Kynda

Load a smelter, kiln or fire several items at a time instead of one per press, and build two pieces that make a smelter or a charcoal kiln hold more.

Kynda never changes throughput. m_secPerProduct and m_fuelPerProduct are untouched, so twenty iron takes the same time and burns the same coal whether it went in as one load or seven. What changes is how often you walk back to the station.

Built against Valheim 1.0.7, Unity 6000.0.75, BepInEx 5.4.23.5, Harmony 2.9.

Features

• Hold a modifier key (Shift by default) while adding ore, coal or wood and three go in instead of one.
• Works on every station with a Smelter component: smelter, charcoal kiln, blast furnace, windmill, spinning wheel, eitr refinery, and any modded station built on the same class.
• Works on fireplaces that can be refilled: campfire, hearth, bonfire, standing torches.
• The station's hover text shows the modifier, so the feature is discoverable without reading this file.
• Two buildable upgrades, the Tun and the Woodrack, that raise the capacity of a smelter or a charcoal kiln standing next to them.
• Everything is configurable: the key, the batch size, the upgrade costs, which stations they serve, and how much capacity they add.

Batching

Hold the modifier and press Use on the station.

Station	What goes in	Default per press
Smelter, blast furnace, eitr refinery	ore on the ore switch, coal on the wood switch	3
Charcoal kiln, windmill, spinning wheel	wood or its own input	3
Campfire, hearth, bonfire, torch	logs	3

Some details worth knowing:

• The modifier is held rather than toggled, so a plain press stays vanilla and you can still top up a nearly full smelter with one last ore. Set BatchModifier to None if you would rather batch every time.
• Batching runs after the game's own add has succeeded, so vanilla decides whether the first item is allowed at all. Wrong item, empty hands, full station: nothing happens, same as before.
• Holding Use on a fireplace to refill it repeats on the game's own timer and is not batched. A single press is.
• Pressing Use on a fireplace that is lit and can be turned off is a toggle, not a refill, so it never takes logs.
• Set SmelterItemsPerAdd or FireplaceItemsPerAdd to 1 to restore vanilla for either half.

The upgrades

Two buildable pieces, on the hammer's Crafting tab, marked with the upgrade star. Both need a Forge in range to build, because both are held together with nails.

Piece	Cost	Serves	Capacity
Tun	20 Fine wood, 15 Iron nails	Smelter	10 ore becomes 30, 20 coal becomes 60
Woodrack	25 Fine wood, 20 Deer hide, 25 Bronze nails	Charcoal kiln	25 wood becomes 50

Build one within 4 metres of the station it serves and the station's capacity goes up. The coal figure is twice the ore figure because a smelter burns two coal per ore; matching them would run the fuel out with a third of the ore still queued.

One per station. A second Tun beside the same smelter adds nothing, and says so in its hover text rather than sitting there looking broken. Raise MaxPerStation if you want them to stack.

Look at an upgrade and it draws the game's own station-link effect to the station it is feeding, the same run of motes a chopping block draws to its workbench. That is how you tell which piece belongs to which station in a row of eight. An upgrade that is not next to anything it can serve says so in its hover text.

Each piece serves exactly one station prefab by default: smelter for the Tun, charcoal_kiln for the Woodrack. Blast furnaces, eitr refineries, windmills and spinning wheels are left alone. Both lists are config, so adding a modded station is a line in the .cfg rather than a rebuild.

The models are plain .obj files read from beside the DLL at runtime, with a .col sidecar for collision and an _icon.png for the hammer icon, matched by filename. Rejected designs live in assets\variants\ and are not deployed; copy one up into assets\ and point Model at it to try it.

The upgrades register prefabs, and that is permanent. Valheim keys a placed piece on its prefab name hash and discards any saved object whose name no longer resolves. Loading a world without Kynda, or joining a server that does not run it, deletes every Tun and Woodrack standing there without an error. See Multiplayer below for what prevents that.

Turning Enabled off is safe: since 1.1.0 it only hides the pieces from the hammer and leaves the prefabs registered, so anything already built keeps working.

Installation

Requires BepInEx 5.4.2350. BepInEx 5 only; this will not load under BepInEx 6.

