MidgardPlus

By Odin the Red · midgardplus.odinthered.dev · Discord

One mod to tune Valheim the way you want it, instead of twenty that fight each other.

MidgardPlus keeps growing. I add to it every few days, and a lot of what gets added started as a message from a player. If something breaks, feels wrong or is missing, tell me on Discord. A screenshot, or the lines from BepInEx/LogOutput.log, gets a bug fixed fastest.

Prefer a window to a text file?

There is a MidgardPlus Launcher for Windows. It finds Valheim, installs BepInEx, Jotunn and this mod, and gives every setting a real control with the explanation next to it.

Thunderstore hosts mods, not programs, so it lives on the site:

→ Download the launcher (Windows)

From version 1.2.4 the launcher updates itself. If its title bar shows no version number, yours is older: download it once more from that link, and it takes over from there.

It can also install other mods from Thunderstore in one click, and tells you before you do if one overlaps something MidgardPlus already does. More at midgardplus.odinthered.dev.

Or one line in PowerShell: irm https://midgardplus.odinthered.dev/install.ps1 | iex

Every setting starts at vanilla. Installing it changes nothing until you turn something on. Edits to the config apply while the game is running, so you can try a number and change it again without restarting.

The launcher

There is a MidgardPlus Launcher for Windows: a desktop app that finds your Valheim folder, installs BepInEx, Jotunn and this mod for you, gives every setting a proper control instead of a text file, and starts the game. It always pulls the newest MidgardPlus from Thunderstore, so it cannot hand you a stale build.

What it does beyond installing:

• Presets. Relaxed, Builder, Harder world, Two of you, Long days, or straight back to Vanilla. Each one changes only the settings it names and leaves the rest of your tuning alone, and it tells you which ones before you apply it.
• Other mods in one click. Search Thunderstore from the launcher and press Install. It brings in what the mod needs, and warns you first if it overlaps something MidgardPlus does, is deprecated, or has not been updated for Valheim 1.0.
• Search. Type stamina or chest and get every setting that mentions it, across every group, with the mod's own explanation next to each.
• Export and import. Settings are host-authoritative, so a host can export exactly what they changed and hand that one file to everyone else. Only the differences from vanilla go in it.
• It tells you when there is a new version and updates you to it, and from 1.2.4 it keeps itself up to date too.
• It backs up your config before the first time it writes, into BepInEx/config/midgardplus-backups/.
• It can remove everything again, copying your settings out first so a reinstall picks up where you left off.

The controls come from the config the mod itself writes, so the launcher reads your real types, ranges and defaults rather than a list someone typed by hand. It cannot drift out of step with the mod, and a setting added later shows up without the launcher being touched.

Thunderstore hosts mods, not programs, so it is not here. Download it from the site:

midgardplus.odinthered.dev Direct link: https://midgardplus.odinthered.dev/MidgardPlusLauncher.exe

It is not code-signed, so Windows will call it an unknown publisher: choose More info, then Run anyway. Or read the install script and run that instead:

irm https://midgardplus.odinthered.dev/install.ps1 | iex

Linux has a one-line installer on the same page. Valheim has no macOS build; if you play on a Mac through CrossOver or Whisky you are running the Windows version, so use the Windows steps inside that bottle.

You do not need any of it. A mod manager or a manual install works exactly as well.

Multiplayer

Settings are host-authoritative. Join a server and it hands you its settings, which override yours while you're connected. You get yours back when you leave.

So on a server your own values for those settings do nothing while you are connected. If you change something and see no effect in game, that is almost never another mod. On joining, MidgardPlus lists in LogOutput.log every setting the server sets differently from yours, with both values, and says one line on screen when you spawn. Keys are always yours and a server never sets them.

So nobody has to compare config files before a session, and nobody can quietly hand themselves free building on someone else's world.

Everyone needs the mod, including the dedicated server. Only the host's settings get read.

What you can change

Quality of Life: stack size, item weight, auto-pickup range, portals carrying ore, tames that follow you through portals, a portal destination picker, skill loss on death, and how long taming takes.

