Changelog

1.1.0

First release as Concerned Builder, formerly Concerned Ladders (#590): a new Thunderstore package, ConcernedBuilder, for a mod that now builds more than ladders, with a new icon (#592). It is the same plugin as Concerned Ladders 1.0.0: its ID and config file are unchanged, so settings, placed ladders and the Climbing skill carry over. Install ConcernedBuilder and uninstall ConcernedLadders; do not keep both. The version continues from Concerned Ladders 1.0.0 and is new on purpose: the game's mod check compares version numbers, so a player still on Concerned Ladders 1.0.0 is told to update instead of joining with pieces missing.

Everything below is new since Concerned Ladders 1.0.0, tested in game, and on by default. Each part has its own setting to turn it off; with all of them off, the ladders, the climb and the Climbing skill are the same as in Concerned Ladders 1.0.0, and nothing new appears in the hammer or crafting menus. Every player and the host or server must use the same version and the same values for these settings.

• Floor trapdoors (CL-004, #485), behind Trapdoors / Enabled (on by default). Adds nine trapdoor pieces to the hammer. A trapdoor's lid opens and closes with the door's own Use, over the matching door's swing time, and waits instead of moving into anyone or anything on or under it. A ladder aimed at a trapdoor's frame in Auto or Top hangs inside its opening; a climber can open and close the lid from the ladder without letting go, climbs out through an open lid, and is held below a closed or closing one. Turning the setting off again, or uninstalling, makes the game delete placed trapdoors, with no refund, the next time the world loads. Each trapdoor's lid reads as its own door (#547, #555): planks, a gate, poles, iron bars, iron-strapped planks, a panel, or flametal plates.
• Sloped cellar doors (CL-005, #486), behind CellarDoors / Enabled (on by default). Adds nine sloped 2 m cellar doors to the hammer, at twice the matching door's cost. Both leaves open and close together with the door's own Use, over the matching door's swing time, and wait instead of moving into a player, a creature, an item, a cart or another building piece. A ladder aimed at a cellar door's frame in Auto or Top hangs inside its opening; a climber can open and close the leaves from the ladder without letting go, climbs out over the front panel or down into the opening only while both leaves are open, and is held below a closed or moving pair. Ladders never treat a cellar door as a floor. Turning the setting off again, or uninstalling, makes the game delete placed cellar doors, with no refund, the next time the world loads. Shaped like a house's bulkhead door: the high end stands 1.76 m tall with a beam across it and is open below, so a stair built down from the low end passes under it (#549), and the low end is a threshold you walk over, not a ledge (#566). Each cellar door's leaves read as its own door, as the trapdoors' lids do (#547, #555).
• Trapdoor and cellar door surfaces take their texture from the matching part of the door's own texture sheet (the Roundpole doors' bark, for example), instead of stretching the whole sheet across every face (#548).
• Ladders in the vanilla materials (#558), behind LadderFamilies / Enabled (on by default): Vertical Darkwood, Ashwood, Flametal, Dvergr and Log Ladders, each made from the game's own pole of that material and costing what that pole costs. They climb exactly as the other ladders do. The Vertical Iron Ladder now shows only the iron part of its texture sheet, as the iron railing does. Turning the setting off again makes the game delete placed family ladders when a world loads.
• Railings (#556), behind Railings / Enabled (on by default). Adds railings in eight materials - wood, copper, iron, darkwood, ashwood, flametal, dvergr and log - each level (2 m and 1 m), for the game's stairs (26.57 degrees), for the step ladder (45 degrees), and as a newel post. They snap along a stair's side edge, a floor's edge or another railing. In the hammer they read by size and angle (#573): Half Wood Railing, Wood Railing, 27 Wood Stair Railing, 45 Wood Stair Railing, Wood Newel Post, and so on, with stair railings' icons drawn at an angle so the slope shows. Wood and the vanilla woods are plain, copper has twisted balusters with a knuckle, and iron and flametal have twisted bars, scrolls and finials. The vanilla materials cost what the game's own pole of that material costs. Turning the setting off again, or uninstalling, makes the game delete placed railings, with no refund, the next time the world loads.
