Highseat

An admin console for Valheim dedicated servers. Press F5 to open a browsable panel instead of memorising command names and argument order.

Named for the ondvegi, the chieftain's high seat in a longhouse, which is where authority was exercised from.

Why This Exists

Valheim refuses devcommands on a dedicated server, and it does so silently. There are three separate gates, and every one of them fails without an error message:

1. Terminal.IsCheatsEnabled() returns m_cheat && ZNet.instance.IsServer(). A client is never the server, so cheats are off no matter what adminlist.txt says.
2. ConsoleCommand's constructor does OnlyServer = onlyServer | onlyAdmin, and IsValid then returns ZNet.instance.IsServer() for those. Every admin-only command, including spawn, is unreachable from a client.
3. Since 1.0, ConsoleCommand.RunAction refuses all cheat commands until the character is confirmed with confirmcheats.

Highseat opens the first two for genuine admins, surfaces the third as an explicit choice, and mirrors the game's console output so a refused command is never invisible again.

Install

Install on the admin client, not the server. The gates are client side, so a server-side install does nothing.

Requires BepInExPack Valheim.

Admin Setup

Add your platform user ID to adminlist.txt on the server, then restart it.

It must include the platform prefix:

Steam_76561190000000000

A bare SteamID64 will not work. Valheim compares against PlatformUserID.ToString(), which is "<Platform>_<id>". Pasting just the number is the single most common reason admin silently fails, and most server guides still tell you to do it. If you get it wrong, Highseat detects it and logs the exact line you should have used.

Using It

F5 opens the panel. Non-admins cannot open it at all.

Tab	What It Does
Spawn	Searchable grid of every spawnable prefab with real in-game icons, filtered by items, beasts or build pieces, and by item type within those
Player	God, ghost, fly, debug and no-cost toggles, heal, skills, teleport
World	Time of day, time skip, weather
Server	Server settings, cheat confirmation, achievement restore, force save, drop cleanup, and the player list with kick and ban
Log	A working console: everything the game prints back, plus a command line

Before anything will spawn you must press Confirm Cheats once on the Server tab. This is Valheim's own requirement, not Highseat's, and it permanently marks the character as cheated.

Server Settings

The Server tab carries every world setting the server will accept from a connected admin: world level, player and enemy damage, enemy speed and star rate, raid frequency, stamina, eitr, food, carry weight, durability, resource and skill rates, death rules, free building and crafting, portal rules, passive creatures, no map, and the rest.

Edit what you want, then press Save. Changes take effect immediately, for everyone connected, and are written into the world save. There is no restart step and no config file to edit on the server.

These are the world's global keys, so Default clears a setting rather than pinning it to a value. Rates are percentages: 150 means 1.5x, because that is how Valheim stores them.

What is not here, because no client can change it: server name, port, password, public/private, crossplay and save directory. Those are command-line arguments read once at launch. They live in the server's start script and need a restart.

Dropped Items

Valheim only despawns a dropped item after an hour of world time, and never while it is inside a player base or within 25 metres of a player. Gear dropped around a base therefore stays forever. The rule is hardcoded, so there is no setting for it. Clear Dropped Items on the Server tab removes the loose drops loaded around you.

The Console

The Log tab is a full console, not just an output pane. It opens beside whichever tab you are on, so you can browse and type at the same time.

Key	Does
Enter	Run the command
Up / Down	Walk back and forth through command history
Tab	Complete the command name, or the argument once you have typed a space
Esc	Close the panel

Tab completion reads the game's own registered command list and each command's argument options, so spawn then Tab cycles real prefab names. Pressing Tab again cycles to the next match.

Commands you type are echoed in brass, the game's replies below them in white. That matters more than it sounds: Valheim reports a refused command by writing to its console, and Highseat hides the vanilla one. Without the mirror, a rejected command looks like the button did nothing at all.

While the panel is open, game keybinds are blocked. Typing m will not open the map and pressing Enter will not open chat.

Achievements

Confirming cheats blocks achievements for that character. Iron Gate ship an official way to turn them back on, and Highseat exposes it as Restore Achievements on the Server tab. The panel reads the resulting state back from your character so you can see whether it actually applied.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/gbv.valheim.highseat.cfg

Setting	Default	Purpose
Enabled	true	Unlock devcommands for admins
PanelHotkey	F5	Key that opens the panel
AutoEnableDevCommands	true	Turn devcommands on when the panel opens
VanillaConsoleOnHotkey	false	Also open Valheim's text console

Window position and size are saved automatically.

Credits

Reference behaviour was verified against the game's own assemblies. JereKuusela's Server devcommands (Unlicense) confirmed the same patch surfaces independently.