Arvakr
A loading bar for Valheim's startup. Tells you which mod it is on and that it is still working, so a long load never looks like a crash. It does not make loading faster, it just stops the guessing.Arvakr
A loading bar for Valheim's startup.
Why
If you run a lot of mods, starting Valheim means staring at a frozen window for a minute or two, wondering whether it is working or whether it has died. There is nothing on screen to tell you.
That is the whole problem Arvakr is here to fix. Not the waiting. The not knowing.
So it puts a bar across the bottom of the window, tells you what it is loading, and stays there until the menu is ready.
It Will Not Load Any Faster
Worth saying straight away, because a loading bar tends to suggest otherwise.
That wait is your mods starting up, one after another. Arvakr does not make it shorter by a second, and no mod could. It just means you can see it happening.
What You Get
- A bar from the first mod through to the main menu.
- The name of whatever is loading right now, and how many mods are left.
- A seconds counter if things go quiet, so a long pause still looks alive.
- No more grey "Not Responding" screen while the game loads.
- A note on the bar if something goes wrong, instead of a silent failure.
- A list in the log afterwards of which mods took the longest.
- It gets out of the way on its own once the menu is up.
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
If startup has got painful, that is where it went, and it is usually two or three mods rather than all of them.
A slow mod is not a broken mod and it is not a reason to uninstall anything. Some of them just have a lot to set up. The list only tells you what you are paying for.
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 exactly as it did before. |
[General] |
TimeoutSeconds |
600 |
Give up and 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] |
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. If
you are doing it 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 itself 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.
All it does is read the loading messages your mod manager already writes, and draw a bar from them. If it ever fails you lose the bar, and the game carries on exactly as it would have.
Nobody else can tell whether you have it. It connects to nothing and sends nothing anywhere.