MotorMod

Rideable motorcycles for Valheim. Build one with the hammer, feed it Surtling cores, ride it across the land and over the sea, pop wheelies, and leave a trail of fire behind you. Works in single player, on a hosted world and on dedicated servers. Built with BepInEx and Jötunn.

Pictures

More in docs/pictures.

The bikes

Bike	Trail	Built with
Hel Cycle	Fire on both tyres, thicker at speed; enemies catch fire	A skeleton trophy
Wraith Cycle	The same fire, burning blue	A wraith trophy
Draugr Cycle	The same fire, burning green	A draugr trophy

All three ride the same: fast (65 km/h, 130 km/h with boost), long and heavy. Trails only hurt enemies: never players, tamed animals or buildings.

Riding

Key	Action
E	Get on / get off (Space also gets off); on the saddlebags: open them
Shift+E	Fill the tank with Surtling cores (from your bag, then the saddlebags); only while the bike stands still
1-8	Add a Surtling core from the hotbar while looking at the standing bike
W / S	Throttle / brake, then reverse
A / D	Steer: the bars and front wheel turn, and the bike leans into turns
Shift	Boost: double top speed, double fuel use
Right mouse	Rev the engine
Left Ctrl	Wheelie: hold to lift the front, ease off to keep it up
F7	Sea soundtrack off / on

• Stopped, the rider puts both feet on the ground; they go back on the pegs as soon as the bike moves.
• Wheelies: gravity pulls the front back down, so you keep it up by feathering the key. Hold too long and the front just drops; you never fall off. Wheelies longer than 2 seconds show their time and your best.
• Water: bikes ride on water, but only stay up while planing: at boost speed (Shift+W) or in a wheelie. Anything slower sinks fast: cruising without boost it is swamped in about 3 seconds, standing still in 1.5, and 1.5 seconds after that it breaks apart. Braking to a stop takes longer than that, so a bike that stops on deep water is lost. Get up to boost speed from the shore. In shallow water it just sits on the bottom.
• Crashes: ramming a creature at speed hurts it, and crashing into a building damages the building.

Fuel

The bikes run on Surtling cores and nothing else. A full tank holds five cores and goes 6.7 km; new bikes are built with an empty tank.

	Normal	Boost
One core	1.33 km	670 m
A full tank (5 cores)	6.7 km	3.3 km
Full tank at top speed	about 6 minutes	about 1.5 minutes

• Fuel burns by the distance you drive; boost burns it twice as fast, and standing still burns nothing. At sea you need boost to stay up, so one tank crosses about 3.3 km of water.
• Filling only works while the bike stands still: Shift+E takes cores from your bag, then from the saddlebags; a core used from the hotbar (1-8) goes in too. A rolling bike shows no fill prompt and takes nothing.
• Looking at a bike shows its fuel; while riding, the panel a saddled lox shows becomes the fuel gauge. You are warned at 20 % and 10 %.
• Empty, the engine dies and the bike rolls to a stop. On water that means it sinks: there is no refuelling at sea, so watch the gauge before you set out.

Flaming skulls

Wear a burning skull instead of your own head (the Ghost Rider look). Made at the workbench, they are only for looks and give no armour:

Skull	Flames	Materials
Hel Skull	orange	Skeleton trophy 1, Surtling core 1, Leather scraps 2
Wraith Skull	blue	Skeleton trophy 1, Greydwarf eye 5, Leather scraps 2
Draugr Skull	green	Skeleton trophy 1, Guck 5, Leather scraps 2

The skull is the game's own skeleton skull; hair and beard are hidden while you wear it. Its size and place can be tuned in the [FlamingSkull] settings.

Saddlebags

Every bike has leather saddlebags with two slots. Look at the bags and press E to open them. They stay shut while someone rides the bike. Shift+E takes cores from them when your own bag has none, so spare fuel can ride along. What is in them does not count toward your carry weight.