Mod manager: install Kynda from Thunderstore.

Manual: drop the contents of plugins/Kynda into <Valheim>\BepInEx\plugins\Kynda\. The .obj, .col and .png files have to sit beside Kynda.dll or the upgrades fall back to the donor prefab's look and icon.

Longhouse Core is optional but recommended on any server. Kynda works without it.

Configuration

BepInEx\config\ezomic.valheim.kynda.cfg, written on first run.

BepInEx writes every entry to disk the first time the plugin runs, and the saved value beats a new default in code. If a setting appears to do nothing after an update, check the .cfg.

[Batching]

Key	Default	Effect
BatchModifier	LeftShift	Hold while interacting to batch. None makes batching unconditional. Read through Unity's legacy input, so use a keyboard key
SmelterItemsPerAdd	3	Ore or coal per press at any Smelter-based station. 1 restores vanilla
FireplaceItemsPerAdd	3	Logs per press at a fireplace. 1 restores vanilla

[Upgrades]

Key	Default	Effect
Enabled	true	Whether the two upgrades appear on the hammer. Off hides them from the next world load; it does not delete what is built
Donor	piece_chest_barrel	Prefab cloned for its machinery (ZNetView, Piece, WearNTear, placement rules). Its look, collision and icon are all replaced, so this is not a visual choice. Falls back to piece_chest_wood. Needs a restart
Station	forge	Crafting station you must stand near to build them. Empty or an unknown name leaves the donor's, which is the workbench
Range	4	How close an upgrade must be to the station it feeds, in metres
MaxPerStation	1	How many upgrades of one kind count for a single station
TexelsPerMetre	28	How coarse the borrowed texture is drawn. Vanilla props and piles run 24 to 54; higher eventually reads as flat colour
ShowLink	true	Draw the station-link effect when you look at an upgrade
LinkHeight	0.8	How far up the upgrade the link starts, in metres

[Trough] (the Tun)

The section header is still [Trough]. Renaming a config section resets every saved value under it, so it stays as it is.

Key	Default	Effect
Name	Tun	Name on the hammer and in hover text
Stations	smelter	Station prefabs this upgrades, comma separated
Cost	FineWood:20,IronNails:15	Build cost as Item:Amount pairs
Model	kynda_tun_camp.obj	OBJ loaded from beside the DLL, with its .col and _icon.png matched by name
Scale	1.0	Overall size. Scales collision with it
SkinDonors	@fi_village_wood:keep,coal=@coal_pile:keep,ore=@copper_ore:0.02/0.30/0.46/0.22	Which vanilla prefab or material each mesh group borrows its surface from. A bare name covers the whole piece; group=prefab overrides one group
OreCapacity	20	Extra ore a served station holds per Tun
FuelCapacity	40	Extra coal a served station holds per Tun

[Woodrack]

Key	Default	Effect
Name	Woodrack	Name on the hammer and in hover text
Stations	charcoal_kiln	Station prefabs this upgrades, comma separated
Cost	FineWood:25,DeerHide:20,BronzeNails:25	Build cost as Item:Amount pairs
Model	kynda_rack_camp.obj	OBJ loaded from beside the DLL
Scale	1.0	Overall size
SkinDonors	@wood_item:keep,frame=@woodwall:keep,roof=@straw_roof:keep,roofalpha=@straw_roof_alpha:keep	As above
OreCapacity	25	Extra wood a served station holds per Woodrack

There is no FuelCapacity here. The Woodrack only serves stations with no fuel slot, so it would be a setting that could never do anything.

[Diagnostics]

Key	Default	Effect
TestMode	false	Both upgrades cost one wood, so they can be built without bronze or iron. Logged loudly at startup
Verbose	false	Log each batched add
VariantMode	false	Put every model in assets\ on the hammer as its own piece at one wood each, named var: ..., to compare them side by side. Destructive when turned off: each variant is a registered prefab, and anything built from one vanishes when its name stops existing
SkinTrials	(empty)	Comma-separated donor prefabs. Puts one copy of each upgrade on the hammer per donor, named skin: .... Same destructive warning as VariantMode
DumpShader	false	List every property of each borrowed material's shader, with its type
PrefabSearch	(empty)	Comma-separated words. Every loaded prefab whose name contains one is listed in the log. Scans everything loaded, so empty it again when you are done
DonorCarrierLocations	Vendor,Hildir	Fallback only. Location prefabs to stream in if a donor material cannot be loaded directly by name. Blank turns the fallback off

Multiplayer

Install Kynda on the server and on every client. The version has to match.

