FarLands

Valheim stops drawing the world not far from you, and the distant land it does draw has no trees and no buildings. FarLands carries the view on to the horizon: the mountain you are heading for, the coast across the sea, the forest on the next island, your base across the bay. All of it is made from your world's own heights, biome colours, trees and rocks, and from the pieces you built, so what you see far off is what you will find when you get there.

What you get

• Far land joining the loaded world without a seam or a step, and following the ground you have dug, raised, levelled or paved.
• Far buildings: your bases, and other players' bases you have been near, out to 2500 m at Medium, with the game's own meshes and colours and snow on the roofs where the game puts it. Where the game's own detail would start thinning a base out, FarLands draws it instead, so a base stays whole as you walk away and is not left empty as you come back.
• Far lights: at night the fires, torches and lamps of far bases glow, and light the walls and ground round them as the game's own light would; a fire only while it has fuel, workshops (ovens, forges, smelters) stay dark. Buildings → Lights turns them off, Buildings → LightFalloff sets how fast they dim with distance.
• Far forests: the game's own tree models nearer you, impostors (images of the game's own trees, made on your machine) farther out. Trees stand where the game would grow them; where you have been, it is the forest you saw, felled trees included.
• Big rocks and cliffs on distant mountains and hills, as the game's own models.
• The sea reaches the far land's edge instead of ending short of it.
• Far shadows: distant mountains cast the sun's shadow across the land, trees and rocks beyond where the game's own shadows end, and distant forests shade the ground under them.
• Clearer air: the game's fog would hide the far land a kilometre out, so FarLands thins it in the game's own colours. Air → Haze sets how hazy: Clear, Light, Standard (default) or Thick (Air → Enabled = false turns this off). Air → SeaMist (off by default) adds a mist out at sea, so the far shores fade into it.
• No popping: the land changes detail smoothly as you move, and the land just past the loaded world is finer than the game's.
• Cached per world: after your first visit the distant land and your bases appear at once.
• Bigger or reshaped worlds (Expand World, Better Continents, Riverheim): the far land follows them out to the world's real edge. Their custom vegetation is not followed, so far forests there can differ.
• Seasons (shudnal): the far land, trees, rocks and buildings take the season's look and follow a change of season. Seasonality: the far buildings and trees follow its change of season.
• HD Terrain and other terrain texture mods: the far land is drawn with the near land's textures.

Quality

One Quality setting, Low, Medium (default) or High, sets how far the land, forests and buildings reach and how detailed they are. Each part can also be set on its own (Quality then shows Custom). TerrainShadows turns the far shadows off, Buildings → Enabled = false the far buildings; Enabled = false gives the game its own distant land back.

Performance

The far view costs little on a modern graphics card. On a weaker one start with Medium or Low; a lower ImpostorResolution also saves video memory. The far buildings cost about 0.17 ms of GPU time with a large base in view (measured on an RTX 4070 SUPER) and up to about 180 MB of video memory. Coming near a base for the first time in a session can cost one frame of up to about 10 ms.

Multiplayer

Client-side: the server and other players need nothing. On a dedicated server far trees are as dense as the real forest but do not always stand exactly where the real ones do.

On a server your game only knows the places you have been near, so the far buildings are the bases you have visited, as they were when you last saw them. Your cache keeps them, so they are there from afar the next time you join too, even if you start far from them. A base you have never been near is not shown, and changes made to a base while you were away show once you come near it again.

Requirements

• BepInEx for Valheim (required)
• Configuration Manager (optional; every setting can be changed in the game)

Limits

• Small furniture and decor (chests, torches, signs, stools), ships and carts and banners are not drawn far off (the glow of fires and lamps is).
• Ground flattened by the game's older terrain modifiers (round some locations) is shown far off as generated.
• Like the game's own distant land, it shows places you have not explored yet.
• Not tried together with other mods that change the game's distant land.
• A native Linux build of the shaders is included but has not been tested.

For mod makers

Other mods can draw their changes of the land (rivers, roads) into the far land and keep the far forest off them. The API is described in API.txt (docs/API.txt in the source).

Problems and feedback

Write to me on Discord: https://discord.com/users/683075123816824940, or post in the Bugs tab. Attach BepInEx/LogOutput.log from the game folder, or from the profile folder with a mod manager (r2modman: Settings → Browse profile folder), and say what you did when it happened. A screenshot of the distant view helps with anything visual.