Arvakr

A loading bar for Valheim's startup.

What It Is For

With a lot of mods installed, Valheim sits on a frozen window for a minute or two before the main menu, with nothing on screen to say whether it is still working.

Arvakr puts a bar across the bottom of the window and names what is loading, so you can see that it is working and roughly how far along it is.

It Does Not Make Loading Faster

That wait is your mods starting up, one after another. Arvakr does not shorten it, and no mod can. It shows you what is happening while you wait.

What You Get

• A bar from the first mod through to the main menu.
• The name of whatever is loading, and how many mods are left.
• A seconds counter when things go quiet, so a long pause still shows as working.
• No grey "Not Responding" screen while the game loads.
• A message on the bar if something goes wrong.
• A list in the log afterwards of which mods took the longest.
• A minimize button and a close button.

The Two Buttons

Both sit in the top right of the bar and work while the game is frozen.

Minimize sends the bar to the taskbar and off the screen. Bring it back from the taskbar like any other window.

Close stops the game loading, the same as closing the BepInEx console window. It is safe: the bar is only on screen before the main menu, so no world and no character has been loaded.

Finding Out What Is Slow

When you reach the menu, open BepInEx/LogOutput.log and search for Arvakr:

Mods loaded in 65.8s: 62 of 62.
Slowest mods to start:
     9.4s  Warfare 1.9.4
     7.3s  SouthsilArmor 3.1.9
     6.4s  Monstrum 1.6.0

Startup time is usually two or three mods rather than all of them, and this is how you find out which.

A slow mod is not a broken mod. Some have a lot to set up before the game starts.

If the count is lower than the total, some mods did not start at all. Search the log for Skipping to see why, which is nearly always a missing dependency.

Settings

BepInEx/config/gbv.valheim.arvakr.cfg, written the first time you run the game with Arvakr installed.

Section	Setting	Default	What It Does
[General]	Enabled	true	Show the bar. Off means startup looks as it did before.
[General]	TimeoutSeconds	600	Close the bar after this long, whatever happens.
[General]	AlwaysOnTop	true	Keep the bar in front of the game.
[General]	DockToGame	true	Sit the bar in Valheim's window. Off centres it on the screen.
[General]	ShowCloseButton	true	The close button that stops the game loading.
[General]	ShowMinimizeButton	true	The minimize button that sends the bar to the taskbar.
[General]	KeepWindowAlive	true	Stop Windows greying the game out while it loads.
[Report]	SlowestCount	10	How many entries in each log list. 0 for the totals only.
[Console]	HideWhileLoading	true	Hide the BepInEx console while the bar is up.
[Console]	ShowOnError	true	Bring the console back if anything errors.
[Console]	RestoreWhenDone	false	Show the console again at the menu even if nothing went wrong.

Install

Client only. There is nothing to put on a server, and a server has no loading screen.

It installs to BepInEx/patchers/, not BepInEx/plugins/. Your mod manager handles that. By hand, the file goes in BepInEx/patchers/Arvakr/Arvakr.dll.

If Something Looks Wrong

No bar at all. Search BepInEx/LogOutput.log for Arvakr. If there is no preloader entry line, the file is in the wrong folder. If it is there, try AlwaysOnTop = false.

The bar is in the wrong place. Set DockToGame to false to centre it on your main screen instead.

The game changes resolution on startup. Set AlwaysOnTop to false, then Enabled to false if that does not settle it.

The bar stays after the menu appears. It should go within a second or two. Failing that it closes after TimeoutSeconds. Please report it.

The console has gone. It is hidden, not closed, so nothing was lost. Set RestoreWhenDone to true to get it back at the menu, or HideWhileLoading to false to leave it alone.

Is It Safe?

Yes. Arvakr changes nothing about the game. It does not touch Valheim, it does not touch your other mods, and it cannot reach your world or your character.

It reads the loading messages your mod manager already writes and draws a bar from them. If it fails you lose the bar, and the game carries on as normal.

It connects to nothing and sends nothing anywhere.