.

🌍 NEW: Earthquakes that tilt the world

• The land leans: every now and then the ground lurches and, for 4–5 minutes, the whole landscape tilts - hills, trees and buildings lean around 10 degrees one way, a different direction every time, swaying as the quake rolls on. Two to four times in each quake the land heaves much further - over 30 degrees - for several terrifying seconds.
• Gravity stays true: while the land tilts, you, other players and creatures stay standing upright, the sea stays level (so the water runs up the low side of the land and pulls back from the high side) and the sky and horizon stay put. It really looks like the ground has shifted under you.
• Real footing: walking and running are never slowed. But gravity is real: where the tilt makes the ground steeper than you can stand on (its own slope plus the tilt - the same 38 degrees at which you slide on any Valheim hillside), you lose your footing and slide, just like on a cliff side. Gentle tilts never move you; a heave while you stand on a hillside facing the wrong way just might. Dropped items, fallen logs and carts feel the shifted gravity too - they stay put on gentle tilts and slide or roll when it gets steep - and every hard jolt makes them hop.
• Shaking and rumbling: Valheim's own camera shake trembles the whole time and kicks hard at each jolt, under a real recording of the earth cracking and grinding - soil and stone splitting - that rolls on for the whole quake and bursts out close by at every jolt.
• The forest comes down: trees crash to the ground all through the quake - one or two at every jolt, more and more in between, and a whole lot during the heaves. They topple downhill, and a falling log hurts whatever it lands on, so keep your eyes up. No tree falls right on top of you without warning (trees within 7 m are spared), and trees near your buildings are never felled.
• Dust in the air: every jolt kicks clouds of dust up from the ground all around you, and each heave cracks the earth open with a huge burst.
• When they strike: on their own every one to two and a half hours of play, and often during the omen of a Flash Surge (65%) or Great Flood (80%), sometimes with other events too. Everyone in multiplayer feels the same quake.
• Your choice: tilt angle, shake, slide, sound and how often they happen are all in the [Earthquakes] config section. Prefer no tilting? Set EnableTilt = false for shaking and rumbling only.

🔥 Wildfires, completed: you can see, smell and run from them

• A living fire front: every wildfire races outward in every direction from where it catches, sweeping through meadows and forests at about a normal running pace (0.55x your sprint speed by default). Keep moving and you can always get away; stop or get cornered and you are in serious trouble. It flows around obstacles, keeps burning across land that isn't even loaded around you, and stops dead at rivers, lakes and the sea. Fire never burns on water.
• The sky fills with smoke: walk towards a wildfire and the air turns into a brown-orange haze, the fog closes in and the sunlight goes a sickly orange. At night the smoke glows instead of going grey.
• Ash and embers fall around you: grey ash flakes drift down through the smoke and glowing embers ride the hot air past your face.
• Smoke columns on the horizon: tall pillars of dark smoke rise from the fire and lean with the wind. You can spot a wildfire from far away and decide whether to run towards it or away.
• Heat shimmer: get close to the flames and the air ripples with heat, using Valheim's own Ashlands heat-distortion effect.
• Scorched earth: the land the fire passes over is left as bare, blackened ground with the grass burnt away, then slowly heals over about one in-game day (sleep and it recovers overnight). It is visual only and never saved to your world, so paths, farms and terrain edits are untouched.
• Falling trees: roughly one in ten trees the fire burns through comes crashing down.
• Fire bites: flames deal 10 damage a second to players and creatures. Being properly wet protects you. If you stand in fire and take no damage, a message tells you why (debug-flying, god mode, wet, or in water).
• A fire season, not a one-off: every wildfire is a series of 3 fires that burn one after another. Each catches 40–120 m from you, burns for its share of the event (about 8–9 minutes), then dies down as the next one starts nearby. Want them burning together? WildfireStartLocations sets 1–3 fires at once.
• Burns from the first moment: a wildfire spreads from the very start of the event (the omen phase), not after a quiet warning period.
• Built to stay smooth: fewer, wider-spaced fire points; flames beyond 120 m aren't drawn (they still burn, spread and hurt, and appear as you approach); burnt ground is painted a little at a time; smoke columns are kept light on the graphics card. Every effect can be tuned or switched off in the [Wildfire Atmosphere] config section, and strong PCs can turn on FullFireEffects for every effect layer on every fire point.

🌊 Natural tides

• The sea breathes: sea level now rises and falls on its own, tied to the in-game clock. By default there are two high tides and two low tides every in-game day (a high tide about every 15 real minutes), each ±1 m.
• Shorelines change through the day: at low tide, sand bars and rocks appear and docks sit higher out of the water; at high tide the water creeps up the beach towards your boathouse.
• Works with every water event: tides stack on top of Storm Tides, Flash Surges, Great Floods and droughts, so a storm surge arriving at high tide hits harder.
• The same tide for everyone: it is calculated from the shared world clock, so every player in multiplayer sees the same water level.
• Safe and adjustable: tides only change the runtime water level, never your terrain. Set the size and frequency in the [Tides] config section, or turn them off.

