Valheim Terrain Tools

Shape the land with precise Hoe controls, adjustable brushes, a free camera, and tools for clearing an area.

Build a level foundation, support a staircase with a matching slope, move a hillside without flattening it, or soften the edges of your latest landscaping project. Valheim Terrain Tools expands the existing Hoe menu and shows your selection before you apply it.

Client side — no server installation required. Only the player using the tools needs the mod. Edits use Valheim's native world data and synchronization, so the changes are saved and visible to other players.

Current build: 0.6.4, built against Valheim 1.0.17. Requires BepInEx 5.

Shape your terrain

• Level ground: Set the selected ground to a chosen height, raising and lowering it as needed. Adjust the target in fine 0.125 m steps by default.
• Raise ground: Create a rounded mound toward a chosen height, with a controlled footprint and a smoother transition toward the surrounding ground. Repeating a click at the same position and target height does not keep stacking another mound.
• Smooth ground: Soften bumps and uneven transitions while retaining the ground texture. Repeat the action for stronger smoothing.
• Move ground: Raise or lower the existing terrain profile without flattening its bumps and dips. Choose a positive or negative offset; each click applies that change again. If a terrain limit is reached, the movement is reduced uniformly to preserve the profile.
• Slope ground — 26°, 45°, or 67°: Create a straight incline at the angles used by Valheim's angled building pieces. Rotate the uphill direction and adjust the slope's height to support stairs, ramps, and paths. The preview arrow points uphill.
• Pathen and Paved road: Paint the ground using your selected brush size and shape, without changing its height.

Valheim's native terrain limits still apply: approximately 8 m above or below the terrain's original baseline. The terrain also uses a one-metre grid, so very small details and perfectly sharp edges are limited by the game itself.

Choose your brush and blend the edges

Switch between a circle and a rotatable square. Hold Shift and scroll to resize the selection without zooming the camera.

• Terrain shaping and Reset terrain have a default maximum radius of 10 m, configurable up to 20 m.
• Remove nature and Remove builds have a separate maximum radius of 50 m.
• For squares, the displayed size is the half-width: 5 m makes a 10 × 10 m square.

Enable Natural edges with F7 to add a transition outside Level, Raise, Move, or Slope selections. This helps edited ground meet the surrounding landscape more naturally. The transition is off by default, starts at 3 m wide, and can be configured from 1–10 m. A green outline shows its outer boundary.

The selected area stays flat for Level, keeps its existing profile for Move, and retains its intended plane for Slope. Raise blends its rounded mound across the enlarged footprint. Smooth remains available for further refinement.

Get a better view with the free camera

Press F3 while using a supported Hoe action to detach the camera. Move around your project with W/A/S/D, use Space to move up and Q to move down, then press F3 again to return.

By default, the camera can travel 75 m from your character and target terrain or objects up to 200 m from the camera. Both distances and the movement speed are configurable.

The selection must remain over loaded terrain. Free camera does not move your character or load additional parts of the world.

Restore and clear an area

Reset terrain

Restore the original terrain height and ground cover inside a circle or rotated square. Resize the selection to reset a small patch or a larger area.

Reset does not respawn removed objects or undo building deletion. It restores the original terrain rather than the previous edit, and it does not add an outer blending band.

Remove nature

Clear supported trees, fallen logs, stumps, rocks, bushes, vines, and pickables without resource drops.

Eligible objects turn blue before removal. The selection covers all heights within its horizontal footprint. Build pieces, creatures, loose items, and protected game infrastructure such as spawners are excluded. Ordinary access and no-build restrictions still apply.

Remove builds

Clear eligible building pieces inside a circle or rotated square, with an adjustable vertical range. Ctrl + scroll sets the total selection height from 1–100 m. The range is centred on your aim point: a 10 m selection reaches 5 m above and 5 m below it.

The bright outline follows the terrain so you can judge the footprint. Fainter horizontal outlines show the actual upper and lower height limits. Eligible building pieces turn blue.

