EarthWright

Terraforming for Valheim's hoe and cultivator. Resize the brush, pick its shape and edge, level to an exact height, raise and lower by exact amounts, smooth, paint, reset, build ramps and curved roads and undo what you did, all inside the game's own build menu. Costs, height limits, wards and admin rules are set by the server. Every gameplay setting is synced and lockable, every key and display option is per player, and the config file and five YAML files hot reload.

Required on the server and on every client. The machine that owns a piece of ground applies EarthWright's edits to it, and ground raised or dug past the game's ±8 m shows correctly only where EarthWright is installed.

The brush

• Size: Alt + mouse wheel, or ] / [ (hold Ctrl for bigger steps). 0.5 to 20 m by default; the server sets the range, per entry in EarthWright.Brushes.yml too. The game's own entries start at their own size and every entry remembers its size. Painting grows with the brush. A size multiplier, a cap that grows with a skill and a cap per tool level are optional.
• Which value the wheel changes: B steps through size, amount (raise and lower amount, level step or smooth strength), edge hardness, rotation, depth or inner size, and target height. The HUD highlights the one selected.
• Shape: N cycles circle, square, rectangle, ring and frame. The arrow keys turn it by 22.5°, Home turns it back to north. Squares are true squares in the world, never the game's diamond.
• Edge: from soft (the effect fades from the centre) to hard (full effect up to the rim). A soft edge on a square raise gives a bevel instead of a cliff.
• Grid mode (I): the brush snaps to whole metres with a hard edge; hold Z to snap only while held. Aim at the edge (O): the crosshair marks the near edge of the area instead of its centre.
• Hold the mouse button to keep applying (start delay and rate are settings). The camera does not zoom while you adjust with the wheel.

Target height (what levelling levels to)

• Your feet by default, like the game; hold Shift for the ground under the crosshair.
• K locks the current height; PageUp / PageDown move it by 0.1 m (Shift: 0.5 m); End goes back to your feet. Choosing the target height with B sets an exact height in 0.25 m steps (Ctrl: 2 m).
• Y cycles feet, aimed ground and continue the flat: the height of the levelled ground next to the cursor, so a new stroke extends the platform you already made (falls back to the crosshair when two platforms disagree).
• Middle mouse copies the height of the floor piece you aim at.
• The HUD shows the target height and where it came from. Clicking a rock or cliff next to the ground still works: the brush lands on the terrain behind it.

Operations

• Level in three styles, cycled with L: Ease (like the game, at most the step per click), Step (a larger step, up to 1000 m) and Instant (a flat plateau in one click). F9 makes one instant, hard-edged plateau with Level or Raise selected.
• Raise and Lower by an exact amount (0.05 to 8 m by default); repeated raises add up to the raise limit.
• Smooth evens out ridges without flattening the ground.
• Paint: P cycles the entry's own paint, dirt, paved, cultivated, grass, the biome's original ground, grass density, clear grass, and keep (change the height, leave the paint).
• Reset: the Reset entry, U for the brush area or Shift + U around you puts the ground and its paint back as the world made it. Reset never removes buildings, trees or rocks and skips the ground under buildings.
• Undo and redo: Ctrl + Z / Ctrl + Y, 15 steps by default. A held stroke is one step; ramps, roads, resets and paint are covered. Costs are not refunded. The history is cleared when you log out.

Build menu entries

The game's Level ground, Raise ground, Pathen, Paved road, Cultivate and Replant use the brush. EarthWright adds:

• Hoe: Lower ground, Smooth, Paint, Reset, Ramp, Road, Groundbreaker (clear, level and pave in one swing), Clear objects (off unless the server allows clearing) and Terraform (admins: level past the height limits).
• Cultivator: Till (cultivate without changing the height) and Uproot (removes wild berries, mushrooms, branches and stones in the brush).
• The hoe and cultivator menus get the game's full build menu with search, recent and favourites. Every entry can be switched off, and each entry's description lists every key that works with it, as you have bound them. Any console command can become a menu entry through EarthWright.Entries.yml.

Ramps and roads

• Ramp: click the start, click the end, set the width with the brush size (or by moving the cursor sideways), click again to build. N cycles the profile: straight, soft joins, soft ends, S-curve. Hold Ctrl to widen one side only, Alt to blend the ends into the ground. J builds a ramp from your feet to the crosshair at once.
• Road: click waypoints, the road curves through them; H carves it, Shift + H carves it paved.
• The preview is coloured for carts (up to 20° green, up to 25° yellow, steeper red) and turns red when the ramp is too steep, too long or past the height limit. The HUD shows length, rise, width, slope and points changed.
• Backspace, or the undo key, removes the last point first.

