PingHeim

A craftable Ping Stone that lights up everything around you on the map: creatures, traders, other players and buildings.

Use the stone and a sonar-style ping rolls out across your area. Everything it finds appears as a coloured dot on your map:

Map icon	What it is
Paw print	Creatures: monsters and animals. The size and colour show how big and strong they are (see below)
White person	Traders (Haldor, Hildir, the Bog Witch)
Blue person	Other players
House (the game's own icon)	Buildings that players have built
Portal (the game's own icon, with the portal's name)	Portals that players have built
Green skull	Creature spawners: nests, bone piles and the like, labelled with what they make

Everything fades. Whatever a ping finds stays on your map for 3 minutes (Ping / DotMinutes), then disappears. Click any of them on the map to keep it for good: it's marked "(kept)" and saved with your character. Click it again to let it fade.

Creatures by size and strength. The paw gets bigger and warmer in colour the tougher the creature is: tiny (small yellow paw: deer, boar, necks), small (orange), medium (red), large (big crimson paw: trolls, lox and the like) and bosses (big purple). It goes by the creature's health, so a starred creature shows a tier higher. Switch it off with Detect / SizeByStrength for plain red paws.

Then the stone needs to recharge (10 minutes by default). A status icon with a countdown shows when it's ready again.

Contents

• Getting started
• Choosing what to show
• Pinging other players
• Examples
• What a ping can see
• Multiplayer
• Configuration
• Troubleshooting

Equip it, then choose

Right-click the Ping Stone to equip it in your hand. Now click: a small box opens with your choices.

• Ping now: the normal ping, described below.
• Aggro ping: every hostile creature within 60 m hears you and comes for you. It's a way to pull a camp or a nest to where you want to fight, so use it on purpose. Bosses stay put unless you turn Aggro / IncludeBosses on. It has its own recharge (60 seconds), separate from the normal ping's.
• The switches for what a ping shows on your map.

Getting started

1. Craft a Ping Stone at a forge: 3 Bronze, 5 Fine Wood, 1 Surtling Core.
2. Carry it. Right-click it to equip it, then click to open its choices (or Shift+use it in your inventory).
3. You hear the ping. Open your map: creatures, traders and players show as icons, and any player-built buildings and portals nearby are marked with the game's house and portal icons.

The stone is not used up. After a ping it shows a recharge timer in your status effects, and using it too early just tells you how many minutes are left.

Choosing what to show

Don't want every kind of find? Open the map and you'll see a small Ping Stone box with a switch for each kind: Creatures, Traders, Players, Buildings, Portals, Spawners. Click one to hide or show it straight away. You don't need to ping again: everything the last ping found is kept, and the switches only decide what's displayed.

You can also open the same box from the stone: hold Shift while you use it. It has a Ping now button too. Your choices are saved in the config file.

Pinging other players

A ping isn't silent. Any other player it detects gets a ping at your position, just like a middle-click on the map: the word PING appears in the world and on their map. They are told "Your name pinged you", and you show up on their map as a blue dot for 3 minutes, so a ping reveals you as well as them.

You can switch that off with Detect / NotifyPlayers, so the ping stays your secret (you will still see them).

Examples

Before you enter a swamp crypt: ping from the doorway to see what's wandering nearby, and which of your friends are close.

Scouting a base site: ping where you're thinking of building. The house icons show whether someone's already built close by.

Checking on the farm at night: a ping tells you whether anything is lurking around the pens.

Finding Haldor: he moves. A ping in a Black Forest clearing shows a white person if he's within range.

Group hunts: one player pings and everyone nearby sees them. Use it to meet up.

Quiet scouting: turn NotifyPlayers off and ping without alerting anyone you detect.

