Stoneveil

Hidden passages, ordinary stonework.

Turn an existing Valheim wall, floor, or roof into a concealed moving panel. Conversion keeps the vanilla piece, its health, materials, and saved position. Adding a hinge to a 2x1 stone wall now creates a 2x2 secret door with two matching stone courses. The upper course repeats the original geometry one metre higher, preserving stone proportions and texture scale. Both courses move as one panel.

Early prototype: compilation and 581 automated state/motion checks pass. Live-game visuals, structural behavior, and multiplayer have not yet been verified. Try it in a test world first.

Install

Install Stoneveil through Thunderstore Mod Manager or r2modman. For an unpublished ZIP, use your manager's local-mod import option. Launch Valheim through the selected mod profile.

Required dependencies:

Install the same Stoneveil version on every client and the server.

For manual installation, install the dependencies first, then copy the ZIP's plugins/Stoneveil folder into your active profile's BepInEx/plugins folder. The resulting file should be BepInEx/plugins/Stoneveil/Stoneveil.dll.

Upgrading From Secret

Exit Valheim and remove the old Secret.dll from your active profile before installing Stoneveil. Existing saved hinges and configuration remain compatible. The configuration filename intentionally remains com.tomtom.secret.cfg.

Controls

Build a supported vanilla piece, then equip the vanilla hammer and aim at it. Only the original builder can add, change, or remove a hinge.

Action	Default control
Convert to a secret door	Alt+H
Remove the hinge from a closed panel	Ctrl+Alt+H
Cycle hinge edges, slide left, slide right	Alt+J
Reverse a hinged panel's swing	Ctrl+Alt+J
Hide/show the interaction prompt	Alt+K
Open/close	Put the hammer away, aim at the panel, press Use (normally E)

Hammer shortcuts are configurable in BepInEx/config/com.tomtom.secret.cfg. Opening uses the game's normal keyboard or controller Use binding. Editing defaults to keyboard shortcuts. Motion changes require a closed panel. Hidden prompts do not lock the door: anyone with ward access can still use it.

For a stacked stone door, leave one course of free space above a single 2x1 stone wall and press Alt+H with the hammer equipped. Occupied space blocks conversion; the mod does not consume or join an existing wall above it. The original bottom edge stays in place. Removing the closed hinge removes the added upper course and its snap points, returning to the original 2x1 wall. Existing stone doors from 0.1.0 keep their size; remove and re-add their hinge to use the stacked form.

Supported Pieces

Wood walls: wood_wall_quarter, wood_wall_half, woodwall.
Stone walls: stone_wall_2x1, stone_wall_1x1.
Floors: wood_floor, wood_floor_1x1, stone_floor_2x2.
Straight thatch roofs: wood_roof, wood_roof_45.

Walls hinge at a side edge; floors and roofs hinge across a front/back edge. All support sliding left/right. Prefabs with unexpected component layouts are rejected with a message instead of being converted. Natural ruins are excluded.

Behavior and Limits

The piece's conversion, stacked layout, motion, concealment, and open state are saved together in its ZDO. The current object owner validates requests and writes state; peers animate toward the replicated state. Joining players restore saved poses.
Creator, equipped hammer, range, and vanilla ward permission are checked on the receiving owner. This follows Valheim's peer-owned networking model.
The vanilla piece root and snap points stay fixed. Structural calculations temporarily query all open panels in their original closed pose, then restore them before normal physics runs. This retains the intended support footprint; it needs in-game regression testing and profiling in large builds.
Stacked stone doors add matching upper snap points at the closed position. Structural calculations include both courses. The copied upper course shares the lower course's damage visuals, materials, collision state, and single health/resource pool. It adds no independent network object or extra drops.
Visual damage variants and physical colliders move together. Roof cover is evaluated against the moving geometry. Opening a roof can expose the interior.
A conservative character-overlap check samples the proposed path before an operation. This may reject tight spaces and does not predict players moving into the panel after animation starts. Panels can clip surrounding buildings; provide room for their swing or slide.
Conversion is free for this prototype. A craftable Secret Hinge item, additional materials, grouped panels, locks, and custom pieces are future work.
Concealment hides the prompt only. LatchLink switches and DoorDirector timers are not integrated: Stoneveil panels do not use vanilla Door components.
Third-party ward replacements and mods that rearrange piece geometry require compatibility testing.

Validation and Removal

Compilation and automated state/motion checks do not exercise Unity, a running world, or multiple peers. Structural support, reloads, and multiplayer need testing in a test world before normal use.

To revert one piece, close it and remove its hinge with Ctrl+Alt+H. To uninstall, exit the game and uninstall Stoneveil or remove Stoneveil.dll from the active profile. Since the saved prefabs and root transforms remain vanilla, the pieces load as ordinary closed pieces without the mod. Custom ZDO data can remain; reinstalling restores saved hinge settings unless they were removed first. Exit the game before changing plugins; live plugin unloading is not a supported workflow. For stacked stone doors, uninstalling also removes the added upper course. Any construction relying on that course's support must have another support path.

Jotunn's network compatibility requirements are documented in the official network compatibility guide. Prefab names and component layouts were also checked against Jotunn's generated prefab list.