⚡ Also new

• Lightning direct hits are now rare: a strike hitting you directly is possible but unusual (2% by default, was 12%). Near misses still land close by.
• Valheim 1.0.20 fixes: removes a log warning that repeated every frame on the new game version, and repairs several other lookups that broke in the update.

Important upgrade notes

Your existing BepInEx/config/marc.thefloods.cfg keeps its old values, and old values override the new defaults. If you never customised the config, delete it and start the game once to get the new defaults (earthquakes, fairer and smoother wildfires, rarer direct lightning hits, tides). Earthquakes are a new config section, so they work straight away either way. Otherwise, check these settings:

[Wildfire]
FireFrontSpeedMultiplier = 0.55
WildfireStartLocations = 1
PlayerFireDamagePerTick = 10
WildfireSequenceCount = 3

[Lightning]
DirectHitChance = 0.02

[Wildfire VFX]
MaxActiveFireLights = 10

If you ever see a dark horizontal strip or black band across the display, set both of these to false:

[Storm Visuals]
EnableBlackHorizonStormBank = false
EnableApproachingStormFront = false

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What is The Floods?

The Floods: The Broken Cycle is an extreme-weather and coastal-disaster mod for Valheim. The sea rises and falls with the tides, and can surge, retreat, and turn violent, transforming how safe a familiar shoreline feels. A dry coast can become a fire risk. A calm forest can turn dangerous under a gale. And sometimes the ground itself gives way, tilting the whole world under your feet.

The mod is designed around long quiet periods punctuated by memorable events. The host rolls and saves event strength, timing, and state, then synchronises the result to connected players.

Main features

Tides

• The sea level follows a smooth natural cycle tied to the in-game clock.
• Default: 2 tides per day, ±1 m. Set the size and frequency in the [Tides] config section, or turn tides off.
• Every player sees the same tide — it is calculated from the shared world clock.

Dynamic coastal events

• Storm Tide — a variable coastal rise, normally between +1.5 m and +5 m by default.
• Flash Surge — a fast and dangerous surge, normally between +6 m and +12 m. It can begin with an unnatural sea drawdown.
• The Great Flood — a rare major event, normally between +8 m and +16 m. At its most extreme, The Broken Cycle begins.
• Drought — the sea retreats, normally by 3–5 m. Rare severe droughts can expose even more shoreline.
• Wildfire — can emerge from extreme dryness or dry lightning.
• Strong Winds — an independent gale disaster with debris and controlled treefall.
• Earthquake — the land tilts and heaves for 4–5 minutes; on its own, or as the omen of a Flash Surge or Great Flood.

Every event moves through an omen, rising, peak, and receding phase. The exact severity is rolled once, stored with the world state, and does not change when the world reloads.

Earthquakes

• The landscape visibly tilts (around 10 degrees, heaving past 30) while players, creatures, the sea and the sky stay level.
• Camera shake, a cracking-earth rumble, dust clouds, and trees crashing down all through the quake.
• You slide only where the tilt makes the ground too steep to stand on; walking and running are never slowed.
• Loose items, fallen logs and carts feel the shifted gravity and get thrown about by the jolts.
• Your buildings are safe: the tilt is visual and trees near your base are never felled.

Storms and lightning

• Valheim’s native thunderstorm environment is used during active coastal storms.
• Readable procedural forked lightning with a short-range flash and thunder that arrives after a realistic delay based on distance.
• Dangerous strikes usually land near exposed players; a direct hit is rare but possible.
• Lightning can ignite dry, flammable ground.

Wildfires

• Every wildfire is a series of fires that burn one at a time, each starting near the player and growing outward in all directions.
• Fires spread through fields, forests, and across biomes, by day, by night, and through storms. They stop at water and in non-flammable biomes (Ashlands, Deep North).
• Flames, smoke, embers, sparks, ground glow and firelight; a smoke-filled orange sky, falling ash, smoke columns visible from far away, Ashlands-style heat shimmer, and scorched ground that heals over about a day.
• Fire damages players and creatures standing in it; being wet protects you.
• A fraction of trees in the fire's path fall.
• A wildfire grows for about 25 minutes, then burns itself out over about 12 minutes. Rain and floodwater put it out faster.
• Speed, size, damage, node counts, light counts, and detail distance are configurable for performance.
• Safety by default: player-built structures are not damaged by wildfires.