With Longhouse Core installed, Kynda registers at Requirement.Everyone: Core checks each client's Kynda version and build id on connect and the server rejects a client that does not match. Core also applies the host's Kynda config to connected clients in memory, without writing to the client's own config file, so a server's capacity figures and batch sizes are the ones in play. BatchModifier is exempt from that, because a key binding is personal.

Without Core, Kynda still works and logs a warning at startup. Nothing then stops a client that lacks the mod from connecting, and that client will discard every Tun and Woodrack in the world it loads. Run it ungated on a world you control, not on one you share with people.

Compatibility

• Batching hooks Smelter.OnAddOre, Smelter.OnAddFuel, Fireplace.UseItem and Fireplace.Interact as postfixes, and the capacity component is attached to every prefab carrying a Smelter. Another mod that adds a Smelter-based station is picked up automatically.
• Another mod that changes a station's m_maxOre or m_maxFuel on the prefab will conflict. Kynda captures the base values in Awake and recomputes from them every three seconds.
• Kynda does not touch smelting speed, fuel cost or conversion recipes, so it composes with mods that do.

Known limitations

• Repeated presses can overshoot a station's queue. The capacity check reads the queue size from the station's network object, which updates after the add rather than during it. One batched press stops at capacity correctly. Pressing again before the station has caught up can push the queue past its maximum, and the game does not clamp the ore queue on its own side. Reported on smelters and blast furnaces. Not fixed yet.
• Uninstalling Kynda from a world that has Tuns or Woodracks in it deletes them permanently. Break them down first if you want the materials back.

Troubleshooting

No [Shift] x3 line on a station's hover text. Check BepInEx\LogOutput.log for a line from Kynda saying which reflected game members are missing. If a game update renames a private method Kynda uses, batching is switched off at startup and says so rather than throwing later.

The upgrades are not on the hammer. Valheim hides a piece whose materials you have never picked up, rather than greying it out. On a character that has never held bronze the Woodrack is simply absent. TestMode drops both to one wood if you want to check they registered.

An upgrade is next to its station and nothing changed. Check the range (4 metres by default), that the station is one named in that piece's Stations list, and that there is not already a closer upgrade of the same kind counting for it. The hover text says which of those it is.

The Tun is magenta or wearing the wrong texture. It borrows materials the game streams in on demand. They are loaded by name, and there is a fallback that summons the carrier location. Both are logged. A dedicated server skips skinning entirely because it draws nothing.

A config change did nothing. BepInEx already wrote that key to the .cfg, and the saved value wins. Edit the file.

Bug reports

Report in the Discord or on the issue tracker. Please include:

• BepInEx\LogOutput.log
• Whether you were on a server or in single player, and whether Longhouse Core was installed
• Your ezomic.valheim.kynda.cfg
• For anything involving a station or a piece, its prefab name
• AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\Player.log if a vanilla mechanic broke. Gameplay exceptions land there, not in the BepInEx log

Discord

discord.gg/hJzAVaZ5wb for mod information, updates, support, bug reports and compatibility questions.

There's also a small EU server running the pack if you want somewhere to play. Details are in the Discord.

Design notes

Why the upgrades are buildable pieces rather than a level on the smelter, how batching rides the game's own add, why the Tun still answers to the [Trough] config section, and how the surfaces and the link effect are borrowed: DESIGN.md.

Building

dotnet build

Targets net462. Game assemblies are referenced by HintPath from the Steam install; no NuGet packages. Output deploys to the repo-local testprofile\ by default, or pass -p:ProfileDir= to deploy elsewhere.

Part of Longhouse

Kynda 1.1.0 is included in the Longhouse modpack. It behaves exactly the same installed on its own.

Licence

Kynda is an original mod by Robbin Thijssen (Thijssen Software). Copyright (c) 2026 Robbin Thijssen. MIT licensed, see LICENSE.