NoVikingLeftBehind — the ultimate Valheim quality-of-life mod!

One install. Thirty-six modules. Zero arguments about config. NoVikingLeftBehind is the all-in-one quality-of-life mod for co-op Valheim: extra inventory slots, one-key loadouts, fist weapons with a shield, crafting straight from your chests, food that never decays, a compass back to your corpse, dual guardian powers, ore that grows back, portals that carry your metal, a longship that points closer into the wind when your crew is aboard, tools that tear through material they outclass, a workbench whose reach grows with your settlement — and a catch-up system that keeps the whole crew playing together even when half of them only get online on weekends. It replaces six other mods and plays nicely with the content mods you already run.

Every number below is a server setting, and every one of them can be changed while the server is running — save the cfg file and it applies within a second, no restart, no client re-download. The server enforces the settings, so nobody has to agree on config by hand.

Why it exists

For co-op groups where nobody can play every night. If half your crew is deep in iron and the other half only gets online on weekends, this mod stops the gap from turning into a wall — no more "the bronze crunch": ore mined out, the forge moved on, and the latecomer stuck ranging the coast for scraps of copper everyone else abandoned weeks ago.

How it thinks

The mod tracks the world's frontier: the highest boss your group has actually killed. Anything at or behind that frontier is "old news" and gets easier; anything at or ahead of it — the boss you haven't beaten yet — is untouched. Nobody is singled out as "behind"; the rule keys off the world's progress, not any one player's.

Concretely: your group kills the Elder. World tier ticks up to 2. Bronze (tier 1) is now behind the frontier, so all at once: bronze recipes and pieces cost half as much, smelters spit out double the bars per ore, portals stop refusing to carry it, mined-out copper and tin nodes grow back over time, and Haldor starts selling ingots of it. Iron — the new frontier — isn't touched at all. The mod never makes the leaders' game easier; it only softens the trail behind them.

Features by theme

Catching up

• TrailingTierDiscount — that iron cuirass costs half the ore it used to, the moment iron stops being your group's edge. It can also re-price everything made at one named crafting station, whatever its tier — handy when another mod's own cost settings refuse to stick. Tune it: [Discount] CostMultiplier=0.5, ExtraPerTierBehind=0.0, MinAmount=1, StationMultipliers="BCA_CookingPot:0.75"
• RichSmelting — drop copper in a behind-the-frontier smelter and watch it spit out twice the bars per ore; craft a bronze recipe and get double the yield per craft. Tune it: [Smelting] OutputMultiplier=2, RecipeYieldMultiplier=2
• FastMining — a behind-the-frontier vein melts under your pickaxe instead of eating your stamina bar. Tune it: [Mining] SpeedMultiplier=3.0, DropMultiplier=1.0, IgnoreToolTier=false, OreNodes="rock4_copper:1,rock4_copper_frac:1,MineRock_Tin:1,silvervein:3,silvervein_frac:3,MineRock_Obsidian:3,MineRock_Meteorite:4"
• OreRegrowth — that copper vein your group stripped bare a month ago is standing again next time someone new needs it, quietly regrown while nobody was near — and only once the whole vein is gone, never while a half-mined chunk of it is still standing. Tune it: [Regrowth] RegrowDays=7, CheckIntervalSec=60, MinPlayerDistance=64m, MaxPerTick=5, Prefabs="rock4_copper_frac:1:rock4_copper,silvervein_frac:3:silvervein,MineRock_Tin:1,MineRock_Obsidian:3,MineRock_Meteorite:4"
• TraderStock — Haldor has bronze and iron bars on his shelf now, not just the trinkets he's always sold, and only once your group has actually earned the right (boss-key gated). Tune it: [Trader] Items="Bronze:5:60,Iron:5:80,Silver:5:120,BlackMetal:5:150", TraderNames="Haldor"
• PortalTrail — that stack of iron you'd normally have to lug home on foot? Toss it through the portal like everything else — the newest tier still can't ride along, but everything behind it can. Tune it: [Portals] AllowBehindFrontier=true, ExtraTiersBehind=0, AlwaysAllow="", NeverAllow=""
• PlaytimeRubberBand — the friend who only logs in Sundays gathers and levels noticeably faster than the group's daily grinders, without anyone ever slowing down. Tune it: [Playtime] MaxBonus=1.0, MinGroupSize=3, WindowDays=14, GatherBonusEnabled=true, XpBonusEnabled=true
• GroupSkillCatchup — your one-hand sword skill climbs noticeably faster while it trails the group's best swordsman — and stops mattering once you catch up. Tune it: [SkillCatchup] Bonus=1.0, MaxFactor=3.0, WindowDays=14
• VanguardShadow — stand near your better-geared friend and feel it: hits land softer, XP ticks up faster, stamina comes back quicker — the moment you drift out of range, it's gone. Tune it: [Vanguard] Radius=20, TierGap=1, DamageReduction=0.25, XpBonus=0.5, StaminaRegen=0.2, RequireBehindFrontier=false