Preview and HUD

• The outline of the brush follows the ground; markers show every point that will change (raise, lower, held by a limit); a translucent volume shows the ground up to the target; buildings inside the area are highlighted.
• Next to the crosshair: size, shape, edge, amount, style, paint, target height and source, cost, and the tile and height under the cursor. A badge shows when the server locks the settings.
• F8 draws a world grid on the ground. F6 (or the EarthWright button in the Esc menu) opens a panel to type exact values, use raise presets (1×2, 5×2, 5×3, 8×3), undo and redo, and for admins the protection settings.
• Colours, sizes and every part of the display are personal settings. Dust from the hoe can be switched off.

Costs

Vanilla by default. The server can set stamina (off, fixed, scaled with the brush), tool wear, materials (scaled with the brush, per entry in EarthWright.Costs.yml, plus an item per swing), the stations needed (paving without a stonecutter; Groundbreaker needs none unless the server asks for one), stone per cubic metre raised and per square metre paved, and a cooldown. Free build (F7) is for admins by default. The HUD shows what a stroke costs and what you have, in red when you are short. Resets and undo are always free; the admin Terraform entry pays stamina and wear but no stone.

Height limits

The game allows 8 m up and 8 m down from the world's ground. EarthWright makes both limits settings (0.5 to 512 m), per biome in EarthWright.Limits.yml, and uses them for the pickaxe too. Admins may go further (Admin Limit, and hold Right Alt while clicking). Optional: gentle slopes (digging also lowers the surroundings, raising lifts them), and a strict mode where the dig limit lifts only near ore, buried treasure and tar. ew limits shows the limits where you stand.

Protection

• Wards are checked over the whole brush, on your machine and again on the machine that owns the ground.
• No terraforming in no-build places (traders, boss altars) or inside dungeons.
• The server can allow terrain tools to everyone, admins only or nobody, lock all terrain editing (admins bypass, tools can be exempt, the pickaxe included), refuse edits while hostile creatures are hunting you, and limit terraforming to admin zones (ew zone add <name> <radius> [player], ew zone list, ew zone remove <name>).
• The same rules apply to clearing objects and uprooting.

Tools

While a terrain tool is out: reach 20 m (5 to 50), a light on the tool that everyone sees (its colour is yours), faster running, and a torch that stays in the left hand. The hoe and cultivator upgrade to level 6. Sprinting on dirt roads is 10 % faster and cheaper, on paved roads 20 %. Seeds can snap to a grid (I with a seed selected), and the cultivator can be allowed on ground the game forbids.

Console commands

ew help lists them. ew on / ew off switch EarthWright for you (also typed in chat as /ew off). ew reset [radius], ew undo, ew redo, ew history, ew snapshot save|restore|list|delete <name> [radius], ew limits, ew zone ..., ew language write|reload, ew reload (admin). Clearing: ew forestry [radius], ew debris [radius], and for admins ew pieces [radius] and ew terrain <op> ... (level, raise, lower, min, max, band, offset, slope, remove, reset, paint; filters for a share of the points, skipping ground under buildings, and including or ignoring objects). ew terrain help lists the options.

Files

• milkyteam.earthwright.cfg: every setting, numbered by section as above. Hot reloaded.
• EarthWright.Brushes.yml (brush sizes per entry), EarthWright.Costs.yml (costs per entry), EarthWright.Entries.yml (custom menu entries), EarthWright.Limits.yml (limits per biome), EarthWright.Zones.yml (admin zones, kept by the server). Hot reloaded and synced from the server.
• EarthWright.Language.<Language>.yml: translations. ew language write writes the English template.

Server settings

With Lock Configuration on (the default) every player uses the server's values and cannot change them; server admins still can, in game. Keys, colours and display options are always your own.

How to install

1. Install BepInEx for Valheim.
2. Install this mod on the server and on every client.

For a manual install, put EarthWright.dll into BepInEx/plugins. Keep EarthWright installed once you have raised or dug past 8 m: without it the game draws that ground clamped to its own limits.

Building

Requirements: .NET SDK 8, Valheim installed with BepInEx, and the ValheimModLibs folder next to this one. pack.ps1 builds the mod and creates a Thunderstore zip in thunderstore/.

dotnet build EarthWright/EarthWright.csproj -c Release

Bugs and feature requests

The source is open, at the repository linked from the store page (website_url in thunderstore/manifest.json): https://github.com/geraldjglasgow/ValheimMods. Found a bug or want a feature? Open an issue at https://github.com/geraldjglasgow/ValheimMods/issues and name the mod, its version and what happened.

Shout outs

• The BepInEx and Harmony teams, for the tools every Valheim mod stands on.
• Iron Gate Studio, for Valheim.
• Thunderstore, for hosting this page.
• The Valheim modding community, for the hard work and dedication that keeps enhancing an already great game.
• Every modder who keeps their mods open source so others can collaborate, learn and build on them.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0). You are free to use, study, share and modify it, and anything you distribute that is built from it must carry the same freedoms and be released under the same licence, with source. See the LICENSE file for the full terms.