Player: carry weight bonus, stamina regen, stamina cost, run speed, skill XP rate.

Building: free building, ignore structural stability, build range.

Combat: enemy health, enemy damage, player damage, how often creatures spawn with stars, and how much they drop. Creature-vs-creature damage is left alone, so tamed animals behave normally.

Production: smelter speed, fermenter speed, fireplace fuel duration, infinite fuel, how long crops take to grow, and how much you get from trees, rocks and ore, and from crops and anything you pick.

World: day length, and a hard mode for learning recipes: with Recipe discovery on Hard, a recipe or building piece is only learned while you carry enough of every material for one craft, so finding a single bar no longer reveals everything made from it.

Companions: how many at once, health, star level, gear tier, recall distance, whether they scale to your weapon skill, and a list of things a gatherer leaves where they lie.

Containers: craft and build from materials in nearby chests, with a configurable range.

Crafting and inventory: how many you craft at once with Shift (the game's own multi-craft), repairing everything in one press, and keys to quick-stack into nearby chests and to sort your bag or an open chest.

Weapons, armour and tools never become stackable, whatever you set the multiplier to. Durability and quality are stored per item, so stacking them would wreck both.

What it adds

Three horns, three companions

Companion Horn - crafted at a level 2 Workbench for 10 fine wood, 2 bronze, 4 deer hide and 10 greydwarf eye. Calls a warrior.

Gatherer's Horn - same station, 10 fine wood, 8 leather scraps, 4 deer hide and 10 greydwarf eye. Calls someone who would rather carry than fight. A gatherer walks over to what is lying around within reach and picks it up, then files it into chests nearby as it goes, keeping whatever it is wearing and any food. It turns up in the starter kit and hits for half what a warrior does - enough to survive a fight it did not start.

Give a gatherer an axe and it also chops the fallen logs and trees around it; give it a pickaxe and it mines rock and ore. It swings with that tool's own damage and tier, and picks up what falls. Take the tool away and it stops.

Builder's Horn - same station, 10 fine wood, 20 stone, 10 resin and 10 greydwarf eye. Calls someone who looks after your base. A builder repairs damaged pieces you built, keeps fires and torches burning, and keeps smelters, furnaces, windmills and spinning wheels supplied, from its own bag first and then from the chests around them. It never feeds wood into a kiln, so your building wood is safe, and it follows the same rules as your hammer: a workbench in range where a piece needs one, and nothing inside a ward you are not permitted in.

Each wears its own colours, so you can tell them apart at a glance: warriors in the Dverger's red, gatherers in green, builders in blue.

Plant a berry bush

Plant anything under Features adds raspberry, blueberry and cloudberry bushes, mushrooms, yellow mushrooms, thistle and dandelion to the cultivator. They grow into the real thing, so they keep giving every time you pick them. Tilled ground, any biome, and they plant in rows like any crop.

Stronger builds without switching stability off

Structural support multiplier under Building lets every material reach further before it needs support, from the game's own rules at 1 to twice as far at 2. Ignore structural stability still switches support off entirely, and Build range multiplier only changes how far away you can place. Chests have snap points too, so they line up with walls and floors; Chest snap points under Containers turns that off.

For launchers and tools

The package carries plugins/midgardplus-settings.json next to the DLL: every section, key, type, default, range, choice and description, generated from the mod's own code. Read it to show or edit settings before the game has ever been started, which is when midgardplus.cfg first gets its keys.

Questions people ask

Do I have to grind ore for hours? Not if you do not want to. Smelter output under Production sets how much comes out of each ore, and Bronze per craft sets how many bronze a forge craft makes. Both start at 1, the way the game does it. The time and fuel do not change, so you carry less, you do not wait less.

Does everyone on the server need the same settings? The host's settings win. The server sends them when you join and again whenever the host changes one, so nobody has to edit a file to match.

Which settings need everyone to update the mod? Only a new minor version, like 1.6 to 1.7, and the changelog says so at the top when it happens. Patches like 1.7.1 and 1.7.2 play with 1.7.0.

Where do my settings live? BepInEx\config\midgardplus.cfg. If another program rewrites that file and drops settings, MidgardPlus puts them back from midgardplus.cfg.last-good with the values you had.