What a ping can see

• It reaches 120 metres around you by default (Ping / Radius). Valheim only keeps track of the areas close to you, so in practice a ping finds things within roughly 64 to 128 metres, depending on where you stand in your area. You'll see more if you stand near the middle of an area than at its edge.
• Creatures include animals and monsters. It skips creatures you have tamed unless you turn that on (IncludeTamedCreatures), and you can limit it to hostile creatures (OnlyHostileMonsters) or add the creature's name beside each dot (LabelMonsters).
• Buildings are grouped into one house icon per 16 metres (StructureClusterMeters), so a whole base isn't covered in markers. Repeated pings don't stack up duplicates: a ping near a building it already knows just renews it. They fade like everything else unless you click one to keep it. Only things that players built count, not ruins or dungeons.
• Players show as blue people with their names. Portals show with their names, so you can find your way back to one.

Multiplayer

Pings are shared. When one player uses a Ping Stone, every other player with PingHeim hears the ping and sees the same results on their own map, along with a message saying who pinged. The caster's spot also shows as a normal ping with their name (PING in the world and on the map), as if they'd pinged from the map themselves. Each player's own map filters still apply. You don't need a stone of your own to receive it. Turn it off with Share / ShareWithPlayers (what you send) and Share / ReceiveFromPlayers (what you accept).

Install PingHeim on the server as well as every player: the Ping Stone is a new item, and a server without the mod removes items it doesn't recognise. Versions must match. Everything the ping does (the dots, the notice other players get) is between players' own games, so there is nothing for the server to do beyond having the mod installed.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/mbaya.PingHeim.cfg, or Gale's config editor:

Section	Key	Default	Notes
Ping	Radius	120	Metres around you (limited by what the game knows, see above)
Ping	CooldownMinutes	10	Recharge time (restart the game to apply)
Ping	DotMinutes	3	How long everything a ping finds stays on the map, unless you click it to keep it
Aggro	Radius / IncludeBosses / CooldownSeconds	60 / false / 60	How the aggro ping works
Detect	SizeByStrength	true	Creatures' paws are bigger and warmer in colour the stronger they are
Detect	Monsters	true	Show creatures (red paw prints)
Detect	OnlyHostileMonsters	false	Skip peaceful animals
Detect	IncludeTamedCreatures	false
Detect	LabelMonsters	false	Show names beside red dots
Detect	Traders	true	Show traders (white people)
Detect	Players	true	Show players (blue people)
Detect	Structures	true	Show buildings (house icon)
Detect	Portals	true	Show portals (portal icon, with names)
Detect	Spawners	true	Show creature spawners (green skull)
Icons	BuildingIcon	Icon1	Which of the game's map icons marks a building (the house)
Icons	PortalIcon	Icon4	Which of the game's map icons marks a portal
Detect	StructureClusterMeters	16	One house icon per this many metres
Detect	NotifyPlayers	true	Detected players see your ping and you appear on their map
Share	ShareWithPlayers	true	Everyone else hears your ping and sees what it found
Share	ReceiveFromPlayers	true	Hear other players' pings and show what they found
Window	PopupPosition / MapBoxPosition	-1, -1	Where you left the options window and the map filter box (drag them)
Sound	PingVolume	0.8

Troubleshooting

• The stone isn't in the forge's crafting list. Check the mod is in the profile you launch from, and that you're at a forge with the Bronze, Fine Wood and Surtling Core.
• Nothing happens when I use it. Right-click it in your inventory. A message tells you if it's still recharging.
• I see no dots. Dots appear on the map: open it (M). Only things within the area the game keeps track of can be found, so try again from a more central spot.
• The icons disappeared. Everything a ping finds fades after DotMinutes (3 by default) unless you clicked it on the map to keep it. Also check the switches in the Ping Stone box on the map.
• The house or portal icon looks wrong. The game's icons aren't named in its files, so Icons / BuildingIcon and Icons / PortalIcon pick them by number. The game's icon names are written to BepInEx/LogOutput.log when you first open the map; send it to me if they're wrong.
• A building icon is in the wrong place. Icons sit at the middle of each group of buildings (StructureClusterMeters).
• The server removes my Ping Stone. The server needs the mod too, with the same version.
• Something else. Open an issue at github.com/mattbaya/PingHeim and attach BepInEx/LogOutput.log.

Works with

• PortalHeim SG1: ping your gates' surroundings before you step through.
• GearHeim and Bag O' Heim: keep your loadout and supplies ready for whatever the ping shows.