Smart Build

Stop placing pieces one click at a time. Place a thousand.

Floors, walls, roofs, foundations, smelters, torches — everything in the build menu. Pick a piece, set a size, click once, and the whole grid appears. Builds that used to take hundreds of clicks, and a lot of patience, take one, at scales you have never built at before.

What you get

• Grid on three axes (X, Y, Z) — size width, depth and height independently, then place the whole thing in one click.
• Gap, per axis — space a row out along one direction and keep another tight.
• Stagger, per axis — step, offset or lean a stack into a diagonal.
• Rotation — turn each piece a little more than the last, so a row bends into an arc or a circle.
• Blueprints — select pieces you've already built, save the assembly, then place it over and over through the same grid controls, gap, stagger and rotation included.
• Hold — freeze the grid or blueprint in place so you can walk up and place it from a distance.
• Follow terrain — each piece rises and falls with the ground under it, so a grid on a slope follows the land.
• Undo — Ctrl + Z takes the last grid or blueprint stamp back and refunds it.
• The whole grid is checked before anything is placed: if you cannot afford it, or anything is in the way, nothing happens.
• Client-side only — nobody else on the server needs it.

The time it saves

What you are building	One piece at a time	With Smart Build
A 10 x 10 floor (100 pieces)	100 aims and 100 clicks	1 click
A row of 20 foundations	20	1 click
A 12 x 2 x 2 curved wall (48 pieces)	48 pieces, each turned by hand	1 click, the curve set once
A 30 x 10 wall (300 pieces)	300	1 click
A 1,000-piece build	1,000	1 click

Setting the size takes seconds: hold X and scroll. It stays safe at that scale too — materials are checked before anything is placed, a blocked spot refuses the whole grid, and Ctrl + Z takes it back.

Features

Grid on three axes

• Hold X and scroll (or Up/Down) for width, Z for depth, X + Z together for height — extra layers stack upward.
• Hold Shift to move in steps of 10. Pressing Down at 1 flips that axis to grow the other way from the piece you're aiming at.
• With no key held, the mouse wheel rotates the whole grid, exactly as it does for a single piece.
• Size, gap, piece count and blocked count are all shown on screen while you dial it in, and three small arrows (red X, green Y, blue Z) float above the ghost so it's always clear which way each axis grows before you click.

Gap

Each axis has its own gap, so you can space a row out along one direction and keep it tight along another.

Stagger

Three settings, one per axis: X shifts each row sideways, Z shifts each column forward or back, and Y leans each layer sideways so a stack tilts as it rises.

Rotation

Each piece turns a little more than the one before it, so a row bends into an arc or a full circle.

Blueprints

Combine several pieces — walls, a roof, corner posts — into a reusable blueprint, then repeat it through the same grid controls as a single piece. This whole tunnel is one blueprint (a wall-and-roof cross-section), stamped in a row with one click. See Blueprints below for how to capture and place one.

Quick start

1. Craft the Smart Hammer (1 Wood, no crafting station) and equip it.
2. Pick any piece from the build menu, so its ghost is showing.
3. Hold X and scroll to set width, Z for depth, X + Z together for height.
4. Aim and click — the whole grid is placed at once, checked for cost and blocking first.
5. Ctrl + Z undoes it, refunding the materials, if you change your mind.

Controls

Every key below is rebindable in the Jotunn config, and only does anything while the Smart Hammer is equipped with a piece ghost showing — the plain hammer stays completely vanilla.

Keys	Action
X + Up / Down / scroll	Width (X) +/- (hold Shift for steps of 10). Down from 1 goes to -2 and grows the other way from the piece you aim at (sizes run -2, 1, 2: a single piece is just 1)
Z + Up / Down / scroll	Depth (Z) +/-
X + Z + Up / Down / scroll	Height (Y) +/-: stacks layers upward, e.g. wall on wall
G + the size keys above	Gap on that axis instead of the size (0.5 m per step)
B + the size keys above	Stagger: X shifts each row sideways, Z shifts each column forward/back, Y leans each layer sideways (0.25 m per press, accumulates)
R + Up / Down / scroll	Rotate each piece a bit more than the last (1 degree per press by default, config range 0.1-45): bends the grid into an arc
H	Hold: freeze the grid or blueprint in place (press again to release); place it from up to about 10 m away
L	Follow terrain on / off: each piece rises and falls with the ground under it, so a grid on a slope follows the land. Stays on until you turn it off or switch pieces
K	Open the control panel: type exact sizes, gaps, stagger and rotation, or use its - / + buttons; also Reset, Hold, Undo, Save/Clear for the current blueprint selection, and a full list of every shortcut. The mouse is freed while it is open
F	Add or remove the built piece you are aiming at from the blueprint you are putting together (Shift + F: its whole group, Alt + F: it and every piece connected to it, no limit)
Delete	With a saved blueprint selected in the build menu (its ghost showing), delete it
Mouse wheel	Rotate the whole grid, as for a single piece (when none of the keys above is held)
Ctrl + Z	Undo the last grid (refunds materials)
Ctrl + S	Save the current blueprint selection, with a name typed into the game's own naming box

Scroll works like Up / Down: hold the key, then scroll (up = Up). While one of those keys is held the wheel does not rotate the piece or zoom the camera.