Combat & powers

• DualPowers — carry two Forsaken powers at once, each on its own cooldown, and hit G to fire the other one mid-fight instead of waiting out the first (the key is written on the second power icon, so you never have to guess). At a boss altar it works the way round you'd expect: plain E sets slot 1 exactly like vanilla, Shift+E sets slot 2, Ctrl+E sets slot 3 if you run three — and the stone's own tooltip says so, naming your keys and telling you which power it would replace. nvlb.power clear 1|2 and nvlb.power swap fix a power in the wrong slot. Tune it: [Powers] Slots=2, IndependentCooldowns=true, CooldownMultiplier=1.0, local SecondSlotKey="G", local SecondSlotModifier="LeftShift", ThirdSlotModifier="LeftControl"
• Power HUD — every Forsaken power icon is drawn as a circle with a thin charge ring around it that fills as the cooldown recovers: full ring means ready, and every second CombatRecharge shaves off jumps the ring forward, so you can see the power charging while you fight. Built at runtime in Valheim's own parchment gold — no extra downloads, no flashy overlay, and the vanilla icon and cooldown text are untouched underneath. The second slot sits beside the first — move it wherever you like with HudOffsetX/HudOffsetY. Tune it: local [Powers] RoundIcons=true, CooldownRing=true, RingThickness=4, RingColor="E6C88AD9", RingTrackColor="00000066", HudOffsetX=84, HudOffsetY=0
• CombatRecharge — every hit you land or take visibly chips seconds off your power's cooldown bar, so a hard fight brings your power back around, not the clock. Watch the charge ring on the icon jump forward with each hit. Tune it: [Recharge] SecondsPerHitDealt=2, SecondsPerHitTaken=3, MaxPerSecond=10, AffectAllSlots=true
• FistsAndShields — put the Flesh Rippers (or Hugo's bronze knuckles) in one hand and a shield in the other. Vanilla calls every fist weapon two-handed, so equipping one drops your shield — even though bare fists and a shield have always worked fine together. Now they don't fight each other, and a torch will sit in your off-hand too. Tune it: [Fists] ExtraPrefabs="", ExcludePrefabs=""

Inventory

• ExtraSlots — dedicated slots for helmet/chest/legs/cape, two utility slots (Megingjord + Wishbone together), three auto-eating food slots, two ammo slots, and two generic slots for whatever doesn't fit anywhere else — all extra real estate outside your main bag, so it never eats into carry space. Stored outside the vanilla save package (a vanilla client or tool can't delete them), with 3 rolling backups and a rescue path for characters migrating off shudnal's ExtraSlots. Tune it: [Slots] EquipmentSlots=true, UtilitySlots=2, FoodSlots=3, AmmoSlots=2, GenericSlots=2, QuickSlots=0, AutoEatFromFoodSlots=true
• SafeSlots — your extra-slot items are backed up locally and to the server; nothing to do. Your character file is copied aside before this mod first touches it, the items themselves are kept on the server after every save, and if you ever come back to an empty set of slots the game tells you they're there and how to get them back. Tune it: [SafeSlots] VaultVersions=5, MinUploadIntervalSec=30, local CharacterBackup=true, KeepBackups=3
• Loadouts — hold Alt and tap Z to save your current weapon+shield, then just tap Z later to snap both back into your hands mid-fight without opening the inventory. Or point a loadout at two hotbar slots (Loadout1Slots=1,2) and the key just equips whatever is sitting in them right now — nothing to save, rearrange the hotbar and the loadout follows. One loadout is on out of the box; set Slots=2 and give the second one a key when you want it. The keys are rebindable on Valheim's own Keyboard & Mouse settings page, along with the rest of this mod's hotkeys, and a rebind there takes effect straight away. Tune it: [Loadouts] Slots=1, local Loadout1Key="Z", Loadout2Key="None", SaveModifier="LeftAlt", Loadout1Slots="", Loadout2Slots=""
• CraftFromChests — stand at the forge near your storage wall and craft straight through it — no more running back and forth for one more bar. The stone oven bakes straight out of the chests too, while meat racks never pull, so the raw meat you stashed for a recipe is still there when you go looking for it. Tune it: [Chests] Range=20, PullForCrafting=true, PullForBuilding=true, PullForSmelters=true, PullForFires=true, PullForCookingStations=false, PullForOvens=true, OvenPrefabs="piece_oven", local ToggleKey="LeftAlt+O"
• RepairAll — walk up to the workbench and everything in your bag it can fix is already fixed — one sound, one message, no more clicking the little hammer twenty times. It is vanilla's own rules applied to the whole bag at once: repairs stay free, a forge still won't touch workbench gear, and a level-1 bench still won't repair your best axe. Items sitting in ExtraSlots get repaired too. Prefer to press a key instead? Set Trigger="Hotkey". Tune it: [Repair] Trigger="OnOpen" (or Hotkey/Both), ShowMessage=true, local Hotkey="R"