I turned on world finds but there is nothing out there. Valheim lays out places when a world is made. For a world you already play, run genloc once in the console with devcommands on, and they go into ground nobody has explored yet.

Why can two of us open the same chest now? Shared chests. Whoever opened it first is in charge of it, and everyone else's taking and putting is sent to them and answered, so a thing is never in two places. Carts, boats and graves stay one player at a time.

Can a companion build for me? Turn on Builder plans, press the plan key (F7) and place pieces for nothing. A builder companion with the materials puts them up. You can also look at a plan and press E to build it yourself, paid from your bag and the chests nearby.

My companion gets stuck or falls behind. It walks to you first and is only moved when it has stopped getting closer, is stuck in the ground or is very far away, and then onto a clear spot beside or behind you, never in front.

Does the mod touch my save? It writes its own keys on things it makes (companions, plans, finds) and nothing else. Turning a feature off leaves what you built alone.

Shared chests

Several players can have the same chest open at once. Whoever opened it first is in charge of it, and everyone else's taking and putting is sent to them and answered, so a thing is never in two places. Carts, boats and graves stay one player at a time. Shared chests under Features turns it off.

Bigger bag

Extra inventory rows under Crafting and inventory adds up to 4 rows to your bag, using the game's own support for bigger bags. Your tombstone keeps every row, and lowering it never drops anything.

Plans and rows

Look at a blue plan to see what it needs, and press E to build it yourself. Planting row length under Production plants a whole row with one cultivator click.

The row runs along the way you are facing, and the gap is worked out from each plant, at twice its own growing radius, so carrots come out tight and trees come out wide and none of them crowd each other. Every plant sits on its own ground height, so a row follows a slope. Anything a spot cannot take is skipped and the row carries on past it, and if fewer go in than you asked for you are told exactly why: not tilled, wrong biome, too steep, somebody else's ward, something in the way, or simply out of seed.

World finds

Forgotten caches in every biome from the meadows to the Mistlands, each with a scratched map stone that marks the nearest cache in the next biome; abandoned camps with supplies and a note; rare old coin hoards in the forest and swamp. They are laid out when a world is created. For an older world, run genloc once in the console with devcommands on. World finds under Features turns them off.

Make them yours

Shift+E on one of your own companions opens a panel: rename it, and for a Viking choose the body, hair, beard, skin and hair colour.

Mead-givers

The names of people who buy Odin the Red a mead are carved on the Red One's Rest and the saga stones, join the names companions take, and a supporter who plays shows a small mark by their name. The list comes from the MidgardPlus site; Supporter names under Features turns it off.

Lost a companion?

Sound a horn when you are at your limit and every companion you own within 200 m is called to your side, even one stuck in the ground or waiting where you told it to stay, and you are told who was where.

Crouch and sound any horn twice to dismiss every companion you own, however far away. The ones near you drop their bags where they stand. The far ones stay where you left them until someone next goes near, then put their bag and the gear you gave them on the ground there and go. Leaving a companion behind has a price: to get your gear back, go and fetch it. On a server it is the server that finds the lost ones, so update the server as well.

Any of them

Sound it and a Dverger turns up, already tamed and already yours, with a name everyone on the server sees. They fight whatever attacks you and won't turn on you, because they sit in the player faction rather than being a tamed enemy. Press E to send them ahead or tell them to hold, the same way you command a wolf.

Arm them yourself. Every companion carries a 5x3 bag: hold E to open it, drop in a weapon, shield or armour, and they put it on within a few seconds, handing back anything of yours they were using. They will not swap down to something worse, so a bag you use for hauling will not strip their kit. Leave food in the bag and they eat it when hurt. What you give them stays yours: it is saved with them, so it is still on them after you log out, and if they die it drops on the ground along with their bag. The kit they arrive in is their own, and goes with them.

They start in rags on purpose, so gearing one up is something you do. Set Companion gear to Auto and they instead arrive at a tier matched to your own weapon skill.

Anyone who falls more than forty metres behind gets pulled back to your side, so you will not lose them the first time you take a portal.

