BALANCED FISHERMAN

A DIFFERENT CATCH AT YOUR HOME DOCK

A little variety. A slower pace. Enough for supper.

Balanced Fisherman gives OdinShipPlus's existing fisherman a weighted selection of whole fish and seafood ingredients. Common catches are more likely, rarer catches unlock with world boss progress, and nearby food stocks pause production.

Compatibility / v0.1.0
OdinShipPlus is required and must be installed separately. This helper targets the reviewed OdinShipPlus 0.8.5 dock implementation on Valheim 1.0.16; newer ShipPlus versions are not supported by this build. Install the same helper on every player client and the server. Requires ConditionalConfigSync 1.0.9. RtDOcean 2.2.49 supplies optional additional seafood.

SUPPORT ME ON KO-FI

If this makes your harbour more useful, a coffee helps me keep making small improvements for modded games. Support is optional and appreciated. Vercadi

AT THE DOCK / HOW IT WORKS

One attempt every 3 active daylight minutes, with a 50% catch chance: about 10 successful catches per active daylight hour on average.
Each success adds one size-one vanilla fish or one seafood ingredient to the dock's chest. Modded animals are never spawned.
All 12 vanilla fish item types are included. With RtDOcean, the reviewed seafood pool adds shrimp, crab, cod, tuna, squid, manta, marlin, shark, turtle, whale and its additional shark/sea-monster ingredients.
Common catches have higher weights. Rare entries unlock with world boss keys, from Eikthyr through Fader. The home dock can catch unlocked entries regardless of its biome.
Fishing pauses at a default 40 fish portions across the dock and loaded chests within 32 metres. Recognized fish-derived cooked foods count too.
A player must be within 64 metres. There is no offline catch-up, and night-time does not earn fishing progress.

Existing docks work. The fisherman remains visible during daylight when the stock limit pauses production. The chest hover text explains whether he is fishing, resting, full or waiting for storage.

The helper adds no villagers, animals, buildings, recipes or bait requirement. It does not alter ShipPlus's files or its boat features.

FOOD STOCKS / WHAT COUNTS

Whole fish, raw fish and supported raw seafood each count as one portion. The helper follows the loaded cooking recipes and station conversions to count their processed foods. A batch recipe divides its fish cost across its outputs, rounding conservatively. Where recipes offer alternatives, the largest recognized fish cost is used.

Only loaded containers within range count. Player inventories, distant/unloaded storage and foods with an unrecognized custom processing system are outside this local budget. Cooking or carrying a fish elsewhere can change what counts. Multiple docks may briefly see different network snapshots; this is a local production limit, not a globally atomic quota.

An open nearby chest pauses fishing until it closes. Unchanged chest snapshots are cached; counting does not move items or save nearby containers.

READY THE DOCK / INSTALLATION

Close Valheim and stop the server normally.
Install a supported OdinShipPlus 0.8.5 build separately on the server and every client, or keep it if already installed. It is mandatory. Its absence from the package dependency list means the mod manager will not download it automatically; it does not mean ShipPlus is optional. This helper does not include or replace ShipPlus.
Install BepInExPack Valheim, ConditionalConfigSync and BalancedFisherman on the server and every client.
Restart with the same BalancedFisherman version everywhere.

Manual installation: copy plugins/BalancedFisherman into BepInEx/plugins. Keep only one BalancedFisherman.dll per endpoint. Replacing a local test entry with a published package requires removing the old local entry first.

Compatibility limit: this release checks for OdinShipPlus 0.8.5 and the fishing interfaces it needs. If those checks fail, the helper disables its own changes and leaves the original dock production in place. Newer ShipPlus versions need a separate compatibility review.

YOUR SETTINGS

Server-controlled settings live in BepInEx/config/vercadi.BalancedFisherman.cfg.

Setting	Default	Meaning
Production enabled	true	Off pauses catches; it does not restore the fast native producer.
Seconds per attempt	180	Active daylight seconds, adjustable from 30 to 3600.
Catch probability	0.5	Chance that an attempt yields one item.
Fish portion limit	40	Local raw/processed food budget.
Storage radius	32	Metres of loaded storage to count.

Per-species weights and boss gates are fixed in this version. The helper writes BepInEx/BalancedFisherman-catalog.tsv after world data loads, listing the actual available catches, gates and processed-food weights.

FIELD NOTES / SUPPORT AND REMOVAL

Test status: this initial release has automated rules checks and item save/load checks in a copied dedicated-server world. Player fishing sessions and multiplayer ownership handoffs still need in-game verification.

Look for ACTIVE: original dock production suppressed followed by READY: in BepInEx/LogOutput.log. If an unexpected inventory or compatibility error occurs, production pauses and logs the reason.

For a bug report, include the client/server logs, catalog TSV, ShipPlus and RtDOcean versions, time of day, nearby food stock and the dock chest's hover text.

Removal: save and stop all endpoints, then remove this helper everywhere. Caught items remain ordinary game/mod items. ShipPlus's original fishing behaviour returns; its old production backlog is cleared while this helper owns the dock.

CREDITS

Created by Vercadi. Thanks to Marlthon for OdinShipPlus, Soloredis for RtDOcean, and the BepInEx, Harmony and ConditionalConfigSync contributors.

The original helper code and unique fishing icon use the included MIT license. Development used AI assistance. Game assemblies and other mods' binaries are not included. The linked Ko-fi button is Ko-fi's brand artwork.

Enjoying my work? Buy me a coffee on Ko-fi. A useful bug report helps too.