Other mods binding the same keys (for example a quick slot on Z) do not break these controls: SmartBuild reads the keyboard directly, blocks item use while its keys are held, and logs a Key clash warning at start-up naming any mod that shares one of its keys. Vanilla's Sit key is X, its holster key is R and its Guardian Power key is F, so those are blocked while you hold the matching key with a piece showing. A legend of the keys is drawn at the left of the screen, and a readout of the grid settings at the bottom (hide them with ShowHud in the K panel or config, or ShowControlsHint for just the legend).

The Smart Hammer

SmartBuild lives in its own tool, the Smart Hammer, not the plain hammer. Craft one for 1 Wood (no crafting station) — it has the same durability and repair as the plain hammer, and builds every piece the plain hammer does, including anything another mod adds to it. Equip it to use every feature above; equip the plain hammer (or anything else) and building is exactly vanilla, no grid, no extra keys blocked. A client without SmartBuild installed cannot load the item: it is skipped (and lost) when that client's inventory next saves, and it is invisible on the ground to them. Nothing crashes for them either way.

Blueprints

Combine several pieces into a reusable blueprint: aim at a built piece and press F to add it (F again removes it; Shift + F takes the whole group it was placed with, for example a whole grid; Alt + F takes it and every piece connected to it, touching, no limit). The pieces you've picked glow, the first one gold — that one is the origin the others are measured from. A selection like this can't be gridded, moved or rotated on its own — press Ctrl + S (or Save... in the K panel) and type a name in the game's own naming box to save it, or Clear in the K panel to abandon it.

Every saved blueprint shows up as its own piece in the build menu, in a Blueprints category on the Smart Hammer (its icon is whichever piece it uses most, so it's easy to spot in the list). Pick it there and aim, exactly like any other piece — the ghost shows every piece in place, correctly positioned, and snaps onto nearby builds the same way a single piece does. With it selected, press Delete to remove it for good.

Once picked from the build menu, a blueprint repeats through the same X / Z / X+Z grid controls as a single piece — set a size first and one click stamps that many copies of the whole blueprint in a row, with gap, stagger and rotation working the same way too (this is how you build a long tunnel: one blueprint with a floor, walls and a roof, repeated). The copies nearest you show as the real pieces, not just a box, so you can see exactly what you're about to place and which way it's facing; further copies (or a very large blueprint) fall back to a wireframe box. Three small arrows float above the ghost too, showing +X (red), +Y (green) and +Z (blue), to help judge a rotated or staggered stamp before you click. The whole stamp is checked for blocking and cost first and placed at once, refunded by Ctrl+Z like everything else. Like a piece staying selected in the Smart Hammer, the blueprint stays armed after you place it, so the next click places another straight away (the grid dial resets to a single copy each time, so you don't repeat the last stamp by accident). Blueprints are saved as small text files under BepInEx/config/SmartBuild/Blueprints and reload automatically.

Rules

• The whole grid must be affordable when you click, or it is refused. If you use a build-from-chest mod (Valheim Plus's CraftFromChest, Craft From Containers, AzuCraftyBoxes and similar), materials in the chests it can reach count, and are taken from them as the pieces spawn. Undo refunds to your inventory.
• If any cell is blocked (terrain or another piece in the way, a ward you lack access to, a no-build zone, or the wrong biome), the whole grid is refused.
• Size, gap, rotation and stagger reset after each grid placement, when you switch to a different piece, and when you put the Smart Hammer away or swap to another tool (follow terrain stays on across placements but also clears in the last two cases). By default a grid is limited to 100 per axis and 100,000 pieces in total. Both limits are settings: raise them in the config up to 1,000 per axis and 1,000,000 pieces. A placement that big takes minutes, runs in the background so you can keep playing, cannot be cancelled, and makes a world heavy, so raise them only if you mean it.
• Pieces spawn over several frames (25 per frame by default), and materials are charged as they spawn.
• Blocked cells are checked for clipping into the world (for pieces that need it), wards, no-build zones and biome. Cultivated-ground and ground-only rules are not re-checked per cell.
• Follow terrain uses the ground height under each piece (terrain only, not other buildings), measured against the ground under the first piece. The outline for very large grids ignores it.
• Grids over 400 cells show an outline instead of ghosts and are checked when you place.
• Client-side: servers and other players do not need the mod.

Known limits

• Spacing comes from each piece's snap points (mesh size if it has none), so gap 0 may leave tiny seams or overlaps on some pieces.
• Pieces that only touch (rather than snap) may get less structural support than hand-placed ones.
• Undo removes only pieces you created that still exist, and refunds their materials.

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