• Iron Shovel and measured basement excavation (CL-006, #487), behind Excavation / Enabled (on by default). Adds the Iron Shovel, crafted at the Forge from 10 Iron and 4 Wood once you have found Iron (Iron Scrap alone does not unlock it) and repaired there. The mouse wheel chooses a ready-made hole (#574): 1x1x1, 2x2x1, 2x2x2, 4x4x1, 4x4x2 or 4x4x4 m, and one Attack digs it. A hole lines up edge to edge with the holes you just dug beside it, so a row of holes stays straight even when the sizes differ; with none beside it, it snaps to the world grid of its own size, so holes of one size tile. Stones, branches, berries and other pickables in the way are picked for you, and rocks, stumps, bushes, logs and trees are cleared; only carts, ships and fixed scenery still stop a dig. The floor is level, measured from the highest ground at the hole's edge, so it stays level on a slope. Ground that is already lower, such as an earlier hole, is left as it is, so a new hole beside or over an old one joins it. The ground itself cannot be cut vertically: each side slopes over one more metre. With Excavation / EarthFill (on by default, #577) that sloping border is filled with earth blocks up to the ground beside it, so the hole has straight earth sides, flat ground to its edge, and corner snap points a wall can use. The blocks wear the terrain's own grey rock, the rock of a steep hole's side, on every face, the top included (#579, #583). Aim the shovel at an earth block to dig sideways into it: the new hole lines up flush beside the old one and takes the blocks it covers out. The game's own tools clear them too (#584): the hoe's level and raise and the pickaxe's dig take out the blocks they reach, so separate holes can be joined into one continuous dug-out area, and a pickaxe breaks a block in one hit (inside a ward only for a player it grants access). The hammer removes a block, free and with no refund. A new hole takes out the blocks on its floor and fills its own border; undo puts both back. Turning Excavation off again, or uninstalling, makes the game delete the earth blocks the next time the world loads, leaving sloping sides.
  • While the shovel is held, the bottom panel names the chosen size and what it is for, as the hoe's panel does for its pieces (#587).
  • While the shovel is held, a flat outline shows the hole's top edge, the floor and the walls between them (and the water line if the floor would flood). It is green when Attack would dig, amber when there is nothing to dig, and red when it would be refused. One short line under the crosshair says what to do next, or the one reason it cannot.
  • Pressing Secondary Attack twice within 3 seconds fills your last hole back in, exactly as the ground was, newest first. That is free and refunds nothing, and it is refused if the ground has changed since, or anything (a building piece included) now stands in the hole. Up to 10 holes can be filled back in, until you leave the world.
  • The ground you aim at must be within 8 m and be the first thing you see, so the shovel never digs through a wall, a floor or a rock. No digging from a ladder. Aiming, menus, the inventory, chat and the console never dig.
  • A dig costs stamina and durability by the ground it removes: 10 stamina plus 0.3 per cubic metre (at most 60) and 0.16 durability per cubic metre, before the world's stamina and durability settings, charged once and only when the dig is placed. It is refused inside a ward that does not grant you access, in no-build areas, below the terrain's dig limit, and over carts, ships or fixed scenery, which it never removes (#567). Your own building pieces beside a hole are not protected: their support is the game's, so a piece standing on dug ground can fall.
  • The shovel has its own model, a wooden shaft and T-grip with an iron blade (#550). It has no attack and plays no animation yet. It raises no skill. A read-only cl_excavate console diagnostic plans a dig without digging.
  • Turning the setting off again, or uninstalling, removes the shovel from the game, and the game discards crafted shovels when their inventory or chest loads. The mod does not undo holes already dug.

Concerned Ladders

The package before the rename, TheConcernedCat-ConcernedLadders.

Concerned Ladders 1.0.0

First public release.