Building

• OverkillTools — a black metal axe drops a beech in two swings and an iron pickaxe bites a boulder like it's chalk. The bonus is the gap between your tool's tier and what the target actually needs, so day-one Meadows with a stone axe is exactly as slow as it always was — this only ever rewards going back to old material with better gear. Ore veins are left alone: those are FastMining's job. Tune it: [Tools] PerTierBonus=0.5, MaxMultiplier=3.0, AffectTrees=true, AffectRocks=true, AffectDestructibles=true
• WorkbenchReach — every boss your world kills pushes the workbench's build radius out a little; every level of extensions pushes it out a lot. A level-5 bench in a five-boss world covers nearly the whole base, and the circle you see when you hover with the hammer grows to match, so there's no guessing. Monster-spawn suppression is not enlarged — that stays exactly vanilla. Tune it: [Workbench] PerTierMetres=2, PerLevelMetres=6, MaxRangeMetres=60, Stations="piece_workbench"
• SettlementDiscount — the clan gets better at building: every boss down knocks 10% off every build piece, to a floor of half price. Build pieces only — crafting recipes cost what they always cost — and deconstructing refunds exactly what the piece costs now, never more. Tune it: [Settlement] PerTierDiscount=0.10, MaxDiscount=0.50, MinAmount=1, ExcludePieces="", OnlyCategories=""
• BuildersLoad — stand near your bench and the wood, stone and metal in your pack weigh half as much, so a big wall is a couple of trips instead of ten. Walk away and it comes straight back (with a three-second grace so the encumbrance arrow doesn't strobe at the edge). Building materials only, your own inventory only, and your carry limit is untouched. Tune it: [Load] WeightMultiplier=0.5, Materials="Wood,FineWood,RoundLog,Stone,...", Stations="piece_workbench,piece_stonecutter", HysteresisSeconds=3
• BuildersGuild — build big at home without grinding for it. Anywhere inside 80 m of the right station, that station's materials get cheaper: wood and stone at half price near the workbench and stonecutter, iron at a tenth near the forge. Out in the wild everything costs what it always did. And beams behave like a frame instead of a shopping list — the first pole of a support tower costs 1 of each material, and every beam you snap onto it costs nothing, so a five-high iron tower is one iron and one wood. Snapping onto a wall or a floor doesn't count: frames are what's rewarded. On top of that you get better at building: a Builder level that goes up every time you place something (bigger pieces teach you more), worth up to 30% off at level 100 — it lives on your character, it is never lost when you die, and nvlb.builder in the console tells you where you are. And when you settle into placing the same piece over and over, each repeat shaves another 5% off, up to 25%, until you switch piece or stop for twenty seconds. Each piece remembers what it actually cost, so deconstructing gives back exactly that and never more. The hammer tells you why the number changed. Crafting recipes are never touched — the iron you save goes into gear. Tune it: [Builders] YardRadius=80, Materials="Wood:0.5,Stone:0.5,Iron:0.10,...", Stations="piece_workbench:Wood|RoundLog|FineWood,forge:Iron|Bronze|Copper,...", StructuralFirstCost=1, StructuralAttachedCost=0, MinAmounts="", SkillMaxDiscount=0.30, RhythmPerRepeat=0.05, RhythmMax=0.25