Optional enhanced fire effects

The mod draws its own fire. If you place a compatible fire asset bundle named thebrokencycle_firevfx in BepInEx/plugins/TheFloods/Assets/ (or BepInEx/plugins/TheBrokenCycle/Assets/), the mod uses its animated flame and smoke textures instead. The bundle is not included in this package. floods wildfirevfx status shows which look is active.

Strong Winds

• Strong Winds can occur as their own disaster or alongside larger weather events.
• Windblown debris sells the force of the gale without permanently changing the world.
• A limited number of nearby trees may fall in severe gusts.
• Candidate trees near beds, portals, wards, workbenches, and player pieces are protected by default.
• Global and per-player treefall limits keep the event controlled and performance-safe.

Multiplayer and world safety

• The host/server controls event timing, severity, water state, strikes, and fire start points.
• Event state synchronises to connected players through Valheim RPCs.
• The mod changes runtime water behaviour only. It does not regenerate terrain or permanently sculpt the map.
• World state is saved per world so active events survive reloads without re-rolling.

Installation

Thunderstore / r2modman

Install The Floods through your preferred Valheim mod manager. It requires the Valheim BepInEx pack.

Manual installation

1. Install BepInEx for Valheim.
2. Create this folder if it does not already exist:

Valheim/BepInEx/plugins/TheFloods

1. Put TheFloods.dll in that folder.
2. Keep the optional storm-audio files in an Audio folder beside the DLL, or use one of the supported plugin audio locations.
3. Start Valheim once to generate the configuration file:

Valheim/BepInEx/config/marc.thefloods.cfg

For multiplayer, install the mod on the world host/server and every player joining the world. The host decides events; clients render their synced effects locally.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/marc.thefloods.cfg contains tuning for:

• tides (on/off, height, tides per day);
• earthquakes (how often, how long, tilt, shake, slide, sound);
• event timing, recovery periods, and severity ranges;
• water level, drought depth, Flash Surge drawdown, and Great Flood scheduling;
• storm darkness, distant flashes, lightning frequency, direct-hit chance, damage, and safety rules;
• wildfire start locations, spread speed, fire size and lifetime, damage, falling trees, spot fires, and performance limits;
• Strong Winds intensity, debris, treefall caps, protected-base radius, and debug tools;
• custom storm-audio volumes and fade time;
• debug logging and test events.

Useful wildfire settings:

Setting	Default	What it does
FireFrontSpeedMultiplier	0.55	Fire speed as a multiple of your sprint speed. 0.55 = about normal running pace, 1 = sprint speed.
WildfireSequenceCount	3	How many fires each wildfire event burns, one after another (1–6).
WildfireStartLocations	1	Fires at once (1–3). Each fire gets its own MaxFireNodes budget, so 2 fires = twice the burning area and roughly twice the cost.
IgnitionMinRadius / IgnitionMaxRadius	40 / 120	How far from the player the starting fires appear, in metres.
MaxFireNodes	220	Most fire points burning at once, per fire. Lower = smoother, higher = bigger fires.
FireVisibleDistance	120	Fire further than this from you isn't drawn (it still burns and spreads). The biggest performance setting.
MaxActiveFireLights	10	Real-time firelights at once. Fewer = faster.
FullFireEffects	false	All five effect layers on every fire point. Much heavier - only for strong PCs.

Wildfire atmosphere ([Wildfire Atmosphere]):

Setting	Default	What it does
EnableHeatShimmer / HeatShimmerStrength	true / 0.55	Ashlands-style heat distortion near the flames.
HeatShimmerDistance	30	How far from the flames (m) the shimmer fades out.
EnableSmokySky / SmokySkyStrength	true / 0.7	Smoke haze, thicker fog and orange sunlight near a wildfire.
SmokySkyRadius	250	Distance from the flames (m) where the haze begins.
EnableFallingAsh	true	Ash and embers drifting down around you in the smoke.
EnableSmokePlumes / MaxSmokePlumes	true / 5	Tall smoke columns rising from the fire.
EnableScorchedGround / ScorchedGroundStrength	true / 0.9	Burnt ground where the fire passed.
ScorchedGroundRecoveryDays	1	In-game days for burnt ground to fully recover.
WildfireTreefallChance	0.1	Share of burning trees that fall.