• Vertical Wood, Copper and Iron Ladders: 2 m hammer pieces in the Building tab that stack into one continuous climb, with Auto, Bottom, Top, Left side and Right side snapping onto floors, walls and other ladders.
• An original climbing animation: each hand and foot takes its own rung going up and coming down.
• Get on from the ground, from a floor above, in midair, or out of the water. Step off at the top, onto a floor beside the ladder partway up, or at the bottom. Jump off, let go, or slide down.
• Climbing skill: earned per metre climbed, makes fast climbing and sliding cheaper, and unlocks the slide at level 20.
• Fixed: a climber who grabbed the ladder from the water showed the swimming pose under the climbing arms and legs. The game's swimming and falling animation states are now cleared while on the ladder.
• Multiplayer, dedicated servers and controllers are not tested yet. See the README for what uninstalling does to placed ladders and the skill.

The entries below are internal development candidates. None of them was published.

Concerned Ladders 0.2.7

Internal owner playtest candidate. Not a release.

• Climbing posture (owner-approved): the climber stands off the ladder with the hips and chest square to it, steps two rungs at a time with the support leg nearly straight, and the knees stay in line instead of folding to the chest or falling outward.
• Getting on and off is quick and clean (owner decision): mounting from the ground, catching in midair, stepping off at the top, onto an intermediate floor or at the bottom, and getting on from a floor above all take about a quarter to half a second, with the limbs simply taking or leaving the rungs.
• No squat near the top: climbing stops (or steps off onto a floor) about 1.3 m below the top, with both hands on the top rungs; getting on from a floor above ends in the same normal climbing stance.
• Grab a ladder while swimming, like climbing aboard a boat: Interact pulls you up out of the water onto the rungs.
• Renamed to Vertical Wood Ladder, Vertical Copper Ladder and Vertical Iron Ladder so they no longer share a name with the game's own Wood ladder. Placed ladders are unaffected.
• Mounting from a floor no longer refuses a step or two back from the edge; a jump that brushes a rung is still caught as a midair grab; top landings are found along a floor's edge, and small floors beside the ladder are found for the intermediate exit.
• Snapping (owner revision): Cycle Snap now offers Auto, Bottom, Top, Left side and Right side. Left side and Right side line the ladder's left or right rail up with the left or right corner of the floor edge or wall you aim at (left and right as you face the ladder's climbing side), standing on a wall's bottom edge or hanging below a floor edge like Auto. Auto, Top and Bottom still centre the ladder. Every mode sits the rails against the real face of the wall or floor edge, including wood walls whose snap points lie inside the wall.
• Rotate while snapped: the hammer's rotation now turns a ladder snapped to a floor or wall about the chosen anchor (the middle, or the left or right corner), up to 45 degrees either way, and never into the surface. Square to the building it faces straight out, as before. A turned section does not join the climbing run of the ladder below it. Ladders stacked on ladders always line up with the column.
• Copper and Iron Ladders have new artwork: slim metal rails and round rungs. Copper has rounded tube rails and a warmer colour; iron has sharp flat-bar rails and a cooler colour. The Wood Ladder is unchanged. Height, rung spacing, recipes, durability and placed ladders are unchanged.

Concerned Ladders 0.2.6

Internal owner test candidate. Not a release.

• Climbing is slower and more natural (owner decision): 0.9 m/s, 1.2 m/s with Run (were 1.8 and 2.43). Sliding, stamina and the Climbing skill are unchanged.
• New climbing animation authored in Blender: hands and feet move one at a time on their own timing (a hand reaches, the opposite foot recovers knee first, then the other pair), knees point into the ladder, and the body rises more slowly while a foot comes up. Grabbing the ladder sets hands and feet in turn; a midair catch grabs with the hands first.
• Snapping redone (owner decision): Cycle Snap offers Auto, Bottom and Top. Aimed at a floor, the ladder centres on the floor edge nearest your aim, flush against it, hanging below so you climb up onto the floor (Auto, Top; Auto stands it on the edge when there is no room below) or standing on the edge (Bottom). Aimed at a wall, it centres on the wall face toward you, standing on the wall's bottom edge (Auto, Bottom) or hanging from its top edge (Top). Aimed at a ladder, it extends that column. Any hammer rotation.
• The two wall-corner snap modes are removed.

Concerned Ladders 0.2.5

Internal owner test candidate. Not a release.