Durability

Bikes use the game's own building durability, like boats and carts:

• With the hammer in hand, looking at a bike shows its condition bar. The hammer's repair tool repairs it when a forge is nearby. Nothing repairs itself.
• Monster hits, weapons and hard crashes wear it down, and the bike shows it the way the game's ships do: below 75 % it turns sooty and lets off a burst of smoke with a metal crunch; below 25 % it is black with soot and smokes from the engine until it is repaired. Looking at a bike shows its condition next to its fuel.
• A head-on crash at boost speed breaks a bike outright whatever its condition, and a crash that breaks a bike ends in a fireball. At plain top speed a head-on costs about a quarter.
• A broken bike drops everything it cost loose where it broke: on land the materials lie on the ground; a sunk bike's go down to the seabed, and in deep water they are gone. Only what the saddlebags held comes up in a floating leather saddlebag, which waits for you and vanishes once emptied.
• The hammer can take a bike apart near a forge (everything back, on the ground), but never while someone is riding it. Wards protect bikes like any building.

Building a bike

Equip the hammer, open the Misc tab and stand near a forge:

Bike	Materials	Weight
Hel Cycle	Silver 40, Iron 10, Bone fragments 50, Surtling core 8, Skeleton trophy 1, Chain 4	753.5
Wraith Cycle	Silver 40, Iron 10, Bone fragments 50, Surtling core 8, Wraith trophy 1, Chain 4	754
Draugr Cycle	Silver 40, Iron 10, Bone fragments 50, Surtling core 8, Draugr trophy 1, Chain 4	754

Metal bars weigh 12 each (silver 14) and cannot go through portals, so plan a cart or a boat for the silver.

Installing (players)

Everyone who joins a world with bikes needs the same MotorMod version.

1. Install BepInExPack Valheim (5.4.2351 or newer) and Jötunn (2.30 or newer). A mod manager such as r2modman does both for you.
2. Download MotorMod-<version>.zip from the releases page and extract it into BepInEx/plugins/, so you get BepInEx/plugins/MotorMod/MotorMod.dll and a bundles folder next to it.
3. Start the game. The bikes appear in the hammer's Misc tab.

macOS: BepInEx runs under Rosetta on Apple Silicon. Follow the macOS steps on the BepInExPack page; tools/mac/start_valheim.sh in this repository is an optional Steam launcher that asks each time whether to start vanilla or modded.

Linux clients are untested (the bikes' shaders are built for Windows and macOS).

Installing on a dedicated server

See docs/SERVER.md, with step-by-step notes for Indifferent Broccoli and other hosts. In short: the server needs BepInEx, Jötunn and the MotorMod folder; it needs no music.

Sea soundtrack

Ride on water with friends nearby (or alone in your own world) and a shared soundtrack plays: everyone hears the same song at the same moment. Leave the water and it fades out over half a minute; back on it sooner and the same song carries on.

1. Put MP3, OGG or WAV files in BepInEx/config/MotorMod/music (created on the first start; the console command motor music open opens it).
2. Give your friends the same files: zip the folder and send it. Songs are matched by file name, and the playlist only uses songs that everyone listening has.
3. New files are picked up when you join a world, or at once with motor music rescan.

The mod measures each new song once (length, and loudness so every song plays equally loud). The soundtrack follows the game's music volume slider; F7 switches it off for you. More in docs/MUSIC.md.

Settings

All settings live in BepInEx/config/com.shiva.valheim.motormod.cfg, created on the first start. Each bike has its own section (speed, acceleration, turning, wheelie difficulty, rider and saddlebag placement); shared sections cover riding (including how far the handlebars turn), the headlight, the trail, durability, fuel, water, wheelie, the flaming skulls and the soundtrack. On a server, the fuel rules come from the server's file. Edit the file with the game closed, or use motor reload in the console. Each player's own settings apply to the bikes they ride.

Console

Open the console with F5. motor list lists the bikes, motor <bike> (hel, wraith, draugr) spawns one in front of you, motor remove removes the nearest, motor repair repairs bikes within 10 m, motor fuel 50 sets their tanks to 50 %, and motor music status shows what the soundtrack is doing. Spawning, repairing, refuelling and removing bikes are cheats: they need devcommands (on a server, only admins can turn that on). docs/cheat-sheet.md lists handy test commands.

Building from source

See docs/DEVELOPMENT.md.

Credits and licence

The bike model is by BatCat and the saddlebag by Red_Ilya, under Creative Commons Attribution licences. Full credits, including the engine sounds, are in CREDITS.md.

The code is under the MIT licence (see LICENSE).

MotorMod is an unofficial fan mod. Valheim is © Iron Gate AB; the mod reuses the game's own effects and objects (the campfire and torch flames, the skeleton trophy, the cargo crate, the chest window) at runtime and ships none of its assets.