Leave one at home

Tell a companion to stay (press E) and that spot becomes its home. A builder keeps the base around it repaired and its fires, smelters and kilns going; a gatherer picks up, chops and mines around it and files everything into the chests there. Each walks back home after every job. Tell it to follow again and it comes with you.

Portals by tier

Three portals in the hammer under Misc, each the normal portal's recipe plus ten bars of its metal:

Portal	Extra cost	What may pass
Bronze portal	10 bronze	copper, tin and bronze, as ore, scrap or bars
Iron portal	10 iron	all of that, and iron
Silver portal	10 silver	everything, like the stone portal from the Ashlands

What you may carry depends on the portal you step into, and they link by tag to any portal, the game's own included. Each glows in its metal's colour, and says what it lets through when you look at it.

Pick where a portal goes

Turn on Portal destination picker and Shift+E on any portal lists every portal in the world, with the biome it stands in and how far away it is. Pick one and you go straight there, no matching tags needed. Walking in still works the normal way. What you carry is still checked against the portal you stand at, and tames following you come along. On a server the list comes from the server, so it needs 1.3.0 as well.

Reinforced Chest

An iron-banded chest with an 8x4 grid. Built with the hammer under Furniture, for ten fine wood and four iron.

Recipes for found-only materials

Additions only. Every normal drop and spawn is left as it was.

Item	Yield	Cost	Station
Chain	1	4 iron	Forge, level 2
IronNails	20	1 iron	Forge
Tar	4	8 resin, 4 coal, 2 bloodbag	Workbench, level 3

Coming next

MidgardPlus grows every few days. This is what is on the bench, roughly in order:

• Plant anything, in neat rows, with the cultivator: berry bushes, mushrooms and thistle, and whole fields at a time.
• More inventory space, and a trash slot.
• Repair a stretch of your base with one swing of the hammer.
• Builders that build. Place a plan with the hammer, and a builder puts it up from your chests.
• Viking companions, built like you, so the armour and hair you give them show on them.
• Chests that know what they hold, so gatherers and builders put things where they belong.
• Shared chests for servers, and chest upgrades that keep what is inside.

None of this has a promised date, and what players ask for changes the order. Tell me what you want most.

Help, bugs and ideas

This is an ever-expanding mod, and it gets better fastest when people tell me what is wrong with it.

• Found a bug? Post it on Discord with what you were doing, your MidgardPlus version, and the lines from BepInEx/LogOutput.log. Those lines usually say exactly what went wrong.
• Have an idea? Same place. A lot of what is in the mod started as someone's suggestion.
• Playing on a server? Say so. Everyone needs a matching version, and a mismatch can look a lot like a bug.

I read all of it.

Config

BepInEx/config/midgardplus.cfg, written on first launch with everything at vanilla.

Take only what you want

Every setting starts at vanilla, and each thing MidgardPlus adds has its own switch under 0 - Features: Companions, Reinforced chest, Extra recipes and Tiered portals. Turn one off and it leaves the crafting and build menus. Anything already built or summoned stays where it is. On a server, the server's switches apply to everyone.

Running a server

Install BepInEx, Jotunn and MidgardPlus on the server as well as on every player's PC. A dedicated server (valheim_server.exe) loads it the same way the game does, and writes its own BepInEx/config/midgardplus.cfg the first time it starts. That file is the one that counts: when a player joins, the server sends them its settings, and they get their own back when they leave.

Edit the server's file while people are playing and the change reaches everyone connected within a second or two, with no restart and no reconnecting. Everyone needs the same minor version, so all 1.3.x releases play together. 1.3.0 adds new portals, so a server on 1.2 and its players update together. The launcher can export your settings to a file you copy to the server.

Uninstalling

Remove the mod. Nothing the game ships gets modified, so there's nothing else to undo.

Notes

Content is always registered rather than config-gated, because a client and server that disagree about which prefabs exist can't stay in sync. Config controls behaviour, not whether things exist.

Multipliers apply to a captured vanilla baseline rather than the current value, so changing a setting repeatedly never compounds.