• Snapping: aim at a ladder to extend it; the new section lines up as one straight column above (Bottom) or below (Top), and Auto picks the nearer end without ever burying a section in the ground. A wall corner centres the ladder on a 2 m wall at the wall's own angle, facing you. Corner modes aimed at a ladder, and ends beyond your building reach, are refused (red ghost) instead of showing a displaced ghost. All the game's own placement checks still apply to the final position.
• New climbing animation: right hand with right foot, then left with left, every hand and foot on a real rung. Limbs cycle half as fast as 0.2.3 at the same climbing speed (a four-rung stride). Stopping settles every limb on the nearest rung; climbing down retraces the motion. Near a flush top the hands take the rails and the step onto the floor uses the game's own walk.
• With the hammer out only your right arm swings; the body, legs and left hand keep holding the ladder.
• Fixed: the game's own foot placement pulled the climber's feet to the ground under the ladder.

Concerned Ladders 0.2.4

Internal development builds for in-game checks (several, one version number). Superseded by 0.2.5.

Concerned Ladders 0.2.3

Internal animation checkpoint, replacing 0.2.2 before any gameplay use.

• Fixed: 0.2.2 let go of every ladder the moment you mounted. It called a game method that is not accessible at runtime (found in game).

Concerned Ladders 0.2.2

Internal animation checkpoint for the owner test lane. Not a release.

• New original climbing animation: hands and feet follow the rungs with your actual climbing, replacing the 0.2.x limb pose. It is a first prototype and still being fitted.
• Crouch while climbing drops straight off the ladder, with no hop and no stamina cost. Jump still hops off.
• You can mount, climb and build with the hammer equipped. While the hammer is out your right arm uses the game's own hammer animation; the rest of the body stays on the ladder.
• Building a new ladder section above you while climbing extends the climb without getting off. Removing the section you are holding lets you fall normally.

Concerned Ladders 0.2.1

• Pressing Use partway up now steps off onto a landing beside the ladder. In 0.2.0 the safe-dismount search looked only 0.75 m to the side, where a standing footprint still overlapped the rails, so a real side landing was refused.

Concerned Ladders 0.2.0

Owner-test candidate implementing the owner revision of 25 October 2026.

• Grab from about 1.5 m, measured from the chest to the rungs (or, standing on a floor at the top, the step onto the rails); the prompt says "Move closer" when a press would be out of reach.
• Climb either face; the route stays on the face you approached. Grab while rising or falling; a refused grab leaves the fall untouched.
• Jump hops off upward and in the steered direction with the game's own jump and stamina; without stamina it simply lets go. Re-grabbing needs 0.4 s and a new press.
• Run climbs at 2.43 m/s for stamina; native Climbing skill; slide at level 20.
• Stepping onto floors at the top now also works to either side and around a lip.
• Refusals name the real reason; only another building piece is blamed as one.
• Wood Ladder, Copper Ladder and Iron Ladder names; readable Cycle Snap labels.
• Custom procedural climbing animation on the native rig.

Concerned Ladders 0.1.1

• Owner-test candidate built against Valheim 1.0.20, BepInExPack 5.4.2351 and Jotunn 2.30.2; implements the 1.0.20 hover interface.
• Mounting works from flat ground, slopes, off-centre approaches and uneven ground; the bottom, top and side-landing exits complete and leave the player standing.
• Use while climbing asks for a safe dismount wherever the player is looking; with no safe landing the player stays on the ladder with a message.
• Wall corner snaps sit against the wall face instead of inside it.
• A push or other displacement the ladder did not make is released without overwriting that motion or the fall it started.
• An icon that fails to render keeps the fallback icon and is reported; the cloned pieces hold no references into the removed donor model.
• Development status: single-player only. Multiplayer, dedicated server and controller play are not yet verified.

Concerned Ladders 0.1.0

• Initial independent Concerned Ladders source candidate.
• Original runtime-built vertical wood, copper and iron pieces, 2 m snaps and native building resource requirements.
• Explicit local-owner climbing with collision-aware movement and safe release policies; normal locomotion animation fallback.
• Dependency-only test-profile import and narrowly scoped deployment tooling.
• Development status: licensed build, single-player, controller, multiplayer, durability visuals and save/reload acceptance remain unverified.