Earthquakes ([Earthquakes]):

Setting	Default	What it does
EnableEarthquakes	true	Turns earthquakes on or off.
MinimumHoursBetweenEarthquakes / Maximum...	1 / 2.5	Gap between natural earthquakes, in real hours of play.
EarthquakeMinimumSeconds / Maximum...	240 / 300	How long each earthquake lasts.
ChanceDuringFlashSurge / ChanceDuringGreatFlood / ChanceDuringOtherEvents	0.65 / 0.8 / 0.25	Chance an event's omen brings an earthquake.
EnableTilt / MaxTiltDegrees	true / 12	Whether the land tilts, and how far for most of the quake.
HeaveTiltDegrees	34	How far the land heaves 2–4 times per quake. 0 = no heaves.
KeepOceanLevel / KeepCreaturesUpright / KeepSkyLevel	true	What stays level while the land tilts.
ShakeStrength	1	Camera shake strength (Valheim's Camera Shake option still turns it off).
SlideOnSteepGround / ObjectSlideStrength	true / 1	Slide only where the tilted ground gets too steep to stand on; how strongly loose objects feel the tilt.
EarthquakeTreefall / TreesPerMinute	true / 6	Falling trees during quakes, and how many per minute between jolts (three times as many during heaves).
MaxTreefallsPerQuake / TreefallRadius	30 / 60	Most trees one quake can bring down, and how far from players they fall.
EarthquakeDust	true	Dust clouds at every jolt and heave.
RumbleVolume	0.8	Earthquake sound volume.
EarthquakeSoundFile	earthquake.mp3	The earthquake sound (in the mod's Audio folder). Swap in your own MP3 if you like.

Back up your world before experimenting with unusually large water offsets, high damage, or aggressive fire/treefall settings.

Console commands

Enable the Valheim console, press F5, and run commands as the world host/server.

Command	What it does
floods help	Shows the full command summary.
floods status	Shows the active event, phase, water offset (including the tide), dryness, and — during a wildfire — fire size, speed, and spread statistics.
floods schedule	Shows scheduler information for testing.
floods event stormtide [omen|rise|peak|recede]	Starts a Storm Tide.
floods event flashsurge [omen|rise|peak|recede]	Starts a Flash Surge.
floods event greatflood [omen|rise|peak|recede]	Starts The Great Flood.
floods event drought [omen|rise|peak|recede]	Starts a Drought.
floods event wildfire [omen|rise|peak|recede]	Starts a Wildfire near you, replacing any fire already burning. The reply tells you how far away and in which direction each fire is.
floods event strongwinds [omen|rise|peak|recede]	Starts Strong Winds.
floods quake [seconds]	Starts an earthquake now (optionally for a set number of seconds). Also floods event earthquake.
floods quake stop / floods quake status	Eases the earthquake out, or shows how long is left and the tilt direction.
floods strike	Creates a manual nearby lightning strike.
floods strikeme	Creates a manual strike aimed at the local player for testing.
floods dryness <0..1>	Sets the saved dryness index.
floods ignite [x z]	Lights one extra test fire near you or at X/Z. It only spreads while a wildfire event is running.
floods fireout	Puts out all wildfire.
floods wildfirevfx status|reload|procedural|assetbundle|textures	Shows or switches the fire visual mode.
floods start omen|rise|peak|recede	Starts a custom water event for testing.
floods set <metres>	Immediately sets a custom water offset. Negative values lower the sea.
floods fastforward	Advances the active event to its next phase.
floods stop	Stops the active event and restores normal runtime water behaviour.
floods probe	Writes water and environment diagnostics to BepInEx/LogOutput.log.
strongwinds start	Starts Strong Winds in the omen phase.
strongwinds peak	Forces Strong Winds to peak.
strongwinds status	Shows wind intensity and treefall status.
strongwinds stop	Stops Strong Winds or clears remaining runtime wind effects.
strongwinds testtree	Attempts one controlled debug treefall.

Notes and known limits

• Water events and tides affect runtime water and shoreline behaviour only; terrain remains intact.
• An earthquake's tilt is a visual effect - the world itself is never rotated, so buildings, terrain and saves are untouched. The level sea is visual too: the real water level does not change.
• Wildfire is a serious environmental danger, but structures are not burned down. Very large fires are demanding: if you get lag, lower FireVisibleDistance first, then MaxActiveFireLights and MaxFireNodes.
• The visual intensity of storms, fire, wind, particles, and lights can be reduced in the config for lower-end hardware.
• During any major update, use a copied world for your first test and inspect BepInEx/LogOutput.log if something behaves unexpectedly.

Credits

• Earthquake sound: "Cracking Earthquake, Cracking Soil, Cracking Stone" by freesound_community, via Pixabay (Pixabay Content License).

Support / feedback

When reporting a bug, include:

• your BepInEx/LogOutput.log;
• the exact console command or event that triggered it;
• the output of floods status for wildfire issues;
• for lag: set PerformanceLogging = true under [Wildfire VFX], reproduce it, and include the [perf] lines from the log;
• your current marc.thefloods.cfg where relevant;
• your mod list;
• a screenshot or short clip showing the issue.

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Watch the horizon. The coast remembers.