WARNING: NO MATERIALS RETURNED. Remove builds permanently deletes selected buildings and their contents, including everything stored in chests. No resources or loot are dropped.

Every active Ward protects its buildings, including your own Ward. Ownership, access permission, and free building do not bypass this protection. Deactivate all covering Wards before removing protected buildings.

Both removal tools select whole objects by their placement points. A tree's branches or part of a large building piece can extend outside the outline while the object is selected. Removing supporting pieces can also affect the structures they support.

Reset terrain and both removal tools can aim at objects or empty space above loaded terrain; you do not have to point directly at the ground.

There is no undo. Back up your world before large edits or cleanup.

Default controls

Equip the Hoe, open its build menu, and select an action. The on-screen panel shows the relevant controls, selection size, height, costs, and status.

• Left click: Apply the selected action.
• Shift + mouse wheel: Resize the brush in 0.5 m steps.
• Ctrl + mouse wheel: Adjust the target height or movement offset. Default steps are 0.125 m for Level, Move, and Slope; 0.25 m for Raise. For Remove builds, adjust total selection height in 1 m steps.
• Alt + mouse wheel: Rotate a square selection or a slope's uphill direction in 15° steps. Slopes can rotate with either brush shape.
• Alt + S: Switch between circle and square.
• F8: Additional circle/square shortcut.
• F7: Toggle Natural edges for Level, Raise, Move, and Slope.
• F9: Sample the aimed ground height for Level; sample ground + 2 m for Raise; reset Move's offset to zero; or start a new Slope through the aimed ground.
• F3: Enter or leave free camera.
• W/A/S/D, Space, Q: Move in free camera.

While a wheel adjustment is active, it consumes the scroll input to prevent camera zoom. In the normal camera, scrolling without a modifier retains the usual zoom behavior.

Costs and configuration

By default, material, stamina, and Hoe durability costs scale with the brush area. The Natural edges band also counts toward the cost. The panel shows the total before you apply an action. Free building consumes none of these resources, and an action that changes nothing costs nothing.

After launching the game with the mod installed, configuration is available in:

BepInEx/config/icecub.ValheimTerrainTools.cfg

You can configure brush limits, size and height steps, rotation steps, smoothing strength and passes, transition width, camera settings, and panel size or visibility. Set ScaleCostsWithArea to false to use the normal per-click costs instead of area scaling.

The F3/F7/F8/F9 keys, circle/square shortcut, and free camera movement keys are configurable. The Shift/Ctrl/Alt wheel modifiers are fixed. For example, ShapeShortcut = S + LeftAlt is the default; change it to G + LeftControl to use Ctrl + G. Set a shortcut to None to disable it.

Installation

1. Install BepInEx 5 for Valheim.
2. Close the game and extract the mod archive.
3. Copy the archive's BepInEx folder into your Valheim installation folder. The DLL should be at BepInEx/plugins/ValheimTerrainTools/ValheimTerrainTools.dll.
4. Launch Valheim, equip your Hoe, and open its build menu.

To update, close Valheim, replace the existing DLL, and restart the game. Keep only one installed copy of the mod.

To uninstall, close the game and remove the ValheimTerrainTools plugin folder. Removing the mod does not reverse saved terrain changes or restore deleted objects.

Compatibility and support

• No server installation or library dependency is required.
• Valheim Performance Overhaul is optional. An included compatibility patch keeps its terrain cache updated when terrain changes, including changes followed by Cultivator painting.
• Pickaxe and Cultivator controls retain their usual behavior. These additional tools are accessed through the Hoe.
• Compatibility with every mod that replaces terrain operations or changes terrain limits has not been verified.

When reporting a problem, include your Valheim version, Terrain Tools version, other terrain/building mods in use, steps to reproduce it, and the relevant BepInEx/LogOutput.log. A screenshot of the selection and tool panel is especially helpful for aiming or preview issues.

Discord

Join the Discord to report issues, suggest features and discuss the mod:

Icecub's Valheim Mods