Survival & world

• FoodNoDecay — that meal you ate ten minutes ago is still giving you full health and stamina right up until it actually runs out, instead of quietly fading the whole time. Tune it: [Food] KeepFraction=1.0, HidePulse=true, PulseBelowSeconds=0
• LongFires — load the hearth once and it's still burning hours later; your hand torch barely loses any charge on a long cave crawl. Tune it: [Fires] FuelDurationMultiplier=5, HandTorchDurabilityMultiplier=5, InfiniteFuel=false
• CorpseRunPlus — five things that make dying suck less: a HUD compass points straight at your grave so you're never guessing; you respawn with a meal already eaten and Rested already running; Grave Pull boosts your stamina regen the farther you are from your loot, easing off as you close in; and vanilla's own Corpse Run buff scales up the farther your grave was from home, so a death way out in the mountains actually helps on the long walk back. Tune it: [CorpseRun] CompassEnabled=true, RespawnRestedEnabled=true (RestedMinutes=10), RespawnFoodEnabled=true (RespawnFoods="Bread"), PullEnabled=true (PullMinDistance=50m, PullFullDistance=1000m), ScaledEnabled=true (ScaledDurationPer100m=0.2), local HintAlpha=0.55, HintScale=0.8 The grave marker is an off-screen waypoint: it sits on your corpse while the corpse is on screen and slides to the edge of the screen in its direction when it is not, so it only points dead ahead when you are actually walking at it. Hold Delete for a second and a half to dismiss a grave you have given up on, no console needed — and that hint line under the distance is deliberately quiet: dimmer and smaller than the distance itself, and you can fade it further (or bring it back) with HintAlpha / HintScale while you play.

On the water

• SeaLegs — with a crew aboard, your longship points closer into the wind. The angle you can sail at tightens with every extra body on deck, so three of you can tack up a channel a lone sailor would have to row. Nothing gets faster — downwind speed is exactly vanilla — you can just go places you couldn't. The wind arrow on the HUD brightens as the sail catches, and passengers get that same arrow now instead of a blank corner. Tune it: [SeaLegs] Crew2Cone=32, Crew3Cone=27, Crew4Cone=23, MaxCrewCounted=4, local PassengerWindGauge=true
• Lookout — step off the tiller on a moving ship and you start earning your keep: the map fog peels back noticeably wider for whoever is watching the horizon instead of steering. Fog only — no pins, no callouts, nothing shared or spoiled. Tune it: [Lookout] RadiusMultiplier=1.75, RequireMoving=true, MinSpeed=1.0

Server-side knobs that need no client mod

• ServerKeys — the admin-only dials every server owner reaches for on day one: skill XP rate, how much skill you lose on death, free build/craft, unlockable recipes without a workbench — applied to the world itself, so even a vanilla client feels the effect. Tune it: [ServerKeys] SkillGainRate=1.0, SkillReductionRate=1.0, NoBuildCost=false, NoCraftCost=false, AllRecipesUnlocked=false, DeathKeepEquip=false

In-game settings menu

Open Settings — from the pause menu in game, or from the main menu — and there is a NoVikingLeftBehind tab next to Gameplay, Audio and the rest. Everything below is in it: modules down the left, grouped by theme with an on/off switch each; the selected module's settings down the right, one row apiece with a plain one-line hint under the name and the full explanation on hover. A search box at the top finds any of the 235 settings by name, key, hint or description. Section headings are buttons — click one to jump the list to it.

Lists are picked, not typed. Settings like [Mining] OreNodes are a list of things in the world, and since 0.8.5 they open a picker: search, tick what you want, set the number beside it. Everything is listed by its in-game name with the prefab underneath, read from the world you are playing — so anything another mod has added is in the list too. A Raw button brings back the text field if you would rather type it.

Nothing is sent until you press Save. Changing a control marks its row and adds it to a queue the footer counts (Save changes (3)); Discard puts everything back. Vanilla's OK saves the queue and closes, and Back or Escape stops to ask first, so a mis-click costs nothing. Key settings are recorded rather than typed: click the binding, press the key you want.

By default anyone on the server can change most of them, live, for everybody — that is the point: friends can tune the game while they are the ones playing it. Every change is announced in chat with the name of the person who made it, the server logs it, and the footer has an Undo last change button and a Reset module to defaults button. Server owners who would rather keep the dials to themselves set [Access] TweakAccess = Admins and the whole thing becomes admin-only in one live edit.

The handful of settings that change the world's rules — the [ServerKeys] block, the mod's safety switches, the permission settings themselves — are admin-only whatever happens. A setting you may not change is still shown, greyed, with the reason ("Only a server admin can change this", "Needs a server restart", "Join a server to change this"), so everyone can see what the mod can do. Values move under you when somebody else changes something, and per-player settings — hotkeys, HUD offsets — are written straight to your own config and never leave your machine.

If your server also runs SmoothServer, one more entry appears down the left — Network (SmoothServer) — with the five switches of that mod worth reaching for mid-game: the network preset (Default / FastLink / Custom), compression, the shared map, smooth motion on your own machine, and the admin-only "require the client mod", plus a Reset network to Default button. Its other settings stay in its own config file, and none of this exists if you do not have it installed.

Nothing new is downloaded for this: the tab is built at runtime out of Valheim's own controls, so it matches the game's fonts and colours, and any skin you use skins it too.

Customize everything

Every setting above lives in one file on the server: Nosferatu.NoVikingLeftBehind.cfg, generated the first time the server boots with the mod installed. Edit it in a text editor, save, and the change is live within a second — no restart, no re-download for players, because ServerSync pushes the new values to every connected client automatically. The one exception: flipping a module's Enabled line from off to on needs a server restart to install that module's patches (turning one off is instant, same as everything else).

A handful of settings are deliberately local, not server-synced — hotkeys and HUD panel offsets for ExtraSlots, Loadouts and CorpseRunPlus — because those are about your keyboard and your screen, not the group's rules.

A real excerpt of the cfg:

[Discount]
CostMultiplier = 0.5

[Regrowth]
RegrowDays = 7

[Slots]
FoodSlots = 3

[CorpseRun]
RestedMinutes = 10

Three console commands round it out: nvlb.status (client) prints the live world tier and every module's current settings, nvlb.catalog lists every setting with its hint, type, range and who is allowed to change it, and nvlb.slots.restore rolls your ExtraSlots storage back to one of its automatic backups if something ever looks wrong.

On a private test server the admin can add [Debug] AllowTestCommands = true to unlock three helper commands for connected players - nvlb.give, nvlb.power and nvlb.tier - which a dedicated server's console otherwise refuses; it is off by default, so nobody can hand themselves items.

Install

Players — install via r2modman or the in-game Thunderstore mod manager (Online tab): search NoVikingLeftBehind under the Valheim community and install it into your profile. First, remove any of the mods it replaces from that profile: SkillGainModifier, SmartSkills, AzuCraftyBoxes, ExtraSlots, ConditionalConfigSync, YamlDotNet. Join the server — if EnforceClientMod is on, r2modman keeps you version-matched automatically.

Server admins — unzip the whole Thunderstore package contents into BepInEx/plugins/NoVikingLeftBehind/ on the dedicated server (depends on BepInExPack_Valheim 5.4.2350). Start the server once to generate the cfg, then edit it to taste. [General] EnforceClientMod (default on) rejects any connecting client that isn't running a matching version — turn it off to let vanilla clients join alongside modded ones (they just won't see the client-side features).

FAQ

• Can a vanilla client join? Not while EnforceClientMod is on — the server rejects it with an explanatory message. Turn that setting off if you want to allow vanilla clients in.
• Will my items in the extra inventory slots survive a crash or a bad update? Yes — they live outside the vanilla save package entirely, with 3 rolling automatic backups and nvlb.slots.restore to roll back if anything looks off.
• Does it work alongside content mods, like a Jotunn item/creature pack? Yes — NoVikingLeftBehind never touches prefabs, items, or creatures; it patches vanilla behavior (costs, yields, mining speed, cooldowns, and so on) and stays out of content mods' way.

Credits & license

MIT licensed. ServerSync by blaxxun-boop (MIT-0), vendored as source. CraftFromChests adapts container-pulling logic from AzuCraftyBoxes by Azumatt (MIT-0). ExtraSlots' panel UI is adapted from shudnal/ExtraSlots (Unlicense / public domain). Full details in THIRD_PARTY.md.

Source & issues: https://github.com/MJensen01/NoVikingLeftBehind

Sibling mod, server-tuning focused: SmoothServer.